Imperdible

On my last night in Huánuco, Peru, my host mother Elena and her daughter Carla surprised me with an unforgettable despedida. On that memorable Tuesday evening in mid-July, 2009, Elena and Carla had prepared a night of folkloric dancing in their living room. I couldn't have asked for a more special send off.

Elena and Carla retrieved a overstuffed plastic bag full of traditional Peruvian skirts and blouses and proceeded to dress me in layers of fabric and colored sashes. The first dress they presented me was for the Huayla dance of Huancayo, where I had traveled during Holy Week.

I stepped into two knee-length red and orange skirts, each with a wool border of giant hand-stitched flowers, tropical birds and even images of pumas from the surrounding jungle of the region. Elena pulled a black tunic over my head and adjusted the skirts. She then slipped my hands into two decorative sleeves, connected by a string behind my back like a pair of children’s winter mittens.

Over my shoulders Elena draped a heavy manta, or shawl, usually embellished with a flower-patterned square in the middle, but sometimes with more particular designs. And, of course, no look is complete without the typical hat of the region.

In the mountain town of Huancayo, the traditional hat is the simplest I’ve seen - a round top low-brimmed felt hat of tan or black, with a ribbon which gathers on one side in a delicate fan shape rather than a bow.

Hats are a bit of a status symbol in the more traditional regions of Peru, giving each woman a distinct look, without which their daily attire looks markedly similar. In Huánuco, women are seen wearing dark pleated skirts and pastel-colored knit sweaters with two black braided pigtails trailing down to their waists.

In the surrounding villages, women decorate their hats with a mix of brightly colored silk flowers, ribbons and even Christmas tree tinsel. Local shops near the market cater to this by hanging all the necessary hat accessories outside their doors, with women coming to refurbish or upgrade their otherwise bland cream-colored top hats.

At first glance the hats seem a bit excessive, but considering that these women have few possessions of their own, let alone freedoms in life, the hats represent a form of personal expression, identity and artistry.

As Elena continued to dress me in the outfit from Huancayo, Carla tried on a dress from the town of Huacaybamba, a small pueblo near Huánuco. She stepped into a longer black skirt, bordered with a vine of fuchsia flowers. The accompanying bodice was a pink and yellow satin button-up vest with longer panels laying over the sides of the skirt.

Carla then helped Elena put the finishing touches on my Hualya, including a multicolored woven sash wrapped around my waist to hold up the skirt and then a large safety pin to secure the heavy shawl across my back.

Elena asked Carla for an imperdible to pin the shawl and I remembered how much trouble I had had with this word. Sounding nothing like “safety pin,” I had to write it on a piece of scrap paper when heading into town for craft supplies. Carla, who had been my emergency language translater, offered a useful explaination.

Derived from the verb pedir, to lose, imperdible roughly means “unloseable.” What an absolutely sensible name for a safety pin!

While Elena secured the imperdible and rushed around me making final adjustments to my outfit, I pondered what it means to be “unloseable.” But as Carla raised the volume of the music and began dancing the zapateria across the living room, I left my reflection to the eight-hour bus ride I would take the following morning, returning to Lima and later back home to the U.S.

It was during that final journey over the crest of the Andean Mountains, that I came to see how my entire year spent in Peru was a demonstration of this newfound concept of being “unloseable.” To be held together, bonded to and constantly surrounded by loving and supportive people.

To work with survivors of sexual abuse who have surely been lost but have arrived at a human rights agency where the message is “You have been found.” To reinforce my faith and belief in G-d, which tells me that we are all found, already and every day without question.

As it says in Psalm 139, “Oh Lord, you know it [me] completely. You hem me in behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.”

I find this to be so absolutely reassuring, to know that no matter how lost I feel, no matter where I find myself, no matter what happens from here on out, I am unloseable. We are already found, already loved, already assured, already justified and already accepted in every way.

A safety pin, no larger than my pinky finger, held together my shawl so I wouldn’t lose it while dancing in the living room on my last night Huánuco. Just as an imperdible reconnects a shroud of material to its source, I too was reconnected. A safety pin, a seemingly fragile and ordinary object, held the mismatched pieces of my own fabric together, when I felt torn or detached, far from home and uncertain of what I could endure.

That simple object, at once trustful and resilient, has come to represent the faith that sustained me during a year of unpredictability and growth and embodies the strength of a community of people who displayed that faith so fully and honestly.

As this journey continues, I dedicate the contents of this blog to my friends in Huánuco and the Association Paz y Esperanza, who held together the fabric of my own heart when I needed it most.