Unfortuante policy choices, cuy and why I have too much time on my hands

More news today. I promise to put my own photos up soon.

It will probably not surprise you that women tend to start having children at a younger age here in Peru. It stands to reason that young people are having sex at a young age. Often (or at least sometimes) young women partner with much older men. This leads some young women to avoid the free national prenatal care for fear that their partners will be charged with statutory rape. Peru's response to this problem today is to lower the age of consent to 14. This article says that the vote in congress was overwhelming. It's at best disturbing that the answer to this problem is protecting the predator and not offering more education or life options to youth, especially girls.

Guinea Pig cuisine or cuy is popular here in the mountain areas. I tried it myself when I was in Cuzco and again in Cajamarca. I'm glad that I tried it twice because I thought that it was pretty gross the first time around. The cuy in Cajamarca was much cheaper and far superior. In fact it was free. I was at a conference and one of the attendees had some. His wife had packed him a lunch of two fried guinea pigs (whole) and a bunch of fried corn kernels called canchas in a plastic bag. He shared it with us and it was delicious. In Cuzco I went to a fancy tourist restaurant to have it. It was just the leg and hind quarter portion and it was baked but still managed to be greasy. Yuck. My advice, fried whole cuy is the way to go, especially with the canchas.

Finally, the reason that I have a lot of time on my hands is that everyone with whom I usually work seems to be on strike. The health workers want more pay and the nontenured ones want tenure. The teachers are also on strike. School is closed today and tomorrow for the strike. The teachers want more pay. Then Thursday and Friday are the Saint's Days for St. Peter and St. Paul, patrons of fishermen. Usually, this would be a holiday but I think that they're having school late in the afternoon (after the normal school day hours) to make up for the missed classes. Honestly, the details are still a bit unclear to me.

Special thanks to Ed for keeping me up to date on the Peruvian news circuit.