Welcome to Civilization
We landed in Lima last night exactly on time at 11:59PM, after a smooth connection in LAX, where I had my first, and hopefully last, encounter with a full-body X-ray machine. Unlike last year, our arrival through baggage check and customs was not entirely smooth. Clare's bag did not reach Lima from Los Angeles, and customs was suspicious of the recording equipment (microphones, recorders, batteries, etc.) and accompanying chargers that we carried in our water-tight cases (which happen to be marketed as gun cases). After some headache, and them pretending like they were going to make us declare them (which requires a form of internamiento), they relented and said they would let it slide this one time. Security is rumored to be greater around the country due to the fact that June 5 was the day of presidential elections, from which it appears that Ollanta Humala, a leftist with uneasy ties to Hugo Chávez, is in the lead.
We spent a restless night in the Lima airport (Jorge Chávez) before boarding a 9:35AM flight for Iquitos. On the flight we met a Davis epidiomiologist Thomas Scott who is doing work tracking the spread and sources of last year's outbreak of dengue fever in Iquitos. We exited from the plane into the weighty, dense humidity that permeates this region, and easily reached La Casona (our hostal) in mototaxi. The dueña remembers us and even gave us one of the same rooms we stayed in during one stint last summer.
I very much welcome the arrival to Peru. Their airlines provide multiple meals with metal utensils, glasses for wine made of real glass, helpful airport attendants that get things done quickly for you, and seats that recline that otherwise deprived two inches for aided sleeping. Mototaxi drivers are terse and friendly, and that spread across thousands city-wide adds an urgency and busyness to a city that is the largest in the world with no external road access. People are warm and easygoing, and are more than happy to have you stop by their house with relatively little forewarn, kind of like Americans used to be before everything began to be scheduled with cell phones. The food is excellent nearly everywhere, and it is expected that the coffee always be good -- a major benefit.
In less fortunate news, it appears that our most elderly and likely best speaker of Omagua, L, who lives in Iquitos, will not be able to work with us during these two initial weeks we had scheduled to be in the city, which we found out following a brief visit to her daughter's house in the suburb of San Juan. An illness which we knew about appears to be worse than we had thought, and with her being 91, it is unclear if we will be able to work with her even in our time in Iquitos following our stay in San Joaquín de Omaguas. This leaves one other known speaker in Iquitos, Am (80), who we intend to work with us as much as possible beginning tomorrow. We hope to meet her two youngest siblings, who also live here, in the hopes that they may also be speakers of Omagua (not a guarantee since there is such an age gap between them). Most likely, our departure date for the village will be bumped forward a few days. The next few days promise to be full of numerous errands, new acquaintances and the hurried beginnings of work.
We spent a restless night in the Lima airport (Jorge Chávez) before boarding a 9:35AM flight for Iquitos. On the flight we met a Davis epidiomiologist Thomas Scott who is doing work tracking the spread and sources of last year's outbreak of dengue fever in Iquitos. We exited from the plane into the weighty, dense humidity that permeates this region, and easily reached La Casona (our hostal) in mototaxi. The dueña remembers us and even gave us one of the same rooms we stayed in during one stint last summer.
I very much welcome the arrival to Peru. Their airlines provide multiple meals with metal utensils, glasses for wine made of real glass, helpful airport attendants that get things done quickly for you, and seats that recline that otherwise deprived two inches for aided sleeping. Mototaxi drivers are terse and friendly, and that spread across thousands city-wide adds an urgency and busyness to a city that is the largest in the world with no external road access. People are warm and easygoing, and are more than happy to have you stop by their house with relatively little forewarn, kind of like Americans used to be before everything began to be scheduled with cell phones. The food is excellent nearly everywhere, and it is expected that the coffee always be good -- a major benefit.
In less fortunate news, it appears that our most elderly and likely best speaker of Omagua, L, who lives in Iquitos, will not be able to work with us during these two initial weeks we had scheduled to be in the city, which we found out following a brief visit to her daughter's house in the suburb of San Juan. An illness which we knew about appears to be worse than we had thought, and with her being 91, it is unclear if we will be able to work with her even in our time in Iquitos following our stay in San Joaquín de Omaguas. This leaves one other known speaker in Iquitos, Am (80), who we intend to work with us as much as possible beginning tomorrow. We hope to meet her two youngest siblings, who also live here, in the hopes that they may also be speakers of Omagua (not a guarantee since there is such an age gap between them). Most likely, our departure date for the village will be bumped forward a few days. The next few days promise to be full of numerous errands, new acquaintances and the hurried beginnings of work.
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