La lluvia pues.

As I live in the aptly named dry forest, rain doesn’t so much happen. For the most part, I’ve hardly seen any moisture except for that which flows down from the Sierra in the so-called “Pomac River”, a small irrigation ditch. Then two nights ago at 2:30am I awoke to a downpour that persisted for 3 straight hours which, when you live in an adobe house with an aluminum roof, is an interesting experience. I got up to put a bucket under the part of my roof which consistently leaks even when it drizzles and a brief glance to the right revealed water beginning to flood from underneath the backdoor into my room. Of course that glance was followed by a panicked rush around my room trying to put all of the stuff that has no place to go in some kind of higher place. In a matter of minutes I had a good inch of water covering half of my room. A few minutes later my soaking wet host-cousin entered with a shovel and quickly constructed a dam outside my door, thus stopping any more water from entering. I had to sop up the mud and water that had entered and made some witty sarcastic comment to my host-mom about not planning on washing my floor at 3am which she didn’t get. We were up until 4am just milling about putting buckets in new locations and watching the neighbors down the way who were digging a canal around their house and leaving frequently with bucketfuls of water. It rained hard enough to take the paint off our house and to remove the dried mud from the fence around my bucket-bathing area. Two days later the rain is still the major topic of conversation.

Of course, those volunteers in the Sierra have a much different experience than those of us on the coast. Many of them spend around 5 months of the year in mud, and rain is a consistent part of their daily existence. My friend Aaron recently told me that they get so much rain at his site that washing clothes is pointless because they don’t dry. Thus, if he really wants clean clothes he wears them down into his capitol city wet and walks around until they dry.

On the topic of natural phenomena, we experienced a slight temblor (tremor) this morning. I was pretty sure that a large mango truck had run into our house while my 2 year old half-host-brother kept talking about the tenedor (fork) instead of the temblor.

On the topic of some other kind of phenomena, most likely globalization, my friend Susan discovered a new organization in her community which is run by her neighbor. Its official title is the Comité de Karate. Indeed, she has a karate committee in her site which is comical given that our sites don’t even qualify as pueblos. Apparently he learned it in the Peruvian Army. Regardless, it will be an interesting addition to her institutional inventory.

Finally, I’d like to send a big hello to the mother of my friend and fellow volunteer, Mateo. It turns out she hears from me, via my blog, more than Matt. Needless to say, Matt’s not overly thrilled with me. But, Matt’s Mom, in case you’re wondering, Matt is in fact alive and well.