Andrew is scheduled to do a presentation on an explorer on the Friday I am out of town. Because I will be away, we decided this was a great opportunity for Scott and Andrew to work together on the project, something they get to do infrequently.
Tonight all three of us were working to formulate a plan for his presentation. First step of course was to pick an explorer. Andrew wanted to study a Rainforest Explorer, and we started to look into what that would mean. Then he specifically said he wished to study someone who is exploring in the mountains and forests of Peru. Okay. Huh.
After some stumbling around the internet we came across a man named Paulino Mamani. Mr. Mamani is a native of the Province of Calca and is one of only three international explorer fellows from Peru of the prestigious Explorers Club based in New York City. Mr. Mamani has been helping lead expeditions into the regions extending beyond Machu Picchu in the Andes for over 20 years. There is precious little information about this frontiersman/cartographer/explorer. Andrew wrote an email with my help to the Chair of the New England Chapter of the Explorers Club asking him for leads on information about Mr. Mamani. Gregory Deyermenjian has himself been on over 2 dozen expeditions to Peru, and has been interested in exploring since he was a boy. A great quote from an interview of Mr. Deyermenjian is:
So what happens as you become more immersed in other cultures like this? How does that change how you see the world?
DEYERMENJIAN: There are two ways in which getting immersed down there can grab you. One is the interpersonal, in that while there are such advantages to being here in the United States—and I'm very much the patriot—nonetheless, when you start spending time in a place where the culture is still as it was many years ago, you come to so appreciate everything being on a man-to-man, person-to-person, eye-to-eye, handshake, your-word-is-your-bond kind of level, and where the joy is not in what's the current movie, but in interacting with those around you. Just as it is on an expedition where your entertainment is the entertainment that the person sitting right across from you is providing. So, on that level, it's just becoming addictive. And in a country such as Peru—although I've made expeditions in Brazil and in Ecuador—you're treated like a king, being from the United States. And you're only limited by your own energy.
You just need to have the will power and the tenacity to stick with it and not lose your cool when things appear to be all going wrong and the officials are all denying you entry. Just stay cool, never be insulting, never be pompous or high and mighty, just stick with it, and eventually, at the last minute, it all just falls into place.
There are undocumented ruins, unknown ruins, ancient Inca ruins. And so you can do something that no one else has ever done, but it's up to you. And so you're not bound by a lot of strictures that there are here.
Sounds to me like great advice for life in general. I so dig homeschooling!
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