Carnaval (Andrew)

Last Sunday we got to take part in Carnaval (or Carnival), the giant Roman Catholic celebration that happens just before Lent. The world’s biggest Carnaval festivities take place in Brazil (or Carnival of Venice??), but Peru has its own festivities that have been gearing up over the last month. Over the previous few weekends we had seen more and more children (who are on vacation from school at the moment) on the sides of the roads, throwing water balloons and the occasional full bucket of water. Some friends of ours tried to describe what was going on, and we found out that Sunday, February 3rd was going to be the biggest celebration day and would culminate in each neighborhood performing some sort of crazy tree-chopping ceremony. Our friend Sergio from PROCREL invited us over to his house for the day’s activities, and we eagerly accepted the offer of a familiar house and group of people to enjoy the cultural event with.

We wore old clothes after hearing about all the paint and clay that would be fair game on Sunday and after experiencing buckets of water thrown at us while riding mototaxis the previous day. We arrived to find Sergio out in front of his house, decorating a 30 foot tall palm tree brought in from a forest somewhere with balloons and streamers and plastic presents. We were immediately bombarded with balloons and buckets of water by the neighbors, so we retaliated and soon found ourselves soaked. After finishing the decorating and putting the tree up unsteadily (in a hole in the street, leaning against telephone wires…) we enjoyed a delicious lunch from Sergio’s wife, Magali. She made me (Andrew) wipe off some of the orange clay that had already accumulated on his face before eating.

After lunch, our friends Pamela and Cesar arrived, along with our friend Nathan from the Field Museum in Chicago. Then we set about filling water balloons and buckets to prepare for battle. The neighborhood residents were lining the streets, ready to wreak havoc. There were some unwritten rules about who was fair game for attack in a mototaxi (ie no dressed-up people, no mothers with infants), which meant mostly younger people riding around squealing. We could see the kids at the intersection down the street dousing mototaxis with buckets of water and took our cues from them for who to go after. And whenever traffic got slow, someone would run across the street to launch a surprise attack on the neighbors. Jess and Pamela really enjoyed painting themselves with colored clay. Cesar and I preferred to avoid it, but other people (mostly Jess and Magali) still managed to cover us. There was also some strange purple ink being squirted about, which we discovered would not come out of clothes and only came off skin with much scrubbing. Things went well until a strange woman from across the street began attacking us (maybe because she had been an easy target for our waterballoons??...) with motor oil, which she smeared first in my face and then in Jess’s. I was not too happy about this and tried to reach out to protect Jess just as she ducked, resulting in a bloody nose. We played for several hours, but didn’t wait around long enough to see the tree get chopped down, although there was some dancing around it. We had had plenty of fun and didn’t feel the need to endanger ourselves with a crashing tree, a scramble for presents, and possibly some downed powerlines. On our way back to the apartment, we were attacked by other groups of kids with waterballoons, who were impressed with our thorough multicolored dirtiness.

After a quick shower, I joined our American medical school apartment mates to watch the SuperBowl at a nearby gringo hangout- The Yellow Rose of Texas Bar and Restaurant- still sporting some conspicuous purple stains on my arms and face. It was a pretty subdued crowd (most of whom had spent the day terrified of Carnaval) drinking overpriced beer and I decided that it was much more fun hanging out with Peruvians. However, the last 10 minutes of the football game were spectacular and made up for it (I hate the Patriots and New England teams in general). It was a nice way to start the week before heading to our new office and sitting through long presentations for several days.

This Sunday was a little quieter, with a fun on a birding trip to Reserva Nacional Allpahuayo-Mishana in the morning with our professor Haven Wiley, who is visiting Iquitos from Chapel Hill. The Reserve protects an area along the road to Nauta that contains some unique white-sand ecosystems and endemic species, but is currently being threatened by leakage from the nearby city-dump (the rivers also run into the place where Iquitos gets its water supply- not a good choice of location). We visited an area that borders the Reserve at the beginning of our time here, but haven’t had much of an opportunity to get into the park. This time, we saw a lot of new bird species (see the species list on the side), and a neat frog (see pictures), not to mention some very interesting white sand habitats. And now that we have a better idea of how to get there (and which trail to sneak in on), we’re excited about going back on our own. We may not get that chance for a while though, as we’re headed out to the field on Thursday with the PROCREL team for 10 days. We have lots of work to do before then though, so we might not be able to post anything for a while. Send us an email if you get the chance!!