When Shit Misses the Hole

Not how it's done, Perú.
FAIL.

Thursday morning I got up and went down to the latrine to find a giant pile of how I felt.  Someone, I am assuming Maximandro because he can’t see very well, had left a giant pile of shit a little bit right of the hole.  What did I do? I took a picture.  Unfortunately that picture doesn’t do it true justice, but it does, at least, capture the horror of the situation. I have also stopped using the expression “shit hit the fan” and exchanged it for the ever more realistic, “shit missed the hole”.  Well, Wednesday, shit missed the hole, and then Thursday, shit actually missed the hole.

I spent the morning trying to get organized, sending emails from my Kindle, and trying not too eat much because I didn’t want to have to use the latrine again.  It happened to be beautifully sunny outside, so I took advantage and soaked up as much sun as I could.  I was still feeling rotten about the day before, but I was hoping that if Silvia actually called me, we might have an opportunity to just move forward and I would feel better about letting everything go.  Celina, who had been sick for quite a while and recently discovered she had bronchitis, decided to come out and lie on the grass next to me.  We were both quiet, until Mishel came out and started chatting about things and crawling on her Mom.  I ended up getting a little to up close and personal with the two of them for the next half an hour while Mishel picked lice out of Celina’s hair, used the end of a match to clean the wax out of Celina’s ears and then wiping it on her, and stuck one finger up Celina’s nose to pop the blackheads.  I thought I was going to gag watching all of that happen so I tried to distract myself with other things.  I did decide, however, that cleaning out their ears with match sticks is better than watching them do it at the dinner table with the other ends of their spoons. 

Celina finally fell asleep, and Mishel was completely incapable of being quiet so that Celina could sleep.  I kept having to shush her, which I felt bad about, but she was shouting things at me.  We spent about two hours with her filling up needle-less syringes with water and asking me which one had water in it.  I would guess right every time, which I guess made her more determined to fool me. 

By the end of Thursday, I had never received a phone call from Silvia.  Part of me was relieved because I didn’t want to deal with her or pretend everything was fine, but part of me was frustrated that José had not been able to get through to her, and worried about working together the next two years.