Excerpts from the Peanut Gallery

A Day in the Life of Someone Who Generally Fakes Knowing What She's Doing

Let’s just re-cap the events of the last 24 hrs shall we?

Tuesday:
3:30: leave house, take taxi to “Ex terminal” – the city broke up with it in a nasty event last February. Most people still go there, but they don’t mention it in front of the city, in case it looks like they are choosing sides.

3:48: arrive at Ex, wander down side walk along the road next to the terminal to where trufis are waiting (a trufi is a taxi with a set route that will pick up and drop off passengers along the way – generally a station wagon or a Japanese minivan). See, now where would be the sense in having the trufis waiting IN the terminal? Like I said, we still gotta keep up appearances.

4:02: leave Ex in the dust and head out to Yapacani (or as I ‘affectionately’ call it, Armpit – erm, that would be the literal translation).

6:30: arrive in Yapacani. Find moto-taxi (yes, that is a motorcycle taxi) to take me to office. With one bulging backpack on my back and a smaller-yet-similarly-crammed one nearly choking me around the front, I saddle up behind a nice man who takes me to the office.

7:08: multiple repetitions of that time I shot down one of the guys I work with when he whistled at me. The line “in your dreams” has since become the stuff of legends. I am not kidding. They are way too easily amused.

8:14: We decide that 7 am is unnecessarily early to begin work, and settle on 8. I also pretend to be working while really skyping mom and friends. Handily, my male coworkers mistake my guy friend I am chatting with for my long-distance lover. He obligingly agrees to take the heat and the boyfriend ruse continues. Local attentions are somewhat on the wane. We are grateful for the repose – although I regularly have to defend my non-boyfriend’s fidelity.

9:22: make tuna sandwich in dorm room. Our office is sort of out in the boonies, and while I know that I don’t have to go to Santa Cruz to get dinner – I still feel like I do, because there is no way into town if someone isn’t willing to drive me – other than my feet, but that isn’t much of an option if you ask me.

10:28: glorious bedtime.

5:00(ish): awake to sounds of rustling leaves, light patter of rain and –what’s that? Oh yes, the high school band practicing – or at least, the drum corps. It’s only slightly creepy to hear drums emerging from the nearby jungle.

7:09: awake for real.

8:14: on the road again – Willy Nelson not included. I think to myself as I walk out of the office, ‘time to go for a motorcycle ride, you LIKE this Kiki” in order to psych myself up for what I am expecting to be a long, bathroomless day in the campo (field) doing interviews in Spanish-which-turns-out-to-be-more-Quechua.

8:35: Am pelted with either a stone or a bug kicked up from the tailwind of a semi-trailer. “You LIKE this, Kiki!” I am also regretting the choice of footwear (flip-flops) as the dust kicked up from passing trucks and cars feels like sandpaper. But the sandals will come in handy later, just you wait. The scandalous truth though is that I DO like motorcycles and the palm trees they pass.

9:02: Begin interviews “Frank,” my compañero from work speaks to many of the interviewees only in Quechua. Sweet. Turns out that some speak in Spanish though, so interview carries on, without too much double translation for my head. I am now becoming quite accustomed to the blank stare and then the drift in gaze when they don’t understand me. That look kills me. I know what I said! I know it’s grammatically correct! I just don’t know why it doesn’t make sense to you! However, when things are translated into Quechua a funny thing happens. A look of understanding and then a nod and then they launch into a nice long story in response. The lights are all on and all of us are home. It is a brilliant moment when it happens. It also makes you marvel at language – how they can be so different, and how impressed I am when someone is fluent in something else, but also – how comfortable it is to hear your own familiar words. We are all fluent in at least one!

9:49- 12:00: More interviews are conducted. A river is portaged with the moto (2 times of course – Frank does the portaging) and I pray against piranhas and leg worms (which I am CONVINCED I will soon get on my next micro ride or by crossing rivers in flip-flops. There was a woman on the bus the other week that had a worm in a tight squiggle in her leg. Not kidding you. I know they are not contagious – certainly not by just looking at them down the aisle five rows back and with multiple bags of oranges and other market products in the way. But part of me still wonders and checks the backs of my calves daily).

12:37: We are back on the road. Dirt road. A road Willy would fear to tread. Actually, that’s a lie - I’ve seen worse. But I hear that Willy is a bit of a diva anyway.

1:21: arrive back in Armp- I mean, Yapacani for lunch. Discussion centres around bottled Starbucks frappuccinos and the Korean Hogwan educational system. Best not to ask.

2:19: return to office, spring my computer from the dorm and head back for the city.

4:41: arrive in Santa Cruz, in time to purchase flag (Independence Day is only one week away) and bottled Starbucks Frappuccino. Make friends with FOB American school teachers in line ahead of me in the supermarket, feel solidarity as one of them is a redhead.

6:36: arrive home. Sigh of relief. Tomorrow we do it all over again, but for tonight I am home.

Epilogue: The devastating events of the next morning are worth noting. I had planned to return for noon the next day to do interviews with a large group. This would have been an interview goldmine. I would have been able to get many more than I can get in a day of trying to go farm to farm (it’s a lot of distance and by mid-morning they are generally out working in their fields that could be far away). So I went back to the Ex and squish into the front seat of a trufi and wait patiently for our driver to sally forth out of the city.

Only to be informed that there was a blockade in Warnes, about half an hour out of the city. Now, blockades are not uncommon. Once already this summer I have had to cancel work because of a blocked highway. I was told that it is a very bad idea to cross alone (which apparently you can try to do on foot sometimes). The issue is this: often “they” are just protesting illegal taxis or some sort of regulation that they don’t like. But if the protest is political, it can be a pretty big deal. So I made the call to ditch the wonderful, beautiful few-and-far-between opportunity to get ahead in my interviews and stayed in the city. On the one hand – I was so frustrated to miss them because I didn't stay the night but on the other, can’t really change that decision now and coming home was a sweet rest. So I was set back, but not completely defeated: I had a blessed encounter with a doctor which leads me to our next post. Stay tuned.

posted by Kiki @ 4:21 p.m.