Wednesday, May 30, 2007

That Cow Just Hit Our Car

Last week my boss, el Dr. Pepe Salinas, came to El Palmar for a site visit. He came with two of my favorites, Dave-bones and Mark. They arrived wednesday afternoon and brought with them our long-waited for fish nets for the tanks in Salital-Campo Verde. Needless to say, I was excited. Since it has been so cold down here recently, we have been unable to receive our fish from Santa Cruz. Too dangerous to ship them. They´ll get sick and die we are told. So, turning in the nets at least gave us some small victory in this very drawn out project that is now almost completely out of our hands. Anyways, we cruised around and turned in a number of nets, checked out our now totally ready tanks and were happy.
That night we went left for Yacuiba to eat a good steak and head to Agua Blanca and the Chaco Humedo for some other site visits. Early Thursday morning we were on the road. We had to make the highway to Carapari by 730 am before it closed and we got a latish start.
At around 650 something in the am, we were hauling ass down the road when, whoops! here comes a herd of cows! They very suddenly decided to make their way across the road. What to do? Coming in the opposite direction was another car so that escape was closed to us. To the right, the cow herder was standing on the shoulder. So, unless we wanted to kill the man, that route was not an option. Pepe slammed on the breaks, but it was of no use. It was apparent that we were going to hit these cows. Everyone in the Land Cruiser was quiet. We just sort of sat there, numb, apparently not phased by what was sure to be a nasty impact. Pepe, however, saved the day. He swung the car and tried to split in between two cows of the herd, and ended up only clipping one of them with the left side of the grill guard. The cow flipped and spun around in what probably looked like something out of a Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote chase scene and ended up on his side in the middle of the road, collapsed in a cartoonish heap. We kept driving, wanting to avoid all potential conflict with the owner or the cops, but the hood of the car was all bent in and we had to pull over.
We were able to drive the car back to Yacuiba for some basic repairs and on the way back we noticed that the cow we hit was standing on the side of the road with a bloody hip, the owner and the rest of the herd were nowhere in sight.
It did not die. We hit it going probably 50 miles per hour and it did not die. Still, I am sure that he was put down later that day in what was probably a fantastic cookout.
I wish I had a picture to share with ya´ll, but oh well.
We hit a cow. Or, a cow hit us. The most shocking part of this was how little reaction it got out of us. I feel like I have been completely Boliviafied if something like this didn´t even make my stomach flutter. Good? Bad? I don´t know.

Sunday, May 20, 2007

El día es oro y no nos espera


Yesterday morning I woke up and walked out to Campo Verde to begin work on the repairs of on Don Gregorio´s pond. With the heavy rains this past year, we lost an entire side of the tank and most of our water. Now, the pond is a mess. There are weeds growing everywhere and the remaining walls are being eroded away by the goats who drink from the pond. I still do not really understand how this happened. How is it that his tank is the only tank with problems? It makes me feel terrible because I really do not have a good explanation. Anyways, we have to fix it.


When I got to his house, I found Gregorio working with the goats and hanging out with some other guy who I did not know, but who certainly knew me. They had been pre-gaming from the looks of it and were, as a result, ready for a good conversation. We sat down at a table and started talking, a bottle of puro and creek water was passed around, and I started to wonder if any work was actually going to get done. Turns out it did not.


After talking for an hour or so about whether or not I was going to stay and live in Palmar after my service was up, if I had kids back in the states, and if I had a girlfriend in town, we finally made our way down to the tank.



As I said before, this tank is a total disaster and is going to require a good week or two of work to clean it up. Our plan was to begin pulling the plant life out, but since we were unable to get our hands on the water pump we could not get much done. We ended up piddling around with the shovels for about 2 hours and then sitting down. It was a good morning´s work we decided. I am not sure why. All we really did was confirm that we had a whole lot to do and then put it off until Monday. Still, they were happy with it.


On my way back to town I passed a retarded kid that I always talk with on the road. He was kind of far from his house and was playing with a sling shot. Right before I got to him, before he had seen me, he turned and just nailed this dog with a rock. Direct hit, right in the ribs with the sling shot. The dog yelped something furious and took off into the woods. The boy stood there smiling and laughing a not too comforting laugh. He sounded crazy. I passed him, waved and said hello and he just kept smiling, staring at me. After a few steps I turned around to look at him. He was still just standing in the middle of the road with his sling shot. I started to get a little freaked out. I kept wondering if maybe he was going to shoot me too. I know that is a terrible thing to think, but I just couldn´t shake the thought. I kept walking and looking back over my shoulder. He just stood there. I started a fast walk to get out of range as quickly as possible without seeming like a jerk.

Later on, safely out of range of his sling shot, I felt terrible. Sort of the same sensation you get when you lock the door of your car when a homeless person approaches. A general shitty feeling that, for better or worse, colors the rest of the day.


Friday, May 18, 2007

To begin at the beginning

In an effort to get as much of this wild non-sense down as possible I am restarting my blog for probably the 3rd or 4th time. But not tonight! Tomorrow! To be included: photos, fun and scary stories, boring stories, detailed accounts of me staring at my wall at night, being too bored to read, reading too much, being too nervous to sleep, being too tired to do anything but sleep, chasing roosters out of trees in the middle of the night, killing snakes, teaching myself calligraphy, try to write my name with my foot, my dog throwing up under my bed at night, moldy and cold sheets, Esquire magazine, toe fungus, crotch rot, malnutrition, really good steak, not such good beer, O.K. beer, Budweiser, fish ponds that work, fish ponds that don´t work, bad weather, great weather, and straw mattresses.
Heart.