Nazca was a really interesting place so full of history, culture and ‘aliens’. I was lucky enough that the guy I was staying with worked in tourism and insisted on taking me to all of the sites for free. I was really glad that I travelled back 300 kms to explore the area after he had invited me to stay with his family… and I really recommend the south of Peru to anyone who is interested in history and culture. First I saw the Nazca lines which are mathematically created, large figures etched into the ground over hundreds of years. There are a lot of theories about where they came from because they are so large and precisely drawn… one theory is aliens but given the nature of the culture I think the Nazca people most likely created them as part of their religious ceremonies and worships to the Gods but it is amazing how they managed to create them so precisely given the basic tools available at the time and is yet another sign of the innate intelligence of indigenous people in comparison to modern day man. The next site that I went to was an ancient burial mummy site. Here I saw mummies that were still left in their graves, millions and millions of years old. Finally I saw the ancient pyramids and aquaducts created by the Nazca people to prey and water the earth, they were impressive constructions and I am quite sure the pyramids will become the next Machu Pichu once they have been properly excavated. South Peru really is every tourists dream but the sad thing about it is that the Peruvian government does not place a lot of importance on these ancient and historical sites, so it is quite normal to see a highway or car tyre marks etched through the middle of an important site such as the Nazca lines. I left the next day to head back to Paracas by the coast. Here there are some islands that are considered the ‘poor man’s Galapagas’ and are filled with elephant seals, penguins and rare species of birds as well as ancient etchings in the sand. I was lucky enough to get back the day before a religious festival and was invited on a boat trip with a sharman to bless one of the islands and the sea. It was a lovely way to finish my travels and I was looking forward to go back to the orphanage where I had started my trip over a year ago. I was really nervous going to the gate of the orphanage, I was not sure if I had made the right decision to go back… some things are best left as a happy memory. I knocked the door and a familiar face finally answered the door… I knew immediately that I had made the right decision. ‘I know you’ a 14 year old boy said looking at me with a smile. ‘You were here last year!’ How on earth do you remember that I thought to myself amazed, there must have been a hundred volunteers that came and went after me. But to my surprise, he was not the only one and suddenly I started to be greeted by hundreds of children with big smiles on their faces touching and hugging me, thanking me for my return. I knew then that even if I was not able to do much to help them in the 2 weeks that I was there, I had already done something for them… I had remembered them and for children who had been abandoned and neglected by their parents, that was the most important gift that anyone could give them. I started working with the young 4 year olds that I had been working with when I had been at the orphanage previously. However, there was another volunteer there and things seemed to be surprisingly in control so I quickly asked to move into another class not wanting to waste a minute and give the most about of help that I could in the 2 weeks that I was there but I promised to go back and help with the little ones whenever I had a spare minute. The volunteer coordinator looked a little disappointed with me, which I did not understand but agreed to my request. I was back with the children who had ran rings around me over a year ago and who had been both physically and mentally abused by their previous tutor who I had made a complaint against and was later fired. I was really happy to see how much they had changed in a year. They had a new tutor who was very loving and in turn the children were a lot calmer and more obedient…. It made me realise how true the saying was that violence breeds violence. I worked intensively for the 2 weeks and again was left being one of the only volunteers in the orphanage while the other volunteers left for Lima for the weekend. I divided my time between the little ones that I had been with and the older children who I was now officially the volunteer for. Although there was a lot more control with the little ones I started to realise that their life had become like a military camp. They were 4 years old and they were humiliated if the wet their pants or spilt food on their clothes. Then I started to witness one of the tutors physically and mentally abusing the children, pushing them over and locking them in the toilet naked if they mis-behaved. ‘Oh God!’ I thought to myself…. Not again!!!! I tried to talk to the tutor and said that the Director had asked me to report to him any abuse that I had witnessed towards the children, hoping this would make her stop. However, it was as if she did not care or just could not stop herself and she continued with her brutal behaviour. I later learned that she previously lived in the orphanage for 8 years herself and she had admitted that she could not behave lovingly towards the children because she had been treated so badly herself in the orphanage previously and the place was so full of bad memories for her. I felt in a bit of a dilemma… I thought it was nice that the directors had given her a job to keep her off the streets BUT she was not in the right head space to look after children and I could not stand by and watch her continue to abuse them. I spoke to the other volunteer who was in that class about it when she returned from Lima and she agreed that the tutor’s behaviour was unacceptable and needed to be addressed. I also spoke to the volunteer coordinator who had originally assigned me that class about this tutors behaviour. ‘Yes’ he said looking at me sadly, ‘that is why we put you in that class originally… we have seen her do worse things like forcing a 4 year old to eat a raw chillie as punishment but the directors do not believe us… you are our only hope to make things better for the children….’ I suddenly started to feel an overwhelming amount of responsibility… ‘but I am not even in that class anymore it is better for the other volunteer to speak to the directors rather then me’ I said a little flustered. ‘’I would like you both to but I have a feeling that she will not… it is not an easy thing for a volunteer to do, turn against the tutor who you are working with and the Directors respect you because of what you did for the children last time you were here’ he said a little desperately. ‘OK, OK , I will speak to them’. The next day the Directors came to the orphanage and I pulled them aside and explained to them what had been happening, they called the other volunteer over for confirmation but as the volunteer coordinator had predicted she was not strong enough to speak out and said she had nothing to say on the matter… I felt a little helpless… it was all down to my word over hers…. thankfully they believed me and the tutor was immediately fired and asked to leave the orphanage. I was relieved for the children but I suddenly felt like the most hated person in the orphanage. The tutor had said I had lied about everything and it was my fault she no longer had a job…. The majority of tutors and children believed her and I got greeted with angry looks every time I walked into a room. I knew I had done the right thing but it was destroying me inside and I could not wait to leave the orphanage for Lima. It was not easy being greeted with animosity when you are working very hard trying to help. Finally the day came for me to leave. The children in my class held onto me tightly. One girl who had not spoken to me a lot suddenly burst into tears and would not let go of me. I was really surprised and looked at her and said why are you so upset… another volunteer will come in a day or 2 there is nothing to be sad about. She looked at me through her tears and said ‘but they are not like you… you are different… you really care about us’. Another 9 year old girl who was known as the trouble maker of the class picked up my big rucksack and looked at me desperately and said… ‘don’t go… please can I come with you… I promise I will not be bad anymore’. I realised that she was not a bad child, she had never been visited by her parents and was just missing love in her life so she had become hard…. I had given her love and tried to help her understand why she was behaving in this way and why she was always being told off which I thought would help her but by doing this I had formed an unbreakable attachment with her and now by leaving I was breaking her heart and I knew she would behave twice as badly now as a result, even though I had made her promise me that she would not. Finally I opened the door to leave with a tear in my eye…. ‘Wait!’ one of the girls shouted from the other side of the orphanage…. “Take my cross and my heart” she said sobbing hysterically and running over to put around my neck her religious cross necklace and putting in my hand an ornament of a heart with her name on it. I left not knowing what to feel…. I knew I had done something to improve the lives of the children but I had also added to the pain in their already very sad lives by coming, giving them love but then leaving…. And making them feel like they had been abandoned once again. I spent 2 days in Lima and reflected about my trip and how much I had changed in the last year. I was supposed to meet with another boy, Diego, from the orphanage who had run away because he had been misled by another boy in the orphanage into thinking life on the street would be better then life in the orphanage. I asked the boy who had told him to run away why he had done that and he said it was because he knew that Diego had hope and a future because of his intelligence and his presence in the orphanage made him feel bad about himself and his future…. I could not believe it… ‘So you put his life in danger because of your own jealousy’ I said dumbfoundedly. ‘Yes’ he said without a look of regret in his eyes. I knew I had to try and meet Diego and try to help him but hours before I was due to meet him he sent me a message saying he had no money for the bus and so he could not meet me. I had no number to call him and I was due to leave Peru the next day… I had run out of time and there was nothing left that I could do… I felt sad and helpless and for the first time that year said a prayer for him, holding tightly the cross that the girl from the orphanage had put around my neck. I spent my last night in Peru with 2 buskers that I had met further south in the country. They had such humble and kind souls and played and sang beautifully in the middle of the public park in Lima where we sat surrounded by homeless people and locals. It made me think about how we can find happiness in the most simple and basic things in life if we look for it hard enough. The next day I was finally on my flight back to the UK. Well my return flight had to have some kind of mis-hap, it was me after all! So when I landed in Madrid airport I proceeded with putting on all of my clothes so that I would not have to pay 50 euros to check in my bags with ryanair… I walked through the scanners and just my luck for the first time ever in my life they beeped. The airport staff looked at me in my 10 layers of clothes suspiciously and beckoned me to a private room…. Here I was asked to strip down to my underwear for the first time ever so they could check I was not smuggling anything. They looked at me confused when it was obvious I was not smuggling anything… I knew what they were thinking and quickly explained that I did not want to pay to check my bag in so I was going to wear all of my clothes on the plane instead. Thankfully they saw the funny side and spoke to the airline about letting me carry the extra clothes in a bag without having to pay a fee so I would not have to wear them all! Finally I was on my final flight back to the UK. I have been back now for 2 weeks but I can honestly say that it feels like nothing has changed. I think that is one of the nicest things about going away, you realise who your true friends are…. I had changed so much in a year but with the people that were important to me it was not awkward or uncomfortable as you might expect after 14 months of not seeing or speaking to people and I really felt like I had never left. The only thing that I did feel a little sad about was that while I had learned to open my heart in my 14 months of being away, it seemed like my closest friends were closing their hearts because they had been hurt a few too many times. I understood why they felt like this but I also felt sad for them because as the saying goes… ‘it is better to have loved and lost then to have never loved at all’. The day to day reality of life in the UK started to hit me. I was really happy to be back but it was hard to see people insisting on only drinking bottled water when we are lucky enough to live in a country where we can drink clean water from a tap. It made me think of the families that I had visited in the Amazon who had to resort to putting their buckets out every night to collect rainwater to drink. I knew I did not have the right to be judgemental because everyone has the right to live their life as they please but I also knew it would be hard for me to see and accept these ‘normalities’ when I had lived outside of it for so long. I also saw for the first time the sadness in my mother’s eyes when she spoke about all of the times that she waited for my call that never came and although she told me that she was very proud of me and understood my need to live and travel as I had, it reminded me of something that I had once heard from a wise man… ‘whether one was ever justified in neglecting the welfare of one’s own family in order to fight for the welfare of others’.
Posted on: Sat, 28 Jun 2014 22:02:40 +0000
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