“I can’t believe it!! You can carry a lot of weight!”

I finally found my favorite street food lady, she seems to be so popular that she sells out long before I tend to get into town. She sells Rocoto Relleno and Papa Rellena, typical Peruvian dishes – Stuffed hot peppers (battered and fried!!) and Stuffed mashed potatoes, both of which are deeeee-licious. Of course, neither are complete without a serving of Aji, hot pepper sauce (the green stuff in the baggie).

I also finally decided to try “tuna” – the spanish word for cactus fruit. They skin them for you before they bag them up.

Prickly Pear Cactus Fruit by kretyen, on Flickr: ”Prickly pear cactus has been a staple of the Mexican and Central American diet for thousands of years. In parts of the U.S. it has been gaining popularity as an exotic, gourmet and healthy addition to one’s diet. The prickly pear plant has two different edible sections: the pad of the cactus (nopal), which can be treated like a vegetable, and the pear (tuna), which can be treated like a fruit. They grow wild throughout the American southwest, down to South America and up to Canada.”

Tuna/Cactus fruit from the cactus called Opuntia

No related posts.

So, what’s cache corruption? If you go to a web site once, everything loads just fine. Go to it the second or third time and all of a sudden everything is broken – links are plain blue, everything loads straight down the page rather than in typical positions and images either fail to load or copy themselves endlessly. Cache corruption is when the files your computer saves for faster loading times become corrupted, and upon re-accessing them everything goes haywire. If you clear your cache, everything goes back to normal but at its worst I was having to clear my cache at minimum ten times a day (there is also ctrl-F5, reloading and bypassing the cache, but it still wasn’t a fix). At first it was happening with just Steam and Facebook. Then it began happening with Amazon, Paperbackswap, the Daily Beast. Sometimes gmail would hang at loading. Basically, any site you visit regularly and heavy on the CSS (i.e. super fancy and complex).

At first I thought it was a Chrome issue. Well, all right – I’ll switch to Firefox. Then the problem began on Firefox. Forgetting why I had switched to Firefox, I went back to Chrome. Realizing both browsers were having the issue I began to look past the browsers and experimented with all types of anti-virus configurations – uninstalling and reinstalling the programs I was thinking of using, turning the web shields off thinking they were flagging the CSS as a problem, going without virus protection for short periods of time to see if that helped. Scanned for malware. Made a new profile in Firefox. Considered downgrading Firefox. Reinstalled Chrome. Set cache limit to 50 mb. Set cache limit to 0 mb.

The frustrating thing is that the only solution browsers offer is to clear one’s cache and cookies. Yes, it works, if you want to do it over… and over… and over. Depending on your problem, a new profile may help for the long term. But then I found a forum thread dedicated to Samsung users during my search and wondered if my issue could be system related. Searching brought up one thread in which someone says to uninstall Samsung Support Center.

I tried it a week ago. My cache corruption problems, as well as intermittent issues such as no videos loading anywhere on the internet and Readability refusing to register changes are gone. I was lucky that I came across the information because it’s scarce and I suspect most people are not aware that it’s an issue specific to a program that comes with their system. I’m ridiculously relieved it’s been solved – I was about to bring the computer to the Geek Squad and beg for some Valium.

So, TL;DR version: If you can’t load a number of websites properly on a Samsung computer running Windows 8, try uninstalling Samsung Support Center.

No related posts.

I’ve searched often over the years since to try and find more about the story and read up on it. I’d never been able to and began to wonder if it was true after all. That was until today, when I came across an article, The Last Laughing Death on Longform, one of my favorite sources for things to read. It is about a prion disease called kuru, in Papua New Guinea. While it mentions nothing of pigs, it describes the cultural practices of the Fore people and that the disease afflicted women and children in particular:

In each case, it is believed the victim had incubated the disease for an astonishing 50 years or more, having been exposed to infection as a child when participating in mortuary feasts that were an intrinsic part of Fore culture: that is, the cooking and consumption of the dead, every last piece of them, in order to hasten the journey of the departed loved-ones to the land of the ancestors.

Much later, Alpers, who had always felt discomforted by the term cannibalism — “you don’t like to call your friends cannibals” — would invent a new term for the Fore ritual: “transumption”. It borrowed from the lexicon of Catholic doctrine around the Eucharistic transubstantiation of bread into the body and blood of Christ. He defined the Fore custom as “incorporation of the body of the dead person into the bodies of living relatives, thus helping to free the spirit of the dead”. It was a final act of love by the grief-stricken. Yes, as anthropologists had insisted, there was a gastronomic element: people had given ready testimony that humans were delicious, especially their brains. But this was a perk, not a driver, of the practice, Alpers insisted, in papers citing the secrets shared with him and others over decades.

and…

The Fore’s complex eschatology declared that each individual had five souls; that after death they travelled the land on a kind of farewell tour from which ultimately — assuming various rituals over a period of years were honoured — they would be reunited in the land of the ancestors. The most efficient path to this hereafter was for the body to be eaten.
As Alpers, with Jerome Whitfield and other colleagues summarised in a recent paper: “If the body was buried it was eaten by worms; if it was placed on a platform it was eaten by maggots; the Fore believed it was much better that the body was eaten by people who loved the deceased than by worms and insects. By eating their dead, they were able to show their love and express their grief.”

It was the women’s responsibility to eat the dead, grinding the bones and cooking the flesh, indulging their children along the way with the tastiest bits. Particular body parts were given to particular female kin. Although small boys joined in the feasting, they were generally excluded after about age 10.

I know this can seem rather gruesome (can’t say the story of Jeffrey Dahmer didn’t make me cringe uncontrollably), but I never found it anything other than fascinating – especially the possibility that it was actually protein scarcity that had such an impact on cultural practices. It’s an incredible illustration of the interplay between culture and environment and one of the most fascinating articles I’ve read recently. In addition, there is a more anthropological and just as fascinating source on the topic available at google books: The Anthropology of Health and Healing, in which is revealed an ironic twist:

For women, kuru victims were the most desired source of protein: “the layer of fat on those who died rapidly [heightened] the resemblance of human flesh to pork, the most favored protein” (1979:20).

The research chronicled on kuru has had implications for more familiar diseases to us, Mad Cow Disease and Alzheimer’s. Without a doubt, a highly recommended read.

Related posts:

1. Universal Human Rights: Child Marriage
2. The question of an “advanced” human rights perspective and Western “imposition”

Fantasma (Ghost), gallo de pelea

There’ve been times when I feel like I’m witnessing something straight out of my cultural anthropology classes. I’ll never forget an ethnography we read about cockfights in Indonesia; particularly the spurs they place on the feet of the roosters that are so dangerous they have been known to disembowel their keepers if the roosters kick out. Failing in the “don’t judge, just observe” maxim of anthropology, the practice didn’t sit right with me at all.

Awhile back I was surprised to learn that cockfighting is somewhat popular here and I became ambivalent about my earlier views. Having the opportunity to visit the fights today, I tried to go with an open mind. I was warned there would be blood and death and blahblahblah, but I was interested in the experience more than anything else; to see yet another thing I had read about, albeit in a much different setting.

A man baits two roosters into fighting to show off their ability at a place that breeds and sells roosters for cockfights.

Above all, I’m glad I went and if I have the opportunity I’ll go again. They dropped the roosters to the ground for the first fight I witnessed, and we all sat watching them for almost five minutes as they scratched at the ground, crowed, flapped their feathers and wandered around the ring. I watched the crowd, trying to get a sense of whether this was normal or not and couldn’t gauge either way at all. Finally, one noticed the other and the fight was on. It turns out that this is generally the way fights go and that the roosters usually take time to engage. But at first it was quite comical to think that these two roosters who had been set up to fight one another were just moseying about doing the exact opposite.

A man baits two roosters into fighting to show off their ability at a place that breeds and sells roosters for cockfights.

Despite all of that, it only cemented and strengthened my earlier views – I just don’t think it’s right, and it seems downright cruel. Of course my understanding of cockfighting is limited given my command of Spanish isn’t 100%. I asked a lot of questions during the fights, and what I learned just frustrated me about the whole process given how senseless it all seems. They use spurs here as well which is what causes all the blood and death. A lot of whether a rooster is good or not also seems to be based on bloodlines and breeding, and I haven’t gotten a handle on what any of that means. One rooster looks like any other to me. You can ‘train’ your rooster, but I wonder how much that really helps. This concentrates on their physical prowess, which still seems more about chance to me. I mean, what if your rooster is having an OFF day?! In addition, they seem like very dim animals in general.

Yet another pair duke it out.

In every fight, at least one rooster must die for the other to win, and the winning rooster may have injuries grave enough that it also dies. That means the next match will be fought with another rooster of the owner’s. I had wrongly assumed that one rooster would fight its way through to the end of the tournament, therefore demonstrating it’s ‘the best’, but witnessing the injuries of some of the winners made me realize just how silly that is.

Cages and cages and cages…. tiny… dark… dirty.

It can be gruesome to see the roosters vomiting blood in their death throes. Luckily, they get a quick death after they’re carried from the ring. The winners aren’t so lucky. They don’t get medical attention, whatever their injuries, which again is senseless and cruel to me. It seems to me that this is really just a revolving door of slaughter, and I wonder how much the odds favor someone who has a huge amount of roosters given quality seems to count for so little (even though the countless conversations I’ve heard about rooster and hen bloodlines should tell me otherwise). Why would one allow the injuries of the winner to go untreated if not?!

This picture needs a caption contest. Pssst…. Fernando, when do we go for the killing blow?

I also wonder about the dynamics of ownership when you’re grooming an animal for something that could result in its death within minutes. The many fighting roosters I’ve seen are kept in small, dark cages. I’ve heard the argument that it’s “natural”, and sure, if two roosters come across each other in a field they will fight. On the other hand, it’s not natural to tie spurs to their feet so that when they kick out at each other they inflict grave injuries. It’s not natural to set this scenario up and ensure that they continue to fight to the death when they seem to lose interest or have had enough (in a few of the fights the roosters were repositioned when they stopped fighting).

It’s “give the roosters a special drink and talk about their condition” time.

I wish I could say I’ve gotten a handle on the cultural dynamics of such a thing in all the conversations I’ve witnessed concerning rooster fighting. Obviously there’s something beyond the brutality of the practice. It’s important to note that the region I am living in is agrarian and animals are often used for utilitarian purposes. They provide food (While this might seem obvious, I think this connection is lost to most of us in the shrink-wrapped, sterilized world of the supermarket.) in the form of meat, plowing the fields, and fertilizer. Not even pets are treated in the often doting manner of pet owners in the states. While I think there’s a limit to animal rights (I always think people should go first.) I wonder at what seems like obvious cruelty to me – is it the difference in viewpoints between those from agrarian and industrial societies? (Factory farming muddies the argument though I think few people would deny that it is cruel and there’s definitely an element of out of sight, out of mind.)

In the meantime, I’ve been marveling at all the anthropologists who have gone to live in cultures different from their own where they cannot speak the language, only to be able to piece together how they work and analyze what is going on around them. Either that, or there are a lot of tomes of bullshit on the shelves. I often feel utterly lost given the language barrier, and when making an effort to draw conclusions tend to second guess everything I think (count the use of the word ‘seems’ in this post). I suppose I can console myself with the idea that if I had the time to note everything I saw and heard given it was my intent, maybe I could synthesize it into something coherent. In addition, I can feel proud of myself that I’ve achieved something I used to daydream about in those anthro classes – going off to a foreign place to live in and learn about it.

A mummy with future breeding hens/fighting roosters.

Related posts:

1. Life in the Sacred Valley – Week 1
2. Culture Shock – Urubamba, Week 2
3. Grande Araña, EEK!!

Related posts:

1. Crazy Girls with Cameras Need not Apply….

The view from the bus on the way to Puno - somewhere in the region before reaching Juliaca.

Given El Arte Sano is tourism focused, much of my Basic 2 course centers around food: food vocabulary, menus, and situations like ordering and taking orders. To spice things up a bit (pun intended) I brought in a worksheet that profiled strange restaurants around the world. One of these, a restaurant in London called the Archipelago,  serves such things as locust salad and crocodile. I was mystified when my students couldn’t figure out which terms for locust and lobster were appropriate, and why they were such close words in the first place. The consensus seemed to be that the words were opposite the indication of the dictionary:  mangosta and langosta (Don’t ask me which is which, I can’t remember!!).

Yesterday I came across an article about the ritual of cooking lobsters by David Foster Wallace and was fascinated to find out that the word lobster in English is thought to come from “a corrupt form of the Latin word for locust combined with the Old English loppe, which meant spider.” Now having knowledge of the roots of the word, the similarity of the Spanish words make a lot more sense.

A tangential, fascinating bit of history from the article:

“But they themselves [lobsters] are good eating. Or so we think now. Up until sometime in the 1800s, though, lobster was literally low-class food, eaten only by the poor and institutionalized. Even in the harsh penal environment of early America, some colonies had laws against feeding lobsters to inmates more than once a week because it was thought to be cruel and unusual, like making people eat rats.”

When I told my students the current status of lobster in the United States as an expensive, indulgent food they seemed to agree with the above opinion. I love learning about these kinds of cultural differences.

A mural at one of the bus terminals.

Somewhat related is that when learning a new language one is bound to make mistakes – sometimes with hilarious and embarrassing results. (NOTE: Embarazada is pregnant – NOT embarrassed – luckily I learned that before ever saying “Estoy embarazada!”, “I am pregnant.”)

Once when asked for my phone number, I said in response “No me acuerdo mi nombre.” (“I don’t remember my name.”). The ‘b’ in both words makes me think they are the same despite the spanish word for number being numero (like ‘numeral’). I often have to think for a moment before saying the words name and number in spanish or I’m liable to make that mistake.

In the beginning, even the simplest things could be a bit of an ordeal. Getting photocopies was one of those. With my boyfriend in the copy shop, who could generally help me out when I messed up, I repeatedly asked for ‘nuevo’ copies. He and the shopkeeper both looked at me in utter consternation, and I returned their look with my own – NUEVO!! How hard is that?? Well, neuvo is NEW. Nueve is nine. (I still mix them up allll the time.) So when asked again and again for how many I was responding with new instead of nine.

I bought a pastry at the bakery once and, pointedly waving it, asked for the “basura.” Seeing the clerk’s shocked look I realized I must have said something wrong – I meant to ask for “bolsa” a bag, and instead asked for the trash.

The somewhat desolate landscape of the Puno region - houses averaged every few miles, nestled into the landscape of mountains and hills.

Related posts:

1. Culture Shock – Urubamba, Week 2
2. Día de Mercado (Market Day)
3. ER: Farm Animal Edition

A little Peruvian boy coming to deliver a puppy at my feet.

While I hesitate to post this, I’m genuinely interested in what other people have to say – particularly other teachers. When I first began teaching I would grade all the tests of my students as uniformly as possible. This came from the belief before I was a teacher that this was the fairest thing to do. Now having just a bit more time under my belt and in my second round of classes, I began to notice a big change in my grading process. Grading is modified depending on the student: While one student diligently comes to every class, working hard to understand the material but still struggling, another only comes sporadically and fails to take the classes seriously when present. I’d find myself marking the former’s test more easily while being harsher with the latter. One can’t deny that personal opinion plays into this: I really enjoy the student who struggles and don’t want her to feel discouraged. The other girl’s flippant attitude and space cadet ways annoy me to no end. Another example regards my best students. My first instinct when they make silly mistakes is to go easy on them: They know the material, this is just an instance where they slipped up. And then I decide they will be far less careless the next time around if I take off more points than less.

**A clarification that I wrote below in the comments: I probably should have clarified that the maximum points are all the same – if a struggling student differentiated correctly between “do” and “does” but didn’t conjugate the verb correctly I might take off a point out of 2 instead of all. If my best student did that I might take off the whole 2! Don’t know if that makes sense.

I’m still not sure if this practice is all right, but I’m happy to hear your evaluation – thanks!! Admittedly I didn’t even think about the idea that it’s a disservice to other students. I feel that because some of my struggling students work just as hard as some of my best but it comes less easy to them, they deserve the recognition when they’re on the right track. Some of my students got in the 70s on the last test – a grade range that I balked at before I started teaching. But I was really excited for them, because I could see the basic concepts were beginning to sink in. The number didn’t really matter so much as they were getting there! For me, their tests were great!**

Upon depositing the puppy at my feet, both children solemnly warned me 'Tiene pulgas' (It has fleas.). I really wasn't sure what was cuter.

When I first began to observe this new process, basically a unique mental calculus for every student, I was horrified. As mentioned previously, before I began teaching I believed that assignments and tests should be graded as uniformly as possible. To some extent, one could say this is the very rigid, black and white view of a person who never taught before. At the same time I wonder if this is the kind of slippery slope that leads to things like low marks for things such as political disagreement (As an ESL teacher, nothing I think I’ll have to worry about.). In addition, this does factor in my personal opinions just as much as it does the habits and abilities of each student. While somewhat less horrified by the realization of the change in my method of grading, I´m still ambivalent about it and interested in what other people have to say.

Related posts:

1. ER: Farm Animal Edition
2. The devil is in the details

A typical shop. I like this for the Inca imagery on the poster which is very popular around here. I'd love to know more about that - while it is often used to sell things (the poster is for Inca Cola), people still seem proud of the heritage and legacy of the Incas. I also like the sign Se Vende Miel - This is the construction in Spanish that means one does something: one sells honey. While exact, a more accurate translation is probably We sell honey. It's not uncommon to find these messages scrawled or spray painted all over doorways in the area that vary depending on the item.

Things that still fascinate me about Urubamba and the surrounding region:

• Most people live in the rooms behind or above their shops. To those of you who fight traffic every day on your way to work, whether it’s 20 minutes (given my intense dislike of driving even this had me cursing) to an hour or more – just think of the ‘commute’ from the back rooms of your living area to the front room of your shop. It’s not uncommon for people to close an hour or so in the afternoon for lunch. In addition, they often take advantage of the close proximity by doing chores or cooking in the back rooms while open – a ‘senora’ or ‘senor’ gets their attention so you can buy what you need. I wonder a lot about the economics behind this and how it impacts culture.
• I’ve come to theorize that an oven is a luxury item here. I’m not exactly sure what the standard of living is for the average Peruvian in my area though I’m pretty sure it’s nothing like I’m used to. I’m not even sure how many people have access to electricity given how dark many of homes are (‘rooms’ is actually more accurate). But when it dawned on me that there were public ovens that one could bring things to get baked for payment I was stunned. I’m still amazed by this and given we don’t have one I fully intend to partake in the experience of getting something baked. In addition, they aren’t the ovens we are familiar with but rather more like large bread or pizza ovens. People manage them and you leave your item with the specific time – something that seems iffy to me as I’m thinking they’re probably much more powerful.

Horno Caliente - Hot oven 24 hours

Below are various stories about my time here:

• Shortly after my return to Peru in January another scorpion made an appearance. Insects seem to like our outside door jam. Upon leaving the house for dinner, I slammed the door and noticed something dangling – a scorpion by its leg above my head. I kicked open the door (sound familiar?) and let it drop to the ground. A shout brought my new housemate running. At first I was going to stomp on it but figured distance was the best option and ran for the broom. Despite returning and charging in like Rambo, my housemate informed me that the scorpion had ensconced itself neatly under a ledge, just out of reach. In a wildly counter-intuitive move, I jabbed at it with the bristled side of the broom to the point that we could no longer see it at all. Resigned to being unable to kill the thing, we agreed to keep an eye out for it and I left the broom in the hall. I felt very silly, having taken charge of the situation only for it to result in a poisonous insect having free roam of the house. On returning from dinner I kicked open the door (a common theme) and did a careful inspection before entering. Barely visible, it had wedged itself into the molding behind the door. This time I completed my charge, not allowing myself to think about its VERY spider-like characteristics as I went for the kill. Note: In the past week scorpions three and four have made an appearance.
• Sometimes things go very, very wrong. In November we had planned a camping trip to Lares, hot springs about 2 hours North of Urubamba. I had just gotten a cold that week and I am currently in this years-long phase where colds make me feel like I’ve been physically hit by a truck. This one was no exception, but I was really excited about the trip and I had been talked into going. Two days of soaking in hot baths actually made me feel great – almost as if I wasn’t sick at all. By Sunday I felt well on my way to recovery. I had gone camping with a very bad cold and contrary to what I had anticipated it actually worked in my favor! Well, not quite. It seems I had to pay for brazenly taking such a chance.As we were packing up to leave it became cloudy and began to pour. There doesn’t seem to be any such thing as warm rain here – when it’s cloudy, it’s cold and when it rains it’s colder.

  We got in the combi (public transportation van) and I couldn’t figure out why it was SO COLD!!! I shivered for two hours, only realizing halfway through that I was sitting next to a broken window. By the time I got home I had a chill I couldn’t shake. A shower and hot tea would be just the thing. I generally don’t have a reliable shower in terms of temperature (….which means I go for longer stretches unshowered than I would ever permit myself otherwise….) but for some reason the water was wavering between hot and cold more than usual. I had put the electric tea kettle on so it would be ready when I got out. Well, we lost power in the middle of my shower – showers here rely on electricity to warm up – so this left me fumbling in the dark to turn off the water as it became numbingly cold. If I had a chill before, I really had a chill now and it was pitch black besides. I huddled under my blankets with wet hair and ‘waited’ for the power to come back on. Five hours later, at 1am, the lights woke me up. Relieved that I could finally do something about getting warm, I went to boil the water – except – it seems the loss of power shorted out the electric kettle. In desperation I put on two more layers of clothing and went back to bed in my hat and scarf in an effort to ward off the chill. The next morning I awoke with my cold as bad as ever and was sick for another two weeks. In spite of all this, I still loved being in Peru. If anything I got a funny story out of it and confirmation that I had made the right decision about coming here.

• It is currently carnaval season. I was disappointed to find out that carnaval isn’t celebrated as much in the Cusco region as in other areas in Peru. The surrounding towns celebrated this past Sunday. I have no pictures and I regret this. A major feature of carnaval is that people carry around buckets of water and randomly soak people. Silly string and shaving cream are also very popular and I spied huge sacks of brightly colored powder in Cusco. I was torn between worry for my camera and the desire to document. I did get shaving creamed by some laughing teen boys, and when I got over my surprise I turned around to go at them with the intent of smearing it on their faces. Marc held me back, which was probably smart considering they had two cans of the stuff and I had…. well, not much. Not something I was considering in the heat of the moment.

Typical shopfronts

Related posts:

1. Peru: Ear to the Ground
2. Life in the Sacred Valley – Week 1
3. Día de Mercado (Market Day)

A little girl in Urubamba's outdoor market.

Related posts:

1. Día de Mercado (Market Day)
2. Culture Shock – Urubamba, Week 2
3. ER: Farm Animal Edition

Domestic workers march in the Pro-Democracy parade on Hong Kong's anniversary of independence.

Re: Obama contraception rule goes too far

As a 28 year old graduate student I spent time in Hong Kong as a legal advocate for Filipina domestic workers. The majority of them, younger than I and with multiple children, were separated from their families for years in order to support them. When I read about sparing the Catholic Church a “crisis of conscience” I wonder when they will suffer one for their part in contributing to the poverty of Catholic developing countries where there is no access to birth control. I find it disingenuous to laud their work with the sick and the poor when their stance on contraception promotes poverty in the developing world.

99% of women in the United States have used some method of birth control. 98% of Catholic women in the United States use birth control. This isn’t about a government mandate that goes too far but rather about an archaic, impractical policy on the part of a church whose leadership is comprised of men who have never had to navigate the complexities of marriage and family life. It’s time for the Catholic church to enter the 21st century and amend its damaging stance on contraception.

More reading:

• Who’s Zoomin’ Who? Moving on From “Religious Freedom” Diversion, USCCB Wants to Exempt All Employers From Birth Control Mandate
• The White House’s Dangerous Dance With the Birth Control Mandate
• Religious Freedom? Let the Chimes of Freedom Ring (for reproductive health)

Related posts:

1. The Vote to Defund Planned Parenthood
2. A Retrospective
]]> http://erin-orourke.com/2012/02/10/letter-to-the-editor-re-obama-contraception-rule-goes-too-far/feed/ 2 http://erin-orourke.com/2011/12/21/chicken-er/ http://erin-orourke.com/2011/12/21/chicken-er/#comments Wed, 21 Dec 2011 04:01:15 +0000 Erin O'Rourke http://erin-orourke.com/?p=1338 Continue reading → Related posts:
1. 1/2 Sheun Wan – A 1st Edition of Mao’s Little Red Book
2. Peru: Ear to the Ground
3. Día de Mercado (Market Day)
]]> I seem to say this phrase at least once a day: “Life never gets old in Peru.” Something is always happening that is interesting, different or captivating. I had committed to making an appearance at a going away party last Friday, but other than that it promised to be a relatively uneventful, quiet and relaxed night hanging out with the Peruvian guy I’m dating, Marc.


A goat roots around for something to eat at the feet of the mother and child posing for my picture!

Instead, the night took an abrupt and rather fascinating turn when a mutual friend called Marc to ask for his help – one of his young chickens was badly hurt. We rushed out of the house and I assumed we’d be taking the animal to the vet a couple corners down from my house. It didn’t dawn on me what was intended until we stopped in one of the many little shops along the way and Marc purchased black thread, a scissor and a set of needles. The next stop was the Botica (pharmacy), where an anti-inflammatory usually intended for human consumption was purchased. Marc spoke to the woman and asked what dose he would give to an injured chicken – while I couldn’t understand all of the Spanish, the conversation occurred between them in a manner that suggested this was a perfectly normal topic and that the discussion wasn’t at all out of the ordinary. As I live in a relatively rural area where farms and roaming livestock are a stone’s throw away, this begins to make sense*. I try to imagine the same conversation taking place in a US pharmacy and can only wonder what kind of look I’d get from the pharmacist.



I somehow managed to catch the attention of the lamb I was sitting next to for just a moment before it returned to looking for bits of food on the market floor. Despite seeing how cute they are in person, they still remain my favorite food.

So we arrived at our friends’ and I could feel the blood draining from my face as I walked into the yard at even the idea of being in close proximity to a seriously injured animal. This was noticed with laughter and the comment of “tienes miedo” (roughly – you have fear/you are fearful). Yes, indeed – word was that its chest and stomach were ripped open and I steeled myself to look at the injury full on – I mean, my American friend killed the duck we had on our Thanksgiving celebration a few weeks before. The least I could do was woman up and really look. I mean, I’m in Peru. We settled on the couch, the operation to take place on the coffee table. I took a good look at the injury, felt slightly whoozy and think that any blood that remained really left my face at that point. I never knew one could actually feel the sensation of being as white as a sheet.



A dancer participating in competitive folk dances costumed as a sheep.

Regardless, I was in much better shape than the chicken and my curiosity mostly began to overcome lightheaded wilting. Our friends tied the feet and held the animal down while Marc prepared needle and thread. The injury was positioned to expose the stomach (Which I had to ask about – “Que es eso?” – “What is this?” with a point of the finger!) so it could be stitched up first. After this Marc closed up the outside wound. The chicken was obviously in a large amount of pain and this was somewhat difficult to watch. During this time a more detached part of my brain marveled that 1) I never thought I’d miss a party to attend an operation on a chicken and 2) I never thought I’d admire/swoon over a guy because he demonstrates prowess in sewing up farm animals.

As far as I know, the chicken was in good shape the next day. Unfortunately I left for a visit to Florida two days later and haven’t heard anything about its condition since. I highly regret not having had any sort of picture taking capability to record the incident but it was the last thing I was thinking about as we rushed out the door. It also seems there is a general lack of chicken photos in my collection despite my constant delight at walking into yards they roam.

*A somewhat related side note: In teaching the usage of “can” and “can’t” to my Basic 1 English students I aimed to pose culturally relevant questions, one of which was “Can your mother grow corn?” – the most popular crop in the Sacred Valley. All eight students answered “Yes, my mother can grow corn”, an answer which might be met with some humor and disbelief in the U.S. To them, it was a completely serious question and answer, reminding me of how much more I have to learn about my new home.

Related posts:

1. 1/2 Sheun Wan – A 1st Edition of Mao’s Little Red Book
2. Peru: Ear to the Ground
3. Día de Mercado (Market Day)
]]> http://erin-orourke.com/2011/12/21/chicken-er/feed/ 2 http://erin-orourke.com/2011/12/15/mucha-arana-eek/ http://erin-orourke.com/2011/12/15/mucha-arana-eek/#comments Fri, 16 Dec 2011 03:28:01 +0000 Erin O'Rourke http://erin-orourke.com/?p=1324 Continue reading → Related posts:
1. Vignettes on Adjusting
2. Peru: Ear to the Ground
3. Life in the Sacred Valley – Week 1
]]> Despite being an avowed arachnaphobe I’ve lived a relatively sheltered life in the New York suburbs. I have only witnessed the likes of tarantulas or wolf spiders in the glass cases of a tame place like Petco or the local zoo.

A few weeks ago while walking along a dirt footpath outside of town with a friend I witnessed my first tarantula “in the wild.” I grabbed her, peeking from behind her shoulder and yelling a number of English expletives as it crossed our path, alerting anyone within a five mile radius to the presence of a hysterical gringa. I was in such a lather that I couldn’t put my finger on why it looked so strange until my friend called my attention to the wasp that was dragging the tarantula along. It was, in fact, immobile. When I got home I looked up what we saw and was morbidly fascinated and absolutely repulsed by what Wikipedia states happened next:

The female tarantula hawk captures, stings, and paralyzes the spider, then either drags her prey back into her own burrow or transports it to a specially prepared nest, where a single egg is laid on the spider’s body, and the entrance is covered. When the wasp larva hatches, it rips a small hole in the spider’s abdomen, then plunges into the spider’s belly and feeds voraciously, avoiding vital organs for as long as possible to keep it fresh. After several weeks, the larva pupates. Finally, the wasp becomes an adult, and tears open the spider’s belly to get out. The wasp emerges from the nest to continue the life cycle.



I think the above description now calls for a picture of a rainbow. It was a double rainbow, with another to the right of it. A beautiful rainy season day.

So. Despite the looming knowledge that huge spiders exist in Peru I’ve done my best to pretend otherwise. The spiders that congregate around the door to my house generally freak me out, but they tend to be New York suburban size. Until today.

I returned to the house this morning only to notice a spider the size of my fist (and from tortured research I’ve done in the past looked to be a wolf spider) on the top door frame. One of its legs was stuck in the door, and I can only imagine, in true trauma producing form, that I failed to see it when I left my house a half hour before and upon slamming the door prevented it from falling on my head. If it had indeed fallen on me I think I would have needed a year of therapy. Hoping the spider’s immobility indicated that it was dead (I was dimly aware of the lack of logic here – dead spiders don’t just appear out of nowhere and then continue to hang out on one’s door.) I carefully unlocked the door and then aimed a kick at it to see what would happen. The spider stirred, at which point I screamed and ran across the street. There were Peruanos walking towards me who looked utterly bewildered at this display. That had to be silly Gringa moment #3752.

I had things to do and I needed to get in the house, or get on with my day. The little courage I mustered in having convinced myself the spider was dead now gone, I camped across the street to watch the door swing on its hinges and see the thing stir occasionally. There was no way I was going to remedy this situation with such a creature lying in wait to eat my face. I had a friend on the phone, but I find that my ability to speak my broken Spanish is all but dashed in stressful situations – I finally managed to yell something like “*MUCHA ARANA EN LA PUERTA NO PUEDO IR A MI CASA!!” (I was trying to say – big spider on my door, I can’t go in my house!) and then send a frantic all-in-caps text “MUCHA ARANA NO ES CHISTOSO NECESITO AYUDARME” (BIG SPIDER, IT’S NOT FUNNY, I NEED HELP).

Finally after a panicked run through of people I might get to help me, (said friend was 40 minutes away – I WOULD HAVE WAITED if I needed to) I called my landlady. I must ponder for a moment the virtues of being friends with one’s landlady – and even though I know that to most people this would be utterly ridiculous, I simply could not deal with a spider the size of my fist. Luckily she was quite close and appeared around the corner in a matter of moments. To my satisfaction, she agreed with my estimation of it’s size – HUGE – and after an unsuccessful attempt to reach her partner, took off her shoe and battered the thing to death as I continued to cower against the wall across the street (yes, I checked for spiders first).

I am still utterly bewildered as to why the spider ended up on my door when there are so many in Urubamba to choose from. When I got home tonight there was a small spider running across the tiles – I suppose as a form of therapy, I took out my rage my stomping on it as hard as I could – only to miss, resulting in it frantically running up my shoe. More stomping to dislodge it ensued. This is exactly why I don’t go for the larger cousins myself….

* Mucho/Mucha actually means something like “a lot.” My friend declared he would come to my house and kill all the spiders for me, and while I thought this sweet I was confused as to what prompted this, until I realized I had been using “mucha” all along: a broken version of “muchas arañas” – a lot of spider.

Related posts:

1. Vignettes on Adjusting
2. Peru: Ear to the Ground
3. Life in the Sacred Valley – Week 1
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