El Diablo Está En Los Detalles

    So I’ve been here long enough now that (I think) most of the shocking new stuff is probably waning. Not to say something can’t surprise me, but after seven or eight weeks in the campo now, life feels fairly normal. A few observations and events stick out.

    I’m starting to get a little disturbed by how much killing, skinning, gutting, cleaning and eating animals doesn’t bother me. In fact, I get excited when I hear we’re going to slaughter another mammal. I’m learning a lot about anatomy, too. The other day, I help clean the intestines of a goat. I watched the process via the insides of the creature of turning grass into shit.  It’s cool. Intestines are really fun to clean out because they’re really stretchy, strong tubes. You stretch them out, put it under the faucet and watch the pressure clean out the food/poop. I’ll stick my hand in the grossest anything you put in front of me.  It’s really sweet to see how little time it takes for lungs to harden after exposure to the elements. They use every part of the goat. We skinned him, stretched the pelt on the side of the house. We ate goat head, feet and intestine soup. I’m really into intestines and liver but the head was a bit chewy for me. Couldn’t do it. Blood is my favorite part of the animal besides the meat, though. It’s so flavorful and I can almost feel my iron levels increasing with every bite. I’m gonna have to find a blood hook up in the States upon return.  
So I climb a ladder to get to my room. It’s pretty much straight up, about six rungs, homemade.  Typically, I ascend and descend carrying a bunch of stuff. The other day, my foot slipped and I fell straight off, backwards, onto my back and head. My mom ran over to me (she’s super sensitive) and almost started crying.  I was fine, just banged up. No blood. But I had to pretend like I was better than I was because she was so worried. I had to get up, wipe the mud from my ass and tell her I’m fine. But I have a pretty deep, beautiful bruise the covers most of my lower leg on the left side. I felt like I had been in a car accident. But, living upstairs is definitely better than living downstairs in the campo. I don’t have to deal with chicken rifling through my stuff in the mornings.
However, I have started naming the mice that live in my room. I have white plastic that covers my ceiling beams to protect me from the rain. In the places between the beams, the plastic droops down a little. When my mice play on those parts, they make a hell of a lot of noise. And now they’ve figured out how to come down and play on my floor. I can tell because of the noises during the night. They’re noises of mice playing in my trash can, near my laundry bag, my shoes.  I started naming them after famous mice/rats. I have Gus Gus, Splinter and Jerry.  My third year volunteer told me that if I’m naming my mice already, I’m going to be ok.  I was also told I had one of the toughest sites in Peru. Honestly, it’s not bad.  I mean it’s a far cry from having servants (at least one volunteer has them) or cable, but I didn’t join Peace Corps to have a more comfortable life than before.  I’m thinking about getting a little cat again for a completely practical reason this time. 
So what the hell I am doing?  Well, the kids are on summer break from school. I have two days a week of English class and two days a week of geography class.  The ages range from 6 to about 15, which I tough. We play games with vocab and sing songs.  My group is really too big to be very effective, but the point is more to get to know the community, let them get to know me and start gaining trust.  I really hate unstructured noise.  I can handle and hour or two at a time, but after that, I’m wiped. I like some kids, but in much smaller groups and with more similar ages. After the summer break is over, I’m not having open enrollment youth groups. It exhausts me.  And it’s hard to discipline in a language I’m still learning. And kids here are not made to mind. I have to tell my six year old sister to say please and thank you. And I do. I don’t care if my mom or dad think it’s rude that I do that.
Speaking of my little sister, she’s a trip. Generally I like her a lot, but she whines and is an attention hog. It’s hard to get mad at her for that because most girls in the campo has such low self esteem that they won’t speak. So it’s good that she’s loud and extroverted, but I can’t stand the whining. She does whatever the hell she wants and no one (expect me now) even attempts to discipline her. Thank the baby jesus I have a door now and she can’t come in and mess with my computer anymore. ‘Unstructured six year old dirty jam hands’ isn’t covered under my insurance. She’d have to steal it before I could get it replaced. Anyway, for the first month or so I was here, she started calling me The Queen. She was a princess (did I ever like princesses? Jesus, I hope not) and mom was the cook (self-proclaimed). I hated it. It felt like white worship and I’m really not into divine rule by heredity in general. I wanted her to stop so at first, I told her the Queen orders her to stop calling me the Queen. Didn’t work. Then I had an idea. I started dropping hints that witches were way cooler than princesses. All princesses can do is wear pretty dresses and wait for some good-looking man or beast to save the day and make her a complete person. Not good messages for little girls. Also, I’m starting to wonder how much of liking that shit is in our DNA. She has no exposure to TV, the toy aisle at Target or media in ANY way. And she still likes princesses and pink and purple. And my brother still makes guns out of sticks. How hard can you fight that as I parent? Anyway… So, I started casting spells on her that she liked. It started working and now we’re all witches. It’s cool.
I feel like I look like someone else. I’m wearing the same three outfits made of knit leggings, skirts and Old Navy sweaters. I can’t stick out any more than being of gargantuan size, blonde and have blue eyes. I have to wear my glasses which I hate. I don’t wear any makeup. My legs are still covered and swollen with bug bites (and bruises).  My hair looks pretty shitty and I shower once a week.  However, there are thermal baths in the town down the mountain.  They’re disgusting, but if you close your eyes and let the water take you somewhere else, it’s amazing. It costs 1 sole to 20 minutes. I know the water isn’t coming out of the center of the earth for me, but it sure feels like it.  But, I still brush my teeth at least twice a day and floss. Sometimes when my mom gets really close to talk to me and I can smell her breath, it actually, literally, not joking, smells like shit. Not just like rank breath, like shit. It almost takes my breath away. Constant reminder to keep up my personal hygiene as much as I can here.  However, two words: prison tats.
And I’ve been obsessed with American campo music lately. Lucinda Williams has been in my playlist everyday since I moved here. And Johhny Cash. And Bruce Springsteen. And Gillian Welsh. And John Mellencamp.  And Hank Williams. And Nick Cave. He makes less sense except maybe that Johnny Cash loved him.  I’m not exactly sure what’s going on with that, but I’m letting it ride.
I’m giving a public thank you to my former co-workers/current friends. They sent me a package with a book about mullets and a newspaper clipping of 50 reasons to love Minneapolis. You guys fucking rock. It really means a lot to me. It’s spendy to send stuff back, but rest assured I will.  And thanks to all of you who sent cards, too. It’s awesome getting shit in the mail here. I know my address looks fake without numbers and all, but it works. The town where I have my PO Box is that small.  And thank you so much for the phone calls. I always prefer those to emails (also cuz internet is like 1998 slow here).  I love hearing your voices. And sometimes, because the phones are kinda fucked, you have to keep calling back. And it the thing doesn’t beep, the voicemail doesn’t work.  Love it.

Ode to Paneton

For those of you in the States, Paneton is this strange sweet bread with little pieces of gelatinous fruit thingies littered throughout.  Peruvians go nuts for it and it’s a Christmas tradition to eat it here. It’s special because it’s kinda expensive. Nothing at home compares to Paneton. I wrote this mostly for my other Peace Corps friends because they’ll get it. The Paneton experience can only really be expressed through spoken word. Find the cadence in my poem.

Paneton, oh Paneton
Packed in your shiny red box
Your marketing pleasing
Presentation appealing
Too bad you’re kept under locks

Paneton, oh Paneton
How rico you much taste
With your cylindrical form
And dried fruit a-swarm
There will be not a crumb left to waste

Paneton, oh Paneton
You look so moist and fresh
When will it be time
To savor the sublime?
My patience is a daunting request

Paneton, oh Paneton
A thick slice on my plate
The mound has been shared
I’m mentally prepared
Entiendo this moment has weight

Paneton, MY Paneton
My teeth grind the virgin bite
But it’s dry and disgusting
My tongue forward thrusting
This shit far out of my site

Paneton, my Paneton
Bereft of anything good
I was under the guise
There would be no surprise
But the bread has the texture of wood

Paneton, my Paneton
Seriously, what the fuck?
I mean the fruit pieces reveal
More than they conceal
They’re jellied chunks which suck

Paneton, fucking Paneton
Your mocking is harsh and crude
But I have to eat more
Cuz my family adores
You and Lord knows I can’t be rude

Paneton, my Paneton
I trudge on like a champ
I consume piece after piece
But try not to release
The notion of a tradition revamp

Paneton, shitty Paneton
There’s an Xmas party in my boca
But everyone’s throwing up
New guests showing up
That perhaps will make me choke-a

Paneton, oh Paneton
Perhaps no one is enchanted
It’s just what we do
But we don’t have a clue
A custom we all take for granted

Paneton, my Paneton
Something strange is occurring
The more I indulge
The less of a grudge
I hold- the cultural lines are now blurring

Paneton, my Paneton
I don’t believe I’m not a hater
The crap in my grill
Now feels like a thrill
I wanna save some for later

Paneton, dear Paneton
Can this be a new obsession?
Is it true? ¿Acostumbré?
I was lead violently astray
To not wish you in my possession

Paneton, sweet Paneton
Can you be an acquired taste?
I don’t want to gloat
But it’s worthy to note
Next Xmas had better make haste

Dirt So Good

Of all the improvements made to my room, I really wanted a cement floor done first.  My family, however, had different plans. The floor will be cemented in January.  This had given me much time to think about the merits of having a dirt floor.
    First of all, know that game you played as kids where you had to jump from thing to thing because the ground was lava?  Yeah, well, I play that all day long.  One had to be mindful about where one puts one’s feet when one gets up in the middle of the night to pee when one had a dirt floor.  Otherwise you track that shit back under your fort of blankets.  Looks like I’m reliving at least two childhood games.  Sometimes my blankets graze the dirt when I turn over during the night. It wouldn’t be so bad except that heavy wool blankets are a bitch to wash by hand and take days to dry when it rains every day.  Ok. I’m comfortable being a bit dirty when I sleep.  I think I can get used to this.
    I used to brush my teeth in the kitchen after dinner. I thought maybe I’d set a good example to my family and they’d use the toothbrushes they have. But one day, I accidentally knocked the half plastic bottle the toothbrushes were kept in onto the dirt ground and the toothbrushes fell all over the place. I was horrified because hell if I’d put a toothbrush back into my mouth EVER after it touched the ground (the ground is lava, right?).  My panicked look didn’t seem to convey the gravity I felt toward the situation. My mom sorta laughed and said ‘Don’t worry, Julieta!’ which makes me think they use them about as little as the aesthetics of their mouths portray.  My six year old sister has a toothache so bad that it wakes her up in pain more than once a night. Well, her teeth are rotting out of her head. Every kid around here had rotted baby teeth. This surprises me because I don’t even see them eating many sweets or soda. That makes me think they just hardly brush their teeth. I got some work to do with the kids.  Anyway, I started brushing my teeth in my room for no particular reason except that maybe if someone accidentally knocked over my toothbrush onto the dirt, they’d apply the five second rule and move on with life and see no reason to confess to me.  But, because I have a dirt floor, I spit on my floor. Well, the big spit goes into my piss bucket. I’ve learned the lesson and now release the toothpaste suds from a safe distance of about 5’5’’.  However, the rinse off goes right on my floor. It’s really, really fun to spit on the floor in your room.
    About that piss bucket. When the cement finally arrives, it will actually matter how good my aim is.  This concerns me. I mean, it’s a skill to pee in a gallon bucket for a girl and by all means I have been improving. However, the flow pattern isn’t 100% predictable.  I mean it’s not like I miss and entire trip to the bucket. I might miss the first 7% or something. Sometimes my room smells a little like an old cat lady’s house but I’m sure the dirt absorbs most of the ammonia. Cement absorbs fuck all.  Allegedly, my family is building a latrine closer to the house (and I must say that my Catholic Peruvian family uses pages of the bible to wipe their ass. I’ve seen it with my own eyes in the darkness of the latrine hole)… but in Peruvian time… I’m sure anyone who visits me will be learning to aim for a gallon bucket.  So, I think I will miss the dirt floor.  I hope I miss the cement…
    And on the subject of using my room for a bathroom, I bathe here too. Not often, mind you.  I can’t tell if it’s cold and rainy enough here that I just don’t smell or I’m comparing myself to folks who bathe less often than I do.  At any rate, once a week or so, I take a bucket bath in my room.  And as careful as I am, water gets on my dirt floor.  How do you remove water from cement?  I’ll need to actually buy cleaning products or something. 
    And about cleaning a dirt floor. It is, in fact, possible. I swear there is merit in sweeping a dirt floor. You wouldn’t want rocks getting all mixed up with dirt, would you? When you have a dirt floor, rocks are new dirt.  You gotta get that shit outta there. Also, I know this sounds crazy, but you sprinkle water on a dirt floor to clean it. Seriously.  You find that sweet threshold before it becomes hardcore mud. But just the right amount settles the dust but doesn’t not create a wrestling arena.
    I think I’m gonna keep the dirt. I’ll get a rug.

Cuyilicious

    When humans were migrating around the world a few million years ago, they found only two domesticate-able animals in Peru.  One, the llama (and llama-esque creatures) and two, the guinea pig (cuy in Spanish).  Llamas apparently taste like shit.  That leaves cuy to eat.  Mom, thanks for hating animals and never getting me a guinea pig for a pet.  For that, I am grateful for two reasons: 1) they’re stupid pets and 2) it made watching their slaughter and then sucking delicious meat off their bones doable.
    I got word yesterday that today was cuy-killing time.  I asked my dad if I could participate and I think he thought watching a gringa watch cuy-killing was as novel and I thought the whole thing was too.  We were on the same page.  Awesome.  I found it hard to sleep.  But not that hard for there is not much happening in the campo on a Saturday night. I tucked in around 8pm with two layers of everything except pants because I peed all over one pair on accident. I’ve decided the bucket, after exploring so many other options, is, in fact, the best method.  Anyway, I manage to fall asleep by watching Dexter for the millionth time (I only have that show on my computer) and counting cuy jump over a fence or whatever.
    And by the way, I think they call them cuy because that’s exactly the sound they make.  However, when they’re chilling in their ‘death bag’, they’re surprisingly quiet.  Pensive little fellows.  I sit on a tiny chair in my kitchen with my mom. There’s a little bowl between us and a bag of five cuy beside her.  She pulls one out of the death bag, holding it around the neck.  You can see the two little rodent teeth and a furry belly. It doesn’t make a noise.  I watch intensely as she drags the knife- well actually it’s the dullest knife on the planet so I’m going to use the verb to saw- saws the knife across the throat and quickly bends the gullet over the bowl and bleeds it out.  I’ve never seen an animal slaughtered before. My heart is racing but I’m not grossed out. I’m looking at it like a scientist.  I’m wondering how many milliliters of blood run through a cuy. It can’t be much. We’re saving it to cook up.  Then, the lifeless American pet gets tossed aside and the ritual happens to cuy number two. 
    After two are killed and drained, we put them in a plastic bowl and pour boiling water over them and beat their little bodies a bit.  This helps get the fur loose to pull off.  Then I held one up by the back feet and started peeling fur off the creature.  If you’re into picking zits, dry skin off feet and/or removing wallpaper, you’d be into this.  It was fun- but you had to make sure you get all the fur from the ears and around the eyes off which was challenging.  As my mom and I were working on numbers 3 and 4, my little sister picked one naked cuy corpse and started making it dance and sing a song as a really morbid puppet.  Its head was bobbing back and forth since it was really only attached by the nape of the neck. It’s hard to peel skin and fur off when you’re laughing hysterically.  My little sister, who is six, is awesome for so many reasons. This is just one of them. When she’s done playing with our lunch, she took off and mom had to ask, “Sarita, do you need to wash your hands? Is there cuy blood on them?” And of course there was.  I was trying to think of any time in my childhood my mom had to ask me that. Nope. Nunca.
    Then mom roasted them over the fire on the stove to get the remaining fur off.  This scorches the skin.  Now they don’t look like potential pets anymore. They’re crispy, naked rodents.  Next, we take them to the only working sink in Chuyas, next to the latrine.  There, I watch my mom gut them.  She’s careful to keep the intestines aside to wash out and cook up later. We only throw away the alfalfa not swallowed in their mouths and these little sacs of something orange-ish. I’m not sure if all mammals have them or not. The dog ate them.  After this part, I realized I really had to get some Spanish work done.   I retired to the house.
    When I was retrieved for lunch, the little legs and ribs were all cooked up.  There was an additional bowl of guts all cooked up.  Liver from a cuy tastes way better than liver from a chicken.  I think it’s just because it’s smaller and there’s a higher ratio of surface area that touched oil in the pan to weird liver texture.  The small intestines fried up like little delicious tubes of iron.  I had a side of cuy for lunch with this spicy red sauce.  Those little fuckers don’t have much meat on them, but goddamn they sure are tastey. The skin’s really thick and actually hard to bite through with human teeth, but the juicy meat around the spine and ribs was sooo good.  I yanked at the little scorched feet until the socket at the hip broke and I could excavate the thigh meat.  Mmmmm.  I never would have thought a year ago I would be saying, “Hey mama, can you hook me up with some more fried intestine cuy tubelettes?

Ah-ha! I´m connected!

Hey everyone. It´s taken approximately 17 minutes to get this page open. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. I have some funny blogs ready but my USB won´t read on this computer. Balls. Look forward to them in the future. All in all, all is well. I´m healthy but filthy. I´m happy yet frustrated. I´m thirsty for friendship but can´t get enough alone time. My family´s great but I´m sick of the extra attention. I am, quite literally, the biggest thing to hit Chuyas in a while. My head almost hits the ceiling in my treehouse when I stand up.  It´s super chill here though. Days go by fast but sometimes I can´t wait for bed (which happens around 8 in the campo).  It´s a chance for me to stop engaging and thinking and speaking in spanish. My mom´s pretty overbearing, which I´ve never experienced before in life. She´s only like 12 years older than me but tells to change out of wet clothes, to eat more, that I can´t go to that party because people will be drinking there, etc. It must be my intermediate spanish that makes me sound like a child because I´ve been treated like one. Hopèfully that´ll wear off the longer I´m here and the stonger my vocabulary becomes. It´s definitely getting better but it´s not strong enough for people to think I´m smart yet.  My little sister is still pretty fun but the longer I´m here, I´ve noticed her fun-ness comes at a cost. She´s also kinda bratty and whiny. If you´re not paying attention to her, she´ll try her best to make you. But I still like her. My favorite family member is my 13 year old brother, Santiago. He´s really smart and I taught him to play cribbage and he beat me yesterday. He´s into science and art.  Anyway, my hour´s almost up. I can´t believe it´s winter, let alone almost Christmas. Weird.

My address is:
PCV Juliet Massie
Serpost, Pomabamba
Amcash, Peru
South America

I´ll write when I can!!!! Love you.

Murphy's Law of Nature

Upon my first night in the campo, I was getting myself tucked into bed after a long day of trying to comprehend Spanish. My room is on the second floor via a ladder of an adobe house.  I asked for cold weather. I got it. I don't think the adobe is insulated nor does the heat from the fire stove below rise to my room. So, not unlike the coldest nights in Minnesota with heat, I doubled up on pants, socks, a hoodie and gloves.  I have slept in my bra for eight straight nights because I can't bear the thought of getting undressed.
I bury myself under five blankets on my mattress that feels like in iron patio chair with a seat cushion.  Turns out, also have fleas. Fleas like me like mosquitos and flies like me. Great.  A new rival.  My scarf works as my pillow atop this sundae of sleeping comfort. I put on my earphones to try to escape the cold.  Music doesn't actually affect temperature I found. However, as I was drifting off to Bonnie Prince Billy, I had a thought. There's no bathroom or latrine in the house. In fact, my latrine is about a quarter mile away across a field and it's the rainy season. And pitch ass black. Due to my small bladder and affinity for warm drinks, I panicked. What the hell am I going to do tonight when I have to get up to pee like I do every night?

Shit. A litany of options ran through my head, none of which sounded appealing:
    A.  I have a dirt floor. It'll dry, right?
    B. Hold it. Painfully hold it and have dreams about how much it sucks to hold your pee in for
          HOURS.
    C. Make it down the ladder and pee next to the house. Better than the room, right?
    D. Use the flashlight on my cellphone to navigate a new, very dark place to pee in a new, very dark
         place.

Or better yet,  I wish I had a motherfin' bedpan. I didn't have that on my list to bring from Lima yet. I'll add that. 

So night one, I hold it. And it's miserable. I reposition my body in the freezing cold to alleviate the pain in my bladder.  Turns out the positions that keep you warmest also put the most pressure on your midsection. Balls.

Day two, I had an idea. Dehydrate myself. No liquids after 4pm. Shit, soup is mostly liquid. New plan. I'll wait to see if I even wake up in the night before I worry.  But like always, it happened. Peeing on the house sounds like a good idea. Yep. I have my cellphone/flashlight in my mouth as I descend the ladder.  Aah, yes. That was much better than holding it, but I bucket would have been nice. And it's not exactly the model of perfect health, which I am promoting. I wonder where my family pees? I've never seen anyone use the latrine. Hmmmm.

Third night. Dehydration totally worked. I feel dry and scale-y but didn't have to pee.

On my last day, I decided to play volleyball (Peruvians love volleyball) with my brothers, sister and uncle. I was wearing my 'rain boots'* and I dove to hit the ball, landed on a rocked, twisted my ankle and collapsed to the ground. I am in pain. It's somewhere between Nancy Kerrigan and Peter Griffin pain. My face contorts in lieu of sound.  Everyone helped me out and was so very helpful, it's hard to describe. But this story isn't about how ridiculously awesome my family is.  It's about my sprained ankle and urinating. I know it's not broken, but everyone is freaking out except me. After a few phone calls, it was settled that I didn't need to go to the hospital. Thank the baby jesus. I sat with it elevated on a tiny chair and drew all afternoon. When it came time to have to pee, I loked at my host mom and asked, "Do you have a bucket for me?" 

Yep. The bucket's the best idea of them all. It takes a different skill set than the latrine which I will master, I'm sure. The bucket came at a hefty price but it came nonetheless. I rested well that night.
 

Tengo suerte. En serio.

As life begins to work itself out, I am starting to wonder what part of my future I have a hand in. I mean, I almost always get what I want from life. Is that only good luck? How can I have that much luck? I'm beginning to think I have a hand in sculpting my own future. I have been placed in Ancash. I really couldn't be happier. Am I lucky or was it because I expressed my enchantment with the region to my directora? Both, probably.  In real life, I was littered with exclamation marks, hippe-esque hugs and wide-open mouth expressions. I jumped around like I was listening to post-punk techno remixes while  drinking IPAs at the Bedlam or something.  However, when I type, exclamation marks seem to cheapen the experience. But hell yeah, hell yeah. Hell yeah.

My two best girlfriends, Laura and Brianna are going to be really near me. Like tens of kilometers away. Compared to the vastness of my new country, it's a stone's throw. And that southern accent is mere hours away as well. Jesus. I really can't believe what luck I have. Luck, planning, whatever. Planning, luck, anything.  So many of the personalities with whom I will be spending so much of my near future seem endless yet also beginingless. They're old souls to me in many ways so unfamiliar; territory yet to explore. I'm up for the altitude.

My trip to Ancash last week was unknowingly relevant yet fun nonetheless. I taught in schools, painted a mural, built part of a latrine and improved a kitchen. And also engaged in a hippie hug-fest. That was the most foreign feeling to me since I've been here.

Besides that fact that I had a hell of a good time digging holes in the ground, gathering good rocks and shoveling dirt, I had the most fun making mud with my bare feet with my pal, Bradley.  We needed to make good mud to adhere the adobe bricks. That involved mixing clay dirt and water. The best way to do that was to take off your shoes and socks and make wine out of grapes. We danced in mud like paegens. It was magical. I may have increased to opportunity for worms to enter my GI system, but it might be worth shitting out feets of worms.

So for details about today... finding out our sites was appropriately dramatic and fun, Peace Corps style. I'm joined with a pretty great group of folks, I must say. I'm officially in Pomabamba, Ancash, Peru. Let's Google Earth that shit, for real.  It's a really fun name to say out loud. Try it. My town is only 550 people and 110 families. I will be able to get to know almost all of them and I get to learn Quechua.  My Spanish may never get fluent but hey, I get to learn an unwritten language lost to the Andes. I'm up for it.

I took this picture. I was really there. That's my real life right now and I can't believe it. I'll see that lake every time I travel from Lima to my site. Unfuckingbelieveable.

It's been an overwhelming week and it gets more intense this week. I got back early yesterday morning from the mountains and I'll be heading back there tomorrow night for 10 days. I'll meet my new family and learn some Quechua. It's going to be brilliant, awkward and intense. I can't wait.