Feliz Dia de los Trabajadores (Labor Day)

So today is labor day as well as the anniversary of the town of San Isidro, a little town just off of Ollanta. There has been a fiesta all day, but Hallie and I decided to go on a hike to some ruins called Pumamarca. We had a going-away party for a volunteer last night so hanging out at a fiesta all day did not sound good to me. We were out quite late last night and alcohol was the last thing on my mind.

So after having a nice sleep-in, I got up and had some breakfast. Then I aired out my sheets and sprayed the crap out of them with flea killer along with my mattress and blankets. I am covered in bites again. I've been back home here for a week and a half and I probably have 50 bites on my legs, stomach and back. I have two on my neck and a few on my arms. However, we are pretty sure that these are not fleas. There are wood mites that live in our beds and in our wood floors and stuff. These are the culprits, we believe. I have some B-complex vitamins that supposedly will make me stinky to bugs. I am going to start back up on those. We'll see. I woke myself up in the middle of the night scratching my bites. They itch like crazy!!

Anyway, Hallie and I began our hike around 2pm. It takes about an hour and 45 minutes to get to the ruins. The scenery was beautiful, of course, and these ruins were really big (as in tall) compared to many of the other ruins around here. We then had to find our way down to the town to meet up with the road that we were to follow back to Ollanta. We successfully navigated through fields and past farm animals to the road. When we started the walk back, we passed a woman and her two small children. The woman got up and asked if they could walk back with us.

She had a 7 year old son and a 4 year old daughter. The kids were adorable. However, the woman immediately started telling Hallie and I how her husband was a drunk and hit her and made the kids cry all the time. That he had sent her up to work on their fields and took all their money. She was heading down to Ollanta to stay with her sister and to get away from her husband. Well, at this point, Hallie and I were just kind of like, what the heck is going on? Was she looking for money? Did she just want someone to talk to? She smelled a bit like alcohol so we think she had been drinking as well.

Anyway, on the road down, we encounter her husband. He has obviously been drinking. It all becomes clear that the woman just wanted to walk with us so that we could keep her husband from doing anything. So he starts trying to hold the kids' hands and she keeps pulling them away and coming over near us. He is trying to get us to walk past them but she speeds up so she is always ahead or with us. At one point, the man starts grabbing her arm and pulling her aside and she starts yelling and the little girl starts crying. Hallie and I start shouting "Senor! Senor! Por favor, no ahorita!". We get him to stop grabbing at her. Then a taxi comes and the mom and kids get in and that leaves us walking down the road with the dad. Then the taxi stops and he gets in too and we heaved a sigh of relief. When they were fighting, we just tried to keep the kids occupied so they would not be so upset.

Everyone talks about how bad the domestic violence is here, especially when the men drink, but this is the first time we have seen it in our face. I have seen some women at the clinic who say they fell, but we all knew that was a lie. However, I was fully prepared to have to step in today if it was necessary. Especially since the children were there. Needless to say, Hallie and I were a little shaken up by the scene.

So we got home and took showers and went to our weekly pizza party. The pizza parties are weekly now as there seems to be one or two volunteers arriving each week. The new volunteer will be working in the health clinic as well. We are exhausted from the night before and from the hike, so we are just reading and going to bed early. Hopefully the neighbors next door who sell firewood will be taking the morning off from chopping wood. We wake up at 6am to the sound of "thunk, thunk, thunk" every day as they begin chopping wood. It could be worse! It could be metal clanging or horns or something. One of the volunteers is renting a room from a hostel and the hostel owner has parakeets. The birds wake her up each morning by saying "como te llamas, como te llamas" or "hola, como estas" repeatedly. That definitely is worse!