Election Day in Peru

So today is the first round of the presidential elections here in Peru. Presidents are elected for 5 year terms. They are not allowed to run for 2 consecutive terms, but must wait at least one term in between. For example, one of the candidates was president the term before the current president. So he had to wait the 5 years and is trying again for a 2nd term. As of now, there are 5 front runners. Today's vote will bring it down to 2. In order for a candidate to win, they must take more than half of the popular vote. For this reason, there are normally at least 2 rounds of elections.

In Peru, if you are over 18, it is mandatory that you vote. If you do not vote, you will have to pay a fine. There is a dry law where it is illegal to buy or to drink any alcohol 48 hours before the election. They do this to cut down on fighting and rioting due to drunk supporters. Of course, gringos are allowed to buy liquor and to drink since we can't vote!! Also, the law is not strongly enforced as we were able to buy beer and wine in little shops yesterday while we were in Cusco performing the jurca.

I will get to the jurca later. Anyway, the polls opened at 8 this morning and will close at 4pm. We should know by this afternoon who the two fore-runners are. There is one candidate named Ollanta Humala who is with the nationalist party. He is very extreme and has been likened to Chavez in Venezuela or Castro in Cuba. All educated Peruvians are totally against him, but he is going for the ethnic communities who are not literate. Unfortunately, it seems he will be one of the two to move on to the 2nd round. However, most people are confident he will defeated then. The thing about him is that he has said he wants to try to kick out all foreign NGOs that are working in Peru. So if he wins, Awamaki could be in for some problems!

So, back to this jurca. Celestino is hosting the cargo for his dance, the Majenos, during the 4 day festival in June. Hosting the cargo means that you have to feed all the dancers, their family and friends, as well as a rotating cast of other dance groups and people over the 4 days. You have to have breakfast, lunch and dinner as well as beer and alcohol available for the four days. These cargos cost upwards of $5000. Someone told me the other day that they saw a statistic that said people in third world countries spend an exorbitant amount of money on festivals and parties as compared to health costs, food, and daily living. It seems to be completely true here. Considering Ana and Celestino spent more than a month's salary on Fabricio's first birthday party and they are going to be spending so much on the cargo.

Anyway, as part of the tradition, the people host the cargo go around and make an offering of bread, beer and wine to their friends and family in return for them bringing a case or two of beer or something to help with the cargo. Jurca is a Quechua term meaning offering. So on Thursday night, Ana and a family friend named Hugo went to Urubamba and bought 120 pieces of what I call "Cusco bread". It is a big loaf of round bread. They bought 3 different sizes (large, medium and small). There were 40 people we were going to offer jurca to in Ollanta, Urubamba and Cusco.

So, we put together bags of each size of bread (so three per bag), then we set out to visit people with the bread, a photo of Senor de Choquekilka (the saint who we are celebrating during the festival) that is mounted on this little wooden altar thing, a bottle of wine, and some beers. Everyone is offered the altar and gives Senor a kiss, then they are offered a glass of wine, which they have to poor a little out in reverence to the Senor and Pachamama. Then we give them the bread and a bottle of beer. Ana and Celestino then hope that they will voluntarily bring something to the cargo to help out.

On Friday night, we visited 21 people in Ollanta. On Sat morning, they went to Urubamba for a bit. Then Ana, Celestino, Shura, Fabricio and I headed to Cusco to see 10 more people. What a long day it was. At some points I really wanted to kill myself from boredom, but for the most part, it was really cool to see what the jurca symbolizes. I got to meet Celestino's extended family and see lots of parts of Cusco that I had never been to. One of his cousins lives in the nicest house I have seen here. Plus, there were many parts of the day that Shura, Ana, the baby and I just set out and did our own thing. I love spending time with them so we had a good time together. We were gone all day though and all of us were exhausted when we finally got home around 9pm.

I was in bed with the flu for Wed and Thurs of last week. I now have a horrible hacking cough and haven't been sleeping well, so the long day really took it out of me. Today is a beautiful day though. Jess and I did our P90X and I am now waiting for the water to be turned back on so that I can shower. You never know when they are just going to turn off the water. I am surprised they turned it off today though, since there aren't any construction jobs happening today because of the elections.

So that is what is going on. Awamaki rented a new house for volunteers to live in so we spent a lot of time last weekend and last week painting, cleaning and moving. I've been at the Posta when I can be. As I was sick last week, I lost two days. On Friday, I cleaned up Santiago's leg and then headed to a nearby town to help do some physical therapy with a boy named Alex who has cerebral palsy. It was heartbreaking. Alex is 13 but is about the size of a 6 year old. His family does not take care of him that well. When we got there, I had to change his diaper. It was so saturated with urine that it had leaked through to his pants and sheets so we just changed him completely. He lit up like a light bulb while we were doing the exercises. We took him outside and he sat on my lap while we did some exercises and just goofed around making animal noises and stuff. He was laughing so hard. He has horrible hip dysplasia so it is difficult for him to sit up for a long time. He normally just lays in bed all day. No one ever takes him outside, yet he loves being outside to look at the animals and sky and trees. His little face just crinkled all up when it was time for us to leave. He was so sad. It really did break my heart.

I am going to work on the curriculum for Tuesday's health class and then just enjoy the nice weather with my book. I think my friends and I are going to eat at a nice restaurant in town tonight. We were supposed to on Wednesday but I got sick so we had to cancel that. I am down to less than 5 weeks left. I can't believe it. How sad!