Friday May 3, 2013
I love even the seemingly uneventful days here. Today Dora and I got up to carry water like we do every other day at 5:15am. [We used to have running water in our house for an hour every other day, but it stopped coming about two months ago and now we go to Dora's sister Mimi's (a little ways up the street) to get our water. We each carry a five gallon bucket, fill it up, walk back to our house, dump the bucket in the pila, and repeat. Sometimes Mimi lets us receive water for the whole hour, but sometimes we only get 30 minutes. I have mixed emotions about the 30 minute days: one the one hand, I'm glad for the extra sleep, but, 30 minutes of 'water time' isn't enough to get us through two days comfortably, on those days the dirty dishes and clothes pile up, and sometimes we don't have enough water to fill up the big bucket we use to bathe.]
Mimi let us have the whole hour today, so our pila is about 3/4 full! :)
Mimi let us have the whole hour today, so our pila is about 3/4 full! :)
After breakfast Dora went to buy some thread and I heated up some water to bathe. It was already hot at 9am, but I heated up the water anyways [Dora thinks I'll die or something if I shower with cold water]. I had just put shampoo in my hair and was in the process of lathering when I heard someone knocking loudly on our front door. 'It's probably Willy or Julissa,' I thought, and continued shampooing. The knocking, however, got progressively louder, and I had no choice but to pull back the curtain, wrap up in my tiny towel, and answer the door. People always seem come by and urgently knock on the door when I'm home alone and naked. Typical.
I was ready to give my little Guatemalan cousins a piece of my mind so I fully flung the door open. You can imagine my surprise when I found myself standing nose-to-nose with Don Pablino, a man with a pick-up who sometimes gives us a ride when Joni [aka 'el muchacho' our usual tuc-tuc driver] doesn't answer his phone. Today Don Pablino had a truck-full of firewood that Dora had apparently ordered. I let him in and fled to dry off and put some clothes on. My hair was still soapy, but today was windy and I didn't want to give Don Pablino a free show. [When it's windy the curtain flys up, frequently and completely exposing the person behind it.] I came out of my room, after speed drying and putting on the first shirt and skirt in sight, to find this:
I don't know how he did it, but Don Pablino filled up the entire entryway in under five minutes. My first instinct was to laugh, I mean, this random guy just showed up, barracaded me inside the house with firewood, and acted like it was a totally normal thing to do. As I stood there laughing, Dora showed up. Luckily Dora got him to move some of the wood so that we could at least shut the door [as you see in the photo above] and ordered him to help her climb over the mountain of wood. The look on her face when she saw me in my half-clean state was priceless, yet, being used to my awkwardness, all she said was, 'Ay Raquel.' After waving goodbye to Don Pablino, we proceeded to haul and organize the wood. We really didn't have any choice because it's not like we could leave the house without figuring out the wood situation.
By the time we finished it was almost lunch time. Dora told me that she had a special surprise food for lunch. I was thinking it was maybe cheese to go with our tortillas, but no. It was giant ants. That's right, I ate giant ants today and they were delicious. Zompopos, as Dora told me, are giant ants that only come out once a year, after the first big rainstorm. People hunt/capture them after the storm and they are kind of like a delicacy for some of the people here. Apparently you can buy them in the market, but they´re expensive because catching them is tricky business. One of my uncles brought us some because he said that I just had to try them...
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Dora trying the first fried Zompopo while Letty adds lime.
Of course I tried one.
Ok, I ate half the bowl...
I couldn't help it.
They tasted like peanutbutter.
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