Monday 31 May 2010

Tilly Pitt and The Dune Buggy Adventure


"I've just seen a Peruvian man's willy!" If I heard Clare say those words once, I heard her say it at least 10 times. Now, this was not some wierd swinging weekend away, it was the fact that the men as we went south from Lima seem increasingly happy to just wap it out wee in the middle of the road. They have no embarassment and do not care who is watching, after a while I even joined in "willy watch" (coming to a BBC early eveing TV slot soon!).
After willy watch unfortunatley came poverty watch as the divide between the rich and the poor in Peru became increasingly apparent. The journey started in Miraflores (land of the rich) but as we headed onto the PanAmericana road, the rich are quickly left behind and the average Peruvian is seen with shocking regularity. We saw people washing their clothes in streams, children covered in dirt walking to their hut of a house and thousand upon thousands more of those hut 'shanty' homes. It is impossible for a western mind to imagine living in these conditions and the voyeuristic creature lying within us all very quickly springs to the surface as we pass a world unknown, unseen and often hidden from us for most of our lives. I have taught this geography for years but seeing it in such vast numbers is still hard to witness and impossible to actually describe.
The journey we were taking was to carry out a geography 'reccy' for a new fieldtrip. The IB have changed their syllabus and so there is no more ecosystem studies and therefore no more Tambopata, those Capucine monkeys will not be seen again for some time! The new destination will be the desert settlements of Ica and Huacachina (still a vast difference from the Land that Time Forgot that is Morecambe Lancashire).
As you approach Ica, the fields become more fertile as desert farming dominates the landscape and then civilisation again surfaces as you hit Ica. The hotel was called Belle Sands and although very average looking from the outside, the place itself is beautiful and will be a luxury stay for the kids when they come here in August. Our stay was only slightly marred by the fact that the Ica football team were also staying there. A strange bunch who seem to have John Terry as a role model judging by the fact that they were oggling Clare en mass even though I was holding here hand and she was carrying Tilly at the time.
We wnet from the elite professional sportsperson hotel to the oasis resort of Huacachina. Here, we hired two guides to take us on a dune buggy tour. Now anyone from social services may want to stop reading now as we also took Miss Tilly on the dune buggy. We asked that the driver went very very slow but still the looks we got from Peruvians as we drove off in the buggy made us feel like we had just won worse parents in the world award 2010! (Mrs Matthews was not nominated this year). The Peruvian idea of parenting is however very different to ours. Why change your child or give her food if another option is to wrap them in even more layers of clothing and blankets!!!
We drove around the dunes for about half an hour and I was not prepared for the spactacle that we saw. The dunes come very close to Iguazu falls for the most impressive geographical features that I have ever seen. The photos look impressive but they do not do these 200metre high piles of sand justice. They really are breathtaking! and any waorries about Tilly were quickly banished after our first stop when rather than being terrified of the bumpy ride or crying, she had instead fallen fast asleep in the carrier strapped to my chest.
The second stop then saw the drivers go to the back of the buggy and bring out wooden snow boards that they handed to us. The 45 degree slope was suddenly no longer a geographical feature - oh no! - it was now a challenge to be sand boarded down.
"lie on your front and use your feet as brakes" the driver recommended. I may have forgotten to use my feet as brakes and so one bruised hand, sandy pants and broken camera later, I found myself at the bottom of the dune.
The guide clearly gave a sigh of relief when he realised that I not was going to sandboard with Tily on my chest. Although judging by her sleeping during the buggy ride, I think she may have enjoyed it!
The buggy then toured us around the biggest dune in the dune field, to another natural oasis and then to the edge of the dune above the main oasis where we took photos with the camera that still worked.
We then sat at the edge of the oasis having pisco sours until it was time to return up the PanAmericana and back from teh glorious desert sunshine to the cloud and fog of Lima. Just another day in the extraordinary life of Tily Pitt.


p.s. I have found a way to locate all the Flickr photos of our travels onto a map. Just go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/jonnypitt456/map?&fLat=-13.5071&fLon=-73.1469&zl=12&order_by=recent to see the map and understand a bit more about where we are and what we have been doing.

Adios

Saturday 22 May 2010

Mrs Pitt Signing In.........



This will probably be the only time I will write on the blog as there is no way I could ever possibly compete with the 'Thomas Hardy' of Lima! Well where to start on our first week in Lima.
Tilly was amazing on the flight, I was prepared for hell and I was armed with my pack of pacifiers (dummies!) but she was an angel. This could not be said about the poor peruvian baby next to us who cried the entire 12 hours but maybe the ten blankets, hat, gloves and the fact he couldnt breath from being smothered by his mother didnt actually help.
Day one and we jumped in a taxi with Tilly strapped to Jon's front, the taxi driver as he asked us to pay upfront this is unusual behaviour(we are talking 5 soles which is roughly £1.25) after giving him 3 of the 5, he shook his head and claimed it was all 'falso', he asked to see more money 'falso tambien' and by means of offering a solution he very 'kindly' offered to take us to the bank.....I dont think so!well we didnt last long in the taxi as Jon started shouting 'dimembarko' and we found ourselves back on the street and away from the dodgy driver.
Jon tactically kept certain things quiet before our arrival.... I am a great believer in if you have a baby noone actually wants to hear about how many times he/she poos, what colour it is etc etc the fact is everyone i have met so far will inevitably at some point talk about their own toilet habits and their motions, simply because the amount you become ill in Lima is clearly more than anywhere else in the world. When you greet people with the puruvian one cheek kiss you then talk about your bowel movements, put it this way I am dreading when that time comes!
Crossing the roads........Jon never mentioned you take your life in your hands when you cross the road in Lima literally 'Frogger' eat your heart out (For Those of you too young to understand what frogger is - a 1980's amstrad game where a frog tries to cross the road without getting killed!) I have been shouted at numerous times because Tilly has only one blanket wrapped aroung her (as its 30 degrees!!) by not only numerous old ladies but even an 11 year old begga who told me off for Tilly not wearing a hat (this was in the Brazilian bar drinking the 2 for 1 cocktails like responsible parents that we are!) Tilly is also seen as being a freak here; she is a Gulliver like giant in the land of the Munchkins, the fact she can hold her head, smile and is now gurgling at just over 2 months....?dos mesas no no quatro mesas? the peruvians try to insist......
(Editor back again) Having Clare and Tilly here has made me feel like a tour guide through this mad city. Leading them through the life or death guidlines of how to cross the street, which roads to avoid, when to say 'si' and when to say 'no gracias' at the checkout for shopping and trying to combine all the high points of Miraflores, Surco and Barranco into the first week. I had the nervewracking job or trying to sort out injections (many thanks to Mrs Reeves ((with an 's')) for helping Clare with the job of a 6-in-1 jab! and taking her to the most religious clinic in the whole world (large Jesus statues peer down on you as you sit in the clinic and I have also been told that in the operating theatres they have paintings of Jesus guiding the hand of the Surgeons ((I pray they have also had some kind of training too)).
Then taking them to Barranco to try out the wierd and wonderful world of Peruvian food - Lomo Saltado is salted meat with Sweet potatoes and a red onion sauce, it has to be tasted to fully understand just how tasty this is. Also Cevice, which is raw fish dresssed in a lime and red onion sauce (again a Taste Sensation!). Barranco also enabled Clare and Tilly to see their first humming bird and for Clare to stare up at the sky as about 8 vultures circled overhead.
Today was health check day at work. You turn up and then wait in queues with other teachers as step-by-step you are taken through a health production line. Blood test, check. Height measurement, check. Weight, check. Eye test, check. Chest X-ray, check and general MOT overview, check. Everybody seemed amazed that it was all offered free as the Private health clinics pilled advert after advert into your hands for laser surgery, illness insurance plans and (most surreal of all) a man dressed as a giant tooth handed out balloons and dental insurance plans (free indeed!!!!. Anywho - back to today's guest editor.

Anyway I am missing a brilliant game of rugby ( Toulouse V Biarritz, vivo en ESPN mas) so to sum up: the house is amazing ( the boy did very good), the people are kind, the food is great if a little crazy at times and The Pitts are settling well into our life in Lima.
P.s I am now officially a lady that lunches...........

chiao

Thursday 13 May 2010

Jungle Boogie Capuchin monkey style!




The week has finally arived. The Pitt family are re-united and Life in Peru (the name of the blog) can finally actually start. However, before we get into that, there is the small detail of Tambopata to talk about. Tambopata, for those of you not in the know, is the Peruvian rainforest about 2 hours flight East of Lima.
The flight was an early one and so after moaning about teachers' moaning in the last blog, I have to admit that getting up at 4 o'clock on the first day of holiday did magically transform me into one of those moaning teachers. This moaning did quickly fade once I glanced at the magnifiscent mountain scenery over Cusco and faded into obscurity once I was gazing over the meandering Tombopata river as we approached landing.
The airport we landed in was little more than a glorified shed. For those of you that have had the pleasure of visiting the late, great Coventry airport - this made Coventry look like Heathrow and JFK combined! we were met by our guide for the week (Carolina) and we were quickly transferred to a bus and driven down dirt roads lined with the poorest Peruvian people I had seen since my arrival. I was again in real Peru and what a breathtaking experience it is.
The bus was followed by a boat trip down the river that we had spied from the plane. We passed farmers in their boats, people seiving gold in the river, people using long sticks to push their boats along, children in tattered clothes staring at the rich people travelling past with ipods on, cameras out and a whole world that has been taken forgranted. It was also made very clear that this river was the only way to reach our destination. Even the town we had landed in only had one dirt road connecting it to Cusco and that would take 12 hours. We were in total isolation and any thoughts of British risk assessments were rapidly cast aside knowing that this trip is more important than that for the pupils. This is about being remote, not being in the pampered, protected world of Miraflores but in the absolute wilderness with killer snakes, killer spiders and killer diseases. I was finally fully immune from these diseases but only after a visit to a perverted nurse (push your sleeve higher - no higher - no higher - oh actually can you take your shirt off please!). But thankfully I had recovered from this sexual exploitation by the time I was on the boat down the river. The kids however, were not so re-assured by their injections and insect spray. One particular pupil was terrified after watching an episode of House where a person died of a strange mosquito induced disease and thanks to the glory of Wikipedia he has also researched into this more and found that the disease was indeed to be found in the Peruvian rainforest. After much calming words or rather taking the mick out of somebody basing their medical knowledge on House, we managed to get him onto the boat to go to our first destination - Posada.
The whole area is managed by a group called Rainforest. They are a preservation and travel company that offer Eco-tourist trips and help to sustain the local community and protect the rainforest. There is only electricity for 4 hours a day in their lodges, there is no hot water and you can only use bio-degradable shampoo and soap. The showers are therefore cold- freezing cold- and the soap feels like it has been made from the floor sweepings of a branch of Lush. However that was not the worst part of the showers; the worst part was that there was no lock on the door (thank you Mr German man for walking in on me ((and it was a very cold shower by the way)) and also the wooden wall at the back had large gaps in it that faced onto the girl's rooms. This meant tactically timed showers before the kids were awake (I hope anyway).
The activities were also eco-tourist based and were hugely impressive. We walked up a canopy tower to view over the rainforest and the soaring vultures, went on a night walk to see Aligators, tree frogs and tarantulas, went to a clay lick (Culpa) and saw hunders of Makaws arriving to feed (another 4am start for that one) and we went on a boat trip to see Giant otters. This trip was yet again a 4am start but also ending in no giant otters beind seen (maybe thats because Otters are too sensible to get up at 4 in the morning!!!!!!!!!!!!). I did however endanger the Piranha population of Peru. We were given the chance to fish in the river as long as we returned the fish to the ox-bow lake. I fished away and after about 5 minutes I had a bite. I wrestled with the 5cm long beast and managed to get the piranha out of the water only for the little bugger to fly off the hook and slide across the boat and down a gap in the floor. Never mind, I thought, he will just have plopped back in the water.
I have got to go and mark and wash some clothes and baby bed sheets. I will finish this post tomorrow.
..... continued........
the next stage of the journey into The Heart of Darkness saw us have to travel 6 hours by boat via 2 checkpoints and to TRC (Tombopata, Research Centre). 7 of the pupils had already been staying there for a week on Biology trip and thanks to the extreme discipline of their stay, they were wild, loud, excitable and blue!!! On leaving school, we had be warned about the infamous Huito fruit. It is an inocuous looking fruit that when mixed with pure alcohol (in a bowl not via ingestion) turns your skin blue once applied. We had been asked not to let the kids use it on their skin but the Biology group clearly had and it looked as though we had entered the set of Avatar 2. The look of shock on some of the tourists faces as they disembarked from the boat and came face to face with the Markham Savages was hilarious.
Thankfully the savage period lasted for only an hour and the Biology group quickly transformed into mild and gentile Geographers within no time (however, Mr House was slowly turning into an extra from Lord of The Flies as the worry of killer insects and killer spiders became slowly more and more a reality).
The first killer spider that we saw was on a web about 50 metres from the lodge. It was pointed out by the guide who then started poking the web and asking the kids to come closer for photos. I can clearly remember the words "more poisonous that the black widow" and "yes we have the anti-body, but that just buys you time" being uttered by the guide. Buys you time, I thought, how does buys you time help when we are 8 hours by boat from the nearest twon and from the look of it, that town is not exactly the sort of place that top medics would be choosing to stay. Although who knows, maybe top doctors like living in shacks, riding in rickshaws and going to the impressivley named 'sexy car wash'.
The kids also told me that they had saved one of the teachers from death last week as he took them on a midnight hunt for mini-alligators. They were wading through a swamp in the pitch black when one of them spotted moevement in the water, turned their torch to see what it was and discovered the most poisonous snake in the Peruvian rainforest. The snake was heading towards the teacher and if the kid had not have spotted it, said teacher could have been "buying time" and hoping the 8 hours and shoddy hospital saves him!
Then came the actual work. After a couple of days of travelling and looking at the nice wildlife, it was time to actually study the rainforest and the kids excelled. Having to hack a transect through the actual rainforest was very different although I couldn't help thinking that the machete may have been more useful on the transects we did in Morecambe and Middlesbrough!
got to go again - its a tough life this being a dad thing! The jungle adventure continues soon! with the capuchin monkey comment explained along with much more....
The transect study was completed in a separate part of the rainforest located next to a very impressive beach that had been made by the river deposits. The view of the sun setting as we sat on the beach was breathtaking and was so beautiful that all the kids could think about was "MUDFIGHT!". One hour later the kids were no longer blue, they were now head to toe in brown mud and every last one of them had a huge smile on their face. They came to the rainforest to see amazing wildlife, incredible animals and have a once in a lifetime experience but almost half of them put 'mudfight' down as their favourite activity in the lodge survey. Kids will be kids whether they are in Birmingham, Bogota or one hour from Bolivia.
Now to explain the capuchin monkey comment. I was walking along with my group in the jungle when fruit started to fall from the trees around us. Looking up, we saw a troop of 7 monkeys looking down at us from the canopy layer. The boys started giggling and said "at least its not capuchin monkeys sir. We are safe for a while". I ignored the comment and we walked on. About 10 minutes later we heard more monkeys and this time, they were capuchin monkeys. "Watch out sir!" "Don't drop the soap". I had to know more. The story of the capuchin monkey is a strange but apparently true one. The capuchin monkey is a strong monkey that can easily grab fruit from trees but the Squirrel monkey is much weaker and so has to rely on picking up leftovers from other monkeys. They are therefore known to follow the capuchin monkeys around picking up bits and pieces oif fruit - so far so good. Unfortunately, if the squirrel monkey gets too close to the capuchin then it will grab it, beat it and in extreme cases....... rape it! The capuchin monkey has been seen sexually atacking smaller monkeys and it does not matter whether they are male of female, the capuchin is not a picky beast. So there you have it, the unpleasnant story of the capuchin monkey and the reason why the week was scattered with capuchin monkey jokes and comments - again kids will be kids whether they are in blah blah blah!
The final day saw us transferred to Refugio Amazona and back up towards the airport. This location was picturesque and looks a lot more like an exclusive hotel than the other two locations. The place had an impressive restaurant, massage room, bike hire centre and hammocks hung from the beautiufl rafters upstairs. It was packed with tourists but by this time the Markham Savages were tame and they sat an played chess from the hammocks as the sun set, with barely an inch of blue left on their tired looking faces. By half 9 as the electicity cut out for the last time, the kids had already taken themselves off to bed and were asleep ready for their boat trip and flight home the next day. No need for teacher patrols, no need to tell kids off, just a very pleasant group of kids shattered after a very tiring week in the jungle.
Thankfully there are no volcanoes spewing ash along the way back and so our flight was on time and everyone arrived safely; even Mr House had managed not to get biten by any killer bugs and thankfully none of the other passengers understood the capuchin monkey jokes being stated in the queue for bags.

A evry exciting week which is currently being followed by another very exciting week in Lima as Clare and Tilly arrive in the Peruvian capital to experience in reality what I have just been waffling on about in this blog for the past 3 months.

Thursday 6 May 2010

Fifi The Imaginary Dog


One week to go!!!!!! and only one day to go at school and I am just about keeping awake in class at the end of this 10 week term. The Peruvian staff don't seem to know any different but like a true British teacher, I have been having a good moan about how long this term is (without a half term!). It is not true that all teachers moan but it does seem to be true that all British teachers moan. We are like a rare group of people who do know know when we have a good thing going for us. Even when teachers are in Peru, living a life they could not afford in the UK, in an exciting country and earning noticably more than they would in England (and with a 10 week summer holiday!!), they still moan better than teachers from any other country! (well apart from certain Ozzies).
The kids are also great here. They are fun, relaxed and know how to work hard. In my S2 class (year 9 / Upper Middles), the pupils are hard working, good at geography and are even kind enough to read this blog!!!!
In this class, one of the boys had not got his homework with him and so chose to use the classic "my dog ate the homework" as an excuse. Obviously I went along with this and kept asking about his dog, whether his dof eats any other paper substances, whether he could bring his book to school to eat some of the out of date geography textbooks etc.
Eventually it turned out that the boy in question did not even have a dog and that his dog was a figment of his imagination. Cue, much mickey taking and the development of his dog being in the class room, being taken for walks around the school and being Christened 'Fifi'. Fifi is now the official Geography Dog, when pupils trun up at the door, we have to calm Fifi down, we let her sleep in the corner and she is now a permamaent member of the S2 classroom.
Last lesson with the S2s, I agreed that if they worked well, then I would let them watch a video on YouTube. The problem was that the video chosen was called 'goat giving birth'. How loveley, a nice nature film. Apparently not, as the slow motion and close up nature of the video make it somewhat disturbing to watch and the jokey soundtrack filled with Goat giving birth chorus clearly shows that these people know just how horrible this video is! Mother nature works in starnge ways - as do people that post things on the Internet.

My final rant is about my cleaner. I have not seen him this week and I can guess why he is hiding away. "Hola, mister!" is his cheerful catchphrase but he will not be so cheerful when I next catch him. The current trend around Markham is for the stickers to fill the new Panini World Cup sticker album. The kids are going mad for it, they are turning up early for school to do 'swaps' and they have even poroduced tables showing which ones they still need (some have been done on excel with colour coding to show need, whether it is shiny and which country it belongs to). But some of the kids had been kind enough to ignore the prices that these stickers are going for on the black market and were handing me stickers from the England team. I was building up quite a collection, I had them organised in 4-1-3-2 formation, with Gareth Barry playing deep and Heskey supporting Rooney in attack. I had the England flag and an arrow linking the flag to the World Cup sticker (I had big money offers for that sticker!).
However, on Monday Mr "Hola Mister" thought it was a good idea to clear the stickers from my board and throw them in the bin! My collection that I had to beg hard to get, my collection which was sure to act as a lucky charm as England head to South Africa. How will they focus now that they have been ripped from my board, how will they know that they have to win the cup without the arrow I had drawn in red pen? Mr"Hola Mister" has a lot to answer for and when England are slowly trundling off the pitch after losing to Germany on penalties in the first knock out stage, just remember that it is all Mr"Hola misters" fault! He could have been employed as the man to polish the trophy, he could have used his plumero (Peruvian duster) and Don Limpio to make that trophy gleam - but not any more!

The collection has started again but lets hope, for the sake of the whole country, that it is not too late!

Adios y vamos Inglaterra!