Peru Part V – Turnovers and Tournaments
It’s been an eventful week in the volunteer house since the Cusco sojourn. I’m sitting at the breakfast table at 8am as I do almost every day here, but today is the first day I’m alone. Sarah, our stalwart house manager and the only other early riser in the house, finished her term here and left last night. An early bird, she’s been my regular breakfast buddy in the unique peace and quiet of the mornings in the house, and so the eerie silence over my porridge is a gentle reminder that this week ends almost a complete turnover of volunteers since I first joined the house in late June.
This is to be expected, as there is usually a large inflow/outflow of volunteers at the end of the school semester, and in fact I’m one of the rare cases of a short-term stay running over the semester break. But the upshot is that, together with Kat and Valentin, I’ve become one of the veterans of the house, to be replied upon for intricate knowledge of the bizarre rural Peruvian public transport network, house security guards, kitchen rituals and an endless stream of children’s names.
This is, naturally, a bad idea. My Spanish has definitely come along (last week I was awarded the title of “Volunteer Most Improved in Español”, but to be fair, I had far the greatest potential to improve…), but I’m still very much in the lower half of the household’s fluency. Fortunately, the ‘newbies’ bring with them a very impressive competency of the language, along with new energy, seemingly boundless enthusiasm and a diverse range of skills and experiences to make any lunchtime conversation memorable.
And we’ve only had one visit to the hospital emergency room so far.
If only one of them liked getting up early, huh? The other noticeable omission is a lack of chess ability, which I’m attempting to remedy with house chess lessons this week and next. The purpose is twofold. One, to have an in-house chess tournament, and two, to hopefully spark a bit of interest in taking over my chess classes after I depart next Sunday. The chess program has begun to blossom, with a bunch of new sign-ups, a few private lessons for (I must admit) some very talented kids, and a huge inter-zone chess tournament this afternoon (complete with prizes courtesy of Gardiner Chess). But unfortunately there’s a bit of a risk that the program may shrivel a little after I leave, simply given the lack of chess expertise in the crew. That’s a natural operational risk of running a boutique class in a small, ‘grass roots’ organisation, and it saddens me that I can’t stick around longer.
Still, I’m sure that’s exactly what Sarah was thinking yesterday, as no doubt were Gladys, Jessie, Chris, Lauren and Ellie over the past fortnight. This place is endearing, the kids addictive, and the household surprisingly homely. And it’s amazing how close you can become to people in just weeks when sharing such a unique experience (and such limited personal space). I may have over a week to go, but I’m already dreading the farewell.
First, though, we’ve all got to focus on today’s epic chess tournament. If South Africa could host a smooth-sailing tournament of over 700, surely we can handle a couple of dozen little Peruvian angels, right? Even if they still believe you can ‘eat’ the king, even if they take more delight in breaking the pawns than moving them, and even if, every time I look away for 30 seconds, they’ve created yet another amazing position that is technically illegal.
Well. At least they’ve grown to love the game almost as much as I do, even if they still insist on announcing “checkmate” in Spanish. As the kids love to scream (no matter what the position), “Hakkee-Martay!”