The bad thing about being sick in the Peace Corps is that 90% of the time, we really have no clue what made us sick. We can have a pretty good guess, but we’re never sure. This is a new country with new sickness-causing-issues. In the States, if my head hurt it was probably because I had just spent a good 6 hours staring at a computer screen trying to get a MatLab program to work listening to country music way too loud to try and keep me awake because its 2:00 in the morning. Here in Peru its anything from the sun’s too bright, the weather’s too hot, or I spent too much time in the shade (don’t ask me, it’s what people in my town tell me). In the States if my stomach hurt, well for one thing it was a rare occasion that it did, but it means that I’m sick. Cold sick. Not I just ate something really strange that I know will come to bit me in the tail, which more often than not seems to be the case here in Peru.
Now every time I get sick I have to do a mini scientific analysis on my day’s food intake. Well it could have been that orange I ate and didn’t wash the peel first before I peeled it…No wait, it was probably that Jello that the nice old guy by the mural I’m working on gave me. Bet he didn’t boil that water for 3 minutes to make it like he’s supposed to...No wait, it was defiantly that puppy I stopped to pet. Did I wash my hands before I picked up my water bottle…or was that after? Gah, as you can tell the list just goes on and on. But usually before you get sick here, you get…well for lack of a better phrase…a gut feeling. It’s a grumbling/gurgling feeling that comes from deep down in your stomach that’s the bodily equivalent of a flare gun going off.
Like right now for example. The flare has gone up, I’m about 99% sure that I’ll be hating myself tonight and becoming good friends with my bathroom…again. Dern, I was on such a good streak. 2 months without a stomach problem. But today I went fishing with some friends…seemed like a good idea. And in the infamous words of a Miss Wendy Drake: what had happened was…
Today I walked a good 2 hours to “the good part” of the river that runs by my town in search of Chu-chas. Now I had no clue what a chu-cha was. I was just told that they’re A. Tastey, and B. easy as heck to catch because they don’t swim that fast. My kinda fish. I should mention fishing here doesn’t involve a fishing pole. It involves one of two methods. There is the throwing a fishing net with weights on the end to trap a bunch and fish out the big ones method. Or there is the Noodling method. For those of you unaware of what is Noodling, just let Google be your guide. It’s a “crazy redneck” method of fishing where you stick your fingers (hand, arm…whatever really) into a hole in the bed of a river (you know, under a rock, under a branch) and hope to god that whatever’s under there doesn’t have sharp teeth when it bites on so you can pull it out and say, “hey Bubba looky what I caught.” Ok so we do it a lil different here in Peru, you stick your hand under a rock, or whatever, and if it’s a squishy blob that doesn’t bite back it’s a fish, not a crab or crayfish. Then you try to trap it in a corner or pin it to a rock and get it from your hand to the bucket or bag as fast as possible before you lose it. Sounds simple right? Well with a little practice and strategy, yes it is.
The strategy you might ask? Why block off a feeder creek to the river with rocks and mud of course! Yes, there is a fork in our river where 3 feeder streams meet and turn into the big daddy river of Nanchoc. So we hiked up to the top and piled up rocks and river sand and stopped the water flow with a fishing net waiting at the bottom. The lil fishies had no where to go. Then what do you do you might ask? Well you go from pool or water to pool of water and turn over rocks and feel around for the squishy blob and try and get it out.
This is where I should say that a Chu-cha is not a squishy blob. In fact the first Chu-cha I caught, really it caught me…it stabbed me. A Chu-Ca is nothing more than what I call a Sucker fish back in the States. You know those little brown guys you can buy at the fish store that suck on the wall of your dirty fish tanks? The algae eaters. When you buy them they’re so little (if you’re cheap and get the $2 one like me) but if you leave them there long enough then get REALLY big. Apparently when they get big enough they have big old spines. Yes that cute looking lil fin on the top of a lil one turns into a gringa-stabbing instrument when they are older. Who knew. Then what’s even worse, who knew people would think they’re…good to eat. I mean, let’s do a little thinking here. They eat pond scum. And fish poo. And…you want me to eat one? Now I didn’t study biology, but to me that screams: I am a pond scum eating fish who has a ton of bad things living in my body so don’t you dare eat me! But I guess that’s just me…cause damn if they didn’t cook that thing up and serve me one…
Now I’m sure I’ve mentioned that in Peru, when you’re invited to eat something…you eat it. The family saying we have is “you’ll eat it and you’ll like it.” So I ate this fish. The Chu-cha. And the whole time I was eating I was thinking, “In about 4 hours this is NOT going to be a good day.” I finished the whole thing, except for the head, I have a personal issue eating the head of any animal…I don’t like it when they’re staring at me like that.
I was close, 5 hours later is when the flare went up. After acting like I enjoyed the fish (it tastes like what I imagine algae tastes like…can’t say I’ve ever eaten algae) and sitting around listening to stories, while trying to get the fish bone out from between my back two teeth without anyone noticing for an hour or two, we left to start walking back. The walk back always takes more time when you’re tired. Worse when your stomach hurts. I figured I was the only one who had had the flare gun go off. After all I was the only gringa in the group. I went with my best friend in site Cati, her boyfriend, and Carmen. But then Segundo (the boyfriend) mentioned that his stomach felt bad, followed by the rest of us admitting that ours too, felt horrible.
Needless to say, I’m going to qualify this as one of the 10% of the times that I’m 100% sure of what made me sick. Chu-cha…pond scum sucking fish of the devil (yeah that’s its new name in my book). The end result for chu-cha: they’re really fun to catch…not so much fun to eat.
For now, I’m going to go lay down and hope it’s not a bad night…
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