Today we went to work in the chacra again- the families ´garden´. I am really liking working with the machete, cutting through the jungle. It gives you a great sense of accomplishing something, when you see the result. My family looked at me with great amusement, when I first wanted to try to help them. Now they accept it and seem to really appreciate my help. I feel much more useful lately, since I know now how the family works. I can do things by myself, without having to ask.
I am still waiting on the cameras of the kids to be developed in Lima. It has been one week and everybody is so excited to see the pictures (including me of course). I had one lady coming up to me when I got back to the village on Monday, who was trying to tell me that she had taken some nude pictures of herself and didn´t want me to show them in the class. It was very funny and we laughed a lot. I told her I would look out for them and make sure they are kept private.
This last week has been the worst so far concerning insect bites. Anybody who has not been to the jungle can never understand how bad the bugs can bug you here. There are bloodsucking beasts around all day and night. At daytime it´s little white flies that you hardly see, or feel when they bite you. About the next day, you will have the worst itch from these bites ever. And there are not just a couple, you get about 100 on a single arm. Then around 5pm the Zancudos are coming out of the grass and they stay for most of the night. I have to wear long socks and gumboots at night, because these suckers seem to love my feet more than anything.
No insect repellant, apart from some super strong sweat and water resistent jungle formula stuff that I bought in the states, which has a side effect list that is longer than that of an anti-baby pill, has any effect at all. I had to get Lea, a friend from North Carolina, to send some more of that stuff, because it´s the only thing that keeps the bugs off you for about an hour (it says on the label "up to 12 hour protection").
You can not imagine what my legs look like. Alex, the English girl said before she left "my mum will cry when she sees my legs". And that is pretty much the state I am in right now. Not pretty.
Not much can be done about it and you just have to suffer in silence. haha.
Funnily enough the locals in the jungle get bitten just as much as me, but their skin doesn´t react at all to it anymore. They seem to have developed some kind of resistance to the bugs poison over the years. I guess if you have been eaten by mosquitos for several years, at some point your body doesn´t bother with it too much any more.
Apart from those nasty zancudos and sandfllies during the day, you also get some nice white chiggers, that the women of the village pick out of the skin with a spike of a cactus. Little Perci is completely covered in chigger rash and I observed how Nilsa picked the little things out of his skin. They are so small, that I could hardly see them. She has obviously got some long term experience with picking out chiggers..
I will get some cream for mine. Or nailpolish as I learned from an army boy;)
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