Una Semana Differente

Don´t ask why, but I´m feeling very disanimated about writing a blog. But I might tell you why, even though you (I´m sure!) aren´t asking. Maybe because I left it until last, and don´t have other stuff to look forward to afterward. Maybe because I started the day by delivering piñas to market, starting the drive at 4am. Or maybe because I had so much fun wandering around Pucallpa today, talking with vendadores (vendors/shopkeepers), I´d love to be outside talking with them more. But whatever the reason, I´m warming up to blogging now that the ideas are flowing, so I´ll give you a rundown on the week.

Since last week, lots has happened at Km. 38. We´ve pretty much finished preparing the chacra (field) to plant little mango trees, though we have a few more logs in one corner, that will have to wait until we get our motorsierra (chainsaw) back from the shop. The bigger section, that outside contractors were working on, is pretty much done too, but now the brush needs to dry for a while, then be burned. Unfortunately, another change seems to be the beginning/approaching of the rainy seasion, invierno. We´ve had two torrential downpours, with water covering the flat land aroud the house to a depth of 3-4 inches, and windblown rain running down the inside of our clapboard walls, making us move clothing, food, and books away from the outside walls and off the floor. But no real damage, and we´ve got the system down now. Pray for some more dry weather so we can get the chacras ready for planting.

We also lost Edwin, our expert chainsaw man. He´ll be working in Pucallpa (we´re 38km out, hence the name Km38!), closer to his wife´s family and easier to work on his house there. That meant some chainsaw lessons (and a little practice) before sending them back in, since they weren´t quite up to par when we got them back from when they were worked on a couple weeks ago, but we were waiting until the most urgent parts of the chacra project to send them. While Doctor was teaching, he taught us about the gun too, in case we have to use it on snakes, and to make sure we´re all clear on being safe around it. (The picture at the right was a one time only, check 5 times that the gun is unloaded and the safety is on, only for pictures exception to the no-pointing-at-people rule.)

This Sunday, Mauro, Brent, and I started harvesting piñas. None of us had ever done much with piña before, but the rains were making them ripen fast, and the farms around were harvesting tons, so we started in, not knowing how many we´d find, or even exactly what to look for. We´d been munching on the early ripeners for a couple weeks, so we´d started to get a little idea of when they were ripe, but still a lot of unknowns. By the end of the day, we had about 250 piñas picked, carried to the start of the path from th field, and wheelbarrowed the several hundred yards back to the house. A couple sacks we carried too (kudos Brent, for the huge sack when we were pushing to get the last of them in before dark!)

Monday, we started in on repairing a leak in the pipe from our water tower, but needed some info on how complete of an overhaul we wanted to do. That took a while, since Doctor was busy with patients. In the meantime, we washed some clothes, and were on our way to start transplanting some mandarin orange trees, when Mauro found a dead sheep. We couldn´t figure out why, and were digging the hole to bury it when Jenni got a hold of Doctor, who reassured us that the meat should still be good, since the sheep wasn´t sick, at least for the dogs. So Mauro butchered it, and we cooked it for the dogs. That took us almost to suppertime, a delicious tomato, potato, pepino (cucumber), onion, garlic, cabbage soup. We pulled a trick on the girls, late to supper because they were bringing the pickup back from their day in Pucallpa, and put the meat soup on the table instead. That brought some fun facial expressions! Then we gave them the real soup, and thankfully their appetites didn´t suffer too much. Then we loaded the piñas, and went to bed, in anticipation of today´s early (4 am!) morning drive to make the market before the fruit sellers open for retail business.

Then today, with the adventures of shopping, getting my watch glued together and a rip in my pants sewed up, and talking with my parents. And then I wrote about it here!