It seems to me
I could live my life
A lot better than I think I am
I guess that's why they call me
They call me the working man
Before I get into my shpeel, here, I want to warn you that there is some graphic language, regarding my reproductive organs, at the end of this journal entry. If you are offended by words such as testicles and penis, stop reading before you get to the bottom. Thank you, and have a pleasant day.
You might be wondering, what it is I do on a day-to-day basis in my site. It might seem like I´m travelling all the time, hanging out in the rainforest, or sniffing strange hallucinogenic powders with shamans, but that´s usually not the case.
In fact, I´m busy working on projects most of the time.
I work when I want and plan my own schedule. Currently, I´m working Monday-Saturday, and Sunday mornings. On Sunday afternoons, I´m teaching a group of young people how to play baseball, thanks to a former Peace Corps volunteer that donated all her baseball equipment to me. Here´s what the usually day looks like:
--Wake up at 6:15 A.M. and make breakfast, which usually consists of cooked wheat cereal, softboiled free-range eggs, and fruit.
--Work.
--Lunch at about 1 P.M., which usually consists of corn and beans, or yucca, or cooked platano, with freerange, organic milk.
--Work.
--Dinner at about 6PM, which usually consists of corn and beans, or yucca, or cooked platano, vegetable.
--In the evenings, kids usually come over and I help them with their homework, or I´ll study technical books on reforestation, sustainable agriculture, soil conservation, and income generation, or I´ll hang out at one of the village stores and converse with the locals.
--In bed by 10 P.M.
In the last two weeks, I have engaged in the following activities:
1) Planted vegetable seeds with community members in organic gardens at a local school and at a local daycare center.
2) Distributed and explained the use of “green manures” to local community members.
3) Held meetings with the owners of a brand new radio station, to discuss my upcoming radio show “La Hora Verde” (Green Hour), which I am scheduled to launch this month.
4) Participated in a meeting at the municipality to discuss site assessment for a new landfill to be constructed in 2004 (currently all solid waste is dumped directly into Amazon tributaries).
5) Gave workshop on natural/organic insecticides and pesticides to students at a local school.
6) Arranged for seed collection activity with Shuar Shaman for next week.
7) Led neighbors in community beautification project in a seed planting project, featuring a variety of ornamental flowers and plants.
8) Held meeting with local indigenous women´s organization to seek USAID funding for a clothing manufacturing project. Began feasibility study.
9) Planted 60 tree seeds from 3 different tree species at tree nursery with my counterpart.
10) Met with municipality to plan massive Neem planting activity for next week.
11) Planted banana trees and yucca trees.
12) Planned environmental economics seminar that I´ll soon be giving at a university in the Andes mountains.
Oh, and when I have time, I´ll squeeze in a couple of hours to wash my clothes, by hand of course.
You know what sucks? I got mosquito bites all over my testicles the other day.
You see, one very hot evening I was lying in my brand new hammock, naked (huge mistake!), reading my Natural Resources Conservation book, and as usual there were lots of insects flying around the room, attracted to the bare light bulb hanging there.
Well, I didn´t realize it till the next day, but while I was reading up on environmental economics in my hammock and in the buff, little bitty mosquitos were enjoying the taste of my gringo flesh and I didn´t feel a thing.
The next morning, I noticed that my body was feeling a bit itchy, but I brushed it off, thinking it was just a bad case of bed bugs. But by afternoon, I felt a hot, itchy, burning sensation between my legs. When I went to the bathroom to urinate, I noticed that my nuts were covered with mosquito bites, as were my inner thighs, ankles and waist.
My balls were so badly bitten that they didn´t really look normal. They looked lumpy and swollen. I counted the bites. There were over 40 of them on my genital region. And by night fall, and was going crazy with the itching.
Now, I´ll tell you something. It is very difficult to successfully scratch your balls when they´re covered by mosquito bites. They´re just too tender!
I put calamine lotion all over my legs, inner thighs and waist, but for fear of burning off my goods, I left them exposed to the air without any medication. For 4 nights straight, the itching was driving me up the wall and I could barely sleep.
Just now, the itching is beginning to subside, and I slept semi-normally last night with some minor scratching of my ankles.
I´ve learned my lesson. Anytime I decide to lie naked in my hammock again, I´m gonna cover my balls in garlic (natural insect repellent) and hold a jumbo-sized fly swatter in one hand!
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