The life of Peace Corps volunteer has no flow, so neither will this next paragraph. I present to you my life this past week. In Spanish, it’s called a “locura”. Translation: CRAZINESS.
I’m really dirty. I’m sweaty and OH SO SEXY. It’s a Latin staged Carls Jr. commercial every single day of my friggin’ life! SPF 70 isn’t even a match for the equatorial sun so my face is sharp shade of lobster red. “Gonna have SO many wrinkles when I’m older. Maybe plastic surgery isn’t such a bad thing...” The sun is always particularly unbearable here but these past 5 days, it has hit a level of unberableness that I didn’t even know existed. My scrubs smell like pig feces but no one notices or cares for that matter. Hand sanitizer and Jesus are synonymous terms to me right now. We haven’t had electricity for a couple of days, cell service keeps going on and off, no water for a couple weeks, and when it does come, it’s brown…AKA it’s full of shit. AKA I bathe in shit! AKA I’m ALWAYS covered in shit! “The second you get into a hostel with running treated water, bathe for at LEAST an hour Gioconda, you nasty woman, you.” Hey but I haven’t had gastrointestinal problems in a few weeks so that’s a small win! The other day we took a trip to the river’s canal. The canal runs through the farmlands and feeds water to the hundreds of platano, mango, avocado, blackberry and orange trees plus some 100 cows, 60 donkey’s, give or take, around my Peace Corps site. When I bathed in the canal, I hate to admit it, health volunteer, disease prevention and all, but it was actually fun because I was playing shark with my kid friends and teaching them how to swim…but swimming technique instead turned into, tactics to NOT DROWN. “COJA EL PASAMANO!!” (GRAB THE RAILING!!) The mosquitoes are sucking my blood as if they’re another organ of mine. “Bastards.” I read about anatomy and the brain in the hammock outside of my house and all the kids pass by waving and greeting me, sometimes stopping by to talk. I get through about 5 pages in an hour. Today in the small school I work in, a 14 year old kid asked me what the word “leader” meant, and I flinched, trying to remember, “This is why you’re here Gioconda. Have faith, have faith, have faith.” My 24 year old friend in site asked me, point blank, what a condom was. HERE WE GO AGAIN…big flinch, a little sadness, a look down at the ground for a moment to think, “Where do I start with this one?” My new mantra - “I love questions! I love patience! I love questions! I love patience!” As I did a house visit for my Health Homes project, a goat was slaughtered right in front of me, the mom, and the baby I was working with (“Keep your eyes on the baby, G…EW, GOD DAMN, THAT’S GROSS! EYES ON THE BABY!!!!”). Subsequently, I was gifted the stomach, a very popular dish here in Peru. “DEF RE-GIFTING THIS! Where them hungry kids at?!?!” Let’s also talk about my fabulous Saturday night, which are so normal for a 23 year old girl! I got to stay up with the nurse in the health post because a 76 year old woman had a subdural hematoma so badly treated a couple days before, you could see blood through the skin on her head. The hospital’s an hour away. “Act fast!” The nurse opened her skull up right then and there, “sterile as we can be” and oh shit was it bloody. She made it to the hospital, obviously in an altered mental state, and obviously too late. That night, I fell asleep with the nurse at the health post on a patient’s bed cushion we dragged outside. The sky crystal clear, the stars so bright, the conversation so humbling, so sedative, then BOOM! Rain hits my face and I think it’s a bug. It’s actually a torrential downpour. “Must have been really tired, huh Gioconda? Move move MOVE…ugh don’t forget THE PATIENT BED!!!!!” I’m drenched within a matter of seconds. The pace of life here is surprisingly stupefying. Although I’m filthy, tired, thirsty, smelly, and itchy, I’m fulfilled.
I’m really dirty. I’m sweaty and OH SO SEXY. It’s a Latin staged Carls Jr. commercial every single day of my friggin’ life! SPF 70 isn’t even a match for the equatorial sun so my face is sharp shade of lobster red. “Gonna have SO many wrinkles when I’m older. Maybe plastic surgery isn’t such a bad thing...” The sun is always particularly unbearable here but these past 5 days, it has hit a level of unberableness that I didn’t even know existed. My scrubs smell like pig feces but no one notices or cares for that matter. Hand sanitizer and Jesus are synonymous terms to me right now. We haven’t had electricity for a couple of days, cell service keeps going on and off, no water for a couple weeks, and when it does come, it’s brown…AKA it’s full of shit. AKA I bathe in shit! AKA I’m ALWAYS covered in shit! “The second you get into a hostel with running treated water, bathe for at LEAST an hour Gioconda, you nasty woman, you.” Hey but I haven’t had gastrointestinal problems in a few weeks so that’s a small win! The other day we took a trip to the river’s canal. The canal runs through the farmlands and feeds water to the hundreds of platano, mango, avocado, blackberry and orange trees plus some 100 cows, 60 donkey’s, give or take, around my Peace Corps site. When I bathed in the canal, I hate to admit it, health volunteer, disease prevention and all, but it was actually fun because I was playing shark with my kid friends and teaching them how to swim…but swimming technique instead turned into, tactics to NOT DROWN. “COJA EL PASAMANO!!” (GRAB THE RAILING!!) The mosquitoes are sucking my blood as if they’re another organ of mine. “Bastards.” I read about anatomy and the brain in the hammock outside of my house and all the kids pass by waving and greeting me, sometimes stopping by to talk. I get through about 5 pages in an hour. Today in the small school I work in, a 14 year old kid asked me what the word “leader” meant, and I flinched, trying to remember, “This is why you’re here Gioconda. Have faith, have faith, have faith.” My 24 year old friend in site asked me, point blank, what a condom was. HERE WE GO AGAIN…big flinch, a little sadness, a look down at the ground for a moment to think, “Where do I start with this one?” My new mantra - “I love questions! I love patience! I love questions! I love patience!” As I did a house visit for my Health Homes project, a goat was slaughtered right in front of me, the mom, and the baby I was working with (“Keep your eyes on the baby, G…EW, GOD DAMN, THAT’S GROSS! EYES ON THE BABY!!!!”). Subsequently, I was gifted the stomach, a very popular dish here in Peru. “DEF RE-GIFTING THIS! Where them hungry kids at?!?!” Let’s also talk about my fabulous Saturday night, which are so normal for a 23 year old girl! I got to stay up with the nurse in the health post because a 76 year old woman had a subdural hematoma so badly treated a couple days before, you could see blood through the skin on her head. The hospital’s an hour away. “Act fast!” The nurse opened her skull up right then and there, “sterile as we can be” and oh shit was it bloody. She made it to the hospital, obviously in an altered mental state, and obviously too late. That night, I fell asleep with the nurse at the health post on a patient’s bed cushion we dragged outside. The sky crystal clear, the stars so bright, the conversation so humbling, so sedative, then BOOM! Rain hits my face and I think it’s a bug. It’s actually a torrential downpour. “Must have been really tired, huh Gioconda? Move move MOVE…ugh don’t forget THE PATIENT BED!!!!!” I’m drenched within a matter of seconds. The pace of life here is surprisingly stupefying. Although I’m filthy, tired, thirsty, smelly, and itchy, I’m fulfilled.
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