sweat and tears

On Thursday I accidentally walked at least 2 miles through urban desert with the afternoon sun declaring war against my white China skin. I don´t know why I didn´t just get a mototaxi to chug me around from Becara´s Puesto de Salud (Health Post) to the primary school to the highway, which I missed because I took the wrong road, and decided instead to go to the next caserío´s school to talk to the director but they were in a meeting, so then back towards the highway to wait for a bus back to town. As I walked, fully aware of the blisters growing on my suede-clad feet and my sunglasses sliding down my sweaty nose, I decided that I was walking for four reasons: to save money, to exercise, to see the town more intimately and to let the people in the community get used to my being there. In retrospect I think I was just being stubborn with myself for no good reason. However, I did notice that the streets were pretty empty. Probably because it too frickin hot to be outside.

This morning, after I sweated out every drop of water I have in my body hand-washing my clothes, I went to the Centro de Salud (Health Center) to talk to the nurse in charge of a Health Ministry program called "Escuelas Saludables," or "Healthy Schools." She seemed receptive about doing a training workshop for teachers about the topic of hygiene, so hopefully the interaction between the Centro de Salud, Puesto de Salud - Becará and the primary school in Becará will unfold beautifully. I think my primary role in the community will be to foster communication and collaboration such as this, between different sectors in the community. So this is my first big step towards that goal. As I walked down the dirt path back home, I started to actually feel like an "agent of change," and giggled to myself because that´s a really cheezy phrase.

Yesterday I hung out in Piura with my friends, like we do on most Fridays, and saw Brokeback Mountain. At first the storyline seemed kind of forced but as it went on, it drew me in. As expected, there was some snickering from the sparse audience during the love scenes. In Perú, the LGBT presence exists in small corners of Lima and, once, the nightly news that flashed shot after shot of gay couples in Lima kissing on the street. I guess the main message of the “newspiece” was that gay couples exist in Lima. And that they kiss. My host sister was certainly shocked by it. She looked at me with a look of disgust and I was completely caught off-guard. I think I responded to her look with a look of contortion. Like there was no emotion conveyed through the look, it was just a look. Not exactly prime time to start talking about gay rights, although I would like to do so in the future. I think I will just tell stories about some of my friends who are gay in a casual way. The newspiece reminded me of the Kiss-outs (is that what it was called?) that they had on campus every year. The other PCVs in Piura and I did not expect that the movie would even show in Piura. Well, change comes slowly. At least it´s on its way!

I came home to an empty house except my slacker host bro was there, watching TV, waiting to go out to see his girl. After eating some guanabana yogurt with a banana (yum), I exercised by running around the house, one of the luxuries I have of an empty house. At 10:45, they finally came home. Apparently, it was the birthday of my host sister (the one who moved out) and she had invited the family to Piura for dinner after I left the house for Piura myself. At 10:50 my host mom called me downstairs to eat roast chicken and french fries they brought home for my dinner. I politely declined, as I had just been crawling under my mosquito net for bed when she called me. I don´t understand them sometimes, how can they expect me to eat chicken and fries after my bedtime?? Oh well. At least they understood that I didn´t want to eat at the moment.