Chapter 8: Amira and Antonio

The first week of August was very challenging for us. Apart from the cold front moving in again, the icy wind whistling down from the snow-covered and frozen mountains towards the Tiso Canyon, and the fact that our heating was far from optimal, the main problem was organisation. What should Antonio do for our community? How should the school be organised with Amira as the new teacher? Who could help Amira to improve her English?

But first I gave Amira and Antonio three days to settle in, showed them all the important places in our valley and introduced them to the village. Alonso was very happy to have a trained priest in the valley, as he no longer felt up to the task of providing religious services to the villagers. Later we walked together to the energy and water production facilities and up into the high valley. As we walked, I learned a lot about the young couple and their very concrete plans for life. Isabella almost never left our side, was happy when she could translate and practically idolised our young priest. It was not his masculinity but his authority as a priest that impressed our Nicaraguan woman. Isabella had missed this inspiring charisma and the attention, as she confessed to me. Her priest at home had always been her support in all her problems.

On the first Sunday in August, Antonio celebrated his first mass. Eleven of the fifteen villagers came, along with Alejandra, Olivia, and Luisa, the whole Condorcan family, four of the young mothers and seven of the new girls. Enzo’s and Juan’s wives and parents-in-law were also their, as well as twelve children and teenagers from the village. Ramona counted over fifty people. Our church, the large dining room of the saloon, was not big enough. As the sun was warming the valley that day, the younger guests could stand outside the open windows and attend the mass.

Shortly after the start, I had my first surprise. Antonio and his girlfriend had rehearsed a beautiful Spanish hymn with six of the younger girls, plus Isabella, Kira, Mayari, and Daja: ‘Tu espirito’. Three older women from the village were in tears. Olivia translated the priest’s short speech to the villagers into Quechua, the language of the Incas. Lenya sang the song ‘What a friend we have in Jesus’ along with her banjo. The song is very popular in South America and we had sung it several times before. Many of the guests stood up and sang along if they knew the words.

The short sermon in Spanish was not translated, but Antonio’s deep, resonant voice added to the solemn atmosphere. At the end the girls’ choir sang again, this time the hymn ‘Llévame Allá’, which was very impressive. Antonio gave thanks and a short closing prayer, and his “Go in peace” – “Ir en paz.” was answered by many with “Thanks be to God, the Lord” in five different languages.

For the service on the following Sunday, I invited everyone to come to the Palazzo. Hopefully there would be enough room. In any case, Ramona, Luisa, and I agreed that such regular events would be good for our life together. The calming, celebratory atmosphere alone was a new, important counterbalance for our young ladies, who often acted hectically trying to juggle school, work, and childcare. This sometimes led to minor conflicts, but fortunately these were easily resolved.

When I went to thank and congratulate Antonio, he pulled me into Amira’s small kitchen, gave me a huge hug and fought back a few tears. His girlfriend was sobbing with joy. It had been wonderful. Outside the children were singing the two Spanish songs again. The atmosphere was great. Some of the villagers and the Condorcans stayed to sing more songs and make themselves comfortable. It was a new situation for me, but very impressive. The people enjoyed the religious atmosphere and celebrated themselves, carried by community and optimism.

I agreed with Antonio that he would accompany me to Trujillo on Tuesday. We were going to buy a desk for the altar, as well as Bibles, hymnals, and wooden crosses for anyone who wanted to decorate their room with them. On the one hand, I wanted to bring up our children in a secular way, free from superstition or spiritual influence, but on the other hand, I quickly understood how faith helped us grow closer together and gave some of the girls more inner support. I wanted to continue to encourage this for the benefit of our development. Maybe there was a higher being here in the valley. It seemed so obvious. Something was helping us through all the difficult situations, especially the tortured souls of the girls, giving us the strength and confidence we needed.

Speaking of tortured souls, I made up for the promised hours with Sula on Saturday night and with Fahsai on Sunday. The evenings were particularly wonderful. Sula had become a connoisseur, letting me serve her from head to toe, often trembling with desire and clearly showing me what she liked best. She didn’t want intercourse; she wanted to be pampered by my lips and tongue in her most intimate place. I repeatedly caressed her so hard that she forgot to breathe and was gasping for air afterwards. Somehow, she couldn’t get enough and asked for more of the same. It was pure pleasure for me to see her so demanding. But I also wanted to be released from my lust. She understood my desire when I bent over her and put my head back between her thighs. Her fingers caressed me in a way I had not thought possible with Su. My pleasure was short lived. Her caresses made me explode. She squealed with pleasure as I came on her stomach and breasts.

After a shower together, we kissed and caressed each other for a while until she sneaked into her room. Looking at the clock, I couldn’t believe it. We had spent an incredible three hours making love. The time had flown by.

Fahsai, on the other hand, wanted wild sex, to see if she could climax again despite her circumcision. Luckily, the cinema room was almost soundproof. My partner had put on a CD of oriental music, crouched over me and showed me the dances she had loved to do as a child, but this time on her knees and firmly attached to my shaft. By the third song she was in seventh heaven for the first time. I distracted myself with strange thoughts to maintain my steadfastness for her. But her third orgasm was too much. My body surrendered. After a few seconds, the gasping pleasure gave way to a happy smile that made her dreamlike beauty even more gilded. She was like an angel, a fairy tale from the Thousand and One Nights.

Yes, I also spent an hour with Babette. She let me massage her after a long bath, but avoided any sexual contact. “You may be the father of my unborn child, but I love my Achim now. Be happy with me about how well I’m doing, but I don’t need any more sex from you.”

The kiss that followed spoke a different language of longing, but after a while she opened her eyes in shock. Perhaps, she had been dreaming about kissing her Joachim. She smiled shyly at me and disappeared as quickly as possible to her son Felix.

After the German consul told me that the underage girls were here illegally and should be returned to their parents in Europe, I wanted to clarify the matter. I had agreed with Zarina to do this during English lessons. When I saw the girls, each more beautiful than the last, sitting around our big dining table, my heart melted. How could their parents have left them with a criminal? Some of them may have genuinely believed that their daughter would be trained as a model, but most of them had been paid to send their daughters to an uncertain fate.

Zarina had prepared a questionnaire for each girl in her mother tongue. It was a blessing that we could now use the internet. But first Zarina handed out eleven questionnaires in English. The children were asked to write down their home address, if possible their parents’ telephone number or email address, and the names of their father and mother. At the end were the questions that mattered to me. Who wants to contact their parents? Who would like to return home and if so, when? As far as I knew from the sponsors, the majority of them wanted to stay with us, but I wanted to find out more about it.

Only a few girls did not fully understand the questions. They were given the sheet in their mother tongue. Zarina evaluated the results of the survey in my presence. Unfortunately, only three of the girls were able to give a telephone number. Only Gulla knew her parents’ internet address.

Six of the girls wanted to contact their parents. Russian Katya wanted to return and applied for. Gulla refused to write an e-mail to her parents. “Never!” she shouted when I asked her to. “They are responsible for the fact that I suffered for more than two years, was always hungry, and was even afraid of dying most of the time. No, never.”

It was remarkable how well Gulla could already express herself in English. But what was most amazing was how aware she was of what her parents had done to her. The girls argued with each other, animatedly, almost wildly. Zarina had to force them to be quiet. Finally, she gave them homework. Each of them had to write a letter to her parents, first in her mother tongue, then in English if possible. Heidy and Gulla refused to think about their parents at all, but after a short discussion they agreed to write down their negative feelings. Some wanted assurances that their letters would not be sent, which we of course promised.

It was 10 a.m. in Peru. As far as I knew it was now 6 p.m. in Russia, so a good time to make a phone call. I asked Lenya to speak to Katya’s parents first and find out their email address. Then Katya should talk to her parents. However, I made it clear that they needed to get to their destination as quickly as possible as they only had ten minutes of phone time.

After the third ring, a grumpy male voice answered. The connection was perfect, the speaker was clearly audible. The conversation soon escalated. Lenya was cursing into the phone. I couldn’t understand a word, but the tone was clear. Katya picked up the phone with a trembling hand. I could only hear Mum and Dad, but Katya started to cry. She handed the phone back to Lenya. Her father had just hung up. Lenya had to comfort the little girl. I was shocked. How could a father react like that?

The pupils looked at me with interest. Had Katya contacted her parents? I explained briefly in simple words, “Katya is crying. Her father was angry. Katya has to stay with us.”

Little Theres started to cry. All the girls were suddenly afraid to write to their parents. “Katya always spoke proudly of her parents,” said Zarina. “This is terrible, surely a dreadful shock for our little Russian girl.”

Lenya asked me to give Katya something to calm her down. Our doctor gave the little girl some medicine and put her to bed. Lenya told me the most important part of the phone call. Katya’s father had just wanted to know if his daughter was working as a model. When Lenya said no, he was furious. The family had high hopes for their daughter’s modelling career. After all, they had seen on television how lucrative modelling could be. The father called Katya an incompetent good-for-nothing and simply hung up. Oh yes, it’s terrible how greed for money can corrupt people’s characters.

Lenya was shocked, too. Luckily, she didn’t cry, but she was deathly pale with indignation at such parents. We held each other for a long time. “My dear father is dead. Why is such a bad person allowed to live?”

The girls talked among themselves until late at night. I allowed two or three of them to sit together even after nine o’clock. Some sponsors helped them get over the pain. It was a great shock for everyone that Katya, of all people, was rejected by her parents. Now they were worried about how their parents would react. When everyone finally retired to sleep, I went from room to room with Ramona. The sponsor sat with each girl. I hadn’t seen so many tears in a long time.

Two days later, only three girls gave me a letter to send to their parents. The others were afraid that they would suffer the same sad fate as Katya. Of course, I took the letters to the petrol station in San Huano. The attendant stamped the letters and we waited anxiously for the answers. But more of that later.

Our interpreter’s due date had arrived. Everyone was worried about Carmen, especially after her first difficult birth. Esther, Babette, and Priya took turns for the last few hours. When I entered the delivery room, it was already hectic. The birth had started about two hours earlier and Carmen was having particularly strong contractions when I went to check on her. Esther was doing her best, and this was just four weeks before her own second birth. What Esther had done for us over the past two years was phenomenal. My job should have been to take better care of her, to be gentlier with her, but she didn’t want that. She always stressed that successful births and healthy children would be her true reward.

Nevertheless, I was determined to grab our ‘midwife’ Esther and take her to the Palazzo. She had insisted on looking after Carmen during the birth that morning so that her ‘boss’ could attend the service. Our doctor, along with Priya and Olivia, would now take over the rest of the care. Esther leaned against me, enjoying my loving words, and willingly let me help her into the golf cart. But the tension would not go away. She would have loved to stay with Carmen to help her, but her awkward movements told me. Esther needed to be there for herself and her baby. Her unborn child was the only thing that should matter to her. As I helped her get out of the car on the steps of the palazzo, Esther came to the realisation that was so important to me. “Michael, you’re right. From now on I’m going to take care of our child. I’m really exhausted today”.

With a tender kiss I whispered to her, “That’s right, Esther, you only have one task left, that is your unborn child. Take care of yourself! Give your son a lot of strength and love before he is born.”

When I got back to the delivery room, Priya was giving Carmen a second cup of tea with the Inca remedy, but our mother did not calm down. Meanwhile, Ramona had changed for the birth, felt the stomach, everything seemed to be fine, but nothing was happening. It took another seven hours before our interpreter, almost at the end of her tether, was able to hold her third child, her Celia. A little later, Antonio blessed the baby. Amira talked to Carmen with interest. Somehow, I had the impression that this was a woman seeking advice who was also about to give birth.

The most important task remained for me: to thank and congratulate the mother of my newborn daughter. I dabbed a few drops of sweat from her forehead, kissed her there and then briefly kissed her slightly bloody lips. Our Carmen was visibly affected by the difficult birth, but smiled gratefully at me. When I tried to stroke little Celia’s bottom, the little girl flinched. My hands were too cold compared to the warmth of her mother’s womb, but it felt good to touch my now sixth daughter.

Over a delicious dinner, the plans for classes and childcare until December were discussed. Cara and Qesra had set the table beautifully in the study. Luisa conjured up a fish and rice dish and we enjoyed the tasty food. We immediately had a wonderful atmosphere. The three of us teachers sat together with Willka, Amira, and Antonio. First we toasted our new valley resident, sweet Celia, with a glass of champagne.

Amira wanted to know who else was pregnant. She had already seen and talked to a number of young women with big bellies. I pointed to Lenya first, of course. “Another six weeks, right, dear Lenya?”

Lenya smiled a little tightly. Her pregnancy had been bothering her for days.

Ramona fetched Esther’s list from the doctor’s office. “Yes, Amira, you can see. There are still eleven pregnant students. We expect nine births this year and two in 2020.”

Our new Spanish teacher shook her head. “That a lot. Many students absent weeks and different times. How I teach?”

Her English took some getting used to, but we understood the meaning immediately. We reassured her with our positive experiences from last year and the hard work of our students who had mastered the learning despite pregnancy and childbirth. Then Amira hesitated a little. Finally, she asked us a ‘purely theoretical’ question of what problems the school would face if she were to have a child as well.

“Gladly, Amira, it doesn’t have to be right away. But children are always welcome here, as long as I don’t have to be the father again,” I joked.

Antonio held out his hand to me, laughing. “I promise, I’ll do it.”

Planning then proceeded with great determination until December, but there were very different opinions about the languages. For three years we had trained all the students to speak English, but Spanish is the first official language in Peru and Quechua is the second. After long discussions, we decided together:

1. The main language in the valley remains English.

2. All residents of the valley learn a little Spanish if possible.

3. Primary school is taught in Spanish.

4. In kindergarten we wait to see which language prevails.

5. Preschool is taught in Spanish.

6. Children born in the valley learn English from their parents.

Ten-year-old Dario desperately needed a good education. For a fourth-grader, his Spanish was relatively good, but he didn’t speak any Quechua. Enzo’s son Dylan (9), Juan’s daughter Sara (8) and Thiago’s children Amir (11) and Carlotta (9) were also supposed to go to primary school, but they didn’t know any letters or numbers, could only count to 100 in their indigenous language and could barely do arithmetic. Nevertheless, we decided that the five primary school children should be taught mainly in Spanish. The official language of Peru was compulsory for secondary school.

Antonio promised to take Dario under his wing, train him as an altar boy and teach him maths, Spanish and music. Eventually, we persuaded him to teach all five primary school children in one class. In a way, he became a teacher in our team.

We had three children, six-year-old Salma, five-year-old Carla and Gonzo, who were the same age and needed to be prepared for school. Three-year-old Eliza was looked after by her mother in the sewing room, but should be looked after in the two-year-old group as often as possible.

Amira was appointed head of school education and Willka was in charge of kindergarten and preschool. Daryna was in place to look after the youngest children. Adriana was to take over later, when we could communicate with her. She spoke only Quechua, a little Spanish and no English.

Ramona worked hard to ensure that Valentina and Adriana, Enzo’s two adult daughters, were better equipped to look after the young children. Without these two young women, we would not have been able to combine school and work.

Another problem was that ten young people and adults up to 35 years old were completely illiterate. They wanted to learn to read and write in Spanish. I assigned Carmen to give lessons for a few hours a week. Unfortunately, after just one week we had to use Antonio. Carmen couldn’t cope with the large number of young people. At least, she tried to teach the future child care workers Adriana and Valentina to read and write. Every morning she helped them with the little ones and practiced Spanish words with them for their daily work, so to speak ‘training on the job’ in kindergarten.

Antonio was happy about the thirty confessing members of his church. There was to be a service every Sunday, preferably in the village dining room, but less often in smaller groups in the cinema or outdoors. Antonio was looking forward to the big service the next Sunday and thanked everyone profusely for their support so far. We decided together: once a month the large hall of the Palazzo should be used for a special service with communal singing, which should also include modern songs and cultural contributions.

In the meantime, Luisa had sat down with us. The second important point was the supply of food. We actually produced more food than we could eat. Every time we went to Trujillo or Mersto, I packed potatoes or vegetables in the car. In the town outside Trujillo there was a day-care centre, funded by donations, where the children met in the afternoons to play, do their homework, and sometimes have something to eat. We were happy to give them some food we did not need.

Meat and milk, on the other hand, would be just enough for all the people in our valley, if these products were distributed properly. Luisa asked if there was enough money and, after I nodded in agreement, suggested that we buy three calves, two cows and a bull, as well as a billy goat and a ram to replenish the blood of the existing herds. This was not necessary for the poultry, but five male guinea pigs were urgently needed as several animals were failing to survive due to inbreeding. The small rodents would cost no more than half a dollar each. There was a long discussion about whether to start raising pigs, but the decision was postponed until next year. There were smaller, undemanding pigs in the north of Peru that could live alone for weeks in the forest, but no one in the village had any experience with them.

Luisa suggested that Miguel and Mayari could help us to choose which animals to buy. We agreed that the two animal experts would travel with me to Mersto on Tuesday. They had all the time in the world to choose their animals while Olivia, Antonio, and I drove to Trujillo to do our errands.

Our fish farm had also become impressive. The tasty carp enriched our menu. Everything else, especially flour, rice, and pasta, we could buy if needed. Although I, like almost everyone else, loved our pita bread, Luisa was happy to have fresh bread from the town. It would save the kitchen a lot of work and bring a little happiness to everyone in paradise.