Madmadelyn's Blog

Where we left off:

The march continued. The mob was closing in on the bridge and the fury was building. The first thing to go was the sign in front of the bridge. Several men took the wooden structure down with their hands and hauled it with them. It floated above a tide of angry men down the road.

I noticed an excited teenage girl with a ponytail and a dusty orange shirt smiling brightly beside me.

“Yo soy la unica gringa aca, no?” I’m the only white chick here, huh?

She laughed and nodded. It wasn’t until she skipped ahead and got lost in the crowd that I realized she and I were the only 2 females at all in the front of the hoard of hundreds leading the march. At that point I became to be aware of my surroundings a little more, but fear never set in. Press are often seen here as the people’s only chance to tell their story as the government largely ignores them. I truly felt safe despite the lunacy that had poisoned the mob.

The group divided into two, half to block the side of the bridge where we’d arrived and the other half to stay on the side closet to Pisco to ensure that no one had access. Our half stood at the mouth of the bridge and groups of men turned over boulders the size of small cows while boys threw jagged rocks into the streets and lighted a huge pile of rubber tires on fire. The smell stuck to the insides of my nose like the dust that had clung to and matted my hair.

The crowd roared at the police station that overlooked the crowd, taunting them, knowing that they were much too great for the small station to control. About 5 cops stood at the doorway watching the crowd, knowing that they were right.

“¡Siempre de pie! ¡Nunca de rodilla! ¡Siempre de pie! ¡Nunca de rodilla!” Always on our feet! Never at our knees!

The group chanted for about 10 minutes before moving on. This mob was too excited to sit still. And when anxiety and unrest mix, chaos is born. The crowd now became out of control.

A commercial tour bus had blocked off the road some 20 yards up the road to protect the line of cars stuck in a line on the highway—if the boys could reach the cars, their windows would be smashed with rocks instantly. The bus driver had grossly underestimated the fury of the crowd and thought that his vehicle’s size would seem daunting—it was not. The boys took off toward the bus in a surprisingly fast run up the hill that could only have been fueled by adrenaline. The bus began to retreat, but it was too late. Rocks were already being hurled at the bus and windows began to shatter immediately. The passengers inside covered themselves with blankets or ducked as a dozen or so rocks were hurled through the windows.

After the Pisqueñans finished chasing off the bus and looting a nearby semi and its cargo, the police finally arrived. They had been looking on from the police station at the mouth of the bridge and apparently felt it was time to face the mob. They were only about 15, maybe 20 cops in riot gear.

“Porque no han pedido mas fuerza?” I asked a stander-by. Why haven’t they called in for more force?

He told me that riots were exploding in the two nearest cities, Ica and Chincha, that had been affected by the earthquake, too, and that each region was just trying to hold its own ground. The stand-off began.

Carlos and I had been filming and marching and reporting and running and chasing since 7 a.m. and we were starved. It was 3 p.m. With the bridge closed off, we weren’t going anywhere, so we went and ate lunch. By the time our bill came, the cops had dispersed tear gas upon the crowd and the bridge was opened. We went back to Pisco, showered, and went to stay the night at Carlos’ beach house—half-way between Pisco and Lima. Exhausted from a good day’s work, we ate caprese and recounted our crazy day. Carlos let me have the master suite all to myself. I slept below a thatched roof of bamboo and palm fronds to the sound of waves crashing on the beach.

The protests began at midnight on Friday.

Saturday would be the second anniversary of a devastating earthquake that killed 500 people in Pisco, Ica, and Chinca—three small towns in the south of Peru. It was the equivalent to our Hurricane Katrina. President Alan Garcia had promised a speedy and thorough response, but thousands of people are still living in tents or shacks made of plastic and bamboo. They are cold. They are hungry. And they are angry.

In the South American tradition of displaying civil unrest by demonstrations wielding and banging pots and pans, at midnight on Friday, the first protest was in full swing.

I couldn’t take my eyes off the crying woman speaking to me. She went from a put-together citizen holding a candle to a grieving woman within seconds of beginning to the interview. Tears fell unashamedly down her cheeks. I couldn’t let my gaze leave hers as she told me about the bodies that she carried out into the plaza behind me, but I knew that a crowd of hundreds was quickly beginning to surround Carlos and I. The spotlight of his camera on the woman’s tear-stained face was the center of attention as hundreds of angry and sad Pisqueñans tried to shout to us their stories.

“Y que de los jovenes? Dejenos contar nuestras historias!” What about the youth? Let us tell our story!

“Yo perdi cada persona en my familia!” I lost my whole family!

“Es peor!” It’s even worse now!

“Flaca, por favor, esto no es nuestro Pisco verdadero, esto no es!” Young lady, please, this is not the Pisco that you should know, this is not what it should be like!

The next day at noon, the people rallied again. This time there were hundreds. And as they marched to the Pan-American highway, the main highway through Peru, there were two dozen cops in riot gear guarding access to the road. But the cops were few, and they were many. And when the human spirit has been kicked and spit upon one too many times, nothing can stop it if it has enough men to back it up.

Nearly 2 thousand citizens filled the highway. We marched for almost an hour. The mob wanted to take control of the closest bridge in the Pan-American. If they had control of the bridge, they would control the highway.

Just before stopping at the bridge, the aggressive leading crowd of mostly young men halted momentarily to let the lagging thousand or so behind them catch up so that they would have enough strength to take the bridge successfully once they arrive. The youngest boys in the lead stormed a nearby gas station and succeeded in scooping a barrel of gasoline dry in less than a minute.

The march continued. The mob was closing in on the bridge and the fury was building. The first thing to go was the sign in front of the bridge. Several men took the wooden structure down with their hands and hauled it with them. It floated above a tide of angry men down the road.

To be continued…

If you must peek ahead! Here’s the story. But my unabridged version is way better.

Anti-Garcia protesters block Peru’s main highway

Okay! Sorry for taking so long to post! I’ve been wrapping up two stories this week, one of which became my baby (Cusco) and has just been sent to the desk in Washington, DC and has officially been born!

Climate warming may have given Incas helping hand

Cusco was amazing. I went with one other guy from Reuters who did the TV version of the story. We made a great team and I learned a ton from him–he is an old dog in the business and taught me many tricks of the trade. Cusco is a beautiful town with so much character, it is officially one of my favorite cities in the world. I will definitely be back, I loved it. And my GOD was it nice to be in the sun!

We were covering the emergence of a new theory from a British paleoecologist who concluded, by analyzing a large soil sample in the Andes, that the swift rise of the Incas was due almost entirely to a 400-year period of natural climate warming which allowed them to grow crops at higher temperatures. He and his two kids, 9 and 11, picked Carlos and I up at the airport and we immediately made our way to the ruins. Not only were we so lucky to be able to spend that much time with a source, but we he and his kids were lovely, so good-natured, good-humored, funny, intelligent, and generally wonderful to be around. By the end I felt like we had all been on a family vacation together. Alex Chepstow-Lusty, the scientist, led us around several different Inca ruins, high up in the Andes and to tiny villages where Inca decedents still lived and worked hidden in 8,000 feet of mountainsides covered in thousands of ancient, unused agricultural terraces.

Right now I’m waiting for my now good-travel buddy Carlos to head off to Pisco in the south of Peru go cover protests.  Tomorrow is the two-year anniversary of a terrible earthquake that destroyed the region and could be equated to the USA’s Hurricane Katrina. 500 people died and are still living in tents without hospitals. It will be sad and to see the devastation, but good to get the perspectives of the people living in it. I’ll keep you updated.

I love you all!

Madelyn xo

I woke up this Saturday morning to what appeared to be a bio-hazard zone collecting in my tiny apartment. It’s amazing how quickly a dinky apartment can clutter when I don’t really feel like I actually have anything here… So I set out to buy cleaning supplies. But before I picked up my Comet cleanser in a vacuum-sealed bag and my hand mop (which could be easily confused with a giant square piece of cloth), I worked out at the Gold’s Gym around the corner from my house. I  know how lucky am I?! For those of you who don’t know, I work at a Gold’s in Seattle, so I can work out here for free. While at the gym, I happened to bump in to the other person in Peru who has tattoos. And miraculously, he didn’t strike up a conversation about our respective body art, as frequently happens in Seattle. So refreshing! Because, you know, I am immediately best friends with anyone who has tattoos because it must mean that we have SO much in common.

Lots of awesome stuff has been going on here! Here are some bullet points to facilitate your reading enjoyment:

• My boss gave me his old SURFBOARD! I HAVE MY VERY OWN NOW! Yayyyy! It’s a Klimax funboard, 7’2”. Pretty big, but I really don’t care. I’ll take pretty much any free board. Klimax is apparently one of the best board makers in Peru.
  

  my new bff!

• Last week while surfing I apparently stepped on a sea urchin and spent 20 minutes digging the tip of their quills out of my big toe with a knife. Ouch! I’m getting pretty good at performing minor surgeries on myself at this point, so I did a pretty swell job. Definitely going to get some booties for my feet!
• I had been working on what I thought to be a killer investigative story on the tax system for casinos and slot machine game rooms in Lima, because they’re EVERYWHERE and there’s got to be something fishy going on somewhere, but after interviewing the director of the gambling department in the Ministry of Tourism, my story died. Apparently I missed all the controversy when corrupt supreme court justices tried to eliminate the tax system in 2006, but they sound pretty on top of it now. Bummer! I’m sure there’s something going on there, but it’s not a good first story to tackle. It’s not only incredibly difficult to interview in Spanish, but most organizations are pretty tight-lipped. Especially to a foreigner.
• So my editor has me working on a lifestyle piece about surfing in Lima. Done and done.
• In the mean time, they’re sending me to Cuzco!! For those of you who don’t know, Cuzco is an ancient town in the center of the old Inca Empire, where Machu Picchu is located. I’m flying over with the TV crew Tuesday and staying until Thursday. I’m so excited! It’s going to be an interesting story. I’ve never worked for a globally recognized and influential news service before, so I feel like maybe I shouldn’t post the story we’re covering on the world wide web. Competition, would you like to steal our story idea and maybe beat us there? I’m sure my editor would love that.

That seems to be it for now. I’ll leave you with a funny story.

So last week before I did my master budget and signed myself up for a meager diet of hard-boiled eggs, bread and cheese, and peanuts and apples, I ordered dinner delivered to my house. The guy who brought me the food arrived on a motorcycle like all delivery guys in Lima. I gave him my debit card to check and we had the following conversation in Spanish:

Him: Can I see your passport? (They always check my passport if I use my card since it’s an American card.)

Me: Sure, here ya go.

Him: From the states. What do they use as identification over there?

Me: A driver’s license.

Him: No they don’t.

Me: Uh, yes they do.

Him: No, they don’t.

Me: Well, hm, yes, they actually do.

Him: Well what if you don’t have a car? I don’t have a car.

Me: Well I don’t have a car either but I still have a driver’s license. Nearly everyone has a license.

Him: Well what if you don’t know how to drive?

Me: Pretty much everyone knows how to drive.

Him: Well, I don’t know how to drive and I don’t have a car.

Me: Umm….

Him: So they really use a driver’s license huh?

Me: Yes.

Him: Okay. Have a good night.

Hilaaarious.

Hope you are all enjoying the heat! Stop complaining on Facebook! I’m freezing my hiney off and don’t have hot water to shower in! It wouldn’t even really be categorized as luke warm, so enjoy your tropical heat wave. I love you all!

Madelyn xo

So the supermarkets continue to weird me out. In a good way, but I mean I kind of have to watch myself at how noticeably I react to things that amuse me. I’ll write a whole new blog on that later though, it deserves its own special attention.

Tomorrow is Peru’s independence day so I had today and yesterday off work at Reuters. Even by last Thursday it was difficult to get a hold of anyone on the phone because the whole country was slowly starting to head out the door for vacation.

Which is pretty much the mildest celebration I’ve ever seen, by the way. I mean it’s lovely to be in the park and see all the families together eating popcorn and churros and drinking bottled water and Inca Kola, but….oftentimes, 4th of July is like playing a game of Which Party Should We Attend and How Many Can We Go To Without Spending $100 on Cabs?  and I didn’t see any mayhem in any shape or form go on at all. It was no louder than usual, no one seemed to be really ”celebrating.” Pretty much the only difference in the city between a regular day is that there are some Americans roaming about in shorts freezing their hineys off because they didn’t realize that yes, it’s actually winter here (I take back the thing I said about the Peruvians being sissies about the weather. It’s cold now.), there are a bunch of families in the park eating various sugary goodies, a bunch of art peddlers set up their wares on the street (which are all INCREDIBLY beautiful, I wish I could afford even one), and um….there are sales. Lots of sales in the boutiques. I have been hunting for the festivities and I cannot find them. There’s not even any music anywhere. Maybe this is just how they celebrate and I’m being completely ethno-centric. Perhaps everyone stays in and cooks and celebrates with their families. Perhaps tomorrow, the actual day, will be more festive, but I may stay in anyway so I can get up and surf before work.

SURFING!

So I got the crap beat out of me by the waves today. Not as bad as Panama, where it was a full-on war against me and the ocean, and I only got past the break ONCE, but I definitely got worn out very quickly. But I finally figured out how to duck-dive, which is a HUGE ACCOMPLISHMENT, da-da-da! This means that eventually, I’ll be able to get out past the break and catch some waves.

For those of you who don’t know, duck-diving is when a wave comes at you that is too late to catch, and you push the nose of your board under water, put your knee on the board, dive below the on-coming slightly frightening wave, and basically dive under the current while holding onto your board. It’s hard for a woman because of the force it takes, and if you can’t do it, you’ll just get pushed back by wave after wave and quickly tire before you can even stay on your board for 5 minutes.

Since I haven’t surfed since mid-June last month, my arms were so exhausted from paddling that when I finally did catch a wave, I could barely lift myself up on the board. I figured that duck-diving and practicing paddling was enough for the day and came back ashore completely exhausted after 30 minutes. Then I trudged back up the practically vertical stair-case carved out of the land to get back home–279 stairs I’ll have you know! And it felt AWESOME:)

Alright sorry, I feel like these get so long! Thanks for reading and enjoy the 95 degree weather that I see so many of you complaining about on Facebook!

Love,

Madelyn:)

Everyone who enters the Metro Supermercado knows it.

Women swing their hips to it as they pick over papayas and pineapples, men hum it as they browse beer and bottled water selection, teenagers dance to it and giggle at each other. So I’m not totally crazy, it has definitely been playing at this and every other Metro everyday for who knows how long.

But more than the terrible feeling of knowing that the little ditty will never change, it’s driving me bananas that I can’t think of the song that it’s mimicking. And I HATE it soo much because it stops and repeats right before the last note to complete the little jingle and leaves you feeling disgusted with yourself by wanting to hear it again, hoping that this time, maaaaybe this time, the jingle will be complete. But it never is. Where’s the last note??? Just play it already!!!

I’ve been really sick and even had to take the day off yesterday to recuperate. I had hoped it was mostly from the pollution–it’s so bad that I have to alter my route home from work to avoid the really busy streets–but yesterday my throat told me otherwise. I slept off a busy day at the office, bummer! Apparently the markets were going crazy. My editor said that he’ll help me understand the art of business writing later in the internship, but I’m just trying to get my system down right now.

At first I was feeling a bit discouraged. I can’t tackle a fraction of the issues I’d like to as if I were working at home in the states. People are shifty here, public information is not nearly as accesible, and I haven’t quite figured out exactly what kind of stories Reuters needs–it’s priorities different than a paper. Once I figure all these things out, I’ll be able to come up with some killer stories like I’m used to doing and attacking them with all the fury that my journalism teachers instilled in me. My editor said it’s totally normal for me to feel like I’m spinning my wheels and I think believes me to be a little neurotic and obsessive about getting stuff done and conquering the world. He told me to slow down and not to apply the same standards to myself as home when working in a foreign culture.

Enough for work talk. I’ll translate and research today and hopefully attack a story next week.

I’ll do another cultural post later and hopefully figure out how to upload some pics. It’s Peru’s independence day coming up and it’s already been crazy out on the streets. I’ll keep you updated!

Chao,

Madelyn:)

Alright, so it’s late and I’m tired from working a full-time job (how do you people do this??) and I’m sick from the pollution I reckon, so I’m going to do my first post in bullet-point styley:

• the avocados are so huge here I think I could teach an ab class with them. Fitness ball, what?? I’ve got a fruit or vegetable or whatever full of omega-3 fatty acids! No seriously, they’re like the size of a small pineapple. Not joking.
• I did my first story today, yay! My editor came over to my desk while I was frustratingly battling with the Peruvian government and asked me if I’d like to do a story on mummies. Like any rational human being, I immediately said yes without batting an eye. Here’s the article: http://in.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idINIndia-41248320090723
• Everyone is very short here. I’m at least a head above everyone and they all think I’m Italian because of my nose.
• The grocery stores are hilarious: over the P.A. system instead of music they play the same little jingle/tune over and over and over and over and over….it’s hilaaaarious. Until you really need to get some shopping done and then you want to scratch your eyeballs out with toilet cleaner, but then you’re like, all their cleaning products are sold in vaccuum-packed baggies, so it’ll be a total mess….so you just get over it and pick up a really huge avocado and a Peruvian Cosmopolitan and ignore the stupid jingle.
• I bought my first wetsuit here in Lima, from a really great company calle d Boz. It was on sale because it’s bright blue and makes me look kind of like Superman, but whatever. I’m up for saving $50 while looking like a superhero.  I’ll start surfing next week before work when I feel better. My boss “highly encourages” me to surf before and after work. That’s why I start at 10 am. Ohhhh yeeeeah.
• People crack me up here with their jackets. Yes, it’s winter in Lima, but it’s warmer than the average summer day in Seattle. Hilarious. They’re wearing fleeces for goodness sake! I’m in a tank top…hey, it’s warm to me.

Alright. More tomorrow. Give me some comments so I know you’re out there!! Miss and love all my family. Thanks for all your support on all my crazy adventures.

Love,

Madelyn:)