Wednesday, October 23, 2002

Experiences by Susy Visser


Those were the days weren't they. I moved around the Cerro camps with my parents from 1961 to 1976, so that makes it from the age of 3 to the ripe old age of 18. There isn't a camp I can forget. The wonderful people I met along the way. A youth filled with so many memories, my wish today that I could give my son now what I had then.

Remember the golf clubs, the reunions there on Sundays!! Moms playing cards, dads out hitting the ball, and us kids playing our own rounds of golf! The freedom we had, this worry free youth. Movies for us kids once a week, no discos just memorable parties at home. No TV, just memorable times outside with our friends. Horse back riding, hiking, building club houses, scaling mountains, what else did we not do, never a dull moment.

I now have a son he is 4. When he plays outside I sit and watch and sometimes my mind takes me back to those days and I get nostalgic. I don't remember mom having to sit outside, I don't remember hearing stay where I can see you, all I remember is be home before dark!!!

I wish I could remember all of my teachers names but I can't. Mrs. Muir my first grade teacher I will never forget. Mr. Rosenburg and Mr. Fitzgerald from Cerro de Pasco I will never forget (mainly because all us girls had a crush on them!). I can remember many others but not their names.

People that had a great influence on me were Mr. and Mrs. Ali Fraser and Mr. and Mrs. Jimmy Cowper. Spend many weekends with them to learn my english so I could go to kindergarten. Mimi Harris whom I only knew in first and second grade whom I could never forget because she told me such an outrageous secret, I am now 44 and still have not forgotten or figured it out. To all of you who were a part of my life in those wonderful years I will never forget you and thank you. I was going to name each and everyone of you but I am afraid I might overload the website!!!! I would like to take this opportunity to thank Mr Paul van Nijmwegen for helping me out of a terrible constipation problem when I was 10. Mrs. Dixon for brushing my hair in the mornings for school! (mom was in Lima awaiting the birth of my sister Tanja). I also always remeber Brent McFarlane's sister I think her name was Deborah. She would only come for the holidays and was older than I but she had the patience to sit there and let me play with her barbies and when she left she gave me her whole collection! I was so happy!!! John Kitakawa for helping me with my multiplications. Johnny Broadly who always made me laugh. Mrs. Riet Jansen who got me addicted to hot dogs with mustard. Tony Jansen for the two scars on my forehead!! Johnny and Pamela Simpkins for letting us play in their playhouse and telling on me when I snuck into the school room and copied the answers to the next days test!!! My biggest thanks goes to my mom and dad Arie and Tanja Visser for taking a job with Cerro de Pasco coorporation and giving me these unforgetable friends and memories. I love you mom and dad.

Susy Visser


RECONNAISSANCE

Pinning down the relevant people-points,
One contact leading to three, to fifteen, seventy ...
Is less the leisurely gathering of a bouquet
Than the grasping at leaves in a gale -
At that whirlwind mosaic of scattered lives -
In an effort to connect them to an original tree
When only the ghost of it remains.
But, seeking anew the comfort of those shadow-branches,
We grace them with the qualities of our metamorphosis.
Achievement and deadwood have added their layers
To the bilingual and carefree children
Who played against the backdrop of the Andes
And knew it later for a privileged kingdom.

Lark Burns Beltran

(Sent by Wilfredo Beltran)

(In Chulec 1953-56)