Parasites, yunses, and cumbia, ooh my.

It's another sweaty day in the Sechuran Desert. Today I've been working on a project with Doctor Franciscio at the Health Post. He has wanted me to do short programs about health issues for the town loud speaker system for a little more than a year now. I did a few when I first arrived but, the good humor of the emisora operators only lasted so long. The loud speakers are literally bull horns tied to a long piece of bamboo on somebody's roof. They’re called emisoras, literally emitters. Town's people pay 1 nuevo sol, about 33 cents to announce that they're selling fish, having a meeting, hosting a mass for a family member who passed on, or sending a hello message with an accompanying regatone song to a boyfriend or girlfriend. I don't really like talking on the emisora and people will only stand for The Gringa’s Spanish at 7AM for so many days running. So, I talked Dr. Panchito into recording himself talking about parasites and what not. Today he came over to my house to finally make the recordings with the microphone on my MP3 player. I had been to the Health Post to do this about 5000 times and could not pin him down. I finally I mentioned the project idea to Carlos, the Lieutenant Mayor who got excited about it and now asks the doctor about it every chance he gets. Fortunately for me, this situation put a bit of a fire under Dr. Panchito. He picked the topics, now he has recorded the shorts, and I’m trying to show him how to use the computer to edit programs on preventing parasite infection, respiratory infections, dehydration and diarrhea, and Dengue fever. There are all kinds of radio shorts on different health topic floating around so I'm taking a little of this and a little of that to edit together burn onto CDs to give the emisoras. The teaching computer skills may or may not actually work out. I got this software in a workshop to help with the editing and learning to edit sound has been fun. But, Dr. Pancho is a serious and hard to amuse kind of guy.

The first Yunse of Carnival 2008 was all that I anticipated and more. It’s absolutely my favorite party of the year, called the Fiesta de San Sebasitan. It’s not a huge national fiesta or anything; it's only celebrated in Rinconada. Everyone throws talcum powder at everyone else. I was complettely covered. Every last hair on my head was white. The tree with the gifts that they chop down, the Yunse, was friggin’ ENORMOUS. They used a front loader to stand it up in the lot where they had the party because the forty guys trying to pull it up with ropes couldn’t lift it. I’ll post photos soon. The men and women who will help pay for the party in the coming year took turns chopping down the yunse and when it finally fell everyone ran to collect their t-shirts and plastic buckets from the branches. It’s like a piñata. Everyone comes running but, it's not a paper machet bull or Winnie-the-Pooh. It's this enormous falling tree, incredibly dangerous, but fun.

Then the bad played and everyone danced cumbia and marinera until the wee hours of the morning. I ran off home at around 2 AM when my favorite buddy the cop got too drunk and grope-y. Half a block away, in my bathroom, I was washing the talcum powder out of my hair and getting ready for bed when I heard the singer start yelling at the cops to get the bottles away from people. It seems that the fights were breaking out. At the end the drunks didn't get out the machetes so everyone was fine. I discovered that I like chicha, the fermented corn alcohol that is common here. I usually avoid it, as when I first arrived everyone wanted me to drink with them and I had diarrhea for like 2 months. I think that I have acculturated in the meanwhile.

Also, I’m starting a new little project for myself and I want to read some good memoirs, any favorites to recommend?