P.S. The doggis formerly known as Lila

Gitana is now living in the house I rent the apartment in. Apparently my landlord was looking for a dog. I had no idea.

Everybody wins.

Especially her.

She has gained enough weight where you can´t see each of her ribs anymore. She has been eating mostly kitchen food (dog food is expensive here!) which I think has helped.

Hello darkness my old friend...

This past weekend in Salasaka, there were a number of First Communions for kids from my sector of the community. Among the girls receiving First Communion were both my goddaughter Zoila and the girl I live with (Marga, the patron saint of abused animals). So of course, I found myself in church. Again.*

The morning started out innocuously enough, with a fine mist that was much appreciated. (When it doesn´t rain, or at least mist, Salasaka turns into a big dust bowl, which is exacerbated by the high winds at that altitude. You end up with dust in your mouth, nose, ears, eyes---you get the picture.)

However, what followed was anything but innocuous. By the time I got to the church with the kids (the parents were busy still cooking) it was raining in earnest. We went about setting up the table with the communion wine and host, at the entrance to the church. The tile floor was slippery due to the rain, but we thought nothing of it until ---CRASH--- somebody slipped and brought the whole table down. There was wine and wet wafers everywhere. Of course, it was blessed wine, which they don´t exactly sell down at the corner store. So, somebody had to go to the provincial capital to buy more. These things happen. We settle in and get ready to do some waiting.

In the meantime, a random woman (who is not Salasakan, but who is at the church, for whatever reason) approaches me and starts asking me a bunch of random questions. Then, out of nowhere, she asks me to be godmother to her daughter. In fact, she insists. I tell her that no, I already have both a god-daughter and another soon-to-be god-daughter (Marga) to attend to on that particular day (the maximum allotted god-child number being two for any one occasion). And so she then asks me whether on a different day, maybe for example, in September, I could be godmother to a different daughter for her confirmation. She is really pushy, and has unfortunately already noticed that I have a cell phone. I tell her it´s not mine when she predictably asks for my number. Thankfully, I also have an out for the September confirmation; I will be back in the States. She offers to change the date. I tell her that that´s not a good idea, since I don´t know how long I will be gone. She perseveres until I at least give her my business card (yes, I have a business card). I am pretty sure that she doesn´t know how to do email, so I breathe a sigh of relief and get ready to listen to the priest, who is by now making overtures at the front of the church while the 2-piece band is setting up.

The priest (who I know from when I baptized my goddaughter) decides to take advantage of having the captive audience while we wait for the new bottle of communion wine, and gets on the microphone to make “a few little announcements”. Through the over-modulated maxed-out speaker system, and with the mic about one centimeter from his lips, he starts lecturing the congregation about teaching their children manners at home, and how he has noticed some really badly behaved children around town. He says that he has even seen kids throwing mandarin peels on the ground. (Oh my god, not biodegradable trash!, I am thinking. As if the kids don´t have bigger problems.) He is posing questions like “Do you want your children to grow up to be lazy?”, and “Do you think GOD wants your children to be lazy?”. He then pauses dramatically, waiting for the unanimous chorus from the (with very few exceptions) indigenous congregation. “NO!”, they say in unison. He makes them repeat their responses to his absurd questions with more emphasis when he deems the initial response lackluster. I am already thinking that this guy is kind of a bastard, when in the middle of his numerous and petty call-and-response-formulated recriminations, his cell phone rings. With the mic still at his mouth, he pulls out the phone from under his robes to see who it is. I am surprised by this, especially in light of the topic at hand. Then (wait for it….) he answers his freaking phone. And proceeds to have a full-length conversation, in front of all 200 of us. We are all looking at each other with amazement as his little phone conversation transpires. After about 2 minutes, he hangs up and puts his phone back under his robes, without so much as a word of apology or an excuse. He goes back to castigating the parents some more about manners. Unbelievable. I´d like to ask him if God would want him to be such a racist prick. This would never, I repeat, never, never happen in a non-indigenous community. The church (and indeed, the congregation) would have his head. As this is all going on, I am trying to distract myself by looking at the recently-completed mural behind the altar, which depicts a bunch of Salasakans, walking through the countryside, sort of waiting in line to meet Jesus. Jesus, of course, is depicted as being white white white.


And then I notice that the closer to Jesus the Salasakans are in the line, the whiter their skin is. The baby that Jesus is holding in the painting looks more Norwegian than Salasakan, while the people at the back of the line have the appropriate complexion. There you have it, folks. In case you didn´t already know, Heaven is getting to be white.

While I´ve been spacing out and looking at the oil and water recapitulation of racist church ideologies, a man who is still drunk from the night before has wandered up the aisle. It is obvious that he must´ve gone to one (or several) of the graduation parties the night before, slept in the road somewhere, and then decided to come to church to chat with the lovely priest. He is gesticulating and mumbling, and stumbling closer and closer to the altar. He doesn´t seem to be able to see straight. On the other hand, everybody sees him just fine, although nobody wants to associate themselves with him enough to even remove him. People are in fact moving away from him like he has the plague. Once he gets to within a few feet of the priest, Mister Manners himself finally asks for somebody to please take him out of the church and (wait for it…) back to the bar. I´m sure that´s exactly what he needs, more trago.

Finally, the wine arrives and the mass gets started. The kids all proudly take their first communion, two-by-two. The parents and godparents are all gathering around, stretching their necks to get a better view. Some are taking photos. Todo normal. Until I notice the music. The accompaniment is an electric guitar and a Fender Rhodes-sounding electric piano, both turned up to 11. The majority of the hymns themselves are set to the tune of various Simon and Garfunkle songs**. I don´t know all hymns in Spanish (yet, although I will soon enough), so I instead sing the words to the songs that I learned while growing up. I´m sure that God won´t mind.





* I have been in church more in the past two months here than I have in the past two years.

**In defense of the Andeans, Simon and Garfunkle actually stole at least one traditional Quichua folk song that I know of, which we know in the States as “Flight of the Condor”. How the other songs got reintegrated into the Andean Catholic canon, I don’t know.

Did I mention that the road was out? And that I have a dog problem?

Aside from the lamb, etc., there was one other pleasant surprise waiting for me in Salasaka. A little dog. She seemed pretty badly beaten up, and scared, and hungry (emaciated, in fact). Definitely stinky.

You can probably imagine what happened next.*


Anyhow, one of the women I live with told me that she just sort of showed up at the house, but that she had a suspicion that her daughter had brought the puppy there, and just didn´t want to fess up. (Her daughter is 12 and an avid lover of animals. Aside from the pig, the cow, the guinea pigs and the chicken that she takes care of, she has a dog, several coy fish, and two cats.) However, since the little girl dog showed up, the actual dog tenant of the house had refused to come home.

Even so, I started giving the puppy some food and water, as she made herself more and more comfortable. Then I found the 12-year-old, to get the back-story. Apparently, some neighbor kids had been stabbing the puppy with agave leaves (which are also semi-poisonous) and throwing rocks at it. Being the good kid that she is, she yelled at them and took the puppy away and up to the house. Yet, the dog couldn´t stay there, which we both knew. So, we hatched a plot that I would bring the dog to Baños and find it a home. Easier said than done, as it turns out.

If you´ll remember, the road to Baños is still out (they are in the process of fixing it, really they are!). Also, I had to somehow get the dog past the neighbors, who would probably want her back; which no way, now how, was going to happen, and I definitely wanted to avoid that confrontation. So, I cajoled little puppy into my empty felt shoulder bag. She fit, with room to spare. We set out, first in a truck from the house to the center of town. Then, there was the convincing the bus driver to let me bring her onto the bus (“Look, she´s just right here in the bag! She won´t do anything! I promise! She´s just a puppy!”) He relented, and we rode as far as the next town, in order to catch another truck up to where the road collapsed. No trucks came, though, for whatever reason. Finally a father and his two kids pulled up, asking me if I knew whether the road to Baños was open or not. I kind of lied and said that I had heard that it was, and that I was trying to get there, too. Predictably, he offered me (us) a ride. His kids thought it was pretty cute that the puppy was riding along in my bag, with just her little head sticking out. It was cute. They pet her the whole way to the roadblocks. She only trembled a little. The family decided to wait in their car until they actually opened the road, which the police said would be in a few hours, which I doubted, but whatever. After thanking them, I went on ahead, walking and hoping to catch a truck at least up to the summit of the mountain that allows you to bypass the collapse.

So, after all of that, we are finally almost to Baños de Agua Santa, and I find myself standing in the back of a parked pickup with two Quiteños and a Peace Corps worker from Boulder. The driver doesn´t want to leave, since there are only four of us (which only earns him $1). So, we start trying to encourage other potential passengers to get in. “¡Trasborde! ¡25 centaditos!” It works, and pretty soon we are 12 people and a dog in the back of the truck. We leave for the summit. Little dog girl has still not so much as uttered a peep throughout the entire trip so far.


Now comes the fun part: namely, the descent. The descent is along a switchback path down the side of a steep mountain that, if it should rain hard enough again, will definitely come down. Luckily, it is not raining (yet). How bad can it be, I am thinking to myself, as I watch grandmas in skirts with canes making their way along the beginning of the path. It was a 45 minute descent, sometimes through slippery mud, sometimes at a 90 degree pitch. These are tough old ladies, is all I have to say. By the end, the dog is sticking her head further out of the bag, sniffing at the eucalyptus. I am concentrating on the burning sensation that has settled into my thighs and calves. Finally, almost home. Only one more truck to catch. This time, it´s a vendor truck, with the cooking appliances taken out to make room for transporting people from the site of the collapse. This time, we are 17 humans and one dog.

We make it home, 3 hours after starting out. This would normally be a 25 minute journey. By now, the dog has a name. It´s Lila (pronounced liy-la in Spanish). She doesn´t seem to want to come out of the bag that she´s called home for most of the evening, but eventually does, and then goes promptly to sleep (after being briefly traumatized by a much-needed bath).

Luckily, there is a combination vet/animal pharmacy around the corner from my apartment, which like everything else in town, is open on Sundays. The vet is amazing and kind. We get the basics out of the way first: she definitely has parasites ($1) and she needs a parvo vaccine ($2) to be street legal. She is severely underweight at 5 kilos and 9 or so weeks old, especially for a medium sized dog. I buy some fancy weight gain dog food for $8. And a little cat collar for $2. And some Frontline for the fleas that I´m sure are on her. And some little bowls for her food and water. So, about $20 later, Lila is well on her way to being a non-abused, non-parasite-ridden puppy.

As of tonight, Monday night, after the anti-parasitics did their magic, she is like a different dog**. Silly instead of lethargic, eating and drinking plenty, and making herself right at home in my favorite chair. She is still pretty shy with big scary people who are not me. She won´t go to the bathroom inside (yay for dogs born in the country). She also won´t go near the actual bathroom, which she now associates with a form of abuse that she´d never encountered before the other night (that is, a bath). She walks nicely on the little leash that I crocheted, albeit with some coaxing. She also happens to have a bunch of the same habits as Nina (like the whining and the forceful yawning). It is sure nice to have a little dog around, even for just a few days. As I write she is warming herself up, crammed next to my computer.



I am not looking forward to finding her a home, that is for certain.











*I would like to preface all of this with the fact that there is a huge stray dog issue in most of Latin America, and that, despite my so-called dog psychosis, I have never even contemplated bringing one home. I swear. I have befriended some of the strays (they know a sucker when they see one) but without ever even thinking about bringing them home. There are just too many. This particular dog, however, was different.

**Do not, I repeat, do not, ask or wonder about the horrible creatures that were living in her intestines.

P.S.

I promise that, whatever my next post may be, that it will not include yet another excruciatingly detailed explication of how effed up the road is, and how hard it is to get around.

Seriously, though. It is amazing.

Like this sunset, only not as relaxing.

Mmmm, meat.

So, I finally made it back to Salasaka this week, taking a truck to where the road used to be, climbing a mountain to get around the washout (and of course, descending said mountain), jumping into the back of another truck to get to the bus station, and then finally catching a bus to the center of Salasaka. And then, taking still another truck up to the house. Así sufrimos lo que amamos. It was kind of a long trip. That said, it was far better than the shorter, less physically exhausting route that involved the tarabita, or cable car. In fact, every time I have even thought about getting into one, this painting comes to mind (excuse the soft focus):


It´s in the church in Baños, and depicts a man who, in the 1880´s, fell from the tarabita and miraculously survived, thanks to the Virgincita. I am not so sure she would spare me in the same manner.

ANYway, the following day at the school was a very important one, so I was really glad to have been able to get back to Salasaka in time, by whatever means. We were having an open house for the end of the school year, complete with a program put on by the kids (in English!), a barbeque, a band, and about 70 people in total (including the parents, grandparents, and teachers and students from elsewhere in the community). The program went swimmingly, and the kids did a fantastic job of showcasing their English skills. This is particularly remarkable, because they have only had English classes up at the school for about 6 months. Small class sizes sure do help.

So, aside from the program itself, the part that interested me the most was the food (perhaps not so surprising, that). Besides the standard soup and potatoes that accompany nearly every big meal in the Andes, we had meat. Lamb meat. Lots of it. Adding further excitement to this was the fact that we were going to use a pachamanka, or earth oven, to cook said meat. People don´t do this very often anymore, as it is somewhat time consuming, but since this was a special occasion…

You make a pachamanka by first digging a big hole in the ground, and lining it with stones. Then, you make a big fire, which ideally burns hot enough to turn the majority of the wood into coal. Then you remove the coal and wood. What we did was then line the stones with bean pods, then put the lamb in, then more bean pods, then the coal on top of that, and then… Then you bury the whole thing (yes, with dirt). It takes about an hour to cook the meat to medium rare. Here´s a picture of the meat, and the oven while it was heating up.

And, here´s a picture of the finished product:

Man, was it good.

People were sort of surprised that the gringita (me) was eating the lamb with such enthusiasm. Oh, you have no idea, I told them…