A Familiar face at AMOR

November 5, 2010

What a week. It all started on Thursday. Chris Clouzet sent me an e-mail saying he didn’t have work on Monday and that he wanted to come visit. Yay, excitement, but I didn’t want to get my hopes up in case it didn’t work out. Then he said he couldn’t come. Understandable, plans always change here in Peru. Then Friday afternoon he called saying he was coming. Man, talk about rollercoaster.

It was nice having a familiar face around AMOR Projects. We showed Chris around the house. We informed him that our shower had one temperature (cold) and that the toilet paper was not flush-worthy. I helped him set up a mosquito net and showed him how to tuck it under the mattress to keep out as many mosquitoes as possible. I know Chris chose to come visit us, but I felt bad for making him sleep in a mosquito net, cook in a kitchen with roaches and flies, and take cold showers. But it is what it is.  We almost live in a different world.

Saturday night we decided to show Chris “the town.” Some Saturday nights we all go into Campo Verde for papas fritas (French fries), ice cream, and soda. Most of the time there’s a volleyball game going on. Not this night however. In the square was a comedian. Several people were gathered around him. Curiosity got the best of us and we made our way towards the show. We watched from a distance. The comedian had a male friend dressed in a short red dress and leggings. As we stood there along with several adults and their little kids the comedian turned on some music and started dirty dancing with the guy in the dress. It was pretty awful. I was disgusted, but the locals around me acted like it was normal.  I began to get upset. There were kids there as young as 4. How could their parents just sit their and let their children watch this nastiness? We decided to leave. I wish the parents would have made the same decision.

The rest of the weekend was pretty uneventful. We showed Chris our market where we buy our groceries, took him around Pucallpa to eat ice cream at Cest si Bon, and visited our new vegetarian restaurant. Chris’s time with us was too soon and it was time for him to return to Lima. But…..Hanna and I were going too!