Knowing Your Priorities

Felices Fiestas Patrias a todos!

Today, July 28, is Peru's Independence Day. But this entry isn't going to compare the two Independence Day celebrations. I'll do that later when I have time to process, reflect, and upload the photos. This post is about priorities and how mine are so often different from my host culture's. Here I will present one case study for your analysis.

Since coming back to Peru and being back in site, we've lost power on three separate occasions. Now. When we lose electricity in the well developed United States, it generally comes back within an hour or so if not the next morning. In the mountains of Peru, this is not the case. And this is owed to the fact that our electricity travels what is for me a 4 hour car ride to get to our little pueblo. Thus, a lot of cable + a lot of distance + mountains + strong winds - frequent maintenance = a grand possibility of power failure and delay in repairs.

The most recent power outage happened on a Monday around mid day. The most frequent answer I heard was that a transformer had blown and that the power would be back anytime between the next day and 15 days from then. As a technologically dependent American, I was hoping for the former. I needed my computer to type up some documents, the internet to get them sent out, the printer at the municipality to get them printed to be delivered. Without power, the cell phones don't find their signal and I couldn't make my calls to other volunteers. I was for once living that incomunicado lifestyle of a Peace Corps volunteer. Out on my own, far and out of touch from other Americans with only my books and my knitting to keep me busy. And in some ways, this is good. It's always nice to take a break and remove ourselves from such a dependence on our modern contraptions. However, this was not the time for that. Not just I, but much of my town have/has become dependent on these machines to get our work done. And without electricity, nothing was getting accomplished anywhere.

But it went out on Monday and so with the entire work week ahead of us, we trusted that the good employees of Electro-centro would have us up and running and back on the grid in no time. But. Monday night passed and Tuesday came and went. Tuesday night as I planned on making a trip to a neighboring town to borrow some of their power to charge my gadgets: computer, ipod, cell phone, flashlight batteries, the authorities were busy figuring out how to get one television to work for 2 hours that night.

Back story time: For those of you who don't follow soccer (which I imagine to be most all of you), the South American Cup has been going on. That week was the semi-finals, that is, the game to get in to the championship game and it was Peru v. Uruguay. You may remember Uruguay's awesome handball play during last year's semi-final in the World Cup....or you may not. Let's just lay it out there. Peru doesn't win very often. Ever. Maybe once. So this was a big deal. And this town of 500 was going to see this game with or without electricity. (Turns out without electricity.)

This is how it went. It turns out that our municipality actually owns a gas-powered generator. I had no idea. But you'd think that they might have been using it a little bit in the last day and a half to accomplish those necessary work items similar to the ones that I couldn't do without power. At least I would think that. But it turns out that the generator is only for emergencies. And the threat of missing Peru in the semi-final game was emergency enough. So they hooked it up to the tv in the internet cafe (my house!) and when the time came, the fired it up.

And there we sat. Two hours. In complete darkness but for the bright shining of the television. A few times our generator failed us and we missed a few precious minutes, imagining what might be happening. Everyone cheering on their team, sharply inhaling when Uruguay made an attempt on the goal and yelling directions to the Peruvian with the ball. No matter the sport or the country, a true fan will yell at the tv and expect their player to hear them and heed them. Although I couldn't get over how ridiculous it was that this was the emergency reason to pull out the generator and spend the fuel, I love the night. The sense of camaraderie among Peru futbol fans was heightened by the sense of community brought on by a power outage. Unfortunately, we left the game sadder for having watched it because we were still without electricity and Peru had lost. (They went on to take 3rd place but don't ask me who won the Paraguay v. Uruguay championship.) Still, it was a night worthy of a post.

The power outage was still in effect Wednesday morning and so I took a nice hitch hike down to the town 9 km away hoping to get some power from the NGO I knew to have a generator. But this being the 3 day of the outage, they were out of power too and couldn't help. So then, I went to the source. Although our electricity comes from Huancayo, my capital city, the electricity for the mine comes from a hydroelectric plant roughly 10 km from my town. So I walked there and nicely asked if I could borrow their outlet for a while. They were more than helpful and as I sat working on my laptop while my ipod, cell phone and batteries charged, I marveled at how I was sucking my energy in straight from the source. The river rushing by was making that little battery symbol fuller as I typed. How cool and totally worth the walk.

The thing about losing the electricity is that it can be fun and beneficial if for a little while. We and our neighbors are outside enjoying all that we can of the sunlight until it sets completely. We rediscover the beauty of candlelight and story-telling. We are often more productive in activities that technology distracts us from like my knitting, journal-ling and reading (South of Broad, not the fluff read that you might think judging by the cover). We discover that we can do some things without electricity like making yogurt. We go to bed and arise earlier. We rediscover our priorities when rationing our power and we truly come to value its creation before we spend it.

And those are good reminders. But I'm still glad that we've gone a solid week without another loss of electricity. New record for the month of July. We'll see how long it goes.

Blessings.