Marci Soifer

As I have learned, following a week of getting oriented to my new program, job, and group of volunteers, it is necessary to break away and spend a Sunday morning wandering and writing. Alas, I sit in an poorly illuminated, tiny internet cafe crowded with dusty PCs, wooden desks held together with duct tape (the tape I think I last saw holding up the color war signs at camp), and Peruvian men with dreadlocks (at least three of them). I am in Miraflores, one of the nicer neighborhoods of Lima, and looking forward to a morning of wandering and getting my bearings. At 1:30, I have plans to spend the afternoon at a center for female domestic workers, to teach English and provide company to the women and girls on their day off from working as underpaid nannies or maids for the wealthy of Lima.

Things here have been picking up. The city is massive, and seems to go on forever. Just when I think that I have heard a neighborhood named before as one I should check out, or one to add to the, DO NOT GO HERE AT NIGHT list, I find out about a million other places. The restaraunts number many, the streets and highways go on forever, and it takes me significant time to travel from place to place. I can get peanut M & Ms in the grocery, which looks like any enormous, impersonal grocery you may wander into in the States (and has proven to be a place, just like in the States, where I can wander through aisles and examine products for hours...but I try to hold off here). I am still in Peru however...do not be confused. I even had an anti-US government spouting cab driver yesterday, which is always interesting.

I am getting used to working at Deporte y Vida, although I am stuggling to figure out how I fit in exactly. I get that I am there to answer the, In your country...blahblahblah, question which the kids seem to throw at me pretty consistently. However, this place differs from the prison in that it is systematically run. The teachers keep the kids disciplined and sitting through the supportive schooling in the early morning, and coral them into activities for the latter portion of the morning. I joined a second grade class, thinking that the teacher seemed interesting and the kids were cute (and desperately needed help with math...2+5 never seemed so hard). However, even that seems challenging, because the teacher just wants me to teach her English in the middle of class, or tell her about what different parts of the United States are like (and let me tell you...she was shocked to hear that Manhattan is an island). So, I am hoping that once we can get passed the intial excitement of my arrival and the teacher sees that I am particularly concerned with the kids, things will run an improved course. For now, I am tolerant, and seeking out alternative ways for me to help. I am thinking about creative English teaching activities during free time or...any ideas? I have an hour and half, no space, few supplies, and hoards of attentive kids (if I can pull them away from the same old soccer game, rolling around a couple toy cars, dance class, and the antiquated two laptops where they crowd around Super Mario Brothers). Friday was a little different because it was the day when all January birthdays school-wide were celebrated with games, snacks, and dancing. While I had fun, I continue to be unsure of my place in the workings of this facility and the lives of these children.

I had a very interesting experience on Friday night. Because this weekend marks the three year anniversary of the death of my father (today is infact the exact day) and I had arrived in the big city of Lima, I decided that it was about time for me to check out the Peruvian Jewish population. I had two choices of synagogues to attend, since there is both a Conservative shul and an Orthodox shul. Since I was mainly going for something familiar and the chance to meet people, I selected the Conservative shul. As they have apparently suffered much anti-Semitic violence (not in the most recent past), I needed to fax my passport over beforehand and carry it with me on Shabbat. My program director walked me over on his way home.

We approached a large, cement, unmarked building, which I would have never been able to ID as a synagogue if he had not been with me. We knocked on the thick glassed tinted window next to the massive, steel door. A small women, of about 18 years popped outside and engaged my program director in a Spanish conversation. He pointed to me a few times, and while I was not really listening, I assumed that this was the part when he was introducing me to my new Spanish speaking friends. All of sudden, she turned to me, and in perfect English, asked, where are you from in the States? I replied, shocked, and asked her if she speaks a lot of English. She explained that she went to an American school in Lima, as most of the members of the synagogue did as well, and a lot of people spoke English inside. I was relieved to hear this news.

I parted with my program director and this 18 year old women at the door, and headed inside. After going through my second steel door, I finally had reached the inside. The halls were long and the ceiling high. I wandered around a little, to find a few classrooms and small corners, just like in my synagogue at home. Eventually and easily, I found the sanctuary. The sanctuary also looked very shul-like, complete with rows or chairs for about 400, a small balcony, a bimah (pulpit), stained glass windows with Hebrew letters, and an area in the center of the ground floor for the Rabbi to stand facing the ark (place that holds the torah on the bimah). I sat down alone, and waited for the service to begin.

A handful of people shuffled in, and I must say, I kind of recognized them. Now, I did not actually KNOW any of them persay, but a lot of the people looked familiar. Sitting in the first row was a series of 3 elderly couples, complete with men with thick rimmed glasses that stretched from the forehead to mid-cheek and women sporting their hairsprayed, dyed brown hair helmet. Running in and out of the door was the 10-year-old girl dragged to synagogue by her parents, and her 13-year-old boy sat asleep next to their parents, ignoring the service his family assumed would help him prepare for his bar mitzvah. I immediately zero-ed in on the mix of people, noticing in the crowd of elderly and young families that contrary to my preconceived notion, I might not meet my Peruvian boyfriend there.

One woman sitting nerby befriended me, and we spoke for a little while in English. She told me that most of the Jewish population of Lima originated in Buenos Aires, and that it was a dwindling group. Her children all made Aliyah to Israel, and that was a growing trend. She also explained to me that she does not frequent synagogue, but it was the weekend of her husbands (again, no apostrophes...sorry) yarzeiht. I told her that it was also the English anniversary of my fathers death, and she told me that she would think of me when we all stood for Kaddish (the prayer said for the dead). I thanked her, and returned the expression. And, the yarzeihts listed in the weekly pamphlet were classic Jewish Peruvian names...like, Juan Brodstein.

The service was nearly the same as a service that we would have any Shabbat at camp, or most of the services I remember from the Conservative minyan at Hillel. It was mostly in Hebrew, which I appreciated, as I followed along with the easily recognizable tunes and identical words and tuned out the sermon and announcements in Hebrew. And as I stood for the Kaddish, I kept thinking that my dad would have been impressed that I made it all the way to this synagogue in Lima. And, probably a little proud too.

When the service ended, a nice man who only spoke Spanish approached me to find out who I was and what I was doing in Lima. I told him about my volunteering, my father, and my desire to become a part of the Jewish community in Lima...for the next six weeks. He was excited, and as he put me in a cab to go home, he told me that he would look forward to seeing me next week. I smiled, because I would look forward to seeing him as well.

I spent yesterday wandering throughout downtown Lima with Heidi, a friend of friends who happens to originate in Ann Arbor and was passing through Lima. We had never met before, but spent the day eating, talking, and passing through plazas and over random street corners. We got through the intial, who I am and why I am in South America, and talked about the people we had in common. Only at the end of the day did I explain to her that this weekend was special to me, because I keep thinking about where I was three years ago, and how my family is all together in New York...without me. And as I said goodbye to her (and nice to meet you) and got in a cab at the end of the day, I really felt like I had spent the day with a close friend. I had only heard of her prior to those six hours yesterday, but for some reason, I really enjoyed the time of throwing around names, speaking English to someone other than another volunteer, and exchaging funny travel stories. It is amazing how people can identify with so little when in a totaly foreign situation, and especially at a time when one yearns to identify with anything familiar.

I will spend the rest of my day at the center for the domestic workers (and will fill in the details on the blog later) and journaling around Lima. Today is a day like any other in Lima. But, not quite for me.