Embarcamos a Iquitos!

We (hopefully) are going to the jungle tonight, specifically the city of Iquitos in the Peruvian Amazon.  I say hopefully very quietly because I don't want to jinx it...the thing is, last weekend was when the excursion was originally planned for, but we did less of the going to the uncharted wilderness and more of the waiting in the airport for six hours only to be told that our flight was cancelled due to the fog, which to add insult to injury, smelled like a microwaved fish tumor.  But I'm trying to be optimistic despite the fact that a million other flights out of Lima's Jorge Chavez airport have been cancelled this week (that is numerically accurate, I checked) and the fog is already creeping around the buildings outside like some riduculous, malevolent Dumbo thinking we don't notice it and snickering to itself about how it's going to ruin our flight again.  

But as far as recent events have gone, things are good.  Last night, we had a lesson on how to play the cajon, a percussion instrument created when slaves were not allowed to have instuments and began to use the boxes which held clothes or food or other items.  It was really fun, at least for those of us playing.  I can't imagine how painful it must have been to everyone within earshot.  After the cajon lesson, we were given an introduction to several traditional dances, which really are strikingly similar to every other kind of dance I have ever done, in the sense that they are impossible for me to do without becoming someone who is tall, awkward, and rhythmless.  It is decieving, for somewhere inside me there is a River Dancer waiting to burst out in a blinding show of amazing-ness.  However, one must not hurry things before the world is ready.  So we spun, we thrusted, we hopped, we frolicked, and really did have a good time, mostly because once I accepted that I was not going to be good at what we were doing, I just let myself be horrid.  And it was a masterful horror.  The thing is, my dance problems are compounded by the fact that the only moves I can do competently are those I learned from Hitch.  The rest of the time I let my body do ridiculous things, but smile with the eyebrows raised to assure everyone that I really dance better than this, and am simply in a mood to entertain by pretending that the horrendous thing that is taking place is certainly not what I consider dancing talent.  

After the class, despite being soaked in sweat and having had my dignity somewhat shredded, I was talked into going to get pizza, with the condition that I would not go dancing after.  Two hours later, forty soles burned on expensive but exquisite pizza, I find myself in a bar where our group of seven are the only ones taking advantage of the empty dance floor and the pulsing lights.  We shuffle around and pretend not to feel super awkward.  I pull out the move I learned from the Simpsons where you lay on the floor and run in a circle, and then try and do a ninja-jump up move.  It doesn't work and I fall down.  We decide to leave.

In our Marketing class, we talked about the Bottom of the Pyramid market, where the 4 billion people in the world who live in poverty are given the dignity of being considered micro consumers and micro producers, rather than charity cases.  I am thinking much more about the idea of being an entrepreneur to this market, where real change can be made in the lives of the customers while avoiding the inferior-superior relationship that exists all too often in charity or aid situations, something that always bothered me.  I still have a lot to learn, as things like this remind me.  What is now on my mind is how to organize what Peter, my close friend in Kenya, and I will do for the projects he has underway there.  We have to get our needs recognized, our objectives set, and search for income-generating activities for Baragoi, a more traditional city in Northern/Central Kenya.  From there, we'll set up a documentary, get some promotional materials, and hopefully prepare a cross-country fundraising journey here in the States that we will undertake during a semester or summer, or both.  

Peace friends.  Talk soon.