Small Bubonic Plague Outbreak

There was a rat in the toilet this morning.

It must've swum up through the sewer pipe from the sceptic tank and was doing a breaststroke in the toilet when Nico (my seven-year-old host-family "sister") shrieked and we all came running. Milton (the 15-year-old) poured a few bucketfuls of water into the toilet to flush the critter and chased it with several cupfuls of muriatic acid and we'll see if that does the trick.

There’s a small bubonic plague outbreak in Northern Peru as well. So far it hasn’t made it any closer than 3 hours away from Callanca. They grow a lot of sugar cane in the North and the rats that carry the fleas that carry the plague like living in the sugar cane. So a rat in your toilet is rather worrisome in that sense. But actually the cycle that brings bubonic plague to your doorstep is pretty complex: wild rats, the ones that live in the fields, have to infect domestic rats, the ones that like to live in houses, and the fleas that the wild rats pass to the domestic rats have to attach themselves to you, suck your blood and pass along the infection. So in all likelihood I will not die from the Black Death though it’s possible that I could be burned at the stake or see some other medieval phenomenon get the best of me since conditions here are sometimes uncomfortably close to those of the Dark Ages.

Monsefú

A couple of months ago a television crew came to Callanca to film and interview residents of Monsefú, that’s the District that includes Callanca. The segment they were filming was for a Sunday-morning program called “Domingo al Día” on América TV. It’s sort of a Charles Kuralt type program but more hip and upbeat with fewer long drawnout nature segments with cranes plucking shiny minnows out of silent, pristine marshes. The segment was really a plug for another of América TV’s programs, the famous “Al Fondo Hay Sitio”, a comedy telenovela that’s watched nightly by almost all of Perú.

On “Al Fondo Hay Sitio” one of the characters, Lucho, has been doing a lot of traveling from Lima to Monsefú and there’s some suspicion, especially on the part of his wife, Reina, that he has a girlfriend in Monsefú. The América TV crew came to Monsefú in order to film a segment that showed viewers what Monsefú is really like. There were many questions to interviewees about the romantic lives of Monsefuanos and many remarks from interviewees about how all Monsefuanos have at least two women. This is true, by the way. Many men not only have girlfriends but have families with more than one woman. This practice is common among men 40 years of age and older, much less commom among younger men, though many of them also have girlfriends on the side, but they’ve figured out birth control and are (somewhat) less likely to father children with their illicit girlfriends.

In the video below, Samuel, the interviewer, interviews me, some employees in a restaurant in Callanca and Eusebio, one of the owners of our duck-raising business “Patos Callancanos, Tradición Peruana”. He also interviews the mayor, some artisans and a chichera (brewer of a homemade corn-based alcoholic drink) in the city of Monsefú, the Municipality of the District of Monefú. You likely won’t understand what anyone’s saying but at least you’ll get a glimpse of Callanca and Monsefú, see what our duck farm looks like, etc.

The segment turned out to be terrific free publicity for the duck farm; a week after the interviews aired people were showing up from all over to buy ducks and debate the finer points of marital fidelity.

(By the way, I added two posts today so you may not have seen the previous.)

Here’s the link for the video:

http://youtu.be/UBqoocMoeBs

Feliz Cumpleaños

Here’s my host family singing happy birthday to Judith.

She turned _______ (less than 100 more than 50) on March 9.

Happy birthday, Judith!

In case your Spanish is rusty they’re singing “Happy Birthday”:

Cumpleaños feliz!

te deseamos a ti,

cumpleaños felices

te deseamos a ti!

Muchas felicidades!

Muchas felicidades!

De mi corazón,

de mi corazón!

Feliz cumpleaños, Judita!