Bathing with Piranhas

October 5-7, 2010

Warning: The next two blogs are rather long. Read at your own risk.

Wow, what a week. It’s been four days and my body is pretty banged up. I look like I have chicken pox on my legs.

Tuesday night we pulled into a little village right off the Ucayali River. It was pretty sandy and a few huts dotted the beach as far as we could see using our head lamps. The arrival there had been pretty rough. We had to stop several times to adjust our lights on the boat so that the pathway would be visible. After a couple hours of putting through the water we finally arrived at the first village. Hanna and I scoped out a place for our hammocks. I was pretty excited since this would be my first time using my hammock. Hanna helped me set up between two poles right on the beach overlooking the river. I was pretty excited about the view I would have the next morning.

That night I fell asleep to some locals playing card games and laughing away. The next morning I awoke to locals chit-chatting and Dr. Mathew’s infamous laugh. I popped my head out to see the sun shining off the river and boas floating by.

           

“Yeah, I think I could live like this,” I thought. We packed up our stuff and ate breakfast in a little hut right off the beach—rice, platanos, and frijoles.

           

After breakfast we made our way to the clinic location. As we walked over, announcements were being made over a loud speaker.

“The American’s are here to do a medical clinic. Here they come, they’re 50 meters away.”

We came upon the building where our clinic was to be held. It was a really nice building, it looked fairly new, quite large. As soon as we arrived people started coming. By the end of the morning we had seen about 132 medical patients and 35 dental patients.

With clinic finished we were pretty hungry. We had a little mix up with food, and in the end the guys decided to purchase food from the same lady who made us breakfast while the girls decided to cook the food that we had brought with us. First order of business, we needed water to cook our pasta. The Doctor told us to go down to the river to get our water. Hanna and Steph went in search of a “good” place to collect water. They were gone for about 15 minutes. Hanna returned with the pot and a slightly disgusted look on her face.

           

“What is it?” I asked, “What’s wrong with the water?”

“You don’t even want to see it. Just don’t look at it.”

With that Dr. Mathews took the pot from her to put on the borrowed fire-burning stove of a little woman in a hut. Curiosity got the best of me and I went to go inspect the water, it was yellowish, not clear, and had some floaties in it. Yum.

Dr. Mathews thought we were all a bunch of babies for being turned off by the water. “Oh, my water is not clean, I want to go home, wah, wah, wah!” Then the infamous laugh. For the record, we said nothing about wanting to go home. We were just trying to get over the fact that our cooking waterwas less than clear, and had stuff in it before we started cooking. That’s all.

The water had come from the place where the boats pull in. It looked awful, green, brown, stuff floating in it. I’m pretty sure it was waste infested. But, then I thought back to breakfast, I’m pretty sure she made her food with the same water, and we had survived. Besides we were boiling it. I just had to suck it up, pray, and eat it.

After we finished eating our parasite pasta we packed up the boats and made our way down a little tributary to another village. On the way there the other boat stopped to bathe in the river, our boat kept going because we had a couple passengers to drop off.

           

We arrived at the next village, which was only about 40 minutes from the first one. Some people in my boat then decided that they wanted to bathe too. So we pulled out of the port and headed back in the direction from which we had come. The water was looking pretty muddy, and kind of bubbly. The boys jumped out and soaped down. As they did, the boat driver told Lauren and I that there was a well back at the village where we could bathe. We thanked him for the info. In the end we just decided to bathe in the river off the sides of the boat.

We finished bathing and headed back to scout out our living quarters, which ended up being a school with a wall-less building next to it. Most of the group camped out in the school while Rachel, Steph, Hanna, and I set up our tents and hammocks next door. 8:00 rolled around, the mosquitoes were merciless, and we were ready for bed.

It was a good thing we went to bed so early because at 5:30 am on the dot our village alarm went off. Peruvian music began to blare over some loud speakers; I was so confused. What is going on?

After the music ceased, a male voice came over the P.A. system

“Hola, hola, hola, hola, hola, hola.”

Once he was sure his voice could be heard, he went in to his announcements. I think he was speaking mostly in an indigenous tongue. He did speak some in Spanish and I caught his announcement about the American having a clinic in the village.

Before our clinic we needed to cook breakfast. We found a lady who would let us cook at her house. Dr. Mathews and Shirley set to work preparing fish and platanos. Steph, Rachel, and I went to the boat to get some pots, oatmeal, and other useful utensils. The walk to the boat was sweet smelling; sugar cane lined the walkway.

In about an hour and a half we had a jungle-made breakfast of oatmeal, papaya, fried eggs, boiled platanos, breadfruit seeds, and various types of fish, including piranha. I ate piranha; it actually tasted pretty good., it was tougher meat, the texture was almost like grouper.

The clinic went well, a lot of the same symptoms we saw in Pucallpa. I was thinking we might have some more interesting cases since we were in the jungle. But everyone here seems to have the same things. Bichos, headaches, bone pain, arthritis, and diarrhea. The medical clinic finished before the dental clinic so I asked if I could do a teeth cleaning. They happily handed it over. I decided after that teeth cleaning that I didn’t want to be a dental hygienist.

(If you are still reading at this point I am very impressed. Feel free to stop reading and go back to the happenings in your life. I won’t ever know the difference).

After seeing many patients we were hungry yet again. The girls, Dr. Mathews and Shirley went back to our “kitchen” to cook up some lunch.  Steph, Lauren and I began to prepare the rice. We were running out of plates/blows to prep with. Steph found a yellow little bucket.

Perfect, just the right size. We began to measure out the rice and water and put the seasoning in. When the water finished boiling  Shirley was ready for the rice. Lauren took the rice over to Shirley.

“Girls, where did you get this bucket? Is the yellow bucket ours? Lauren asked.

“No, we got it here, it’s their bucket.” We replied.

The next thing we heard was disgusted yells and screams.

“Do you guys know what this bucket is?” Lauren asked.

“No, what is it?’

“That’s the bucket that the kids pee and poop in!” Lauren exclaimed.

Shirley was still making disgusted sounds and shaking her head saying, “chicas, chicas.”

We didn’t know, we just grabbed the bucket. In fact we had been using it to wash our hands. At this point I wasn’t disgusted. We had been using water that probably had poop and pee and other things in it. Had that been the first day I might have vomited. Instead we made jokes about it. Sopa de kaka, arroz con kaka. What could we do now? (For those of you who may be hurling, let me set your mind at ease. We changed out the rice and the pot and started over with fresh ingredients and pots).

Lunch/supper was good, but we all felt really grimy, so the girls decided to go bathe in the lagoon. We hiked out and found a spot. I didn’t want to get in the water because I knew that was where the piranhas were caught. So we all lined up on a log in our underwear and bathed. As the water got soapier fish arrived. There were tons of little fish waiting to bite our fingers or whatever else happened to get into the water. Half way through our bath some local women with their kids came down to bathe. The kids were swimming away in the water, apparently the nibbling fish didn’t faze them anymore.

It was fun living like the locals for a few days, but I was really ready to go back to Km 38 after that. It really made me miss my Peruvian home. 

Oh, and I didn´t get diarrhea, praise the Lord.