Roosters: They’re not just for mornings anymore!

I live in a sub-tropical paradise where you could eat your weight in citrus fruits if you wanted to. Every time I turn around someone is giving me an orange to eat. The dueña of my house gives me 2 or 3 pieces of her fresh baked bread every day, probably the best bread I’ve had in Bolivia, along with avocados and papayas from her trees. This being said it is incredibly hot and humid and the bugs are eating me alive. They have these little tiny bugs that they call moscos and they are the sneakiest little bastards. You don’t even know that they are biting you and the next thing you know your arm is covered with these little red dots. It kind of looks like I have the chicken pox and I know you’re not supposed to scratch them but I have so many on my feet and sometimes you just have to scratch and when you do it feels so good, so wrong, but so good. I started using some repellent and that helps a bit. Plus I retreat to my mosquito net cage at night, aka my bed and I am safe from the moscos. It is amazing how everyone you talk to comments on the heat and the moscos. I’ve had this conversation a million times in less than a week, we could be talking about anything and then inevitably this happens, usually a couple of times in the same conversation:

“There are so many moscos here.”
“Yes, there are.”
“The moscos are biting you.”
“Yes, all over.”
“You’ll get used to it.”
“Yes, I’ll get used to it.”
“It’s very hot here.”
“Yes, it’s hot.”
“It’s hot today.”
“Yes.”
“It gets much hotter in the summer.”
“So I’ve heard.”

Let’s not forget that it’s fall here. I heard that in the winter it’s very cold, but that it’s a humid cold, how is that even possible? In the summer it is just insanely hot and nobody does anything, you just drip sweat and talk about how hot it is. The good thing about the summer is that it’s even too hot for the bugs to bite you, so at least I won’t have to expend energy trying to swat them away. That’s another thing I do now all the time, swat at bugs whether they are there or not, it’s just something to do. I’ve also discovered that bucket showers are amazingly refreshing. During those extra hot and humid mid-day hours you just need to pour water on your head and it feels great. We have water on a fairly regular basis, it usually cuts out in the afternoon but it’s going strong in the morning and evening. There is a really nice bathroom up here where my room is but no indoor plumbing. The bucket of water flusher works great though.

The one thing that is almost as annoying as the moscos are the roosters. I thought the dogs back in Cuatro Esquinas were bad but that was nothing compared to the chorus of roosters we have here every day. Now I was under the impression that roosters were an announcing the sunrise morning type of fowl, but not these roosters. They crow at all hours of the day and night. The other night I woke up to the usual rooster chorus (much like the dog chorus this is when one rooster starts crowing on one end of town, setting off a domino of all the roosters across the town crowing for a good ten minutes) so I assumed, the roosters are crowing it must be about 5 or 6 in the morning. I look at the clock and it’s only 2am! What kind of ass backwards roosters start crowing at 2 in the morning?! It’s like they’re talking to each other across town and this is what I imagine them saying:
“Hey, is the sun up yet?”
“No, it’s not but I think it will be up soon.”
“Fred, what about over there, is the sun up over on your side of town?”
“No, not yet. Is it up over there?”
“No, not yet, but I think it will be up soon.”
“Yeah, it’s going to be up soon. Let’s keep talking about it because I think people are trying to sleep and we hate it when people sleep, especially that gringa Michelle.”
Plus, my family owns some of these roosters so it basically sounds like they are crowing right next to my window, hell they might as well be in bed with me. I just want to sleep in for once, is that so much to ask? They’re crowing right now and it’s nighttime! Do they think the sun is coming up it just went down! What is the deal?

Coming from the rigorous structure of training to no structure at all is quite a challenge. I have a good foothold in the school and I’m going to start teaching English there next week and I’ve talked with the new director about the school garden. They have 6 types of seeds but I think we should get some more, or maybe some seedlings. It’s pretty much just past the planting season so I’m not sure if I should put stuff in the ground or wait until next March. I’m going to consult Pepe when he visits next week. Other than the school I’ve just been asking around, talking to people trying to get a feel for what people want and what they have. I went to Aaron in the next town, which turns out to be over a 2 hour walk so I’m thinking about investing in a bike or sticking with the public transportation, trufis, trucks that sort of thing when I want to go for a visit. His town is really nice, a booming metropolis compared to mine, like they actually have a finished plaza and most people run some kind of tienda, selling something out of their house. He introduced me to the president of his woman’s group and she is definitely interested in collaborating with my women’s group and I think it will be really great. All the women I’ve talked to are really interested in making marmalade and that’s definitely something I can set up for the near future. This great family that Aaron is close with invited us for lunch and afterwards we went to their orchard to pick grapefruit, mandarins, oranges and tangerines. Then we went back and ate some of everything! So much citrus, so delicious. I had to wait until after 6 to get a truck back to my site because there was a motorcycle race (why?) But it was definitely worth the trip; I met a lot of people, talked about possible collaborations with Aaron and just got a feel for volunteer life from someone who’s already been here for almost a year.

So, what can I say really? Things are slow but you set your own pace. It’s difficult but very promising. I feel lazy and productive. I feel lonely and welcomed. I kind of awkwardly hang around with Doña Santusa´s family and invite myself to do things with them, like planting a whole bunch of onions in their field. This strategy seems to be working for me. I am going with the flow and enjoying the things I can’t do anywhere else, like riding with 30 Bolivians on the back of a truck or eating freshing cut sugar cane. Afterall, TIB (This is Bolivia.)