Fun Photos

My host mom gave me this fruit.  It's called Chirimoya.  It has a bunch of big seeds insides, but it's delicious...except for the parts that have gone slightly bad...the slighty rotten parts taste like dirty feet.

I'm pretty pumped about this weird little pink box.  I made it for my external hard drive out of a mac and cheese box, pink duct tape, and yarn.

Sooo I've been nauseous for 3 months and I finally got permission from the Peace Corps doctors to have a stool sample done.  I went to the clinic and they gave me this TINY little vial.  HOW am I supposed to poop in that tiny little vial?  ...Got the analysis back and I have three parasites.  Named them Hortense, Hubert, and Mortimer.

Most recent photo of me.  I'd just showered...so I looked human for 10 seconds.

It's only 9 am.

I blinked awake and immediately wished to be unconscious again.  The air was suffocatingly thick with sleepy exhales, my stomach was in knots, and my eyes burned, raw and restless.  I was afraid I was going to throw up, but terrified that if I moved to try and get myself a bag, I probably would.  I sat there for a while, willing myself to keep it together.  Took a rather unpleasant trip to the bathroom, and then came back and realized I could open my window.  I opened it a crack and thanked god for the fresh air.

An hour and a half later, we finally pulled up to the Burga Express "station" in Chiclayo.  Karen, the midwife from the health post in Cabracancha who has started helping out with my Pasos Adelante (sex ed) classes, and I ended up sitting in the bus bay for a while, waiting for her uncle to come get her.  I was a little worried about when she left, because it was only 5 am, and I didn't really feel like getting into a taxi on my own and riding to Linea.  I had packed the pepperspray that my friend's mom gave me in high school when she found out I would be living in New Haven for four years, but I honestly don't ever want to have to use that stuff.  I don't think I would do well harming someone that severely unless I was 100% confident that they were trying to harm me...and in that situation...it would probably be too late.

Karen and I hung out for a bit, chatted about how becoming a doctor works in the US, and how poverty here differs from poverty in the States.  It was weird to explain to her that healthy food is more expensive in the States than crap food, and that in a lot of our poorest places, obesity is a problem because it's so much cheaper to eat crap.  Here, McDonalds is super expensive, so are places like Pizza Hut and KFC and all that.  You only find those things in big cities and they cost a lot.  I don't think it really made sense to her to think that rural places have restaurants like that.  I didn't blame her.

When her uncle showed up, she offered to give me a ride to the bus station.  I gratefully jumped in and fished out some money for the cab.  They dropped me at the station, and I ended up finding out that the only kind of bus they have that goes to Lima (10 hour trip...again) is one of the super uncomfortable ones, not "Bus Cama", which have lazyboy seats that fully recline into "beds".  So I sat down, and sent some emails, taking advantage of the fact that the bus station magically had internet.

Around 7:30 am, I got in a cab and headed to the mall where there is a Starbucks, forgetting that it is Saturday and they wouldn't be open for a while (Our Sunday is like their Saturday).  So then the cab driver got all chatty with me, told me I didn't have to pay him for the ride because my presence was payment enough.  I paid him anyway and as I was getting out, he asked, "Tienes un enamorado peruano?" Do I have a Peruvian boyfriend?

"Yep...sorry." and I popped out of the car.  Given the little that I know about Peruvian men, a "no" to that question would give them far too much hope and given how persistent they are...we're not going to go there.

The following is not supposed to sound arrogant at all, but sometime in the last like 2 weeks, I suddenly became attractive to Peruvian men.  Before I would always get the occasional cat call or whistle or whatever, but suddenly men are literally stopping their cars to try to talk to me, or hitting on me while they drive me somewhere, or yelling out "linda", or making kissing noises.  I literally don't understand what happened in the last two weeks that suddenly makes me a super target.  I turned 23?  What does that make me baby-making age by peruvian standards and suddenly their tom cats and I'm in heat?  It's so weeiiiird. It is literally like a switch went off.  I don't get it.

So, all that being said...it's 8:56 am and I'm exhausted.  What am I going to do for the rest of the day?  I will definitely be hitting up Starbucks and maybe wander around in the Peruvian version of a Pier 1 (I love that place).  I'm going to work on my Healthy School project plan and write blog posts.  Tonight, I am going to get on another bus and ride it all night long to Lima.  Tomorrow I'm getting together with other members of my committee and making final plans for the staff training we're giving.  Monday I'm really looking forward to meeting the new Peace Corps Peru volunteers and staying the night with my Lima host family!

That's it for now. Sending tons of love to you all

Still Stranded

I’ve been talking with the other Peru 18er girls from Cajamarca, and we are all going insane with this strike.  It really is like being grounded for something we didn’t do.  I think the worst part is the cow.  I would have left the next day and stayed away until that thing was gone if I could have, but it wasn’t an option.  Apparently authorities down in Chota are getting really angry at people who have not shut down their businesses out of solidarity with the strikers and are threatening to turn off electricity and water in the whole city (it’s not really a city…but it’s too big to be a town…).  I don’t think they’ve actually gone through with it…but I’m pretty sure that would mean a shut down in Iraca too and that would be the cow that broke the camel’s back.

I’ve been obsessively checking my email on my Kindle hoping for some communication from home.  I’m so borrreeed.  I can’t do anything!  The school is closed, the health post is closed, I’m running out of toilet paper, and my room still smells like dead cow!

I washed some things, did my work out, and when I went to wash my face and anything that wasn’t covered in clothing, I pulled the hose off the faucet by accident and the whole faucet head came off, which meant water exploding out of the pipes all over me. This is the second time this has happened.  I got absolutely drenched as I called out Celina’s name.  Magically, I managed to get the whole thing back on the pipe, and by the time Celina showed up it was fixed, and she almost fell over she was laughing so hard…probably because this wasn’t the first time.  She called Edwin over to look at me, and I dramatically displayed my sopping wet self.  That, accompanied with a baby wipe bath made me the cleanest I’d been in days. 

I can’t believe I’m going to be 23 in 8 days.  That seems crazy.  This year went by so fast!  I feel like 23 is a bad number and I’m not sure…maybe just because it’s not 22 and 22 is my lucky number?  Who knows. 

I’ve known I was coming to Peru for a year now.  Peace Corps has been such a crazy experience.  It’s like a weird pause in the middle of my life where the normal progression of things has halted but I feel like my emotional growth has gone into overdrive.  As maddening as this experience can be, this is such a healing and growing process for me.

Celina brought me milk again in my room, which I filled with a cappuccino packet I’d bought at Metro and some cocoa mix.  Delicious.  It hadn’t made me feel at all bad either day – guess I’m not lactose intolerant!!  Watched the 7^th Harry Potter movie, part 2.  I then decided to totally remake my dry erase board and it looks phenomenal now.  I used curly script and made everything really neat and organized.  It took me a while.  I took pictures because I have nothing else to do. I wrote in my journal and went to bed.

WOOT!

The board is usually full...but there isn't much to do during a strike...
and I was just starting to fill it up. 

Freshman summer, I worked as a teacher for the U.S. Grant Program with some seriously amazing people.  One of the jokes we had that came out of that experience was the question, “What is your life?”, which is what you would ask someone in place of a teasing, “What is wrong with you?” or “I can’t believe that happened!” or “That’s ridiculous!”  It had a lot of functions.  I ask myself that question a lot in Peru.  I asked myself that question at night when dogs from all over Iraca came to our house to fight with each other over the cow, or whenever some neighbor nearby gets drunk and fires his pistol for fun.  What is my life? 

Unsuccessful Explorations into Christianity

I woke up this morning to the sound of machete hacking apart bone in the next room.  Apparently they were getting an early start on moving that thing.  I hung out in my room for a while, avoiding walking out during the blood bath, and eventually just shuffled out the door with toothpaste in hand.  I was surprised to find a bunch of people at my house, a couple women were off to the side building a fire with a big pot on top and doing something to a giant bucket filled with what looked like fat.  There were little kids hanging out with Mishel and doing a puzzle.  They had the sink hooked up to the hose, so I wandered around looking for the other end of the hose so I could brush my teeth.  I made a run to the bathroom and on my way back, the women working over the fire outside asked me if I wanted to help, slightly teasingly and with a bit of a laugh I said, “Noooo, thank you.”  They laughed at that, which was good.  Sometimes being the weird gringa saves me from judgment, which I am grateful for.  I walked by my host mom, who was on the phone and crying again.  When I got back to my room, I grabbed my camera, stuck it out my bedroom door and snapped a picture of lord knows what. 

This would be...Lord knows what. 

I spent most of the day with a bandana drenched in body spray wrapped around my face to block out the smell, which I’ve decided smells like sour milk, clotted blood, and gangrene, and with headphones in my ears to block out the sound of them hacking that thing to pieces.  I somehow stopped feeling sick long enough to work out and then gave myself a much needed hair wash in the sink.  When I had finished washing my hair and was standing in front of the door to the butcher shop I hesitated, because from outside, with the door shut, you could still smell that horrible stench.  I heard Celina start to laugh and with a turn of my head, found her sitting in Mishel’s room, cracking up about either the fact that I had a towel wrapped around my hair (which I don’t think they do here), or because she could tell I was hesitating to walk into the room. 

            “It smells horrible!” I said in my own defense, but still laughing with her.  I know I must look like an idiot to them in my towel.  I’ve definitely gotten used to laughing at myself here. 

            I finally braved it with breath held, until I got into my room.  God it still smelled so bad.  I’d never been so thankful for my Glade spray that I’d bought at Metro (big grocery story in Cajamarca City).  It wasn’t as effective as I would have hoped though. 

            About an hour later, when it was clear that they had stopped doing anything with the meat, I started to get upset.  How was I going to sleep with a bandana wrapped around my face? The smell made me horribly nauseous and they had promised they would move it and they still hadn’t.  I was literally the only person whose room was affected by it.  It was like being locked in a butchers shop.  A half hour later, I heard them moving around in there and I opened the door to see if the pile of cow parts had diminished and it had.

            “I’m almost free!!!” I cheered, and shut my door again.  I heard Celina laughing through the door.  A part of me thought, for a very brief second, about helping, but considering that gloves were unavailable, I already thought the smell would make me vomit, and I had a hard time looking directly at the chopped up dead cow, I figured moving giant bloody pieces of it with my bare hands was not going to happen.  They didn’t move all of it, but they moved a bunch and the smell diminished in intensity.

            Later that night, I was in my room waiting to be called to dinner, and Celina came and knocked on the door.  I opened it to find her holding a cup of hot milk.  Although milk and the smell of it…and its connection to the chopped up animal in the room she was standing in was not exactly appealing, it was one of the most thoughtful things she had ever done for me.  She said there was a lot of cow in the kitchen, and she thought I would rather eat in my room.  I was so incredibly grateful to her for thinking of me and not judging me for my aversion to large hunks of bloody meat.  I thanked her profusely and set the cup down on my bedside table.  I let it cool off and then tried to take a sip.  I’ll be real, I missed milk in the States.  I miss it anyway, but really fresh, unprocessed, unpasteurized milk, because of what I’ve been drinking my whole life, tastes super weird.  However, I haven’t been getting any calcium in my diet other than the powdered milk I put in my hot cocoa sometimes, and so I asked my host mom a few days ago if I could sometimes have some of the milk that the school gives to Mishel everyday, which Celina just ends up drinking because Mishel hates milk.  She said of course, but lately, because of the strike, the cheese house where all the women sell their milk is closed and some of the milk we get each day from our remaining cows, Celina is giving me.  I’ve actually been terrified that I’m becoming lactose intolerant because every time I’ve had their version of packaged milk, this horrific stuff called “Gloria”, I get stomach pains and all the other icky stuff that comes along with lactose intolerance.  This is a super problem, because not only do I LOVE milk, I love cheese, and yogurt, and ice cream. 

            One milk was more or less room temperature, I decided I’d have cereal for the first time in almost 9 months.  I haven’t had cereal since I left the States because they don’t have good cereal and their milk is awful. I recently bought some Fitness Fruits that I found in Metro in Cajamarca.  It was nice to eat cereal and milk, even if it all tasted a little off. 

            I finished reading Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer.  It was unlike any book I’ve ever read.  It was really interesting and a little weird.  I decided to start reading Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis.  I’ve been thinking about reading this book for over a year and just haven’t.  As far as religion goes, I know where I stand and I’m reasonably content with it, but sometimes I get jealous of people who have a strong faith in something.  What a wonderful comfort that would be to so solidly believe in something.  To have a firm idea of where you’ll go when you die, to have a community to support you and be part of, to have confidence that there is a higher power with stakes in your life, and to have some kind of understanding in how it is involved in your life.  I think that would be wonderful but I’ve had a hard time connecting with organized religion in my life.  I figured if anyone could draw me into Christianity, it would probably be C.S. Lewis. 

            I guess I wasn’t completely right about that.

            In the first 30 or so pages that I read, I think I gained some things from what I read, but I also didn’t buy all his arguments and conclusions, and he actually kind of pissed me off at one point. 

            I suppose before I jump into this, I should put a mini disclaimer that I don’t have anything against other people who believe these things (I previously stated I sort of envy you), and these are just my own personal thoughts, obviously, because it’s my blog. 

            One of the first things that C.S. Lewis talked about was the Law of Human Nature, that we are all governed by a natural law of what we ought to do, and that often this law is the vehicle through which we can override more basic human instincts, or at least choose between them, to do what is universally considered “right”. He says we don’t always adhere to this law, hence things like guilt and excuses.  His ultimate claim is that the Law of Human Nature is God manifested in the world of man.  How do we know that the Law of Human Nature has always existed?  Given knowledge about the mental capacity of our earliest ancestors, I’m not sure that the Law of Human Nature has always existed, and if not, then isn’t it a social convention?  C.S. Lewis admits that we learn the Law of Human Nature from our parents, but argues that by choosing one morality over another, like a Christian morality vs. a Nazi morality, we are measuring it against a universal standard to decide what is better, as if that’s proof that the universal standard was created by God.  Couldn’t you just say that as a species, as we evolved mentally, we managed to develop our herd mentality into something more complex based on love and justice to ensure a peaceful survival? Who’s to say that just because we can’t pinpoint the origin of this social governance or code that it is God? He even says there are exceptions of people who adhere to the Law of Human Nature, but why would God be absent from certain individuals? That only makes sense to me if it is no more than a social construct. 

            The other half of it that actually kind of pissed me off was when he was talking about the Life-Force philosophy.  This philosophy seems decently close to what I believe, although I usually avoid thinking about anything pertaining to religion in relation to evolution.  He looks at it as related to evolution saying that the Life-Force idea means that the evolution of man happened due to the “striving and purposefulness” of a Life-Force.  His argument was that if this force has a mind, then it is thus God and in agreement with the religious perspective, but if it doesn’t, then how can it strive or have purposes.  It’s a good point, this isn’t actually the point that pissed me off.  For me, I couldn’t say if this higher force, power, whatever has a mind.  A mind seems almost too committal, too involved for my liking, but without a mind, there isn’t the comfort of being listened to when you feel like there is no where else to turn. 

            It’s funny, I wanted to do this, to plunge into this, but I have always had a complete aversion to unanswerable questions.  They drive me crazy! If something can only be personally reasoned with no conclusive answer, I usually prefer to leave it super vague for myself and ask no more questions.  No turning back now I suppose. 

            Ok, so the part that pissed me off.  He said that people like the Life-Force perspective because it gave all the emotional comfort of believing in God without the less pleasant consequences, aka you have no consequences if you do something bad.  He said, “Is the Life-Force the greatest achievement of wishful thinking the world has yet seen?”

            So why does this piss me off?  I guess I don’t understand the additional consequences for bad choices if I believe in the God of a certain religion.  I go to church and say I’m sorry?  If it’s really bad I’m denied entry to heaven?  I don’t think saying Hail Marys is going to feel worse than my own disappointment in myself.  Maybe these “divine consequences” are imperative for people who are not good at holding themselves accountable, or who can’t make good decisions or feel the necessary disappointment or guilt if they make bad ones.  I think I’m mostly offended that what he said made me feel like he thinks I believe what I do to shirk responsibility for my own actions.  I also don’t think that people should make good choices out of fear of God and consequences, but to be a good person and to love others. 

Well, that’s enough of all that for today.  

Dead Cow

Day Three of Strike.

I am presently sitting in my bed trying to get my feet warm under my white down comforter, which still maintains it’s “Best Purchase Made in Peru” title.  My hair is in a sloppy French braid that I slept in.  A really dumb moth is flying around the one prison light I’ve got in my room and repeatedly smacking himself into the ceiling with unpleasant thudding sounds.  I think we’re in moth season because I get attacked by them on a nightly basis now, and they have been no where to be found since I got here in December.  I have some music playing, currently Northern Lights by Cider Sky (it’s a good one, look into it).  I’ve got an opened envelope with AIR MAIL stamped on it, covering part of a cover photo for the Sports section of the Valley News from May 20^th of the Hanover Crew Team racing during the Hanover Invitational.  I keep repeatedly lifting my left index finger to my nose and taking a deep whiff of it.  My upper lip, my nostrils, and my left index finger are covered in a Dove body mist called “Burst”, which smells like “nectarine and white ginger scent”.  Unfortunately, spraying my finger with it and then shoving that finger literally up my nose, does not fully cut the smell of the DEAD COW in the next room.  To hide the smell of blood and skin and death and cow, which has officially taken over my room and is routinely turning my stomach, I am repeatedly applying body spray to the inside of my nostrils.  It’s not as effective has I would have hoped. 

Let’s start from the beginning of today.

I woke up a bit late, used the latrine, read some of my book, checked my email and sent some emails on my Kindle, thought about how badly I wanted this stupid strike to end, and then gathered up a bunch of food and went to the kitchen to cook.  I had a few pieces of bread left (I wish I meant pieces of a loaf of bread…but they don’t have that where I live) and decided I’d make a couple more pieces of garlic bread, along with some scrabbled eggs with tomatoes, onions, and cheese.  I went to the kitchen and got to work.  Mishel and my host mom rather unabashedly stare at me whenever I’m cooking.  I get curiosity, but the unblinking manner in which they gawk at me makes me feel like I came to the kitchen in a thong and nothing else. 

My host Mom told me she had gone to the town party, which made me kind of upset because she had made it so clear the night before that she didn’t want to go and part of the reason I didn’t go is I didn’t want her to feel like I had dragged her.

 Mishel had been studying her multiplication tables, but it turned out she couldn’t remember them unless they were in order.  She then tried stumping me with the multiplication table for 12.  I tried to teach her the trick of just doing multiplication by 11 and adding the number one more time.  She stared at me like I was naked again.  She also knew 3 x 4 (if you did it in order) but couldn’t tell me what 4 x 3 was. Sometimes I wonder with that kid.  I’ve also never been a big sister before, and I think I would have been a terrible one.  In the relationships I have with my Kappa sisters and with other friends, I always thought I’d be a good big sister because I like playing that supportive role, but with Mishel, I’m just SO frustrated most of the time.  It makes me worry that I’ll be a horrible parent.   Being an older sister to Mishel is definitely making me more forgiving of my parents’ mistakes and also sort of squelching my desire to be a parent. 

Anyway, I told Celina that when Mishel actually tries, she does a good job.  She just had to try more often.  I told her that yesterday I had told Mishel I would help her, and she hadn’t stopped crying long enough to respond.  Celina said something along the lines of, “She never wants to bother you when you’re in your room because she thinks you’re sleeping.”  That actually freaked me out a little.  I really hope they don’t think every time I’m in my room I’m sleeping.  I would literally be the laziest person on the planet…I just don’t have anywhere to sit in my tiny room other than on my bed.  Celina also mentioned the lock I have on the inside of my door in a sort of passive way.  I decided to be honest.  I told her that I don’t sleep during the day ever unless I’m ill, which is true, and that I have a lock on the inside of my door because Americans like privacy.  I didn’t really know how else to say it, but I put a lock on the inside of my door because I was sick of them just opening it whenever they felt like.  My host mom will still come to my door and try to push it open, making me thankful for my lock every time.  I still get kind of pissed that she does that, but at least I have a moment before I’m being stared at.  It may sound bad, but I needed something to protect my space, so that it couldn’t be entered without my permission.  I sound like such a moody adolescent…but it is what it is.  This was followed by Celina saying something like, “Well, Mishel calls her sister because she’s getting a degree.” That kind of pissed me off, too. 

            “Well, I’m her sister and I’m here, and I have a degree, too.”

The thing I don’t get, is that Mishel is yelled at by everyone in her family about academic stuff, except for me, and yet she still goes to them.  Celina can’t do multiplication tables, she can only add single digit numbers.  I think it bugs me sometimes because I feel like I make such a big effort with Mishel and get no thanks or recognition for it.  I want to yell at her sometimes, but I never do, and yet she still doesn’t want to come to me.  Oi, whatever.

  I cooked up my breakfast and then sat down at the table.  I asked my mom, for the third time in 24 hours, if she wanted to try some and this time I think she felt like she had to.  She found the smallest little bowl thing she could (about tea saucer sized) and said, “just a little bit.”  So I gave her about three bites worth of scrambled egg, which is about a mouthful for her, and a piece of garlic bread.  She called Mishel in and handed her the garlic bread.  Mishel tried to take a piece but her mom whispered, rather loudly, that she should take it all.  Apparently she was still completely unwilling to try it...which is silly given the fact that they have garlic bread in this country.  I then saw her use her super dirty hands to take a tiny bit of scrambled eggs and put them in her mouth.  What I think is so ridiculous about this, is she makes fried eggs, soft boiled eggs, and scrambled eggs with spinach (pretty much deep fried) all the time, but she’s terrified of scrambled eggs.  She took a tiny bite and chewed it with her mouth wide open like she might throw it up.  I thought I’d give her a minute without putting the pressure on her like she does on me, to not enjoy it in peace.  I saw her, out of the corner of my eye, pretend to eat two more bites.  I looked away for a second to smile without her seeing, and when I turned back around, the whole plate had disappeared.  Was literally nowhere to be found. To steal the title of the first chapter of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, What the?. Where did she put it!? Haha  She refused to make eye contact with me after that and I had to fight not to ask where the plate had gone to.  I didn’t see any sign of it the rest of the time I was eating, and when I got up to go do my dishes, I looked around by her feet.  The pot, where we usually put eggshells or onionskins, was at her feet with the lid on it, and I knew my scrambled eggs were in there, little plate and all.  It killed me not to go pull the lid off the pot and just laugh my ass off.  I also desperately wanted to make a point.  I hate her food, but I have to eat it twice a day.  Any time I don’t finish everything on my plate she’ll say something guilt trippy like, “Haydee doesn’t like my __________.” And I’m forced to say something like, “I’m full” or “No! I like it! You just gave me a lot of food!”  Instead, I didn’t say anything and I hoped she would make the connection herself without me embarrassing her or making her uncomfortable like she has a habit of doing at every meal to me.  I couldn’t believe she hid it in the pot though…outrageous!  It was like 3 mouthfuls of scrambled eggs!

I washed my dishes, went back to my room and read a bit more.  I sent some emails and talked to a few friends on the phone and cleaned my room.  As I was getting ready to work out, there was a lot of noise in the room right next to mine, the one I have to walk through to get outside or anywhere else in the house.  I got a knock on my door. 

            “Si?” I called.

            Another knock.  I got up to open my door. My host mom was standing right there with a look on her face like she was about to cry. 

            “The cow died.”

            “What?”

            “The cow died.”

            “How?”

            “It fell.”

            She walked out the door. I looked to my left at the floor of the room and there was a big blue tarp on the ground. OHHHH NOOOOOOO.

            I walked outside to find a red truck trying to back up to our house with what was clearly a skinned, bent, cow leg poking up out of the truck bed.  I stood there, off to the side, for lack of a better idea about what to do.  My regret came when the truck stopped, the driver got out, and they opened the back of the truck to reveal a bloody headless cow.  I wasn’t sure where the head was, but I didn’t hang out to find out.  As they started trying to maneuver the cow out of the truck bed, I ran into my room, having to dodge a giant splatter of blood on the cement, spotting a blue plastic bag on the tarp (I’m assuming those were the innards) and shut the door.  I called my friend Kate to tell her what was going on.  She, being Kate, told me to eat the cow for protein.  I will not be eating cow…or maybe any meat ever again. 

Dead cow. 

bucket of legs

bucket of skin

leg in a tree. 

When I got off the phone with Kate, I opened my door to find out how bad it all was going to be, and to make sure that my duffle bag was not being touched by dead cow, and saw something I hoped never to see.  Lying out on the tarp was a cow, with no legs from the knees down (they were sitting in a black bucket right by my door), it’s body completely skinned, and all it’s skin sitting in a white bucket, next to the black bucket containing the legs.  Lying about a foot away from the bloody neck was the skinned head, big lifeless black eyes looking right at me.  I took a step back into my room and covered my mouth with my hand, seriously hoping that I could forget that image.  I walked outside, covering any view of the cow or it’s body parts with my left hand, to find out how long I was going to have a dead cow as a roommate.  My host mom was absolutely sobbing, and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why.  They have no respect for animals here, with the exception of some dogs, sometimes.  The only thing I came up with was that she was upset for financial reasons, but they have like four more cows, and tons of other animals.  Peruvians don’t cry, unless something horrible happened and they are on TV, or sometimes if someone dies.  I didn’t know what to say, so I just sat there.  I asked Edwin again how it died…I’m pretty sure he said it just fell over.  I I waited a bit, and then asked Edwin what they were going to do with the cow.  He didn’t answer me.

            “Are we going to sell it?” I asked him.

            “We’ll probably send a little bit to Chiclayo.” He said.  Well, that was about as little information as you could possibly give me.  I know we have family in Chiclayo, but I have no idea how they are planning on sending anything anywhere given that there is a strike and no transportation anywhere out of or into Chota.  After that, I just stayed sitting in my chair, unwilling to go back into my room because it meant walking past that cow again…and my room smelled like death.  I mostly just sat there, completely perplexed by my host mom’s sobbing.  She was still crying. 

The moment I decided to leave came when I looked over to my right and saw my host brother and host grandfather holding up baby cow legs and hacking at them with a giant machete.  BABY COW?  I hadn’t realized baby cow was involved.  I guess the cow that died was the one who had a baby like a month or two ago.  What I didn’t know, was if the mama cow had fallen over on her baby, or if they had just killed her baby because she had died.  Still don’t know.  Also…don’t really want to know.

So, blocking my view of the cow, I went back into my room and shut the door.  I then sprayed that body spray on my finger and stuck it up my nose, hoping that if it didn’t cover the smell, it would at least kill my sense of smell and I wouldn’t have to worry about it.  What I realized in hindsight, was that I would have been better off tying a heavily sprayed down bandana around my face to cover my nose…instead of sticking it up my nose.  Desperation reigned over logic.  While I was hiding in my room writing this blog post, a parade of people arrived and they all came into the room with the cow and sat there.  It was like a strange kind of cow vigil.  They just sat around that giant dead cow while my host mom cried like her child had just died and people talked to her.  I wasn’t about to walk into that mess so I stayed in my room, but if I had to guess, I would say that there were probably 5 or 6 people out there, including a couple kids whose voices I didn’t recognize.  They hung out in there for like an hour or so.  It got to a point where I really had to pee, but didn’t want to use my pee bucket with 7 people separated from me by plywood, and I didn’t want to walk out there to go to the latrine because I figured they would make me sit with the dead cow.  Lucky for me, everyone left right as I was about to pee myself and I used my happy blue bucket in peace.

I hung out in my room until Mishel came to call me for dinner.  I wasn’t sure I had an appetite for anything, and I was terrified there would be cow in whatever Celina served me.  But I got up anyway and made a complete ass of myself, luckily in private.  As I was walking out of my room to the door outside, the room with the dead cow was pitch dark, and the second I had shut my bedroom door and was alone in the dark in that room I freaked out and went running to the door outside.  I felt like such an idiot but it had totally freaked me out.

At dinner, I was a complete baby but I wanted to get the cow out of that room.  If I tried to explain to you why I was suddenly totally weirded out by this giant dead cow, I couldn’t tell you.  If you’re having a hard time empathizing, ask yourself, “When was the last time I slept right next to a giant, skinned, beheaded cow with its legs in a bucket nearby?” I’m guessing the answer is never, sooo I don’t expect you to empathize but I’m hoping you won’t judge me.  At dinner I asked again what we were going to do with the cow, and they were like, “We’re going to send some to Chiclayo.” 

            “There’s no passage to Chiclayo.”

            “There’s no passage to Chiclayo.” They repeated after me.  It was weird.  That was all I got.  My host mom mentioned that we might be eating some for lunch tomorrow and I decided to say what I needed to say then on that subject.

            “I’m going to cook for myself…I can’t eat meat when I know exactly where it came from.” More like, I don’t usually eat people after a sleepover…

            No one said anything.  I realize it wasn’t the most sensitive thing in the world to say…but I was pretty sure after the massacre I had seen that afternoon, I might vomit if I tried to eat that cow.  I could definitely use the protein and the nutrients, but I can’t eat that cow after staring at it.

            Later during dinner, my host mom joked that I was going to sleep with the cow that night.  I thought I’d mention that it smells awful. 

            “But it doesn’t smell like that in your room does it?”

            “Um..yeah.”

            They decided then that they would move it the next day, which was the biggest relief in the world to me.  They started talking about where they would put it and were teasing Edwin, my host brother, that they would put it in his room.  I told Celina she should have it in her’s so she could snuggle it while she slept.  Joking about it, and seeing that no one else wanted it near them took some of the edge off and I felt a little bit better about being a total baby about the whole thing.  I also was a little worried about the animals a giant dead cow would attract.  I’m already living below the corn and to the right of the potatoes and I have major rat and tarantula problems, I didn’t need anything bigger…or carnivorous, coming to live in my room. 

After dinner, I went to go back into my room, and had an internal freakout about walking into the dark room with the dead cow.  I think if that cow had been more in pieces, and less assembled like a cow, I wouldn’t have been so freaked out.  So, like a pathetic gringa, I stood outside the door trying to garner up the courage to dash through that room without squealing like a pig.  In the minute or so that I stood there, my host mom came up behind me and asked, “You want me to come with you?”  I was as mortified as I was touched by that gesture and just told her yes.  She walked in before me and stood there until I was in my room with the door shut.  She was so nonjudgmental about it, she didn’t smirk at me, she just stood there and then walked out.  I was really grateful for that…and super embarrassed.

My family literally must think I’m like the most pathetic person in the entire world.  I can’t be nearby when they kill animals (i.e. slitting guinea pig’s throats, chopping off chicken’s or duck’s heads etc.) or when they skin them or chop them into pieces.  I am absolutely terrified of giant tarantulas (though I did try to handle one on my own once…but it escaped somewhere), and I’ve actually been pretty chill about mice and rats, but I have them in my room ALL the time.  I won’t eat guinea pig because I had it as a pet, and I can’t walk by a dead cow in the dark because it freaks me out.  Even I think I’m pathetic.  But maybe I should cut myself some slack and think about how strange this whole situation is to me and I’m not really sure how to handle it because I literally have no experience to draw from.  Still, isn’t that what makes a coward?

Made myself a cup of hot cocoa in my room and watched “I Love You, Man”, before I went to bed. Weird day. 

Day Two of House Arrest

Day two of the strike, i.e. being grounded/house arrest...

The highlight of my day was my attempt to make garlic bread, which turned out AMAZING.  I remembered to offer some to everyone, which ended up being 5 people in this case.  I’m not sure how they all felt about it, but Mishel liked it, which was an absolute miracle.  Celina wasn’t willing to try it.  Fine with me, it was delicious! I worked on various things throughout the day, and by the time I finally managed to get myself to work out, it was getting dark.  The problem, was that by the time I finished working out, it was too cold and dark to wash my hair in the sink and my hair was disgusting. I took a baby wipe bath and cut my losses with my hair. 

A couple days before, at the meeting I had with Don Juan and…Don Juan…they had invited me to a meeting/party thing that was happening today at 8:30 pm.  I had no idea what the party was for, but I decided to French braid my hair because it was disgusting.  At dinner, Celina asked me if I was still planning on going, but she said it like, “You don’t want to go to that, right?”  and then told me it was up to me…  She had definitely made her feelings known.  I sort of felt obligated to go because I had been invited by Don Juan, and I know I should work harder on spending time with my community.  Celina happened to mention that the party would include an hour long Rosario (which is apparently some kind of catholic service.  That was a hard hit against me going.  My only experience with religion in Peru, aside from crashing a wedding in the National Cathedral in Lima about 6 months ago, was on Christmas Eve when my host dad, Samuel, read from some little book with the Virgin Mary on it and I listened to an hour and a half of mumbled Spanish followed by Hail Marys.  I went back to my room to think about it, and while glancing at my calendar, I realized that the town party is coming up in 5 days and there will be plenty of community bonding time then.  I went back to the kitchen to tell Celina I wasn’t going to go.  She said, “Me neither.”