After my first night in the jungle I feel pretty good. Everybody got up with the sun - i slept about an hour longer. The cocerels started shouting exactly with the sunrise. What a cool alarm clock! I love it! In the early mornings the jungle is covered in a thick wet mist, which makes everything very quiet and peaceful. It´s beautiful and so different to the noise dirty city.
When I get up everybody has left- Angel and Nilsa to work and the kids to school. Only Erika is in the kitchen and cleans the dishes. I try to help her. I have no idea how this family works, what time they eat, how they cook, how they shower - everything is completely different to anything i am used to. I will learn a lot in the next few weeks.
After cleaning i try to find out how to wash, as I am still totally sweaty from the day before. Erika hands me a bucket of water and points to a door in the ´dining- room´.
The door leads to the backyard and the toilet. The floor in front of the toilet is wet so I figure that this is the place they ´shower´. I try my first jungle shower which works pretty well.
Then I decide to make myself useful and try to find out where they get their drinking water. Erika explains that the spring next to the house where Alex lives is the only clean water they have. I take the container they use for water and make my way through the forest. The walk takes about 15 minutes. I fill up the bucket, which holds about 40 Litres and drink a coffee with Sebiño and Alex. I manage to carry the bucket back and get a lot of puzzled looks from people in their houses watching me march by. They are obviously not used to a white person carrying heavy things. Usually they send their kids to get water.
I have no idea how they do it...
After another afternoon of teaching i sit on the porch with the family trying to talk with them, which is still very hard, because of my limited Spanish. I can pick up a lot of what they are saying, but to say the things I want to say is much harder. Angel is very good with that, talking slowly and trying to use different expressions, when I don´t understand something.
They ask me whether I am married and how many kids I have. Eduardo warned me not to say that I was single or just had a boyfriend, because they would think of me as a slut. So I tell them I am married (estoy casada) and they all burst into laughter when I say that I don´t have any kids yet. Maybe one day (algun dia) I tell them and they look at me doubtingly.
The two girls Deisi and Rosa look at my hands and ask me why I don´t have a ring. The clever little things. Now I have to come up with an answer quickly as everybody is looking at me expectantly. I tell them that i took it off so that i wouldn´t loose it in the jungle. That seems to satisfy them.
The moon comes out - it is almost full and lights up the whole jungle. There are some beetles that have a greenish light in their back (I don´t know the english word. In German they are Gluehwuermchen) that look like stars in the trees and grass. The kids show me how to catch some ´luminacas´the glowing beetles and we play with them for a while. I take some pictures of the house in the moonlight and the two girls dancing in their dresses, which looks like two ghosts.
Angel sits on the porch smoking a cigarette listening to the cicadas and I decide that I like the jungle..
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