Just Like Old Times

So while the past 2 weeks have been full of ups and downs, I’m going to be positive and focus on the ups for this blog entry (even though I’m so frustrated with a few people in my site I could scream…I’ll avoid that…). And not just any good ol ups, but ones that remind me of when I was a little kid making them even better!

I’ve finally gotten the Health Center to buy some paint to start a mural at the entrance to my town. I was a little disappointed when they told me it had to be about the new insurance plan for below the poverty line farmers (which is about 85% of my site) and not a really cool protect the environment mural I drew up…but hey, I get to paint so I’m happy. But not only did I finally get the materials I need, I now have helpers!! Some local girls have befriended me--yes I know have friends in site above the age of 5 who aren’t grownups-- and decided they wanted to help. So after helping a few of them with their math homework, which was kinda like pulling teeth since at first they just wanted me to give them the answers (a big ol no-no in my book) and then just wanted to guess (ugh), but after an hour they had started to get the hang of the Foil technique--ya’ll remember that one? We called it the Coke man and the Pepsi man or the Lobster claw too…if that helps jog any memories.

So once all 11 of the homework problems were complete we headed to their houses to ask for permission to head off with the gringa to clean around the wall the murals going on. I can only describe my interactions with one of their mothers as me being the 18 year old boy showing up at the house to take their 15 year old daughter out on a date… needless after convincing them that 1. Their child would not get into any trouble, 2. We were just going down the street, and 3. They’ll be home before dark (any of this ringing a bell from when ya’ll were kids?? Or mom, sound familiar?). We headed down the street to get to cleaning. My new friends Talia, Patty, and Jakie were super excited about helping the gringa clean…still not sure why they were so excited about cleaning…but whatever, its enthusiasm.



Once we arrived at the mural wall (which is currently painted—very badly might I add—with an old insurance plan advertisement) I divided up tasks. I let the girls get to scrubbing the paint off of the cement wall with the worlds thickest sand paper (it’s meant for sanding metal) and I put on my work gloves and got to chopping down the thorn-bushes that were overgrowing the wall. Now I can remember as a child wanting to do whatever my daddy was doing in the yard (well aside from mowing…that never looked appealing), be it weeding, mulching, spreading pine straw, or trimming bushes. It was all the better if I got to wear his old work gloves that were WAY to big for my hands, we’ll call it the “work glove effect.” Well apparently it’s the same for these girls—except I’m not their dad, I’m just the friendly neighborhood volunteer. They quickly grew very bored with sanding saying that I had the better job and they wanted to try it. So after insisting that they would work with one glove each (I only had a pair with me) and that Talia was big enough to handle the shovel, I let them at it. You would have thought they were playing instead of actually doing work. Giggling like the little girls they are (ok they’re 11 and 12, but still that’s pretty little) and squealing whenever a thorn gets the better of them. We only had one minor injury, a thorn decided to attack Patty’s toe, she went in flip flops even after I told her shoes were a better idea—“but my sandals are cute, tennis shoes are for boys”— the thorn was quickly removed with the help of my Leatherman, another thing they quickly fell in love with and decided to play with for a good 10 minutes.



But after being COVERED in paint and cement dust and our fair share for thorn scratches, I decided it was time to head back to get the girls home at the time I told their parents they’d be returning (I may be living in Peru but I’m still not a fan of the Peruvian Time…aka being 30 minutes to an hour late for anything). But my adventure was not ending with the walk home, oh no. As we are about half way back, the bus that takes people to Chiclayo was passing by. These girls squealed (rather screeched) with embarrassment—after all we were all covered in dust and dirt and apparently boys just can’t see us looking like that. The following scene is straight out of a teenybopper made for Disney film, but still funny: Jackie, the oldest of the group at 16 quite literally grabbed my arm and spun me around and then hid behind me as if that made her invisible to the bus rather than actually calling attention to herself (just imagine Elmer Fudd hiding behind a tree when Bugs Bunny looks in his direction) while Talia and Patty dove into the ditch…yes people, they dove.

Now the gringa is extremely confused at this point, because as I’m sure my mom and daddy will point out, I was extremely proud whenever I came back inside all dirty from helping my dad in the yard—it meant I had been working hard. However mad it mad my mom when dad and I would come in covered in yard clippings…to me, it was a badge of honor. But oh no, to these girls it was like pouring pig blood on them during the school dance…I know I just wasn’t a girly girl when I was little—but still, this reaction seemed a little over kill to me.

After the bus incident they giggled and were red the whole 10 minute walk back talking about how embarrassing it was that the boys saw them covered in dirt. Now I thought that that might be the last I’d see of them (since they seemed to hate people seeing them all dirty) but once we got to the first of their houses they asked “so what time are we going to clean tomorrow??” So I’ve decided while these girls act like they hate showing off their hard work (in dirt form) to the boys in town, they really think its super cool to be working with the gringa in site. That made me feel good. I’m glad I can pass on the “work glove effect” to Peruvians here in my site.



Now on a completely different, well ok not completely different note. Another childhood memory that was brought into light today (the 12th of April) was Ant Farms. Ya’ll remember those? The 2 pieces of Plexiglas held together by the green plastic with little tractors and a barn inside. You filled it with sand and then captured ants from the back yard and held them captive in their feeding them bread crumbs and cereal and giving them water with the little water dropper? Ok well I’m just going to hope I’m not the only one who thought it was cool. But I remember the coolest part was always looking at their tunnels, they’re cool and twisty, and just all around an engineering feat that they don’t collapse.

Ant Farms are cool when they’re contained in Plexiglas. When you discover one inside of the 50Kg (that’s about 110lbs) bag of sugar we keep in the front room… not so much. I went to go and grab sugar last night just like normal. Take the measuring cup out of the bag of rice, dunk it in the bag of sugar (without looking like normal) and find a MOUNTAIN of ants. Now, this was a new bag of sugar. I was used to the old one not having anything living in it and thus not needing to look inside before scooping out the 2 cups of sugar we’d be needing to sweeten tea for 20 people. But oh apparently this bag had been deemed ant-topia by the queen ant herself. So after letting a girly scream escape from my mouth (yes I’m ashamed it happened, but I wasn’t expecting to meet the entire crew of the Pixar film Antz before supper time) and dropping the measuring cup (that was more full of ants than sugar) to the floor I decided maybe I should take a second to admire their work. I turned around to flip on the light switch and grabbed the flashlight and shinned it into the 4 foot tall paper bag. Much like my ant farm…just I could only see the first few layers of tunnels that I had disturbed in grabbing sugar.

After admiring for a few seconds I decided I should let my host family know that the big ol bag of sugar had things living in it. Now I’m not sure what I was expecting their reaction to be. I mean, I know if my mom in the states had found that our sugar had equal parts ants to sugar it’d be one of 2 reactions: 1. She’s immediately throw it out into the garbage, or 2. She’s walk it down the street into the vacant lot and throw it there out of fear that the ants would reenter the house made that we’d disturbed their home and ruin everything. But my host mom just looked at me and said, “Ok, well go back and grab as much sugar as you can without ants and let’s put it in the drink.” I must have had the “you want me to do what with the huh?” face on because she repeated her request and I went back to grab more sugar…with less ants if possible. I tried to shake the bag a little—you know scare them out of their holes before I plunged my hand in—but this is a 110lbs bag of sugar, it didn’t budge. So I just did the quick dive and scoop maneuver and came out with an…I’ll say 85-15 ratio of sugar to ants and walked back into the kitchen to see what would happen next. My mom took the sugar, dumped it in the pot, and then handed my host dad a spoon and said to mix the sugar in and take the ants out when they floated to the top.

Yeah, I didn’t drink tea last night.

You Know You're A Redneck When...

So it all started day 2 here in Nanchoc, Cajamarca, which is a town fairly comparable to my Mother’s home town of Pikeville, NC. It’s a small agricultural town that’s more or less in the middle of nowhere and about an hour drive from “civilization.” Yeah, they’re about the same. If you re read that sentence you have no idea which of the 2 I’m talking about…I will say this, at least we have cell phones and internet in Pikeville.

But back to day 2, one of the Doctors at my health post made the rather large mistake of calling me a Yankee. Now to his defense, most Peruvians think that we (that’d be us gringos) are all from New York and therefore are Yankees…Needless to say after a fruitless 2 hours of explaining that I am most certainly not a Yankee, and that Yankee’s are from the north, still no breakthrough had been made. At about hour marker 3 the phrase Redneck came into light. People from the north: Yankees. People from the south: Rednecks. We didn’t get into how that’s not so true anymore due to all of the damn Yankees (which are another breed of Yankee) that move to the south—case and point: Cary, NC. But Redneck was a phrase that just didn’t translate with all of the cultural differences (no matter how literal of a phrase it might be), I tried to explain that a Redneck is much like a person from the mountains here (aka old school farmers), but that too did not translate the signification. In the end they were content with me just explain that it’s a saying for people from the south that live in the country. And that was that. Never brought up again.

Flash forward to my 5th month here in site. I’m working in my garden, and now understand the song lyric “loving me will be like working unbroken ground” because this dirt is TOUGH as all get out! But I’ve been picking and shoveling away at this 10ft by 15ft chunk of land for about a week now—tilling, putting cuy poop in the soil, all that good stuff to make my veggies grow nice and yummy and I’m basically done. But as you all know, no matter how much SPF my sunscreen has or how often I apply it, this white girl’s going to burn. It’s practically a proof in math (yeah math people I’m going there): If there is sun, then Jenny will burn. No doubt or question about it. It will happen. On day 3 of working I switched from my normal t-shirts (al la NCSU logo) to a quick dry t-shirt that had a different neck line—thus exposing my burned neck and the Doctors had a realization, “OH THAT’S WHY YOU’RE CALLED REDNECKS: one of them belted. Why by George I think they’ve got it!



So after a quick 5 minute conversation explaining that yes, most white people burn when exposed to the sun for a larger amount of time, even my mother and brother (two of the tanner people I know) have the ability to burn, they got it. Rednecks because our necks are red. Tada. So apparently sometimes all it takes to cross cultural boarders here in Peru is a little bit of sunburn. Who would have thunk it?

Belly Side Up

Being in the Peace Corps has given me a lot of…down time. It’s not a bad thing—let’s face it, life just moves way to fast in the US anyways, we could all use to slow down a little bit. But my down time has given me a chance to think about a lot of things in life. (Now to those of you who know me, which I’m betting is 99% of the people reading my rantings, you all know better than to expect something profound to follow that statement) And the one part of life that has particularly caught my attention during this rainy season is as follows:

Why is it when you find a dead cockroach they are always on their backs?


(Ok so this ones in a smear on the wall cause I smushed him)

Ok so you’re all glad to see I haven’t let any of you down, and that I’m still not a very pensive person…well I guess it depends on your definition of pensive, because I think this is a very important question that requires some thought.

But seriously, hear me out people. During the rainy season the cockroaches have headed into our house (which at times resembles the outside of the house due to a few lil holes in the roof and muddy floors) to escape the water. Now I will say my attitude towards cockroaches has changed DRASTICALY since moving into my first first-floor apartment (aka easy access for cockroaches) when I literally screamed and chucked a chaco at a cockroach that was flying in my living room (yeah who knew they could fly?). Now when I see a cockroach, especially if it’s a big one, I take a second to admire its size or the clicking noise they make when they walk on wooden doors before squishing it flat with whatever is at hand—a chaco, a rainbow, a Spanish dictionary. And they are everywhere, luckily they tend to stay in the hallways…or at least that’s where I see them the most so I’m going to pretend like they aren’t in my room… so I have a clear shot at squishing them.

But for some unknown reason a lot of them are dying—on their own. And it’s not like they’re the grandpa cockroaches that have lived out their long life snacking on dead bugs and or the candy that people have sent me and have then died of natural causes. I’ve seen a BIG ol cockroach, he was probably a granddaddy, the ones we’re seeing that are dead are tiny. Like cricket sized. And the sight of all these dead little cockroaches was enough for my host dad to ask if I’ve bought poison and that’s why they’re dying. No, I haven’t been poisoning them…but it’s a good idea…

But back to the dead ones, they are ALWAYS, without exception, on their backs. I asked my host dad why that is and I got the standard Peruvian “I don’t know gesture” (that would be to turn your head to one side, make a frownie face, and throw your hands up by your shoulders and raise your shoulders all at the same time while saying “ehh”). With my dad, who usually knows the answers to such random gringa questions a gasp, it lead me to do some thinking on my own.

Why are dead cockroaches always on their back?? Ok so I thought of the obvious connection between that and the 1920s mobster’s saying “he’s belly up” when talking about a dead guy (hey that’s pretty good considering I don’t have Google to help me think up these things in site) but still sans an explanation of WHY they do it. I will admit to turning off the light in the hallway and waiting on one to come out and croak (which is another thing I’ve thought of. Why is dying a frog noise as well?? But that’s another blog) and die on their backs. Sadly I didn’t see the death of a single cockroach, I did however kill a tarantula, and they roll up into a ball when they die— no matter how hard you hit them with your shoe!

So some hypothesis I’ve come up with (in a very unscientific manner):
1. They do a back flip in the moment of their death as a result of their muscles spazzing, and like how bread always lands butter side down, cockroaches always land leg side up.
2. They are super dramatic about their deaths (think cartoon deaths) and do the “oooh” “uuuuh” “arrrrrrgh” with accompanying hand gestures and grabbing at their chests (do they have chests?) and then do the standard twirl and flip landing with their legs up in the air and let out a “sigh” as their eyes roll into the back of their flat heads.
3. The ants are faster than me (they love to eat a dead cockroach) and always arrive before me to the scene of the death and flip the cockroach onto its back to prepare it to be carried away for consumption. Now the only flaw to this is that usually I see the dead cockroach without his ant predators.
4. It’s a trick my host dad’s playing on me with every single cockroach in the house just to see how observant the gringa is. (Ok so this is the most highly unlikely option between all of these. Not only because my dad is a neat freak and hates cockroaches, but because he can’t hardly see so find them all)
Yeah, I’ve been using my down time to its fullest extent in contemplating these occurrences. Now I know what some of you are thinking: Yes I could be using my down time to write a book (haha ok yeah we all know better), or solve some unsolvable math problem (yeah my math people know better-I like ‘em when they have an answer I can prove…and not in proof form), or perfect my Spanish (I’m gonna need more than 2 years to do that) rather than pondering the deaths of cockroaches, however comical the real answer could be. But hey, I’m a 23 year old with a 10 year olds amusement level. I still find bodily functions comical after all. Even more so since joining the Peace Corps—a Parasite is way more amusing than a fart, especially when they are put together!