Buzzards

Fun Fact No. 45: Tow or push? If you run out of gas on your motorcycle, or if it just doesn´t work, you can choose to have it towed by a motorkar (motorcycle with rickshaw thing behind it) OR you can do the most common thing: have a friend push you. You steer your motorcycle, your friend on his or her motorcycle puts his or her right foot on one of the the footrests and literally pushes you. Now, it seems to me like this would be a recipe for disaster, and I´m sure it often is. But I have yet to crash as a result of this method, and I have had to use it on more than one occasion. Very unique.

So you know motorcross? Motorcycles zipping around obstacle courses? Iquitos is like a big obstacle course and driving on unpaved roads (80% of all the roads in the city are unpaved) is like a game of chess or checkers: you really have to think about your next move and how that one will affect the rest of them. It´s great for a person like me who likes puzzles, but a little dangerous because my balance has not always been great. But I have yet to crash or fall, so there you go. On a really muddy road it´s a fun challenge to determine the best route. Often I have to stop altogether and analyze my choices: mud or puddle? Sand or rocks? The puddle might be deep, but the mud might be sticky. The sand always pulls your tires the wrong way, but the rocks could puncture your tires. It´s actually really great problem solving and it gets my mind off of other things.

So there are no flights into Iquitos between 9am and 4pm. Why, you ask? The buzzards over the dump. Yup, the dump is right next to the airport and there are so many vultures over the dump between those hours that the plane will crash. Ever seen Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade? When Sean Connery waved his umbrella at the pigeons on the beach and they all flew up into one of the Nazi bombers? Kind of like that, except they´re huge passenger planes and huge vultures. There´s a plan, though, and they´re hoping to be able to open the airport during the day within two months. They have yet to share the plan with Iquitos, but everyone is excited about it. Blow up the vultures? Blow up the dump? Move the dump? Who knows, but if it involves Iquitos ingenuity, I´m sure it´ll be great.

Speaking of Iquitos ingenuity, despite several glaring inefficiencies in this city, there are many clever solutions.

GARLIC. Don´t chop it. Use the back of a spoon to basically shave it close. Quick, easy, and no danger of cutting yourself.

TIRES. Don´t buy a new innertube for your motorcylce or bike. Use an iron and some tar to patch up those nasty holes. It saves a good amount of cash and time. And to find the holes, inflate the tube and then submerge it in water. Bubbles appear where the holes are.

DIRT. Don´t bust out bleach and whatnot to clean nasty grime. Grab some sand from the street and scrub.

FLIES. Don´t just smack them with the fly swatter. Because the fly swatters here come with big plastic tweezers in the handles to pick up that nasty fly and throw it in the trash.

LEMONADE. Don´t settle for just plain ole squeezed lemons and sugar water. Put it all in a blender with the skins of one or two lemons. It makes a frothy, tasty yumminess.

There´s lots more, but these are just things that I could think of off the top of my head. In our next edition, folks, I´ll be sharing a general critique of fuzzy and non-fuzzy animals as part of daily cuisine a la Michael O´Brien and Julia McReynolds´ clever and informative analysis of Argentine meat. My tales will include turtle, rabbit, armadillo, and other of our fauna friends.

Jews & News

Fun Fact No. 43: Pure bred dogs run wild! Seriously, there are Dalmatians, Huskies, Pomeranians, Chihuahuas running wild throughout Iquitos. I’m not sure how they got here, but they seem to keep reproducing and they run wild. Everywhere.

Fun Fact No. 44: speaking of dogs, they attack motorcycles too! You’d think you’d be safe from packs of angry dogs when you’re on a motorcycle. Big, two-wheeled noisemaker with an engine. It scares me, but not very many dogs. I have been attacked by dogs while going at a good clip on my motorcycle. Luckily I do have speed in my favor. And if you hock a logy, it scares them. I think it’s the aggressive throat-clearing action that intimidates them, not the phlegmball.

Once again, I fell off the radar. Sorry, folks. I need to get out of Iquitos so I am going to Lima and then Trujillo with my friend Lissette's family. Or maybe I'll just go alone, because I need to get out of this place. I don't know that much about Trujillo but people say it's great, so I'm going to give it a whirl. And then we'll see if I don't just hop a plane to Austin. Just kidding! I am being very productive in my fieldwork lately, so I know I need to stick it out. Plus my motorcycle is better than ever these days and I really enjoy zipping around town.

On Sunday I went to Zungarococha Bungalows with my new roomie, Sandrine (a fabulously low-key, super sweet French girl who works at the regional government), Monica, Gloria, and my mechanic, Hiro Hito (yes, his parents idolize Japanese culture. His sister is Yuriko...they're creative people). Zungarococha is a beautiful cocha (or giant lake) a good 30 minutes into the jungle. It's perfectly quiet, no motorcycles and there's a raft in the middle of the lake that you can take a canoe to get to and then just dive off and swim. The water is gorgeous: cool and amber-colored, and it's just lovely. We bought tacacho (plantain balls) and juanes (rice, saffron, and chicken cooked in banana leaves) and ate on the raft and floated on the cocha. It was heavenly!

The motorcycle diaries continue, and they're arresting the guy who took the commission off the sale of my bike. The good thing about the drama is I met Victor (the step son of the old man who sold me the motorcycle), an extremely sweet Jewish boy (hard to find here) who is preparing for his Israel Birthright trip. Except it's different here than in the US. Because there are so few Jews in Iquitos, they have established a program that takes the Jews in waves to Israel after three years of extensive coursework with the aim of keeping them in Israel. It's not just a visit, it's for keeps (if they want to). This is the third and final trip, with about 200 Iquitos Jews going. The first trip was in 2001 (800 Iquitos Jews), the second in 2004 (400 Iquitos Jews) and now there are only 200 left. 98% of Iquitos Jews who go to Israel end up staying there, living in Latin American communities and working and studying. Victor was so excited to see the pictures from Jamie Freedman's recent trip that he is as ready as he'll ever be. He leaves in September and he plans on bringing his family with him after 6 months. It's neat to see him so excited about it, and so into Judaism.

Genevieve's friend Carla was here with her BF Oron a few weeks ago and how lovely it was to see them! It's so strange to have someone from Austin here, seeing what I see and living what I live. It was great to have them, if only for a short time, and they introduced me to their friend Andrew who is studying with one of the few female shamans out in BFE. Andrew is a playwrite from California who speaks Spanish very well and now stays at my house whenever he's in town. A really interesting person, and a nice new friend. Most of you know that I could use real friends down here.

Turns out my landlady's a jerk. She ignores our calls and pleas for repairs and she owes me S/. 75 for replacing the deadbolt on the inside door of our house. We repeatedly asked her for a contract or lease or something and she wiggled her way around it. The funny thing is that because I changed the deadbolt (the other one just broke clean off), she has no way of getting into the house. So I guess right now we're living rent free. And because I lived at the lumber store for so long, I have friends who can fix things that are wrong with the house for cheap. Kind of funny, but great because every penny I can save, I will.

Recent wonderful news is that my dear friend Mario Luis (geographer from UT to refresh memories) was awarded a TAship for this coming school year so he'll be in Austin. I want him to live at good ole Andrew's Apartments, because he'd be a great new addition. I'm excited to have him in Austin. He was afraid that he would have to return to Paraguay without an assistantship, so we're both pretty happy. Good news!

Autumn....

Fun Fact No. 42: No napkins, no knives. Eat at anyone´s house and even if they serve the toughest meat alive (or dead, we hope), you will most likely not receive a knife. Or napkin. And if you get a napkin, it´s basically a square of TP. Little absorbing quality, I might add.

No, it´s not the same, but right now as we get ready to enter "winter", it almost feels like fall. Today I woke up cold, as it was about 75º and rainy. I put my blue jeans on (isn´t that a song?) and bundled up with a sweatshirt. The rain cleared and a nice breeze set in, and now the sky is a crisp blue and it´s sunny but not hot. It made me nostalgic for autumn in any place where the leaves change (unlike in the Amazon). Sunday was the same, and I did nothing at all the whole day long.

My house is really a peaceful place. It´s been lovely every evening around 9 to sit by the jacuzzi with a glass of red wine and chat with my roomies. We talk about what we did that day, and about what our plans are for the next day, and how much we enjoyed such-and-such a movie. It´s just so relaxing. And then around 10:30 or 11 I hit the sack and sleep like a baby until the next day. My running shoes were stolen, but I´m going to have my dad bring me another pair, and then I´m going to get back in the swing of the way things are supposed to be. I live right by a very, very, VERY long paved road that is perfectly quiet early in the morning, and thus I can begin my pre-training for New York or Chicago, depending on which one Karla and Michael want to do. I´m going to run my next marathon in 4:10, dammit!

I think the boss of Grupo Explosión is in the mafia. Well, he dresses like it anyway and it´s nearly impossible to get in to see him. You´d think he was Madonna´s manager at how inaccessible he is. I have spent about 3 days just waiting to see him for an interview that can´t seem to happen. Luckily I am not one to give up, and this is minor compared to waiting for other crap in this country to happen. You think the bureaucratic BS in the US is intense, wait til you see Peru´s. Grrrrrr!!!!!!

Other news is that Genevieve´s friend Carla is here (surprise!) with her boyfriend Ron, and it´s great to see them. It´s surreal having someone from Austin see my world here. Everything has become so normal for me, and I take a lot of things for granted. Like the enormous quantity of motorcycles here. Or the crazy fruits. Or the thatched roofs. Or the giant rivers everywhere. I need to appreciate it because despite all the crap, I know that when I get on that plane, I´m going to be sad, even though I´ll be thrilled to get back to Austin.

Global Disasters?

Me & Mariela Nieto straight from Buenos Aires, & me on my motorcycle.

Fun Fact No. 41: Papayas and Tables. That’s right folks, whatever it is that you need, be it papayas, tables, playing cards, pornos, yuca, you name it, there are people selling it door-to-door every day. It’s actually convenient, because just the other day we had some people over and we didn’t have enough chairs and a little kid was selling small wooden benches for about $1 a piece. We bought three.

Thank you all for your kind notes and emails. I really appreciate it. I didn’t share a lot of the crappy stuff that was going on along the way because I didn’t want to admit that I wasn’t having a good time, or that I really wasn’t happy here. But things are really changing and I am getting much better. Graciela and Cesar both come from shaman families, and they did some spiritual cleansings of the house, and it really made a difference. Plus just being in a beautiful house with great people has been so relaxing. I get to bed at a normal hour and I sleep a good 8 hours, something I was hard pressed to do in the other house. I miss the lake and the people in the other house, but I visit them every day.

My field work is also on the upswing. I got a great interview with a touring band the other day, completely by chance, and it got me thinking about other things. They say that your field work never turns out the way you planned and sure enough, it might just be taking a shortcut to a slightly different thesis. But it’s good – it’s opening my eyes to new possibilities and it’s making me think more.

On what has come to be the comical side (although it began as a traumatic headache), my motorcycle diaries continue. It turns out there’s an embargo on my motorcycle from 1997 that the original owner (a very, VERY unpleasant woman) never paid. I got fed up and went to the police. Sub-Official Lozano (a very handsome young man on the upside) is helping me straighten everything out. I’ve reported the jerk who took the commission on the sale, and it’ll most likely go to trial because he’s unresponsive, but I have two eye-witnesses, so it’s looking like I’ll win. It has really become funny, though, because more and more malarkey bubbles up. A curse? Perhaps. But I’ll beat it!

Not to scare anyone, but the end of the world is near. No, I haven’t started attending one of those nutty Pentecostal churches that litter the streets of Iquitos. But it didn’t rain here for 43 days in a row. Did I mention that I’m living in the heart of the Amazon? P.S., it’s supposed to rain here AT LEAST two times a week in the “dry” season, and we’re not even in the dry season yet. Decreasing water levels, overpopulation of certain fishes because they have nowhere to go combined with the fact that 98% of the Peruvian Amazon is either in contract or already sold to Big Petroleum companies are all signs that we’re going to hell in a handbasket. I’m not trying to depress you, although I’m sure you’re crying, but we’ve got issues folks. I’m going to need each and every one of you to write some letters and soon. I’ll get you the details.

On lighter notes, I saw the movie The Illusionist the other night. I really enjoyed it. Considering that the only movies that come to Iquitos tend to be crappy, I was pleasantly surprised.