Pigs, Proms, and Politicians

More and more often, I find myself in the midst of wondrously strange situations, which can all be accredited to the fact that I live in rural, Andean Peru. Most of the time, I just let these oddities pass, until I sit in my room, and ask myself “How the hell did that happen?” I have a huge, endless list of these passings, and I am sure that my next two years in Peru will surely fill me with days, months, why, even two years of combined strangeness to make returning to the U.S. a struggle not only for me, but for all of you that will have to deal with me. Today surely proved itself to be one of these days. As I was sitting on my front ‘porch’ in a light drizzle, building a shelf out of recycled materials, my disheveled neighbor ran up to me to recruit my help to control some sort of animal. Well, then animal turned out to be the neighbor’s pig, who had some sort of cut on her right hind leg. My job, as qualified as I am with pig rangling, was to maintain control of the pig, and scratch her belly, while my neighbor picked out bits and pieces of straw and fleas from her leg. Needless to say, the 200lb pig was unhappy and uncomfortable with a belly scratch filled day of surgery, and she bucked and fought her way away from us as best as she could. After feeling unsuccessful with animal husbandry and amateur veterinarian skills, I surely thought that my recruited service was finished, until my neighbor ran up the hill with a bottle of grain alcohol, with a dead, curled up snake in the bottom, and a bag of talc powder. Apparently the surgery was not complete until cleaning the wound with snake liquor, and then applying a hearty layer of talc. After successfully getting myself dirtied to the point where I actually decided to bathe, I was released to return to building my lovely shelf of garbage.
A few days after Christmas, I was invited, along with my family, to attend the prom of one of our neighbors. Here in Peru, the entire family and all of the family friends are invited to attend the prom,

whereas in the U.S. it is only the students and some teachers to supervise. The day of the prom I had traveled over the other side of the mountains to have lunch with Pete, Alex and Kaitlyn (other volunteers from Peru 14 who are the closest to me, by about 4 hours) in Yanamito. Because the availability of transportation is meager at best, I decided that once I came down from the mountain, I would wait for my family to descend and meet me in Yungay (the largest town closest to us, where most shopping is done and where the prom was being held). After dark, there is little to no transportation to leave my town, and my family waited for 4 hours before a livestock truck drove by to have any sort of chance of descending into Yungay. After waiting for about 5 hours at my aunt’s house, my family arrived, and we arrived at the prom at about 10pm. Here in Peru, everything operates on La Hora Peruana, meaning that everything is late, generally by an hour.

Although the prom was scheduled to begin at 9, the ceremonies and speeches did not begin until 11, where the students began to file in one by one in a ceremony similar to graduation. After many, many, many long winded speeches (as is the custom in Peru) the dancing and celebrations commenced, at about 1am. As soon as the wind changed from formality to celebratory, every group of adults found their way to the beer table and bought a box of beer, which is about 12 large beers. In the circle that I found myself in, with my family of course, we sat around about 15 boxes of beer.

For the first few hours, I successfully drank very little, pouring only a few millimeters of beer into my glass before passing it onto the next person. However, as the night progressed, old Quechua women were noticing my trick, and chastised me by pouring me full glasses again and again, then throwing me onto the dance floor to dance huayno with their nephews, cousins and sons (all of whom they were trying to encourage me to marry). After hours and hours of dancing, people trying to teach me bad words in Quechua, and falling asleep in my plastic chair, it was finally time to leave, at 6am.
The next day proved to be equally as interesting, although most of the day, at least the first half, was dedicated to sleeping. At some point in the day, I woke up to strange noises outside, and decided that since it was already afternoon, it was worthwhile to investigate.
Interestingly enough, I awoke to find a group of Peruvians dressed in red vests and hats hanging up a tarp and signs in front of my house. It turned out that this group was a campaign team for a certain politician that was giving out gifts, hot chocolate and cake to the children of rural communities, as a way to promote his upcoming campaign to be regional president of Ancash. Strangely enough, they had chosen to hold their event at my house, because it is close to the road and easily found.

Eventually, about 50 children from the community and 20 mothers showed up in front of my house to receive their gifts. A rule in Peace Corps is that we are prohibited from participating in any political rally, or showing any type of support or loyalty to any political party. Therefore, I was unable to help the campaign team pass out their toys, but I made myself useful with helping the mothers cook and open about 60 cans of milk with a pocket knife. As any Peruvian visiting Huashao is confused by my presence, the campaign team was completely flustered by an

American living in the middle of nowhere, in a farming community in the mountains. As I do all the time, I explained to them what Peace Corps is, what my work is concerned with and that I will be living here for two years. The conclusion they made from my eloquent speech was that I am a doctor. Not at all what I had explained. Anywho, after about 3 hours of listening to rants from the political team and watching them hand out dolls and trucks, they finally left, but no of course before giving me my own toy doll.

Back to the topic of pigs, two Sundays ago I was invited to my grandmother's house to help slaughter and prepare their pig, to celebrate my cousin's return to Lima. Luckily, I had just missed the actual slaughter, but I was present for the shaving, skinning and cutting up of the pig. Killing and cooking a pig is a full day event, and the entire family participates in the process. The men generally did most of the cutting and skinning of the meat, whereas the women did all of the cooking and peeling. Before we had our dinner of fried pork, we were given bowls of fried tripe, which, I can most certainly say, I will never be accustomed to.