As of last night the nursing squad (Melanie, Brittany, Lauren and I) along with Matt (the english teacher) have moved away from the compund at 38 and will now be living at the clinic site for the next month and a half. Matt teaches his english clases sporatically through out the day, while the four of us girls head out into the surrounding villages to visit with the families. We visit the familes by ourselves to teach them more about nurtition, hygiene and other similar things. I feel rather like a character from Bible times - the roads are dry and dusty, little clouds of dust follow me everywhere as I plod along in my chacos. Overall the people are pretty friendly and love to chat with me. This coming week on top of the house visits and personal clases, our team will be doing health clases for the general public.
Last Sabbath (while I was still back at the mission at 38) while everyone else was sucumbed to the boredom of sleeping in the warm Peruvian heat, I decided to go for a trek into my jungle backyard. After about 10 minutes of pushing my way through the overgrown trail, I stopped to observe the wildlife around me. At first I saw nothing. But then after a breif moment, I saw 3 little black monkeys scamper around in the canopy above my head. To my suprise another little monkey in a tree behind me starting screeching a me. For some odd reason he was uber upset that I was in his half of the jungle. He proceeded to come down lower in the tree and squak at me. He actually came close enough that I could see his face - which oddly enough resembled that of an Ewok from Star Wars. As he scolded me he kept turning his head upside down under the tree branch and from side to side. This little 7 inch monkey was trying to be all great and threating, yet he was failing miserably. I could only laugh at him.
A few nights ago I had the pleasure of doinging the most random thing yet. I needed to dig a fence post hole, but didn´t have a shovel or post hole digger. It was also dark. But none the less, nothing was going to stop me, so I grabbed a little nail and a metal spoon from lunch and started hacking at the hardpacked dusty earth. After about a half hour of scaping, digging and chiseling away I had about a 7 inch hole, thankfully by this point someone had rounded up a post hole digger and whithin a few minutes had finished the remainder of the needed 2 ft deep hole. I love the improvisation skills I am learning here in Peru.