Hello, I'm Mike Ross, And This is Dirty Jobs

Ok so I’m not Mike Ross, but I sure as heck have felt like him over the past few days. So I’d like to think that you all know what Dirty Jobs is (after all the people reading this are either friends or family and let’s face it, we love that show), but just in the case that one of you haven’t a clue: Dirty Jobs is where a man named Mike Ross travels the country looking for the Dirtiest Job. He doesn’t just look for the jobs, he does the job for the day, it usually involves animals (the animal itself or their poop), trash, or just a ton of dirt. Well as it usually goes, Mike tries to do every job while under the instruction of the actual person who has that job--the other dude/chick usually is WAY better at the job than Mike, and thus we have the comedic part of the show--Mike usually sucks at these jobs, well at least at first.

So back to my point, I have been Mike Ross over the past week or so. To set the frame, my host Mom is in Lima because her daughter is sick, so she has been gone for about 2 weeks now. Then there is the Flu that’s been going around my town (but thanks to my Flu shot a la Peace Corps, I’m still going strong) that took my Host Dad as its next victim this week. So Cleo (the professor that lives at my house) has stuck around this week to help me “run the house.” So I have a few interesting stories to go with the “running of the house” that is Dirty Jobs material…

First let’s start with Cows, they’re always on Dirty Jobs, so it just seems fitting. Well we are in the rainy season here, which has NOTHING on a rain NC summer, let me tell you what. It pretty much pours from lunch time till 3am, we have precious few hours without rain where Mr. Sun reminds us that he does exist…not that any work with cows is does while the sun is out. So Cleo and I walked the 1/3 of a mile to the cow pasture, a distance that should take maybe 10 minutes, 15 if we’re walking at a Peruvian pace…but we’re about shin deep in mud and my Chacos have become encased in mud, and Cleo has her flip flops in her hand cause they aren’t doing her any good on her feet. About 20 meters (yeah I think in meters now) from the gate Cleo eats it in the mud (hey its 5am and its hard to see, how was she supposed to see that rock?). Now my conscious had a short battle between laughing and helping, but it chose laughing while helping her up as the best route…well within 3 steps of helping her up, I fall into the mud. Now you all are probably thinking this is funny. Yes, that it is. But the clean bucket we had to carry the milk back in is now dirty. So we have to walk another 30 minutes (due to mud our pace was slow) to the river to wash off the bucket. We finally make it back to the pasture with a clean bucket, rope the cow, get some milk, and begin the dangerous trip back to the house…needless to say we came pretty dern close to crying over spilled milk. Not too dirty you’re thinking (well I didn’t have my camera to take a picture of how muddy we were) but it was funny.

Now pigs eat everything and anything…one of the reasons I usually try not to think about what any given pig here has eaten when part of it is on my plate during the day here…but our pigs, I know EXACTLY what they eat. Nasty watery leftovers/stuff that went bad/old burnt rice from the bottom of the pot, ect. And we store it in a bucket until it’s time to carry it in a jug to the farm house to feed the pigs. Now this usually is an easy job, but we had a ton of relatives pass through the other day so there was way more “pig water” (as we call it) than usual. And since Don Jose is sick, there was no Donkey to carry the heavy load…just a Jenny (which as Wendy and Leslie pointed out to me our freshman year means a female donkey…so it’s totally fitting). So I carried this 8Kg jug full of…muck…for 40 minutes because we were walking in the mud to the farm house. Then it’s Cleo’s job to give it to the pigs, because I just don’t like the smell. Well she didn’t realize how heavy the jug was and splashed the both of us with the pig water in the process of feeding the pigs. So we are now covered from head to toe in yesterdays nastiness, and to make it worse, my mouth was open so I had pig water IN MY MOUTH. Yeah, that’s Mike Ross material. To put insult to injury, since we smelled like pig water, the flies thought we were a walking birthday present during the 40 minute walk back to the house…

Then the Dog ate one of the ducks, and just left another dead for me to find...



Then today (Jan 22) we were all prepared to make chick peas to go with our rice and chicken…the only problem, this pesky little bug that loves to eat grains had beaten us to the idea and had put tiny little holes in probably 2/3 of the peas we had. So rather than admitting defeat like Don Jose and I said, Cleo decides to boil them for a while, kill the bugs, and pick out the bad ones. Great plan on paper…needless to say I was picking around chick peas with insects popping out of them all during lunch and trying my damndest not to bust out laughing and let the lunch guest in on our little secret. I’ve never examined my food so close before eating. But somehow the Senor that eats with us managed not to see the sea of insects that he was eating…thank god. Ok so not very Mike Ross, but funny.

Then for a not so dirty, but still alittle Mike Ross-ish moment. Cleo and I were pealing garlic (like 6 heads of it) to mash and store in an open container by our open wood burning stove (I need to work on that). And apparently I suck at pealing garlic at a Peruvian Pace…I thought I was doing pretty good…for every 1 I pealed, she had finished about 10. There goes my ego.

Well for now I’m heading up to the other pasture (yeah we have a ton of them) to go and grab some Wan abanas(I spelled that wrong…but I don’t know any other way), I’m about 99% sure it’s a bread fruit in English. A big ol green blob that’s got little white pods with seeds in the middle. Kinda tastes like yogurt…but not really at the same time. It’s a complicated flavor, but its amazing, so I’m going to go brave the mud to grab a few before the rain comes in.