“Begin at the Beginning” - but try not to end there too...

Any friends and family back home trying to follow my progress here in Peru may have noticed there is a pretty substantial gap between my first post and this one. So I start this post with two explanations for the four month void.

The first is simple: disorganisation. But the second is more complicated and has something to do with a different kind of void –that between expectations and realities, dreamy goals and actual achievements, the resources available to the British middle-class and those available in a small, rural town in the far North of the Peruvian desert.

I expected culture shock. Having never left Europe before now I was prepared to be unprepared for this. I had been told time and again of the open friendliness of Peruvian people, who are often willing to drop whatever they are doing and spend half their day being so helpful that if this happened back home back home you might suspect ulterior motives. I had been told of the relaxed attitude towards health and safety (is that kid really riding a stray dog across four lanes of heavy traffic?).  I had been told of the staring that white people receive in Peru, and that it is in no way malicious. I had been told of the poverty, that the clothes I was wearing, never mind the contents of my camera bag, were worth more than the average Peruvians annual paycheck. I had been told of these things and more and amidst the nerves and apprehension they stirred in me I was, I’m ashamed to say, rather crudely looking forward to it – “what great material for my writing and photography, to be plunged into The Unknown and out of my comfort zones, isn’t that how all great art is made?” I thought.

So that was expectation number one. The reality?

For my first two weeks here my camera, pen, diary and laptop stayed firmly at the back of my mind and the bottom of my backpack. I had been told of the culture shock. What I hadn’t anticipated was that these objects, and the arts that they make possible, take on new meanings in new contexts.

With photography there’s the obvious fact of money. If you’ve got a half decent camera, when taking a photo of folks here you’re quite possibly looking at them through a view-finder that could afford a years worth of food, those much needed repairs to the family home, the kids medical expenses and a little extra left over to boot. When you’re waving that kind of money around in front of a family that have agreed to let you take their photograph, photography becomes a very different process.

So, when I finally pulled my camera out, the pictures I took were apologetic. The process was guilty and clumsy, the photo’s self-consciously under exposed. I quickly felt my priorities change from photographing this place to trying to understand it . Talking to folks, not photographing them.

The same can be said for writing and blogging. There is so much of the world coming at you that it it is less of an inspirational space for writing and more of an overwhelming bombardment of noise, shape and shadow. So much that makes so little sense happening so fast in a language that you don’t understand. I would sit down to write and discover my mind filled with white noise. Eventually I realised that I just needed to wait, take time to tune in and focus. Settle.

Expectation number two? Resources. Once expectation number one had been fulfilled, aka once I had begun taking inspired photographs and crafting spine-tinglingly insightful writing,  I would simply wack  it all up online for the world to see. But shockingly, it turns out that state-of-the-art WiFi isn’t abundant in the Peruvian desert. In fact even if you travel forty minutes miles along the rugged dirt track to the nearest city, Talara, it is still had to find internet fast enough to work with the kind of efficiency that is possible back home…

Here’s the lesson that I’m still taking away from all of this: you can make all the plans you like, do all the reading you want and feel as worldly and prepared as possible, but the best form of preparation is to wipe all expectations away and wait for new ones to form once you arrive.

Two months into my time in Peru and finally I’m starting to feel the white noise slip away to be replaced by something comprehensible. So that’s another way of saying I’m going to be writing more frequently from now on. Bear with me, the chronology of the next few posts might jump around a little as I backtrack over the main events of preparing, leaving and arriving whilst still covering there here and now. First up though is International Surfing Day!

Thanks for staying with me!

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About the author: WAVES Volunteer

WAVES is only possible because of volunteers who come from all walks of life. Here, they share experiences and perspective from their time as volunteers.

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