Here, Nostalgia is an Illusion

Photo by: Aino Huotari

Silhouetted by the skeletons of old fishing boats, now put out to pasture, gulls squawk and ferrell dogs scrounge for breakfast through the heaps of garbage that line the coast. The sun is  rising on Talara; a city of few charms.

Thirty minutes down a long dirt road from home in Lobitos, Talara houses the only large, "Western" (for lack of a better word) grocery store in the area as well as an expansive fruit/vegetable market, bus station and my preferred internet café. With time, I have come to view my frequent visits as a necessary annoyance.  The burden can usually be softened with some special treats from Plaza Vea, fun school supplies for my English classes and perhaps a tamale and beer from Cocoro's.  Today's trip affords no such luxuries.

Sandwiched between a sleepless night and a full day of teaching, a six am drop-off at Talara's EPPO Station was less than ideal. Regardless, when Moises brought the car around to pick him up, I couldn´t say goodbye. Instead, I threw myself in the back seat like an extra piece of luggage.  

"You've never seen this place without Jackson, have you?" Seth had asked me a few days before.  I hadn't.

"To be honest," he said, "it's exactly the same.  People come for a while and then they fuck off.  You'll get used to it."


I was only a third of the way through my one-year work contract then and Seth was just a few months shy of finishing his. Jackson had just completed the longest volunteer stay in the history of the development organization we worked for; six months in total. Over the last four, he had become one of my best friends and an integral part of my life in Lobitos.  It was the first, but not last, significant goodbye I would have to say in this town. 

Seth wasn't wrong.  Here, “despedidas” come in such abundance that they rarely mean much anymore.  At the time, I couldn´t imagine my Lobitos life without one of the people who had become so ingrained in it.  Now, the constant shuffle of employees and volunteers that have come in to and out of my life over the past year is a virtual blur.  I´ve seen four members of our tiny team arrive and four others leave, abruptly.  With less than one year in Peru, I am currently the longest-standing international staff member on site. 

I've seen well over a hundred volunteers pass through the organization.  I've lived with them, cooked with them, dined with them, worked with them, surfed with them and said goodbye to them.  Each time, the deck is shuffled again and a new hand of friends is dealt.  With it, comes a new soundtrack, a new routine, new recipes, new jokes and new values. 

The last few months have been sprinkled with a handful of goodbyes that were particularly hard to swallow. Tied to fond memories and paths that vow to cross again, they protrude from a bleak backdrop of a dozen meaningless ones.  A fresh batch under my belt, I am reminded of another conversation that I had with Seth, many months later.

“Here, nostalgia is an illusion,” he interrupted as I started to wax poetic about some false notion of the “good old days”.  We were sharing a few beers on the tree swing at La Casona and looking out over the ocean.  Life here, he reminded me, has always been a constant cycle of adjusting, recalculating and scrambling to pick up the pieces. 

In the span of six months, I watched every member of the staff that received me upon my arrival to Lobitos as they packed up and left town.  Between the four of them, they had taught me almost all of the simple, but important, things about daily life here.  They taught me when to take public transportation, how to pump water and where the vicious street dogs hang out.  They taught me how to avoid being eaten alive by mosquitos, how to light the oven and how to coax coffee out of a particularly fickle espresso machine.  They taught me a lot of the big things too.  It was largely through my conversations with them that I came to understand what we were moving towards, what we were fighting for. 

At times, I still find myself clinging to the memory, though perhaps partially flawed, of a team that marched together triumphantly towards a common set of goals.  I remember each individual blow as that train was repeatedly derailed by one unexpected despedida after another.   As the cliché goes, the only thing that has been constant is change.  Ironically, it can also be summarized succinctly with a classic Tali-ism: adapt or die.   There were times when the latter seemed all but inevitable.

Now I find that reminiscence comes in a variety of flavors.  Sometimes it curls up the hole left by a particular person´s departure.  It's the caffeine headache around noon because your standing coffee date is gone now.  It's the lazy feeling of rolling out of bed late now that your solid dawn patrol crew has been broken up.  It's the guitar collecting dust now that Tom isn't there to play Shins covers, Seth isn't singing Bob Dylan songs and Jackson isn't incessantly strumming the four chords that make up the chorus of “Fast Car”.

There are times when I miss the naivety that once allowed me to feel like I was part of something solid; secure, stable.  Luckily stability comes from other sources.  I find it in the tranquility of small-town life.  I find it in my relationships with the amazing people here and even long-distance from loved ones elsewhere.  I find beauty in a lifestyle that allows for days filled with surfing, ceviche, sunsets, good chats with Zoe and hugs from small children.  I find comfort in feeling one step closer to finally figuring out what I want to be when I grow up.  I find hope in the knowledge that dovetailing interests and paralleling good intentions will continue to spark group synergy.  Wonderful people will continue to find their way here and happy things will continue to happen.