Jaén, 16th of December 2000

Dear friends,

the last letter we sent out isn't that long ago yet, but we didn't find time to translate it for almost one month. Yesterday we sent out our second letter to our sponsors and friends. We start translating now and hope it won't take us a month again! :-) Please forgive us our deteriorating English. The more Spanish we learn the worse our English seems to get. Now, here we go:

We have been living here in Jaén for almost two months and our first letter to all of you has been sent out pretty long ago. It's time to drop you some more lines. In the meantime we feel pretty much like home here. However, now - shortly before Christmas Eve - some things feel a little strange or are missing somehow. The lack of snow is the same in Germany and it's way to warm, just like here. But above all, we are missing the spirit of the (more or less silent) advent that prepares for the coming of our Savior. You are probably all stressed and storming the crowded shops for the last Christmas presents. Here we don't notice much of the upcoming event. A few plastic trees in some shops, here and there a high pitched computer sound resembling "Jingle Bells", and of course all night(s) fire crackers of all kinds, but that's it. We didn't even find an advent wreath in the church.

Today during the weekly "reunión" (here this word just stands for a meeting or date - 2 or 20 people doesn't matter - and is one of the most popular words and tasks :-) of the whole staff of the radio, we were told that there will be a church service next sunday (Christmas Eve!) at 6pm in the large auditorium of the radio. Following that we will celebrate together with all neighbors and friends of Radio Marañón. Let's see whether this will feel more like christmas. Afterwards we will go to the house of a Peruvian family - in the meantime good friends of us - to spend christmas eve with them very traditionally. So far we don't know more than that we will eat stuffed turkey and drink hot choclate at midnight. ;-)

What else happened so far? Way too much to write down all of it. So far we left Jaén only once, but even here in this "hole" - how Paco calls Jaén - there are lots of experiences to make. Two weeks after our arrival we went to Lima to pick up our residence permit and id cards. Thank god the jesuits in Lima helped us a lot to tackle the bureaucracy. Now we got it in written form that we are single and our profession is "religioso". Thus Heidi is one of the rare jesuit sisters. *smile*

We stayed a few days longer to do some sightseeing in Lima. Andy also wanted to personally meet José Carlos - the dealer where the radio orders the computer stuff. Because of the Peruvian reliability the latter wasn't easy, but in the end we had a long and successful reunión.

Lima has many different aspects: relatively dangerous regions downtown (where we lived :-), quarters with mansions of the rich, but also almost "normal" parts by the sea. We did a lot of sightseeing, although there aren't really many sights except numerous museums. Lima definitely isn't the ideal town for tourists with many attractions, but in comparison with Jaén it has quite a bit to offer. The paragliders on the beach pretty astonishing. There are enough up winds along the not very high but steep coast to let the chutes fly back and forth in minimal heights.

Going back we again took the bus. First 10 hours through the night along the coast in a "sleeping bus" (wide and comfortably reclining seats, bus-wardess, dinner, movie, breakfast) from Lima to Chiclayo. From there another 5-6 hours with a normal coach through villages and across the Andes to Jaén. Gladly the mountain pass is only 2000m high at this point, but even these few curves are too much for some fellows. *sigh*

Back in Jaén and back to work, lots of work. Our new colleagues expect a lot from us. We don't know yet whether we can keep up with these expectations, but we will give our best. Heidi is the great hope of all to reorganize the administration of Radio Marañón. End of 1999 the radio almost went broke. Now it has a future again thanks to many sponsorships (in July director Paco Muguiro SJ went to Europe to ask many caritative organizations for help), but still these are tough times. The previous administration was very creative and has achieved a lot, but unfortunately it also ran down the radio financially and neglected the organization.

Paco and the Spanish "voluntario" Gaizko who independently took over the marketing tasks developed new concepts and achieved a "restart" of the radio administration. The secretary Lucha was promoted to become chief of administration, but she is pretty swamped with it. She doesn't lack the theory so much but the daily practice of structuring processes and planning ahead. This explains the pretty chaotic situation in the administration. Heidi now started to supervise Lucha and give her a lot of advice during the daily work. The rest of her time she watches the accounting assistant in order to develop a computer program lateron. Recently she started to give English lessions for interested colleagues and their kids.

Andy primarily takes care of the computers in the radio and the dialup to the internet; maybe lateron also the phone system which is overdue, too. At the moment there are 12 PCs, most of them relatively new. The faster ones (Pentium III-500 and faster) are situated in the transmission studios, the editing studios and the so called discoteca, where all records, tapes and CDs are digitalized one by one. There also are PCs in the prensa (newscenter) and in the administration. Most of them have a modem and are hoocked up to one (!) phoneline, which is split many times and spread all over the whole building. It is almost a miracle that we are getting pretty fast connect rates. Many times two or more want to surf the net at the same time, which leads to aborts, competing redials and desperate searches for "the other guy" and in the end to a horrendously high phonebill. Andy is currently setting up an internal network with one dedicated computer (router) to dial out. This should allow everybody to use the internet at the same time. This should also improve internal structures and the communication. When he is done with that he will work on a domain name of their own and email addresses for everyone. There are two people in the radio who are interested very much in computers. They are already taking courses but are lacking the practice yet. Since Andy doesn't want to make the radio depend on him, he would like that these two do most of the work. Unfortunately time is the problem here again: both of them sit in the studios most of their time or are preparing their programs.

On this occacion we really have to stress how hardworking and dedicated the whole radio staff is. Not only that they spend 6 1/2 days of every week in the radio. They also work more than 8 hours every day. Everyone lives for the radio because they believe in its mission and its positive effects on the people.

We also noticed this attitude during the evaluation which took place during the last two weeks. While the radio program ran on a minimum basis and with the help of students, the whole staff held meetings for 10 days in a row to reflect the last year and intensively think about what could be changed to improve the radio as a whole. Two external consultants were invited to give advice, structure the ideas and develop a strategy. The motivation, the creativity, the interest and above all the ability to be criticized really blew our minds.

One of the externals was German, too (however grown up in Columbia), working for the GTZ (society for technical cooperation). Some of them called it "the German invasion". :-) We also met a guy from switzerland who has been living here for five years, working with street children (he and his wife also adopted two Peruvian kids). We don't have much contact with these guys though, because we want to get to know the local people more. With the latter we are progressing, but it is not so easy. We will always be gringos who - especially Andy - look different, speak different and therefore first are to be treated with caution. By the way the expression "gringo" is not an insult here but simply stands for being a stranger. Supposedly "gringo" was an expression for north american yankees until approximately the 2nd world war. But since the "hippies" (at the latest) it is used for everyone who is not southamerican.

Whoever got to know us better soon lost all scepticism and is very friendly and helpful. This holds for example for the family of Roxana and Calín. Since two weeks we are very good friends with them. Their three children (which is far below average by the way) like us very much and even invited us for Christmas Eve. Last week we joined them for the First Communion of Carlos. By the way this is different than in Germany, too. The kids are older - Carlos is 12 years - and the school organizes everything. They also have godfathers - unless the teachers don't allow them to, like in this case. After the church service (pretty much of a chaos with 130 kids and their parents who all want to be as close as possible to the happening) all returned to the school to celebrate with cake. By the way most of the kids were wearing the school uniforms; only some girls had a white veil or were dressed completely differently. We couldn't find out why.

Last week the school year ended. So there are lots of graduation parties of the classes that change from primaria to segundaria. Even for that there are godfathers! Heidi was chosen godmother for Carlos - but the teachers decided that no one else but parents are allowed to the party.

Roxana also works in the radio and has - according to Gaizko - the most popular voice. Calín, her husband, has been unemployed for a while and takes care of the kitchen. He loves cooking and enjoyed showing us how to cook Peruvian dishes. We also went shopping with both of them (Sunday morning at 7 am). Without help a dumb European is pretty much lost. There are so many types of fruit and vegetable. Many of them we have never seen before or don't know what to do with them. We have told you already about our experiences with corn. It simply wasn't meant for cooking but only for canchita (popcorn) or as food for cuys (see below). But also the many types of rice and potatoes are pretty confusing. On this occasion we also noticed that we get "special prices" at some places in the market. But basicly the marketeers are very helpful and giggle when we are clueless once again.

Last Sunday Roxana and Calín had another Pollada. This is a funny method for families to increase their budget. Pollo means chicken and this is what they cook and sell at a Pollada. A few days before they sell coupons for a dish of fried chicken with potatoes. The according number of chicken is prepared and the people come and pick it up during the afternoon. Pollo is practically the most eaten food - fried or cooked with potatoes and vegetables, in pieces with rice, or feet and intestines in vegetable soups. Otherwise they eat lots of fish (coming from the coast like many other things) and sometimes beef. A specialty is "cuy" - guinea pig. But we don't really understand the hype: it tastes like chicken, costs three times as much and is not half as big. Besides it's kind of scary when you look at your plate and your food looks like a fried rat. :-) But supposedly it is a lot more nourishing than chicken and they only eat it on special occasions. But then there are no leftovers but the blank bones. :-)

Of course all this holds only true for Jaén so far. Last week we planned to drive out to the villages together with Felix (who leads agricultural projects) for a few days. But then he had to reschedule it for next week. We will arm ourselves with rubber boots (in case that the raining season does let itself down to start - the weather seems to go crazy all over the world) drive out of town a bit and then hike to a few pueblos (villages). Next time we will hopefully be able to tell you more exactly whether life outside of Jaén is a lot different.

We are making progress with the language. We can pretty much say what we want to say and we understand quite a bit - if we can persuade the people to speak slower than normally. However our grammar is still pretty bad, but no one seems to mind that too much. At night when we come home from work we usually are just too tired to study our books. The heat tires more than one would think. But after all we have shaped our home comfortably. We closed the windows...eh, the holes in the wall with mosquito grids (so far there are still some holes between the wooden frame and the wall because we couldn't find the great PU-foam yet. :-) We really appreciate our trees in our garden; we enjoy the roses very much; we gradually get used to our "pet animals" and we are still negotiating with the mouse.

We have been asked how far away the radio is from our house and how we get there. It's about 15 minutes to walk, but often times we use one of the mototaxis. During the day the sun is just too strong. But at night we often walk home and sometimes do some shopping in the market. By the way, Murphys Law exists here, too: whenever we are a bit late the mototaxi has to stop at the gas station. Here we should mention that the equality of rights between men and women...sorry, between women and men seems to be very natural. For example, there are women filling the tanks at the gas station, men - like Calín - take care of the household, both genders go to university. Yes, there are not only many schools in Jaén, but also a university and a few "institutos". We have been told that you can study to become teacher or "computación" among other fields.

Uh, just now (Sunday noon) the bill for electricity flies through the open window. Hm, how much is one KWh in Germany? $US 0.12 seems to be quite a lot. The month before last month we had a power failure and they actually gave us 1 cent credit for it ("compencación por interrupciones"). However this time they just rounded up ("Redondeo"). Suckers. On the other hand the smallest coin is 0.10 Soles (3 cents). (-: By the way the electricity in Jaén is from its own hydro-electric power plant in the mountains very close to town.

Soon you will find pictures to complement with all this at our webpages. At the moment updating them is still very tedious because our moving boxes which also contain Andys PC are still swimming somewhere in the atlantic. But we hope that we will manage to update the informations in the web soon. Make sure to check them every now and then: http://maranon.spiegl.de or http://peru.spiegl.de

We are looking forward to visitors! Who will be first? Just be sure to tell us in advance because sometimes we are out of town. And every once in a while we are longing for choclate, a potato peeler etc. We guess a laundromat is too heavy for the plane? Or is anyone planning to fly with one of the new airbusses that have kindergarden, fitnesscenter and gambling halls? ;-)

At the end some technical notes to our dear sponsors: When you are transfering money to our acount, please make sure that you include the information "INES, Spiegl". And when you lateron get the confirmation (for tax redemption) from the mission procurate in Nürnberg, please check whether INES and Spiegl is listed there also. Unfortunately there have been a few confusions but so far we could resolve them all. Sidenote: the money transfer form that came with the jesuits magazine (which all of you got recently) is in no way related to our project!

Finally we want to forward the good wishes from Jörg Dantscher to all of you:

  May the Lord
    with his solidarity to stand by us,
    with his willingness to have become man,
  also change us to become
    more human,
    peacefuller,
    and juster.

We wish all of you blessed Christmas Holidays and a great start into the new year, century and millennium!

Lots of love!
Heidi and Andy.

PS: We have a bonus for everybody who gets our letters via email: :-)
an interesting text about Radio Marañón which was written by a former colleague. Although it was written about 2 years ago, most of it still is true for today.

PPS: How do you guys feel about the US election???

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, last change: 2012-Apr-16