375 days and counting

This past month has made me feel bombarded with drama (and no, not the theatrical kind, despite my recent addiction to Glee). While on a normal day, my town gossip could rival that of any middle school, the month of September has been especially exciting and given people even more to talk about.

I would say the majority of gossip and town-talked about issues are centered around the upcoming elections we have this October 3^rd. All of the town and regional mayoral seats are up for grabs and I have never seen so many ridiculous people run for office. In my district (my town plus four others) for instance, we have a total of 8 candidates running for office. I would say maybe ONE seems decent enough to not secretly stash most of the town’s budget away into his own pocket. That’s not a joke either.

However, there´s one guy that really gets my blood running. His name is Pepe. So Pepe is this severely- obese man that doesn’t actually live in my town (which I´m pretty sure is against the mayor-rules) but for some reason, is still running for office and has an annoyingly-large amount of support. So last night was his big ¨last night before the elections¨ meeting in our town square. For some reason or another, this meeting which was organized for him to “ explain his budget proposals” had fireworks and the town drug-addict dance on a stage, in a thong, with “ Pepe” written over her two butt cheeks. Oh, I almost forgot, her daughter (which she should have never been allowed to have), danced on stage in underwear too, albeit not in a thong. It was a night like this that made me question why men who advocate for this type of show during their “budget meeting” are allowed to even hold any type of power. But of course, the people loved it (or so I’m told). I was appauled.

So anyways, every morning I wake up at 6:30 to the rap and song mixes the political parties have made supporting their candidate on the loud speaker. I guess it’s my version of an alarm. And every night, a candidate holds a meeting in one of the towns to discuss their plans or budgets. Now, everyone in my town is divided amongst who they have decided to support. This of course causes problems. Now maybe things get “nasty” in the states in anticipation for the November elections but I have NEVER heard of people throwing bags of URINE at their fellow townspeople. Yes you heard me, bags of urine. Complaints have been filed because during one meeting, eggs, rocks and urine were thrown at those sitting in the town square by others who obviously weren’t happy with their candidate selection. However despite complaints, it still keeps on happening and I can only tell you how happy I will be with October 4^th rolls around and all of this will be over. Needless to say, I will not be spending election day in my site.

On a much happier note, my community health promoters and I threw a joint- August and September birthday party last week. I volunteered to bake a cake with my jank-ass oven that a) plugs into the wall and b) once caught on fire. So I baked a mean chocolate cake (recipe to be divulged at a later time) and brought it to the party. The party was being held at one of the promoter’s houses and I’m not sure why we picked his house because his wife is evangelical and that means 1. No drinking 2. No dancing and 3. No music and prior to going, we all decided that as a group we would all chip in for beer. So anyways I walk over to my promoter’s house with my cake in hand and upon getting there, I realize that my town’s without electricity and in a half hour we will all be sitting in a circle, in the dark and without music.

In order to avoid this calamity, I ran home to get my portable and battery-powered ipod speakers. Since mine was the only form of musical entertainment available, I had a room of 20 Peruvians listen to whatever came up on “shuffle.” This included Bruce Springsteen and Arctic Monkeys- definitely not what they’re used to. However, after an awkward five minutes passed, my health promoter Peter whipped out his air guitar and started playing along. Then we all started dancing. It was a real cultural-exchange.

So other than birthday parties and elections, my family has been dealing with some guinea pig baby issues. Four months ago, my brother bought two guinea pigs (or cuyes as we call them) to raise and mate and eat basically. He made them a little corral for them to live in outside and there was a brown male and a white female. The female is no doubt, the largest and fattest guinea pig I have ever seen in my life. She looks like she could eat a cat. Anyways, so we (my family and I) all assumed she was pregnant and we were super excited to start our own cuy-breeding business. However, as two months went by and no babies appeared, it was decided that she was just fat and not pregnant (the guinea pig pregnancy period is 60 days).

Because not a lot happens in my town, my family (extended family that is) and I have all been discussing the fertility of our female cuy and putting bets on whether she would ever get pregnant or not. Seriously, I would talk about this during breakfast, lunch and dinner- “ What’s wrong with the cuy”? “ Pol (my brother), don’t scare her, you’ll make her spontaneously abort”, “Maybe she’s just a lesbian.” This conversation lasted the better of four months.

So we’ve had this annoying, fat and non-pregnant guinea pig since June and we’ve had nothing to show for it. However to my surprise, yesterday (September 27^th) my brother found me and told me we had two new additions to our family!!!! At first I thought we got more chickens or something like that but then I realized the female guinea pig finally got knocked up and gave birth!!! The babies were actually really cute- except for the fact that they come out at like 4 inches long and with tons of hair. It would be like if I gave birth to a baby that was 3 feet tall and already had hair down to her shoulders. So that was a little creepy.

So anyways, my family is really happy we have two new additions to the family and I’m glad we can all finally lay our heads down at night and stop obsessing over a damn guinea pig.

Going in a completely different direction, I would like to thank you all for officially being blog-followers for over a year now! I’ve hit the one year mark on September 11^th and it feels really good to have a year behind my back. I didn’t do anything special that day except grab a chicken sandwich to go and a slice of apple pie (which gave me a severe case of diarrhea the whole next day- a cool 19 bathroom trips that morning alone) but the day did not go unmarked as I reflected how much I’ve grown over the past year! It’s been a good run, but I’m not done yet!!! Thanks so much for all of your support guys, it has gotten me through.