3 Abril 2011

The bus from Arequipa dropped me off in Chivay at 5am. There was a comvi leaving for madrigal at 6 so I jumped on. Once there were 20 people crammed into the 15 passenger van they decided to pull out. I can’t believe how much colder it has gotten in the canyon since a week ago when I left. I had sandals on in Arequipa city and thought I was being a little silly piling on 3 pairs of the smartwool socks my mother sent me to come back home. No, not silly. Two pairs of paints, three long-sleeve shirts, sweater, gloves, scarf, hat, and hood weren’t silly either. And, I was still a little chilly. I always think that I am being a wimp when I make these little jaunts and see the tiny 70-year-old woman with bags of potatoes to sell in Arequipa City on their backs. Yeah, I have a bag full of a month’s worth of fruit and vegetables, but they do not weigh like potatoes do… and I am 24 without a humpback.

When I arrived at the house at around 9am my host sister and father were boiling the morning’s milk. They were delighted when I pulled hot chocolate mix out of my bag. I kind of feel sneaky with this hot chocolate. I found it about 4 months ago and it is pumped with vitamins, so I keep getting it every month. I feel like I am sneaking something dangerous into their food when I offer them chocolate.
Hey, that just gave me an idea. What if I could get local governments to economically supplement foods with vitamins so they are less expensive for poor communities to purchase? Especially something like hot chocolate! They already love the stuff, there wouldn’t be much of a daily shift to “get to” eat hot chocolate more often. Hmmmm.

Any ways, over hot chocolate my host father says, “El liebre ha partido!”-“The rabbit has parted”. I had never heard this phrase before. I am thinking, “It left?”. I gave him my confused face that he knows all too well and he says laughing, “The rabbit has parted, now we have a bunch of little rats running around in the pen.” Ah ha! So he said, “the rabbit has split”, not parted. I found this phrase hilarious and he made a joke about me being nauseous so often that maybe I will part soon too. Yeah, not so funny anymore. I promised him that the stuff that was growing in my belly has definitely ‘parted’. No more parasites for me.
But, in all honesty, it is cute how much Don Juan treats me like a daughter. He would just be fit as a fiddle if I brought a man home to him and announced marriage or pregnancy. I think he gets worried sometimes that I am 24 without a wedding or babies in the near future. And we share worry every time I think of the fact that the average age for a woman to give her first birth here is 19.