Eat the Rich

So October came and went and I slipped into my old habit of not blogging about things. It's November the something'th, which means it's the perfect time to blog about October!

Pictured, the personification of "God, fuck this so much." Thank Idelmis for being so expressive. This women's group meets, like, every Friday or whenever (sometimes Saturday), and the woman-in-black teaches them how to sew curtains and large sheets of very thin satin cloth together. I just sit and think about how we're going to monetize this (we're going to monetize this).

Unrelated to sewing is the fact that in mid-September, we connected the luz machine to the luz lines and powered all of Los Bueyes, Palma Herrada and Arroyo Grande for a whole 24 hours before the system crashed. Cue a month of head-scratching as we watch the mini-hydroelectric-power generator's production fall just slightly, while demand spirals onwards and upwards as people connect their houses to the grid. Every engineers is like, "Shit!"
I personally just thought they did the math wrong because they didn't think that every house in the three campos would use the maximum amount of electricity possible (which is like 3 amps). On second inspection, we found that somebody was drawing 24 amps of electricity (while the machine was idling), which could only mean one thing... Rich People.
At some point in the beginning of October, the luz would start to fail even when we turned it on at like 6am, when nobody was using electricity. Then, we'd find that the gate that allowed water into the tubes leading to the turbine was shut, and somebody had manually closed it. Diablo. Coño. 
A quick explanation is in order; in Arroyo Grande, water is syphoned from a deep pool above the waterfall, lead through a mile of big white tubes to a place down stream (at this point, about halway up the side of a mountain) overlooking the generator (which can pound out about 55kw of electricity at maximum capacity). The reservoir is located behind this big, ugly cabaña, where rich people occasionally live when they feel like it. Somebody was shutting the gate that allowed the water to flow from the reservoir to the tubes, and somebody was sucking huge amounts of energy in the campo.
Somebody suggests a stake-out at the source, a group hops into the guagua and they bajan la loma por la machina. En la noche, a dark, shadowy, villainous figure walks out of the big cabaña, cranks the gate closed, and walks back up into his/her house. Later, it's found that at least four houses, including the house of this sinister gate-closing rico, have hooked themselves up to the luz, sin breaker, and proceeded to suck the system dry. And they would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for you and your perro loco. 

Edu-folk Envy (and why no such thing exists)

Meet Alejandra Chavez (in pink, also goes by "Urilena") and her gregarious older sister, Yiselina. They stayed in the same house as me for the first two months, arriving at their grandparents house because apparently their parents just couldn't handle them. Cue two glorious summer months of teaching English and hauling river water up the hill.
Uri is a bit of a workhorse; she's long since abandoned her schooling because manual labor suits her. Yisel is a tramposa (cheater) and like tramposas everywhere, she's super crafty and… well, even just thinking about playing games with her makes me want to strangle a rooster. One time, she stole my black marker, and while we were playing dominoes… (I just actually, physically shuddered at the thought) She's going to make so many people so miserable someday.
During my twice-daily, sometimes 24-times daily English classes, the sisters Chavez would stare wide-eyed, mouths slightly agape, trying to comprehend the incomprehensibleness of the English language. We never moved past the names of letters (ay, bee, see, dee, etc).
Fast-forward to one of the last days of their stay in Los Bueyes, and I ask Uri, "Me diga las letras en ingles." She begins with A… B…. C…. D…. ehhhh (confused look right here). I'm like, "ehh, entonces, en español??"
She's like, "ah… bay… say… day… (confused look right here, too)." And Yisel chimes in with this bombshell: "Ella nunca apprendío el abecedario." (She never learned the alphabet)
She's 10. Aaaaand that's why I don't envy the education volunteers.

Loco viejo things

Let's talk about attention. Pictured is the physical embodiment of such a thing, all tyrant, olive-skinnned, laughing, roaring, doing whatever it is that three-year-olds do. But he's a now a big-brother, and we must count ourselves as enemies, opponents competing for the attention (of my project partners, his parents). I don't stand a chance.

The other day, I mistakenly (read: on purpose) told my little friend that his sister is actually mine, as is his golden mane of hair and that little nose. He responded, "Mira coño, loco viejo, ella es mía, ese peló mío, este nariz mía. Sucio loco viejo coño!"

I'd wash his mouth out with soap... if I had any.

An introduction

I'll start off by saying that I'm not really a fan of blogging. For some reason, I revel in letting events and ideas go by, unrecorded, off to drift wherever those things tend to go. It's been a habit of mine, for as long as I can remember having good ideas, to simply not write those ideas down. Sometimes, they circle back like migrating songbirds, reminding me to forget them again. Sometimes, they ask me to put them on paper, and I answer back, lazily, No. Sometimes, it's not my idea but somebody else's, a nagging reminder, a suggestion; You should blog that, Matt. And often, it's all of those things, and yet, I don't follow through.
It's only now, when I have lots of work to do, and lots of things with which to procrastinate, that I realize I should be blogging. And so, with 17% battery life and my computer held high above my head at the top of a hill other than the one I live on (so that I might in fact upload this entry onto the internet) I begin to blog.
         Today is the 24th day of July, of the year dos mil catorce. Today, I went with three engineers from Santiago and a dozen men (mostly above the age of 60) pa'bajo por el rio, where I basically stood around while the three engineers did their thing, attaching the super-taut cable lines to the wooden poles we've stuck in the ground (because we're setting up a mini-hydroelectric power grid). Sitting there, asking stupid questions, misunderstanding answers, getting joke responses from my stupid-ass questions; this is usually my role. Today, I asked, (without explaining to you the context) en su opiníon, cual institucíon o cosa que usan se faltan Los Bueyes? (What institution or thing that you use is missing in Los Bueyes?). I was expecting answers like a clinic or a store that sells clothes.
Their answer? Una chiva para cojerse. (A goat to fuck.)