He gives and takes away

So this blog will be quick. I have two super high quality stories to accompany the photos.

First the bottom pic. It is a picture of my latrine. I think you need to click on it to really appreciate the story.

My dad is a real handy man so of course he built his latrine by hand. It is really nice. Normally the latrines are made from corragated metal. Which you might imagine this close to the equator are just plain aweful. Our is made of a hole covered by wood support beems covered with a mud- concrete mix. It has adobe walls and has got great airflow.

Between us volunteers we joke around alot about are digestive tracts. We are always sick, and it is a part of every day life for us. So it manifests itself in conversation. This story is along those lines. About two weeks ago I went for my morning stop at the latrine. All seemed normal enough. As I sat down and got comfortable I experienced one of the scariest moments of my life. It needs to be mentioned that I have seen multiple scorpions in the latrine before, but this blows that level of fear out of the water.

So I was just getting comfortable when I felt the floor move. I do not mean an earth quake but the hand patched floor started to give way. I can only begin to describe to you what was going through my head, and it goes something by this. The floor is about to give way to a two meter deep hole filled with awefullness. To top that off I have my pants around my ankles and the walls look like they will fall on top of me as well. I have intergrated but if this were to happen I would not want anyone to save me.

The floor did not give out. But due to my irregular bowls I would continue to use the latrine. For another two weeks at least. Two days ago it happened. If you look closly at the foto you can see that the far side of the floor has caved in. I can say this for all of you that it takes a awlie to wake up in the morning. Being inside a collapsing latrine will get your motor going.

Now the big news. You can see in the fisrt picture one of my resident bats. I have no screens on my windows so at night the fly in and rest on my light bulb. The battle these noctural birds that have a call very similar to a monkey. We do not have electricity so at leasts it has some purpose. I have sat awake many nights listening to the squabbles thinking I wish I had electricity so that when the bats landed on the bulb it would burn thier feet and I would not have to worry about night rabies exposure. Well last saturday the elventh of July 2008 electricity came to LAs Colmenas. I can now do my work from home. I do not have to lug my 20 lbs battery 7 km to get it recharged. LIfe is good. Can you say ability to cook after 7 pm. Man this is awesome.

Bullfights in Chota

I live in a town that consist mostly of people who move here from the mountians. There are two towns in the province of Cajamarca that the people come from, sanat Cruz and Chota. Chota is famos for two things. One is that the people are violent and weild machetes. The other is for the second largest bullfight in the contry. There are only seven countries in the world that have bull fights.
The first one was really aweful. The matador was from Spain. He was supposed to be one of the best in the world. He had a hard time killing the bull. At that point I was not thrilled at all I had to watch anoth 17 bulls get treated like that. But the very next matador was from Mexico. He was increadible. He taunted and danced like no other through out the weekend. With out question he was the best matador there. But due to racism he did not win. The peruvians wanted a peruvian to win. The head judge is the acting mayor, so I imagine it would kill your carrer tpo vote for a foriegner. We did go out with the mexican guy at night. He not only was good at what he did but he was also one hell of a guy.
We were treated to the wonderful weekend by the volunteer who lives in a small town outside of Chota. He family had us over one day to kill a pig. Yes, kill a pig. The typical food of the region is fried pork skin. So her family wanted to prepare some for us. It was really nice to see a small cajamarcan town. To see the real form of life there. Her family raises guinea pigs, so they had a barn full of them. I mean hundreds of them. The food was great and her mom sent us on our way to the fights with a bag of meat. How sweet of her, right.
So the best story from the trip came on my last night. My buddy Justin and I went out to eat at a resturaunt. It was Chota so the fact that we were eating at the nicest resturant in town does not mean much. It just so happen that all of the matadors were sitting to the table to the left of us, and to our right was Grupo 5 the peruvian beetles if you will. About half way through our meal justing and I noticed something. We were getting better service and more attention that either of the afor mentions groups. We had a good laugh about it. We are very acoustomed to the racisim here but usually it is the negative type. I went to the grupo 5 concert that night and had a blast. It was one of the best shows I have been to in my life.
I got some huge news for everybody that I will put in my blog in the next couple of days. I am trying to get my pictures up but my camera is out of batteries. They will be up tomorrow.