Ask First, Drink Later

September 22, 2010

            What a fun night/day. Today I just had one class in Santa Elvita, but this whole week the schools have been having spring activities. So, today Hanna and I made our way to school. I had prepared some activities, but I was expecting to not have class. Right before we left I found out that the dental team was having a clinic at my school.

            Pretty sure I won’t have class. Sure enough, as we got there the kids were all outside. The classes had little grass/tree leaf huts set up outside of the classrooms. They were really impressive. Each little house had some history of food or animal information about Peru. My class had food in their hut. There was pork, some sort of vegetable soup, and rice.

            Hanna and I decided to have a tour of the houses. We made our way across to the secondary school. In one of the houses, there were plants and food. We asked the professor in the hut what everything was. He told us about the plants and fruits. There were pineapple plants, banana trees, coca plants, and other trees. Then he uncovered the food. He said he had two drinks typical of Peru: Aguajina and Masato. The first drink was made of the aguaje fruit. The fruit itself looks really scaly on the outside, and on the inside the fruit is orange. I don’t really like aguaje, it’s really sour, and it doesn’t really have a sweet flavor like you would expect from a fruit. The other drink was made of the yucca root, milk, and sugar.

            The teacher asked if Hanna and I would like to try the Masato (yucca juice). Hanna replied, “Sure, I’ll try anything.” The professor handed us a small cup of the white liquid. It looked like horchata, which I love. I don’t know why, but I was half expecting it to taste like horchata, WRONG!

            Hanna took the first sip, and then handed it to me. I sipped it, it tasted sweet at first, but then as it went down my throat it burned, it tasted rotten. Sure enough, after we had tried it, the professor decided to mention that the drink was fermented. That would explain the burning sensation in my throat and the sour rotten after-taste. We still had half the cup to finish. Hannah and I gulped it down in an effort to not be rude. He then handed us the aguajina, I was leery of this one, I expected it to be fermented like the first, but it wasn’t. But I didn’t like it very much cause it still tasted like aguaje. We said, “Thank you,” and made our way to the next hut.

As we entered, the professor asked if we wanted to try masato. We quickly declined saying that we had just tried some. He insisted his was better, that the other guy didn’t know how to make it. So he handed me a cup with a little bit of masato in the bottom. I cautiously sipped it. To my surprise and pleasure, it actually tasted pretty good. It was sweet and lacked the burning sensation and rotten after-taste. He was right, his was better. I told him I like the drink.

Inside this teacher’s hut were live parrots, pictures of various animals in Peru including giant anacondas. After checking out the hut we said our thanks and moved on our way.

            Later that afternoon the school held a Miss Santa Elvita pageant with three candidates—one from my class (Katy) and two from the secondary schools. The first outfit competition was supposed to be a traditional costume, all handmade. One girl had on a very short skirt and a bra. Attached to the underwear were CD’s in the shape of flowers. She also had a headdress made of CD’s and straws. It was very ingenious. Katy had on a really cute dress made out of newspaper, complete with pleats and a bow. It was very impressive and cute. 

After indigenous clothing the next category was casual wear. I’ve realized that girls here kind of dress skanky. One of the older girls had on really short shorts with a purple sheer top and a black strapless bra underneath, really classy. The other girl had a mini skirt and a crop top, bearing to the adolescent boys her midriff. My little student was cute, wearing jeans and a cute little blouse.

It was a regular old Miss Universe pageant with wardrobe changes and question and answer time. All that was missing was the choreographed dance number.

I wanted m student Katty, to win. She was so cute and innocent looking. As we watched the competition I couldn’t help but wonder if she would turn out like the other girls, unfortunately it would probably happen.

The pageant ended, one of the scantily clad girls won. I went home hot, sweaty, and hungry, we missed lunch.