Always an Adventure

Well in my last post, I forgot to include an account of how one night I entered the kitchen to get some purified water. When I switched on the light, looking at me was the biggest, black rat I had ever seen in my life. I saw its teeth, its foot-long tail, and its large body and immediately turned off the lights and slammed the door. Simply leaving was my reaction after a flood of thoughts rushed through my head. Recently, another PC friend of mine that lives closest to my site told me a story about finding a mouse when he was cleaning up at his site routinely with his counterpart. One time when we were visiting his site, he found a mouse in the same place and accidentally threw the mouse on his counterpart and then later killed it using a box. The last mouse had the same fate, death. However this mouth's form of death was a little different. My friend's natural reaction was to grab the mouse. It bit him a little bit on his hand. He ended up squeezing the life out of the little creature with his bare hands. So as I saw this large, black rat in the kitchen at the co-op, this recent account ran through my mind. I looked down at my flip flops and decided I did not have the courage, nor the proper equipment to enter the kitchen and kill the rat: not with a box, my hands, my feet, nor any other method.

So after seeing this big rat and hearing from my co-workers that they had seen the same rat one day fall from the ceiling, I decided it was necessary to put out some poison. After a week, more or less, the two rounds of rat poison had been consumed. This is where the real story comes in... This past week, I asked the girls I work with if they smelled something bad. They told me it must be all the garlic I cook with. They seem to be very sensitive to garlic and really hate when I use it. I kind of shrugged this off, but really could not get past the smell. I had been using both the stove and oven frequently over the last week and each time I used it, the smell was even more pungent. My counterpart mentioned that maybe the gas was leaking. I didn't recognize the smell, but I was pretty sure it was not a gas leak. So one day my counterpart and I decided we were going to find the source of the smell. It started with identifying the main source of the smell. She said she thought it was my refrigerator. I thought it was the stove/oven. Well she looked behind the oven and noticed in one of the holes in the back that there was a lot of cotton. She immediately said it must be a nest.

After cleaning out a nest of cotton and some other stuff at the bottom of the oven, I said that I believe the smell was still there. She found another nest in the top part of the oven/stove combo that was behind/under the stove-top. She began removing all the remnants of the nest: cotton, rope, stickers, band aids, more random stuff, and also a large cloth rag. She then opened the rag and screamed. I naturally ran outside. It was a dead baby, black rat. It had been cooking under the stove for who knows how long. Whew. After sweeping all the nest remnants outside and disposing of the rat, I said there was still a bad smell in the same area. We pulled my fridge out and she shined her flashlight down by the motor. She screamed very loudly again. We both ran outside. She didn't know if the rat was dead or not but she had knew she had found another one. We finally went back in and it was another dead baby rat. This was quite dramatic and probably the grossest thing that has happened since I have been here. The smell was so pungent, my counterpart actually vomited at home on her lunch break. Needless to say, I did not cook for a few days with the oven or stove.

While I am on the subject of gross stories, of the 20 or so PC volunteers in this region, 2 have had cases of larvae hatching in their skin over the last month or so. Apparently botflies are common here. These flies embed larva in the skin of mammals. The only way to treat it is to wait and then squeeze the worms out. One volunteer had two in his head and the other had one in his back. They had to literally squeeze worms out of their skin...so disgusting.

Well now that I have shared all of the disgusting stuff, I can give an update about what I've been doing. I am trying to be organized and keep working with my counterpart and governing board to plan who will be the next employees of the Coffee Tour. It has been a long process. We are also trying to continue on with the women's artesian group and wooden sign projects. I recently went with two other PC friends to Semuc Champey. It is the biggest tourism destination in our region. We stayed at a really nice hostel and visited the national park of cascading pools, as well as went on a privately owned cave tour where you have to swim with candles through the caves. It was quite an adventurous trip and we had a great time. There are pictures in my photo album #2. You can see I have a good bit of facial hair right now. Several of the guy volunteers in my region are doing "no shave November". We'll see if I actually make it to the end of the month. You can also see in the album that I took my camera on this swimming cave tour because I had my waterproof bag. However, when I gave my camera to someone to take a picture of us in the water, I got distracted and dunked the open bag in the water. So now, my camera is not really working. Thankfully I am going home for the holidays and bought the warranty from Best Buy, so I should be able to get it fixed then.

I'm doing well and excited about the next few weeks of trips and visit from Hunter, my older brother.