Rubber Boots

Again, the most notable thing about this week has been the sudden and drastic change in the weather as we enter the rainy season.  A dense layer of cloud settles into the river valley every night. Although the day dawns clear, as the air mass heats up, the cloud layer rises, just the way you learned in science class, and envelops Tolte. Rarely in my life have I see fog so thick. It can be difficult to see the houses across the street.

Naturally, this means that everything is wet. If you are lucky, and your timing is good, you can get your laundry dry in a couple of days by shifting it to a covered location when the fog closes in, then out to a sunny spot in the morning. Socks are a particular challenge, made as they are of a thick tube of water absorbing cloth. I haven’t tried to wash any jeans lately; that just seems futile. I have been told that this wet, foggy period is part of the beginning of the rainy season, and that as it starts to rain more frequently, the sky will open up a bit.

But we did have rain Friday, and, as promised, the plaza filled up promptly with water. It was around this time that I realized that I couldn’t continue living here with just my one pair of sneakers and my crazy barefoot running shoes, which I cannot use because the road is simply too rough and rocky. Today I went o Chunchi and bought a pair of rubber boots of the kind that everyone here wears at the bargain price of $8.50. I’m not sure exactly how I’m going to use them, but it does make it possible for me to visit someone’s farm in this weather and not worry about the mud. I can just rinse it off later, or walk through a couple of deep puddles.

On a slightly scarier note, my right foot became infected on Friday. I’m not sure how this happened. I imagine a piece of dirt got into my shoe and embedded itself in the sole of my foot. Fortunately, the wise travel doctor I saw before I came down here gave me a prescription for a couple of rounds of doxycycline. The primary reason was to hold off a malaria attack if I was unlucky during a visit to the Amazon, and buy me some time to get more complete treatment. But doxycycline is a broad spectrum antibiotic, and I was told it can be used for all sorts of nasty wounds. It’s sort of a nuisance to take, because you have to take it on an empty stomach, which requires some planning. But it is working quite nicely on the injury to my foot—no one need worry. I only report this as part of the complete picture of living here in Tolte. By the way, if I weren’t allergic to penicillin, there are antibiotics in the municipal office that would have worked fine. There may be no doctor here, but all is not lost. And there is a Centro de Salud in Chunchi.

And one more thing. Last night, Jose took me along to the Evangelical Church, where Juan, the guitar maker, and his brother Pablo, the carpenter, were working on some music. Jose’s job is to beat the big drum. This was the first time I had brought my guitar with me when they were playing, and I had a good time. Juan has enough sense of what he’s doing to be able to tell me the chords to play. In other situations, I have to guess along by ear, and there can be a lot of uncertainty on everyone’s part as to what is actually happening in the music. So I got to participate in learning a couple of Andean Evangelical songs, which might not be my first choice in music, but it did introduce me to some of the chording and sounds of Andean music in general. I was also a big hit, because I could remember the chord changes pretty much form the first run through. Of course, there was a rhythm that gave me fits, but it’s exactly the sort of thing I need to work on if I’m going to get a feel for the local sound. I’m pretty sure they’ll let me come back, especially because I was able to use my limited knowledge of music theory to show Juan the easiest way to change from a D major to a B minor chord on the piano. Juan and Pablo can switch easily from guitar to Cherengo to Pan Pipe to piano. As a “guitar only” guy, I’m certainly impressed.