The Case of the Stranded Documents

It was a bright and sunny afternoon in Lima, Peru in January, 2011. I was accompanying John Kreider, fellow missionary, to take my residence card and passport to the offices of the National Evangelical Council of Peru (CONEP) to get my residence card stickered to make it legal for the next year. We took it there, dropped it off, grabbed some ice cream to beat the heat and went back to the hotel where the entire missionary team was staying on retreat. And that is when the great mystery began.
Several days later, we received a call that my residence card could NOT be updated for the next year, because, according to Peruvian immigrations, I have been in Bolivia for the past two years. To clear up any confusion, I was in Bolivia two years ago for vacation, but I most definitely DID come back and I HAVE been here for the past two years, very much living in Cusco, Peru. Mystery number 1: Why does Peru think I am in Bolivia? Answer number 1: They don't have any record of me re-entering Peru, though I'm sure I gave it to them at the border... Mystery number 2: Why was this not a problem last year? Answer number 2: I have no idea...
My case: Upon entering Bolivia the first time, 2 1/2 years ago, I did not want to pay the $130 visa fee for Americans. Therefore, having Peruvian residency, I used my residency card to pass the border and escaped paying the $130 fee. No one said anything and I innocently rejoiced in the great savings. Entering Bolivia again 4 months later, I did the same thing. Apparently, I'm not supposed to go anywhere without using my passport because then the record of my travels on my passport and my travels on my residence card do not match up. I don't understand what the big deal is, but whatever.
I needed my documents in order to fly back to Cusco, so we returned to the CONEP offices for them before leaving Lima. Upon returning to Cusco, I promptly sent my documents back to Lima and waited. And waited...about a week. Finally, CONEP responded to my inquiries by telling me that they were going to do some kind of a "regularization of migratory movement", annulling the last time I went to Bolivia. Then after that, they should be able to update my residence card with no problem. I rejoiced in the good news and answer to prayer.
Then I learned that the Peruvian government now requires all power of attorney letters to be notarized (brand new law). I needed to get one legalized so that the CONEP people could do all my paperwork for me.
Problem: you can't get anything notarized in Cusco without either a passport or a valid Peruvian identity document. All of my stuff was in Lima. So I had to ask CONEP to send me back my passport so I could notarize the letter and send the whole works back to them. They did and I did. And then I waited again. And waited.
Finally, last week I got another email from them. Apparently, immigrations in Lima had to talk to immigrations in Puno (where I left the country to go to Bolivia), in order to do this regularization of migratory movement. And apparently, immigrations in Puno has not responded to immigrations in Lima yet. So CONEP has to file a formal complaint with immigrations in Lima because they are taking so long.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is all I know. I am praying for favor with the government and praying that my documents can get miraculously saved from the black hole of government offices in Lima so that I can buy plane tickets to go to the States this summer. I'm praying it can all get resolved quickly and that in the end, everything would work out. Please join with me in prayer for my stranded documents to be liberated and to return to Cusco safe, healthy and soon.

Jungle Adventures, chapter 2: Bananas 101

They say better late than never, so here's installment two...

Early Tuesday morning, we were awakened by Meche's sister Doris informing us that their brother Rony and his wife Noelia had gotten through the river okay in their truck, coming back from Cusco, and were waiting outside to take us to a native village called Shintuya because they had a load of passengers to take. They have an interesting job. Their job is to transport bananas to Cusco in their truck and then bring back food staples, passengers, and whatever else other people request from Cusco to the jungle, because you can't get a lot of things in the jungle. But when it rains a lot and the river gets really high, they sometimes have problems getting through. Everyone was relieved to hear they'd made it okay. So we quickly got dressed and hopped in the back of the truck, in the drizzly remnants of the previous night's torrential downpour. The truck was covered with a thick canvas so the rain didn't get in, but it was rather chilly for the jungle anyway. After the drizzle stopped and we passed all the police points, Rony stopped his truck, put a mattress in the little basket over the cab and Meche, Lisi and I hopped in. It was like going on a safari riding on a giraffe. We were about 10 feet off the ground and had a beautiful, unobstructed view of the jungle and the scenery around us. Except for the chilly wind and the bugs implanting themselves in our faces, it was perfect and I realized it was probably a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that not many people can say they've had! :) We rode this way about an hour until we got to the native community of Shintuya. "Native" actually means "civilized native". There are real native communities in the Peruvian jungle (a lot of them, actually), but these natives were clad and lived a bit more like the rest of Peruvian society. We didn't stay long there, but we did stay long enough to see a family of natives heading to the hills barefoot to go hunting for several days or weeks. And we got to see their canoes and things. It was an interesting little visit. Then we headed back to a village called Mansilla, along the banks of a river. In that village is where most of the bananas that Rony and Noelia transport are grown. They get a lot of their bananas from church members and then bring things back to Cusco for them and others. While they sold their merchandise from the back of their truck, we wandered down to the river to wait for them. It was shallow and crystalline. We found a rock filled with clay that we used to paint our faces like natives (or at least like we thought natives would paint their faces). And we found a clump of mud that we used to do our own mud facials. So we found plenty to do while waiting for Rony and Noelia. In the afternoon, we headed back to Noelia's family's house in Salvacion and hung out with them for the afternoon. We headed home and enjoyed a quiet evening at Meche's sister's house. Wednesday morning, we were supposed to meet Rony and Noelia at Noelia's family's house so that we could go back to Mansilla to have the adventure of picking up bananas with them. It ended up that plans changed and we were going to go to Noelia's family's banana field in the afternoon. So we cooked lunch to take with us and then headed out in the truck for the banana field. When we got there, we ate lunch, then headed down to the field. Rony and another guy from the church were cutting bananas to take to Cusco and we headed out with a machete to find what we could find. Before we went down into the field, they were telling me I was going to have a rough time of it. I'd washed my only pair of long pants the night before by hand and they were still considerably wet. Plus, I thought we were going to the river, so I wore capris. In the end, Noelia's mom had an extra pair of old socks that she cut the toes out of. So I stretched them between my ankles and knees and was able to enjoy the afternoon. Ah, the grace of God found in the most unexpected places! :) We ended up finding a bunch of papayas that needed harvesting. So I had my first jungle fruit harvesting course. Papaya harvesting 101:

1. Find a long stick with a fork in the end.

2. Make sure you have two people with something big like a blanket that they can hold between them.

3. Stick the forked stick on the stem of the papaya and push till the stem breaks.

4. Catch the papaya in the blanket and put it gently on the ground, being careful to not touch the sap, which apparently makes your skin burn.

Hacking our way through the undergrowth with a machete, we eventually found their cornfield also. I was quite excited to see small-kernel corn and was hoping it was American-style sweet corn. I carefully brought an ear home with me in my bag, cooked it and eagerly bit into it. No such luck. Field corn. :( Meanwhile, the guys were hacking down heavy bunches of bananas with machetes and carrying them on their backs up a fairly steep, muddy slope to the waiting truck. We finished mid-afternoon and went home for a MUCH-needed shower before the Wednesday evening church service. We wanted to teach them some of the songs we know from church, so in between showering, we copied 6 of them down on big chart papers and taught them to the church. After the service we celebrated the birthday of one of the church members with Coke and crackers. Apparently, he doesn't really have family to celebrate with him, so it was fun to help be a part of that.

The next morning, we woke up bright and early in more rain to head back to Mansilla to pick up a load of bananas for Rony and Noelia to take back to Cusco. Thus began the course I like to call Bananas 101. We ended up having to wait all morning because of the rain and because the special truck that can go up the river to collect the bananas was not available. Around 11 it came and we left to head up the river in the truck. Lisi stayed behind with the truck (and to nap a bit), but Meche and I had quite an adventure dodging branches that wanted to slap us in the face as the truck literally went straight up the river. It was not a deep river, but the truck was designed to go straight up it. After driving about half an hour or so, we got to where the church people and their bananas were waiting for us along the river. They found it quite entertaining to hear me conversing in my semi-butchered Quechua. These brothers and sisters grow the bananas in their fields, then cut them down and haul them carefully to the river. If they are not careful, the bananas will get bruised and mushed and they won't be good anymore. While we were there, about 15 bunches of bananas (okay, not little bunches like you get at the grocery store, but imagine about 20 of those bunches on a huge, thick stem). This is one way that they can provide for their famillies. The truck filled up with bananas quickly and Meche and I ended up walking back to Rony's truck down the river, following the banana truck. Once the banana truck got back to Rony's truck, the bananas were carefully unloaded into the river. The big, thick stems that support all the little bunches of bananas make it difficult to fill Rony's truck to max capacity, so we spent all afternoon cutting the bananas off the stems. We made a dam with the stems of bananas which kept the individual small bunches from floating away. The only problem with washing bananas is the bugs. Big spders and cockroaches love to live in bananas and I caused consternation on several occasions by letting out little screams when they found me. I had to remember the stories my high school history teacher told about his adventures unloading bananas in the States and finding spiders the size of his hand. Those stories were never far from my mind. And then I discovered something else - stinging ants.

All of a sudden, while I was rinsing the sticky sap off the bananas and getting them ready to head back to Cusco, burning pain shot through my finger. It quickly moved up into my biceps. Being out in the middle of nowhere in the jungle, not knowing what it was exactly, hearing stories of biting spiders and ants that cause instantaneous fever does not exactly make for warm fuzzy feelings. Meche, Lisi and I were all a bit concerned until Noelia was able to diagnose it. The sting hurt like crazy for an hour or two and I stopped washing bananas and turned instead to supper detail with Noelia. By this time, it was getting dark and we still needed to finish washing the bananas and then load them to the truck. I started helping again after supper and we finished by around midnight. We then drove back into Mansilla, about 2 minutes away, and collapsed on blanket-mattresses on the floor of the community room. Between the thought of what could be crawling over my face while I was sleeping and the hard cement floor beneath me, I didn't exactly sleep like I would have had I been in my bed. We awoke early on Friday morning, planning on heading back to Salvaciion pretty directly. However, there were more bananas to be collected, so we ended up leaving mid-morning. Back in Salvacion, we took our time getting showers and decided we'd go later to check about getting tickets to go back to Cusco that afternoon. I had to be back quickly in order to leave again on Sunday morning for team retreat, so we needed to make sure we got going that day. We found tickets for an 11:30 bus that would take us about an hour to where we could get another bus to Cusco. So that's what we did. We waited around all afternoon at a restaurant in Pillcopata, where the first bus dropped us off, then boarded the other bus in Pillcopata to go back to Cusco. I was warned before we left not to accept any bags or anything from strangers because they'd be coca leaves (the basis from which cocaine is made). And really, we stopped at a police checkpoint in the middle of the night sometime and they found a whole feed bag full of coca leaves that they confiscated. It was a pretty crazy scene - police yelling, people yelling, mass pandemonium on the bus. But we made it through, made it through the holes in the road, through the swaying bus, through even more rain, through a long night of traveling and arrived back in Cusco the next morning around 6:30, exhausted but having enjoyed our many, many adventures in the jungle. It was an unforgettable trip, educational, fun, exhausting, exhilarating, difficult at some points, but totally, totally worth it all.

Here's a link to my photos on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=273110&id=610351019&l=702ee172ce