Most likely you’ve heard of the Latin American tradition of Carnaval, a celebration held before the start of Lent. The most famous fiestas take place in Brazil and, within Peru, the craziest celebrations seem to take place in Cajamarca. While I did not find myself in Cajamarca to celebrate Carnaval, I did make my way to Pacora, my municipality and the closest town to my site.
On the Northern coast of Perú where I’m located Carnaval is celebrated during the weeks leading up to Lent with sporadic water fights. In Pacora it culminates with a big fiesta that has evolved into a competition between two teams, el bando verde (green) and el bando rojo (red). Team loyalties are seemingly random and can change from year to year. This year my community opted to support the red team and, given that my sister was chosen to represent the rural sector of Pacora as the princess of the bando rojo, I decided to lend my support and wear red. Thinking that clothing would be my only mode of participation was plain naïve.
Somehow I got involved in the getting ready process and was appointed to do the hair of the junior princess of my community. I tried to explain that it was a bad idea but they wouldn’t have it. Thus, I was instructed to copy what they were doing to my sister’s hair. It seemed simple enough except that they have approximately 10 times the amount of hair than the average person from the U.S. The poor girl ended up with an elegant looking mullet/rat tail. Furthermore, I repeatedly had to ask for the comb without using the word comb because it is uncomfortably close to the Spanish word for male genitalia. They were probably starting to think that I lack any form of memory. I did learn that lime juice is an excellent substitute for hair gel and that curls can be created with a bit of lime juice, newspaper and a strip of plastic bag.
I was told that transport to the event would be provided and indeed it was. Transport was a large mango truck that drove us straight to Pacora and then to my surprise straight into a parade. The parade was no normal parade and I ended up riding front and center at the feet of the two princesses down every street of Pacora while we were occasionally sprayed with water or perfume and people got progressively more impassioned about belonging to the bando rojo, yelling things like “Rojo vive, carajo!”
The parade lasted for some ungodly amount of time, considering the small size of Pacora, which would most certainly qualify as podunk. It ended at the plaza where two stages were set up, one for each team. Which ever team has more people dancing and can dance for the longest amount of time wins. Upon arrival I was quickly whisked into the mob of dancers by some random lady. Within minutes she had introduced me to all three of her sons. She was probably on the verge of suggesting an engagement when I ran away to find Susan.
Susan and I were stopped by a random older man to take a picture with him. Why a picture with two random white people is so desirable is somewhat baffling to me. It’s pretty much the same as getting your picture taken with two random Chinese people. What do you say to the people you show that to? I have no clue who these people are but look, they’re Chinese!
I was not a bit shocked when I saw that each group had a tree in the middle of its dance floor and noted that these trees were laden with tuppers in their branches. The trees, called yunsa, are a traditional part of the carnaval festivities. I’m not sure when the tupper bit got added. Anyway, the tuppers are free for the taking when they fall from the branches. There were things like pee buckets, pitchers and strainers in those branches and I had to leave before anything fell. This was probably for the best because I can only fathom that a falling tupper incurs a rather aggressive struggle for possession.
Monday, February 25, 2008
Friday, February 15, 2008
Updates
World Map:
My good friend, who shall remain unnamed, payed a return visit to the school. Apparently he wanted to paint so he broke into the classroom again and painted a portion of one wall bright yellow. It appears that he also kicked the paint can over because there was also yellow paint all over the floor. Despite the disaster I encountered I decided it would be best to ignore it and paint the map. However, I then realized he had also gotten the urge to fill all of the paint cans with water. At this point I also realized I needed the yellow paint. Go figure, it was nowhere to be found. Now, I had passed this young man on my way to paint and he had said hello as always and acted perfectly normal. I was left with no option but to confront him so I charged back to where I had seen him and found him calmly sipping away at a slushy. When asked where the yellow paint was he responded, ¨Why, it's in the plants" as if that was it's logical storage location. I made him go back to the school to show me exactly where it was and he offered me some of his slushy as if I was in the mood for a slushy! As for the map it's nearly complete and looks very nice.
Health:
It should be known that Peace Corps volunteers spend a disconcerting amount of time discussing bowel movements and stool consistency. Hence, I have decided that the rest of you might as well be privy to my current health status. Basically it hasn't been normal since I got to site, my stool that is. But then came the day about a week ago when for once I was normal...for TWO entire days. Imagine my excitement. I was basically rejoicing. Then out of a dark doorway emerged a glass, a glass of impending doom. That's how I felt anyway when I was beckoned over to the entry of the house of the older man who has befriended me to find that he was extending me a large glass of guanabana juice in the dirtiest glass I've ever seen. Honest to God, it had mud on the inside and I know for a fact that the water was NOT boiled. Rather than refuse I cheerfully chimed, "I love guanabana juice!" Things haven't been normal since.
I also may have a stress fracture in my foot from running. I stopped running before Christmas but it still hurts so I'm going to get an x-ray.
My doctor was in the department of Lambayeque recently so she came to visit me at my site. It just so happened that she was here over the lunch hour. Of course my family gave me three times the normal amount of food and then proceded to tell her that I don't eat. My host-mom, as serious as could be, was like, "Karen, you better finish your whole plate." Thank goodness my doctor came to the rescue and told her that we people of the U.S. aren't used to eating such large portions.
Language:
My host-sister and I were walking back from the store the other day when we passed one of my old man friends on his bicycle. As always, he stopped for a brief chat. After the usual courtesies he told me he was going to buy a Marciano, the sketchy but tasty frozen juice pops that I'm always being offered. To which I replied, "Umm, que rico!" This means somethings like, "Yum, how delicious!" Then he mentioned something about purchasing rubbing alcohol which kind of confused me but then we went on our way. My sister asked me what I had just said and she looked pretty damn amused. Turns out he had said he was on his way to see Mariano, the older gentleman who owns the store. ¡Que rico! I'm pretty sure no one says that about Mariano anymore!
My good friend, who shall remain unnamed, payed a return visit to the school. Apparently he wanted to paint so he broke into the classroom again and painted a portion of one wall bright yellow. It appears that he also kicked the paint can over because there was also yellow paint all over the floor. Despite the disaster I encountered I decided it would be best to ignore it and paint the map. However, I then realized he had also gotten the urge to fill all of the paint cans with water. At this point I also realized I needed the yellow paint. Go figure, it was nowhere to be found. Now, I had passed this young man on my way to paint and he had said hello as always and acted perfectly normal. I was left with no option but to confront him so I charged back to where I had seen him and found him calmly sipping away at a slushy. When asked where the yellow paint was he responded, ¨Why, it's in the plants" as if that was it's logical storage location. I made him go back to the school to show me exactly where it was and he offered me some of his slushy as if I was in the mood for a slushy! As for the map it's nearly complete and looks very nice.
Health:
It should be known that Peace Corps volunteers spend a disconcerting amount of time discussing bowel movements and stool consistency. Hence, I have decided that the rest of you might as well be privy to my current health status. Basically it hasn't been normal since I got to site, my stool that is. But then came the day about a week ago when for once I was normal...for TWO entire days. Imagine my excitement. I was basically rejoicing. Then out of a dark doorway emerged a glass, a glass of impending doom. That's how I felt anyway when I was beckoned over to the entry of the house of the older man who has befriended me to find that he was extending me a large glass of guanabana juice in the dirtiest glass I've ever seen. Honest to God, it had mud on the inside and I know for a fact that the water was NOT boiled. Rather than refuse I cheerfully chimed, "I love guanabana juice!" Things haven't been normal since.
I also may have a stress fracture in my foot from running. I stopped running before Christmas but it still hurts so I'm going to get an x-ray.
My doctor was in the department of Lambayeque recently so she came to visit me at my site. It just so happened that she was here over the lunch hour. Of course my family gave me three times the normal amount of food and then proceded to tell her that I don't eat. My host-mom, as serious as could be, was like, "Karen, you better finish your whole plate." Thank goodness my doctor came to the rescue and told her that we people of the U.S. aren't used to eating such large portions.
Language:
My host-sister and I were walking back from the store the other day when we passed one of my old man friends on his bicycle. As always, he stopped for a brief chat. After the usual courtesies he told me he was going to buy a Marciano, the sketchy but tasty frozen juice pops that I'm always being offered. To which I replied, "Umm, que rico!" This means somethings like, "Yum, how delicious!" Then he mentioned something about purchasing rubbing alcohol which kind of confused me but then we went on our way. My sister asked me what I had just said and she looked pretty damn amused. Turns out he had said he was on his way to see Mariano, the older gentleman who owns the store. ¡Que rico! I'm pretty sure no one says that about Mariano anymore!
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Hormigas...
Hormiga is the Spanish word for ant. Lately, hormigas have been playing an uncomfortably large role in my life. I'm fairly certain they've been providing me with the fair share of my daily protein intake, which I'll explain.
It started off with the lone ant colony in my room. Like a true eco-nerd I decided to leave the colony in peace. By day one hardly notices it's there. However, every night there is a mass exodus of ants which explodes from my wall with the setting sun. Watching them is actually quite fascinating. They collect the other dead insects from my room and, regardless of the size, manage to carry them up my wall and dismember them to fit them through their hole. At any given moment there is a stream of around 500 ants on my wall. For about a week there were two of these ant files, as I believe they changed the location of their entrance. Recently the ant colony that runs across my bathing area decided to bubble of from the ground leaving a sizable area of earth in mounds.
As for my consumption of ants, it began with my water. I switched to boiling my water since the solar method I was using lead to the growth of algae, leading me to believe it was not in the least bit effective. After drinking one cup of the boiled water my sister yells out of the other room asking me if there were any ants in it. Sure enough, I peered into the bottom of my second cup tp find about 50 ants. Despite efforts to scour the teapot, this has been a reoccurring problem.
My friend Susan came to visit and noted ants floating in our soup. Apparently I've resigned myself to the ants because I said, "Well, it's protein" and continued eating. Meanwhile, like a normal person, Susan picked the ants out of her soup. I probably wouldn't have given a second thought to eating the ants had Susan not found my behavior to be rather peculiar. This did not prevent me from eating my newly acquired honey which was also invaded by ants. Nor did my familiarity with the abundance of ants prevent me from idiotically marking my book with a cracker wrapper. The next day I opened it to a momentarily startling swarm of ants.
It started off with the lone ant colony in my room. Like a true eco-nerd I decided to leave the colony in peace. By day one hardly notices it's there. However, every night there is a mass exodus of ants which explodes from my wall with the setting sun. Watching them is actually quite fascinating. They collect the other dead insects from my room and, regardless of the size, manage to carry them up my wall and dismember them to fit them through their hole. At any given moment there is a stream of around 500 ants on my wall. For about a week there were two of these ant files, as I believe they changed the location of their entrance. Recently the ant colony that runs across my bathing area decided to bubble of from the ground leaving a sizable area of earth in mounds.
As for my consumption of ants, it began with my water. I switched to boiling my water since the solar method I was using lead to the growth of algae, leading me to believe it was not in the least bit effective. After drinking one cup of the boiled water my sister yells out of the other room asking me if there were any ants in it. Sure enough, I peered into the bottom of my second cup tp find about 50 ants. Despite efforts to scour the teapot, this has been a reoccurring problem.
My friend Susan came to visit and noted ants floating in our soup. Apparently I've resigned myself to the ants because I said, "Well, it's protein" and continued eating. Meanwhile, like a normal person, Susan picked the ants out of her soup. I probably wouldn't have given a second thought to eating the ants had Susan not found my behavior to be rather peculiar. This did not prevent me from eating my newly acquired honey which was also invaded by ants. Nor did my familiarity with the abundance of ants prevent me from idiotically marking my book with a cracker wrapper. The next day I opened it to a momentarily startling swarm of ants.
Friday, February 8, 2008
Who knew Asia was a country?
I can´t remember whether or not I've mentioned that I've been working on painting the world map on the wall of the local school, which is absurd because it's pretty much all I've been doing for the last month. Granted, it wouldn't have taken as long as it has if I had abandoned my perfectionism and allowed the kids in my summer class to draw it with me. That, however, would have been utterly disastrous. I'm not just talking slightly off, but more like entire countries would have been missing and those countries that did make it might have ended up looking like the rabbits I attempted to draw with them earlier in the summer. In other words, frightening.
So I've been working on the map quite diligently. Occasionally people wander up to see what's going on. I've made friends with an older man who lives across the soccer platform from the school who routinely brings me mangos. Frequently, people ask me what it is that I'm drawing. Many of them have no recognition of the world map--something which is hard for me to fathom. Today I was asked if the Atlantic Ocean was the Mediterranean Sea and if Antartica was the ocean. I haven't met one adolescent who can correctly identify Perú on the map. My very own host-sister thought Asia was a country. She still does. This reality tends to be somewhat amusing on the surface but also says a lot about the poor state of the Peruvian education system, which is apparently one of the worst in the world.
Anyway, I finally started to paint the map with the kids the other day. Somehow they managed to paint outside the lines despite the presence of rather thick borders which I had painted to prevent just such an occurrence. The second day of painting they improved markedly when I realized they were all holding their paint brushes about 5 inches from the tip, allowing the brushes to flail wildly about. Then this afternoon came and all hell broke loose. My plan was to go paint more borders around the countries to prepare the map for my class. Reality was nothing approaching peaceful. It started off well enough, with the standard crowd of about 4 kids watching, messing with my stuff but not doing any harm. Then, that kid who shall go un-named came. This is the same kid who has locked himself in my classroom and me out of it when I was supposed to be teaching, and the same kid who the previous time I was painting painted my cell phone number in bright red onto the sidewalk. That calm that previously existed instantly vanished with his arrival. One little girl dropped her sugarly slushy onto the floor, beckoning an instant swarm of ants. The others began to open all of the paint cans, sending splatters of paint into the sticky ant pool. Mysterious finger smudges began to appear on the map. My little host-sister´s perfectly white dress rather quickly became not so white. The "instigator" aquired a paintbrush and made wild stabs at the paint cup in my hand. Finally, I conceded to let him paint an old sign hanging on the wall. Meanwhile, I had only managed to paint about half the border of Greenland in about 20 minutes. At some point my sister asks if she can go to the bathroom so I open up the school. I decided it would be best to lock the paint into a classroom so no one else could mess with it. A short while later I realized the "instigator" had vanished from the scene and took little notice. Then I found that he had broken into the classroom, opened the paint cans and spread paint all over the floor. What's worse is that he did not relent at this point, but rather popped back up running around with his paintbrush and attempting to lock me into the school. I wasn´t exactly happy but didn't think faltering Spanish would accurately convey my disappointment. Instead, I just said, "No soy feliz" which I think comes across more like, "I'm not joyous." Of course I was being watched by about 50 drunken community members celebrating after a eulogy. They were too far away to hear anything but close enough to witness me frenetically running about like a mad-woman. Needless to say, little progress was made on the map. On my way home, the drunken males belted out a nice little serenade in my direction.
So I've been working on the map quite diligently. Occasionally people wander up to see what's going on. I've made friends with an older man who lives across the soccer platform from the school who routinely brings me mangos. Frequently, people ask me what it is that I'm drawing. Many of them have no recognition of the world map--something which is hard for me to fathom. Today I was asked if the Atlantic Ocean was the Mediterranean Sea and if Antartica was the ocean. I haven't met one adolescent who can correctly identify Perú on the map. My very own host-sister thought Asia was a country. She still does. This reality tends to be somewhat amusing on the surface but also says a lot about the poor state of the Peruvian education system, which is apparently one of the worst in the world.
Anyway, I finally started to paint the map with the kids the other day. Somehow they managed to paint outside the lines despite the presence of rather thick borders which I had painted to prevent just such an occurrence. The second day of painting they improved markedly when I realized they were all holding their paint brushes about 5 inches from the tip, allowing the brushes to flail wildly about. Then this afternoon came and all hell broke loose. My plan was to go paint more borders around the countries to prepare the map for my class. Reality was nothing approaching peaceful. It started off well enough, with the standard crowd of about 4 kids watching, messing with my stuff but not doing any harm. Then, that kid who shall go un-named came. This is the same kid who has locked himself in my classroom and me out of it when I was supposed to be teaching, and the same kid who the previous time I was painting painted my cell phone number in bright red onto the sidewalk. That calm that previously existed instantly vanished with his arrival. One little girl dropped her sugarly slushy onto the floor, beckoning an instant swarm of ants. The others began to open all of the paint cans, sending splatters of paint into the sticky ant pool. Mysterious finger smudges began to appear on the map. My little host-sister´s perfectly white dress rather quickly became not so white. The "instigator" aquired a paintbrush and made wild stabs at the paint cup in my hand. Finally, I conceded to let him paint an old sign hanging on the wall. Meanwhile, I had only managed to paint about half the border of Greenland in about 20 minutes. At some point my sister asks if she can go to the bathroom so I open up the school. I decided it would be best to lock the paint into a classroom so no one else could mess with it. A short while later I realized the "instigator" had vanished from the scene and took little notice. Then I found that he had broken into the classroom, opened the paint cans and spread paint all over the floor. What's worse is that he did not relent at this point, but rather popped back up running around with his paintbrush and attempting to lock me into the school. I wasn´t exactly happy but didn't think faltering Spanish would accurately convey my disappointment. Instead, I just said, "No soy feliz" which I think comes across more like, "I'm not joyous." Of course I was being watched by about 50 drunken community members celebrating after a eulogy. They were too far away to hear anything but close enough to witness me frenetically running about like a mad-woman. Needless to say, little progress was made on the map. On my way home, the drunken males belted out a nice little serenade in my direction.
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