After spending five days in Lima, I took a taxi two hours east of the city to a small Chakra (ranch) in Santa Eulalia where I was planning on spending all of January volunteering. The following is a collection of journal entries and poems I wrote while there that I hope give you some sense of the place itself and of my experience with it.

Enjoy :)

December 29, 7:55pm

Well. I have arrived at my home for the next month. 4 weeks here!

It’s a “farm,” but not really a farm, or at least, not a commercial farm. There are lots of different fruit trees and herbs planted around, but in an unorganized, natural, manner; permaculture, I guess. There’s a few avocado trees, not quite in season, cactus fruiting plants (tuna), a lot of pacay trees dropping their pods all day long, and a tiny little garden in the back with cauliflower and purple cabbage. There are six dogs, ten or so ducks, a cat, the kitchen, a dining area, and living room next to it for the volunteers; and it's all open air—just a roof. There’s a building with 4 guest rooms, 3 for the volunteers and one with a kitchen and more space as an AirBnB, and two more buildings serving as single family AirBnB’s as well. There’s a pool, too. And that’s kind of it? It’s small, cozy, quiet, and there’s still plenty of work to be done: I can see the beginning of a wall construction project with stones lying around in heaps, and some untended to land as well.

The main “dorm.” The AirBnB door is closest, with three rooms for volunteers down the hallway.

I’m very tired today, so I think I’ll keep it short. Their friend, who they called “el abogado” (the lawyer) came over with his friend David for dinner. Maria, Paris’ mom (these are the two hosts), made Pachamancha, a big roast of meat and veg cooked under hot stones buried underground—a classic mountain meal. There was choclo (andean corn), habas (lima beans), papas (potatoes), camote (sweet potatoes), a variety of meats, with a salsa de huancaína (a creamy and slightly spicy yellow sauce) that Maria made. For drinks we had orange and mango juice (freshly blended, by the way) mixed with pisco, Peruvian’s special liquor, that the lawyer gave me a 10 minute history lesson on in Spanish.

After the two hour taxi ride speaking Spanish to the driver I was exhausted and ready to relax, but then I had to meet my hosts who didn’t speak English, and then I enjoyed a nice dinner socializing, again, with no one who spoke English. I wonder how my Spanish will be in a month…

December 30th, 2:30pm

My job outline is becoming more clear, and it looks like it will be very very easy. Hah! I help with breakfast at 7, and then with cleaning up after lunch. Maybe I will be cooking in between, too. But that means I have the entire freaking afternoon to just fuck off—how great? I guess I’ll read and write.

I feel so much more relaxed here, it really does feel amazing to be out of the city. I love listening to the birds, the wind in the trees, feeling it cover me like a cold blanket, and then hearing the dogs barking and cocks crowing—really all of the classic nature sounds going on, haha.

December 31th, Morning

Who doesn’t dream of the simple life? If you come from the city, at least.
For some reason though—they say the simple life is boring—
others dream instead of the city, of noise and of fortune!
If you’ve read Anna Karenina, or lived for some time on a quiet
piece of land with a garden and a beautiful woman
with a voice like the ocean and eyes like the earth, then
you might understand.
You too may have had the urge to drop it all!
Maybe it was a passionate furious urge, or a clear realization
that everything you thought you possessed
was total fucking bullshit.
Or maybe, for the first time in your life, you listened
to the rain,
heard a woodpecker at work,
and said to yourself, “ahh yes, ahh yes.”
But then you remembered all the important
woodpecking that you had to do! The world
That you had to save
The love you had to find
The art you had to master
The family you had to make proud
And the rent you had to pay.
So you returned.

As we all do, I suppose.
Just don’t forget, please.

Those are pacay pods hanging up in the tree. The fruit covering the big seeds is white, pulpy, and refreshing.

January 3rd, 12:16pm

I think I’d like to write about this place—tell the story and philosophy of Chakra Corazon as I’ve heard it from Maria and Paris. It’s quite a beautiful history, from what Maria’s told me.

She said she came here and bought the property with all of her money, and that it was the trash dump of the town and everyone in the pueblo laughed at her. There was a single avocado tree, and when she arrived it gave her 3 avocados before finally laying down to die. But! She told us the land knew that help had finally arrived. With love and persistence and belief she stayed there, and fifteen years later it has blossomed into a lush and gorgeous piece of land, and apparently the only place in town that doesn’t need to have water delivered to it every day. Paris told us that if you sing to the water it will provide.

Her first volunteer was a millionaire from the United States who stumbled upon it randomly and asked if he could stay and help. He wanted to experience what it was like to be poor, Maria said. He stayed for four months, moving stones for buildings until his hands bled. Maria cried as she told the story, talking about his bloody hands, his commitment and desire to stay and help her alone with such a destitute piece of land.

The worst challenge that she faced was when she spilled boiling water over her leg. She had to wait for a group taxi to come by—a combi—because that was all she could afford, and was screaming in pain the entire two hour drive to Lima.

The piece of land as it is now is a beautiful testament to the philosophy of the owners, a testament to the power and the magic that humans have if they give their love to the land.

The first few days, as the only volunteer here, I did a lot of sweeping of the stone paths, the kitchen, and the living room. It’s all outdoors, so the leaves and flowers and dirt fall on the paths everyday. At first it felt a little silly, I’d sweep, and the next morning it would all fall back down again. I tried telling myself that the point wasn’t to clean it, but to do the sweeping itself, be calm, enjoy the process, and all that Zen stuff. I’d hum to myself and that helped time pass a little.

But Paris described it another way that I’d never heard before: all we do as humans is move things around. But that’s what creation is, that’s kind of the core of us. Our power is to affect the world around us while we’re alive, and when we do it with love from our hearts, our souls, without ego, we give the things we change a true aliveness and so it becomes beautiful. All of us have the power to make the world beautiful, and we do it simply because we can. Why not make things beautiful, give our souls to the material world around us?

When we let ourselves work with what we have and affect the world around us from our hearts, we make it in the image of ourselves (into the image of God if you’d like) and become one with it, the lines between “us” and “nature” blurring into one.

Speaking of nature, I saw two dogs, brothers 1 year old, absolutely go after each other today. Brownie and Snoopy are their names.

Snoopy is white with black-stained ears like a classic dairy cow, a little bit shy and a loner from the rest of the pack, but sweet and fun-loving too. Brownie is a sleek light brown all over, full of energy and excitement who loves to run around, come and hang out with me for belly rubs and scratches (even and especially when he has fleas), and would sleep by my feet when I was sitting at the dinner table alone. They’re the two biggest of the five puppies by Cala, the two year old sweet lady who had a love affair with a stray, and they fight for dominance a lot.

Their jaws were clamped on each other's mouths, eyes red and crazed, and as they held onto each other they rolled around in the dirt, jumping, wrestling, refusing to let go for nearly ten minutes. I tried breaking them up, remembering their sweet selves, but all I saw in their eyes was blood. Afterwards they stood panting, walking cautiously around each other, drinking water by a puddle, and I saw Snoopy licking Brownies wound after. Brownie had a big cut behind his ear but they seemed okay otherwise.

I’m sitting by the pool with my feet in the water
soft and cool like a blanket left out at night
looking up at barren mountains, thinking—
always thinking, always searching, always remembering—
like how this morning I saw a bee land on a red flower
that was maybe the same size as the bee itself, and so
I ran inside to grab my disposable camera and snap
a shot because I thought it was symbolic or beautiful
When I came back outside it wasn’t on the flower anymore,
but was instead buzzing around like a drunk helicopter
looking for a different one. And there weren’t many.
So it kept darting under leaves and vines, landing, rising,
I didn’t think of this then—I was too busy taking
the next picture: this one of the flower, sin bee,
on a bed of white-outlined green succulent looking plants
with a hazy stone wall in the background filling
the top third or half of the frame—but I am
like the bee, aren’t I? I just can’t sit still
and smile for a picture, even when politely asked.
Although there was my mistake!
I never asked the bee if I could take his picture.

January 6th, 10pm

I have been here for over a week now, and beginning to see the kind of community that this place holds. I was here alone at first, then another volunteer, a Peruvian girl from the south of Lima, Rocío, arrived, and now there are two other volunteers, Marshall and Emma from the Czech Republic, and an old friend of Paris and Maria’s, Minnie. Three days ago too, Maria’s nephew Fabrioso arrived with his wife and daughter, and today too he came back with his cousin. Maria is the eldest, with Jean-Pierre, Paris, Fabrioso, and the cousin, all of the next generation who went different ways. Paris and Jean-Pierre live there with Maria, Paris working, and JP is very autistic, so he takes care of the ducks and Maria takes care of him. They’re vegetarian, so they don’t eat the ducks. They just like having them.

Fabrioso is an engineer with a city brain. He likes American music, and has a hobby/side business of repairing and selling old film cameras. He’s a member of a country club too, and lives in the most expensive neighborhood in Lima, Miraflores. Like all good Peruvians, he knows how to cook and has a taste for good food. He has a wife 10 years younger than him, a five year old daughter, and a beer belly.

One time he pulled up Facebook to show me pictures of something he’d cooked, and got distracted for a full minute or two by a friend's post, liking it, and commenting “Feliz!” I got to know him so well because he speaks English, and he told me he also speaks some Italian and a little bit of German.

These other two volunteers, Marshall and Emma, are a couple from eastern Europe, 40 and 26 respectively. Marshall visited Chakra for the first time five years ago, after a woman he met introduced it to him. He met this woman traveling in Peru for the first time, and then came back to try to live with her and ended up staying in Peru for a whole year, although they broke up after a few months. This is his third time visiting Peru, and he’s here now as a tourist with his partner. They spent two months traveling around and had their last month here in Chakra to relax and work on the garden.

They both have very wide eyes and present gazes: Marshall’s like a blue granite, and Emma’s like lakewater. I did some landscaping work with Marshall, laying squares of grass on the bare ground around the pool. We did some work with shovels and pickaxes evening the ground into a slope that would be good for the grass. It took us a total of maybe 7-8 hours over two days, and it was enjoyable physical work. The hardest part I think was that the grass was all on the bottom of the hill beneath the pool, and we had to wheelbarrow it up six patches at a time.

Marshall would give me a few instructions and then work quietly himself. I had to figure out where I could be the most useful. I think that he likes to be working, to be moving, doing something. After the first few hours we took a break; Minnie and Emma made and brought us over some fresh limeade; Marshall I sat drinking it reclined in chairs under an umbrella by the pool.

Marshall studied forest engineering in school. Right before coming to Peru this year, he and Emma had been in Sweden planting trees. Marshall had planted around 70 thousand trees in three months.

That very morning he found out that a job he had lined up, one a friend had recommended him for right before he left for Peru, had been filled. It was as a manager of an industrial wood farm far from his home, and while it was good money he didn’t seem too bummed about losing it. He told me he wanted to work more with taking care of forests, maybe in a national park, or learning more about and working in permaculture. He mentioned a growing market for people wanting their yards to be permaculture with native plants, and I felt like that kind of work, landscaping and especially of a permaculture type, would be perfect with him, especially after seeing how he works and the care and art he gave it the past couple of days.

He has a big garden outside of his house, maybe thirty for forty square yards as he described it, with all kinds of veggies, and he likes to cook with his bounty.

His partner Emma works in an elementary school with special needs children, which is what she studied in university. And she clearly likes taking care of people. When Minnie had a headache she had her drink water and started asking questions about her pillow, and when she noticed me staring at my finger intently while in the pool she asked if it was okay and if anything had gotten into it. That was another cute occurrence, the four of us hanging out in the pool before lunch in the afternoon.

What made the place feel like such a community was the structure to it, which at times frustrated me, yet it did bring a sense of order and family to everything—especially when it was more crowded. At its peak during my stay there were Marshall and Emma, Rocío, Minnie, Cat from Spain, and Masha from Brazil.

Breakfast and lunch are family meals with everyone sitting at the table, and Maria will select people to serve the food. She will then lead a grace, saying thank you and gracias for love, the father, and many other things (always in Spanish, and when Rocío is there she has her translate).

This morning was veggies in a cream sauce spiced with turmeric, a broccoli and cauliflower omelet heavy on the veg, and a fruit salad with pineapple, blueberries, papaya, and cinnamon. Other mornings we’ve had lucuma, watermelon, banana, orange, with algarrobina, a molasses like syrup make from from a fruit local to Latin America, algarrobo.

Yesterday morning there were little egg and bread sandwiches. Another morning I spread mashed palta (Peruvian avocado) on bread slices and topped each with a thin slice of tomato and hard boiled egg. The food is all very simple, but usually very pretty, too, and tasty! It varies for the number of people needed to feed.

Maria is the chef and everyone is her sous, but sometimes other’s will Chef. One day I made Tacu Tacu for lunch, and another day Minnie made Chaufa.

Lunch is usually a big soup or stew. Sopa de Olluco is made from a tuber local to Peru purchased in little matchstick slices. It’s prepared with sauteed red onion and garlic with aji amarillo and cumin, then boiled with the olluco and potatoes, and finally finished with five different kinds of herbs—I think cilantro, parsley, were two that I know and the rest were local. Other days will be a big pot of stewed beans, garbanzo or another kind.

One day she made a basil pesto we had with noodles. Tallarines Verde (literally green noodles) is what it’s known as here. There’ll often be a salad with lunch too of various sliced veggies tossed in olive oil, salt, and lime juice: tomato, avocado, beets, choclo, lettuce, red onion, carrots, peas, and broccoli are some of the veggies I remember.

There will also be a drink, usually limeade or fresh blended fruit juice. One time we had Avena con Manzana (oats with apple), a very popular warm drink served with breakfast that I’ve since found at little stands on the street. It’s apples boiled with cloves and cinnamon until soft, and then oatmeal is added. It’s all mashed together into a thick and warm drink which would be great if it ever got cold enough here to appreciate that kind of thing in the morning.

Dinners, as I mentioned, were free time, but we often ended up eating together and then hanging around to play. One night we went around singing karaoke. Another, Emma suggested we play a game, and after fifteen minutes of deliberation we landed on charades. The language barrier made things tough, because Minnie didn’t speak English, Emma didn’t speak Spanish, my Spanish is very poor, and Masha from Brazil only speaks Portuguese. So, we made a list of about 30 thirty words and wrote each one in English, Spanish, and Portuguese, and shuffled them all in a hat. It’s these kinds of light-hearted games, simple ways to have fun and connect with people—even people who don’t speak the same language—that make me love traveling and really, love being alive!

January 7th, 2:35 pm

I had a very interesting morning. I’ve been sleeping in and I don’t think Maria approves. I was distracted by a pain in my core and my sides, and she pulled me aside to talk. She says I need to change my personality if I want to change. Which is something I do agree with. I have felt myself changing somewhat here, but I still see the old me—the quiet, shy, hesitant, obedient child absorbed in himself and his thoughts and addictions.

Well, to solve this she put me to work in the soil and told me that after two to three days I would change. All I needed to do was work the earth, give it my energy, and it would gave back to me. I understood this, theoretically at least, and trusting her, I went to work.

I went down to my knees and pulled out weeds from their roots, swinging my pickaxe to upend deeper and more stubborn clumps. I was working to protect the orange and mango and papaya and lime trees. Afterwards I went swimming with Minnie and did fifteen minutes of yoga.

January 8th, 3:30 pm

I had another nice day of working with the earth. Today I was doing the same thing that I was doing yesterday, weeding, but with a little more focus, or I want to say, more consciousness, of what I was doing it for, after another early pep talk from Maria. What was I doing kneeling in the ground and pulling out weeds with my bare hands (and sometimes a pickaxe)? I was taking care of a tree, and I was humbling myself in front of it. Lowering myself and my ego in front of another living being. Literally, by kneeling in the soil, and metaphorically, by tending to it selflessly.

So today I really cleaned up the space around those four trees. It’s good work, really good work, and I’m glad I’m doing it. Maria told me that when I return (she looked at me, paused a moment, and said, “you will be back” in English), it will be all grown up and I can eat some fruit from it. Then we poured some blended fish guts over the trees—she said the phosphorus was really good for them.

Picture of all the earth that I cleaned—you can see the piles on the right. The tree directly in front is an orange tree, and the little baby on the left is a mango tree.

In the future I want a yoga studio, or maybe a dojo, well, I think a yoga studio that also holds martial arts classes, and attached a vegan/vegetarian cafe where people can go eat and be in community after class. I think that would be really amazing, like really really amazing. And having some system like Chakra where volunteers come and help would be amazing. I’d love a garden too that helps the restaurant, probably mainly herbs and chilies and stuff, but if it's a big piece of land maybe more. This sounds like a huge project, I mean, it's an entire community built from the ground up! But that’s what Portia did, that’s what Maria did. It’s good to dream! Right now I have a lot to learn.

Kneeling in the ground today
I offered my assistance
to a tree.
I pulled up the weeds
crowding his roots—he told
me it was hard to breath,
and so I dug him out.
Then I got my head close
to the dirt
grabbed the little bastard spindles
that didn’t want to go
without a fight
and wrenched them out from
their roots. Killing them!
Then I poured blended fish
for them to eat
and the dogs drank
as much as they could
before it seeped in.
They want me to grow, too
to bear the fruit of my soul
onto the world, sweet, colorful,
and many are the fruits
of my soul.
When I kneel before myself
and ask what I want
of me, what to sacrifice,
what to gain? Always
too many answers.
When I kneel in the earth
and ask what they
want of me,
the answer is
always the same.
Silence!

January 9th, Afternoon

Each day is different here, huh?

Today after breakfast this morning we rushed down to the river to help with a community project to build a canal that sends water from the river up to farms. There were about 40 people there. The first hour we stood around waiting for them to make a plan while they argued and argued. I waited with Cat, and Rocío. But then finally, they formed a plan, and there was work to do!

Let me describe the river a bit first for you. It's a wide river of raging white water and its banks are piles of rocks—mostly big, child-sized rocks—rising twenty yards up. The mountains are a few hundred yards off in either direction. There are these large PVC pipes in the river, 10 yards long and 1.5 feet diameter, leading into a small stone canal built a few yards above the river on the bank we stood on. Our job was to walk over, a little over half a mile, following the canal through rocky steps, jungly overgrowth, and more pipes and canals that were already built, until we came out to a line of three pipes running 10 yards above the ground on wooden stilts. We took pipes from here and walked them back to where we started to make a second line running alongside the first, to collect more water, I guess.

At first Paris and I had the pipes over our shoulders, switching it back and forth and stepping carefully. But a group ran by us holding the pips by their sides so we switched—it was a little harder on the arms (but not that much) and much easier to move and navigate. A total of eight pipes were taken, with Paris and I walking the whole distance and a half while carrying a pipe. Then began the installation in the river.

They had flat plastic “ropes” they used to secure the pipes to the rocks, and recycled copper wires that wrapped around the two pipes side by side to hold them together. Someone almost lost a pipe to the river—it turned sideways a little and the current started to rip it away—and nearly fell in retrieving it himself. Another time, a rockslide sent big boulders down into the path of the pipe they needed to lay. They dumped the rocks into the river and out of the way with these heavy iron poles taller than a man used as wedges, that they called “balletas.”

There was an awkward exchange where I was sent by one group yelling to the other group who didn’t seem to give a fuck to grab them “dos balletas” after the landslide, and I hovered about thinking I understood but never completely sure.

Other than helping bring the pipes, and moving five rocks out of the way in the canal, I was mostly just sitting around. Cat and Rocío got some really good chatting in—hours of it—as they had even less work than me to do.

We talked to Branlee, the self-declared brother of Bruce Lee, and the Cat-declared brother of the famous vegetarian Broco Lee. They all talked in Spanish so I didn’t get much—I learned a new expression last week, by the way.

I used to say “Yo hablo un pequeño,” or “mi español es malo,” but now I say “mi español es pobre,” its poor! Because I am finding myself able to pick up some of a conversation now, and even sometimes add a little myself. I usually can only pick out words or phrases here and there but have a hard time putting together the full meaning. So I speak Spanish, just poorly.

I think they spoke of Spain, how it's cold there and snows this time of year, and that Branlee had visited before. I think he was trying to flirt a little bit too, and was unsuccessful, too.

Afterwards we spoke with Filomena, an old lady of about 60 years who came just to hang out and not actually do any work. She used to be a torrero—a bullfighter—here in Peru. She passed her phone around to show us black and white photos of her facing off with a bull, the red cape in hand, and her standing with her arms upraised victorious, and a poster with her name on it advertising the fight. She told us it earned her enough money to send five kids to school, but that she couldn’t stand any of them.

Then they passed around soda to the workers—Filomena had to beg for a little bit because she wasn’t working—Inka Kola and Coke. Inka Kola is a soda unique to Peru and it seems like everyone drinks it. It looks like piss and kinda tastes like it too. Like sprite, but less lemoney, with a little fanta and dr pepper mixed in. Kind of strange. And we snacked on soft panettone with gummy fruit inside, apparently a classic snack here.

Afterwards was a group meeting that Paris stood at impatiently—he had to drive to Lima later to sign some papers—because he needed proof that he had been there. Filomena told us that it was a pretty bad organization, and they pay 100 soles per month to be a part of it. All of them needed water from the canal for their farms. And the canal needed to be rebuilt every year. In April and May the rains create avalanches and rock falls that totally obliterate everything built near the river, so construction begins again from scratch.

The meeting was led by a man in a cowboy hat, long black cotton t-shirt, gray jeans, and hiking boots, with deep lines in his face. He seemed to be giving a kind of useless pep talk—we need to agree, we can’t keep fighting, we have to stick together—and people watched silently with blank faces. Then one other man spoke who was short and pudgy with his bottom lip sticking out like he was perpetually pouting. He talked for five minutes, and Rocío translated for me: he said none of the good ideas were ever listened to and he was angry. Again, he was met with silence.

Then we escaped, Paris having to go, and gave a ride as far as our house to Filomena, Branlee, and another tiny old man who looked Japanese and spoke English. Well, I heard three phrases from him: “Good afternoon,” “I speak English very well,” and “Goodbye.”

And that was my morning!

January 10th

I am leaving Chakra Corazon today. I think I will be back before I fly home, but who knows? I am leaving with Rocío! We are going to Pachacamac where I will stay at her house and meet her friends and community. I’m a little nervous, because I’ve gotten comfortable here, and now I will be let loose in Peru again, but I have Rocío as a guide and translator, and nature as my home forever.

Las Sierras de Peru: Chakra Corazon