We Got Wet

26-May-07

I hadn’t even begun living in my new house yet, and I’d already had just as many community experiences as in my old living situation. I have neighbors visiting and can hear human life around me that doesn’t include campo-calls (hollering in the distance) and tractors passing by.

Yesterday was a rather long day. In the morning I had to go into town (San Felipe) to print out some papers and buy a magdalena cake for a taller (workshop) with the local teachers about teamwork. After the taller, successful, though cut short due to another activity they had to go to and hadn’t told me about, I had to haul down to my new house two bunches of wood that am going to use to screen in my back porch. My shoulder is still sore and red.

The house was still dirty when I arrived, so I had to finish sweeping. I swept up two mountains of polvo (dust) and threw them in the back yard, with all the trash that was already back there and needs to be cleaned up eventually. Then the kids came over….

After sweeping it was still dusty, and dirty, so I had to mop the place down; floors, walls and ceiling. I had bought a hose and nozzle the previous day and was using that to hose wet the floor and the bucket to get to places I couldn’t reach with the hose. It seriously turned into a water war, something like you might find at a water park, the hose being the gun and the bucket being the bombs.

I tell you, if you ever think that cleaning is still a woman’s job in the developing world, just ask a bunch of boys to clean your house. We got everything good and wet. And clean, believe it or not. They would shoot each other with the hose, plaster their buddy with buckets of water and pull each other around on the floor by the feet thereby mopping up the dirt.

I had to manage all the chaos, however. Eventually we had to stop wetting the inside, so that it would eventually dry, and I could bring in my furniture and other goodies the next day.

I can tell you it’s going to be a chore to keep my house clean. The dirt comes in daily from the road outside and the ants bring it up from underneath the house. They will have to die soon.