Unpacking a Packed Trip - June 15th

Ancient civilizations, Colonial Spain, Chinese immigration, The Republic, contaminated water, CCAIJO, museums, Jesuit Baroque Churches, liberation theology, Latin America social policy, futbol, salsa, hiking, Lima, highlands, municipality, jungle, hospitals, and new friends. These are only a handful of themes that I experienced while studying abroad in Peru with UNO in Summer 2014. 

Today at the Hotel was a day to pack my belongings and to enter into the earliest stage of unpacking the trip. As I rubbed the sleep dust from my eyes the Lima sun greeted me through the open window and a coastly breeze hugged me as it swirled up my stuffed nostrils and maneuvered through my forested arm pits. As I stretched my limbs I immediately was confronted with an explosion of dirt stained T-Shirts, red boxers, and holy socks spilling out onto my Hotel floor; in a similar way history, culture, and public health wandered in a scattered chronological fashion in my brain. At the soonest opportunity I began to organize my luggage by rolling up each piece of clothing and placing it in the correct compartment: dirty clothes in the bottom, clean clothes toward the top, delicate souvenirs on my carry-on luggage, and toiletries in the side pockets. In a similar way I began the first stages of making sense out of the entire experience by setting up mental categories in my brain, "the Machu Pichu visit can go under culture, working with Felipe can go under community engagement, visiting the hospital can go under public health, working with CCAIJO last Wednesday can generally go under culture, the debriefing that so-and-so shared at the first debriefing can be placed under public health.. Or should that be under community engagement?" This was my thinking process.

After hearing Mass at the nearby Catholic Church Dr. Claudia and I went back to the hotel and met up with the other early risers where we ate jelly con pan. The other students and I were informed that except for a debriefing after dinner the itinerary for today was wide open with opportunities to shop, go to the museum, or just to hang out at the hotel. I choose the latter in order to read a book that I was craving to read, "Our Lady of Fatima." I noticed in this book how the children who claimed to see a miracle were ridiculed by city dwellers as, "highlanders." As I reflected on this I realized that the main focus of this trip was on the "indigenous highlanders" or to be more general, on the people of the highlands. It made me understand how we looked at these human beings though the lens of culture, public health, and community engagements, and how these different lenses allowed for us to see a dynamic that normally would not be clearly visible.

At dinner we had our fourth successful debriefing with green mystery meat and rice. Some people in the group shared their experience with the water plant, others about the native dances, but I shared my last chance of debriefing about the Catholic Church in Latin America. The Church has a long history in Latin America starting with the Spanish in the 1500's in which the Church worked closely with the State to bring a new belief system to the Native Latin American population. On this study abroad trip I've experienced my first insights into liberation theology, I saw a similar mixture of Indigenous and Catholic Churches in the indigenous populated regions as I saw in Guatemala, and I had a few great discussions on Church teachings. Ultimately I came to the conclusion that although the Church has largely shaped Western Civilization and has a history of flourishing in these types of environments (see Lima), the Church (as it claims to be One, Holy, and Apostolic) should be able to flourish in any type of Civilization that permits free expression of religion. To bring this conclusion back to the understanding of the men and women who populate the highlands, orthodoxy and cultural tradition can always find common ground, but it takes humility, generosity, and peace from those who teach and those who choose to practice.

To change the subject to a lighter note, Peru Study Abroad 2014 was ultimately a success. We all had our ups and downs (for a handful of us certain things came up that aren't supposed to go up and certain things went down in odd ways), but the changes in physical health, emotions, or time can never take away what we've learned. Memory is something that binds human beings together into a family and the 13 of us will always share the memory of Peru 2014.