Recap:
Two weeks ago I was fumigating my house for the second time. I have more spiders and scorpions in one room than you can possibly imagine. While fumigating my roof, the very, very humble abode of my undesireable roommates, three scorpions fell; one of them on my back. Feeling a little skiddish after this twenty minutes that would have put the Weather Girls to shame I decided it was probably a good idea to use my mosquito net when I moved into my new brick house.
Last Thursday, 22 July, I decided, what the hell? Let´s make fumigating a regular thing. So I busted out the bomba, a large spraying mechanism that makes me look not even the slightest bit dissimilar to Dr. Peter Venkman, filled it with water and some pesticide to kill me some scorpions.
Llegué a la casa mia with the ladder to maximize my ass-kicking ability, put my left (and arguably my least favorite) foot on the bottom rung and froze...got a little nervous. I mean, for Christ´s sake, it was raining scorpions last time I did this. Nonetheless, and not trying to push my luck, I decided I´d start with my right foot on the bottom rung just to be safe.
Scaling the ladder I start soaking my roof from the inside. This is what my roof looks like...
Granted, that is not my roof and I have not a clue who that guy with the sideburns is trying to impress but that is what my roof looks like (as lot of clay tiles all pieced together) and I really hate that guy with the sideburns. My roof, though, is covered with mold, broken so that it leaks when it rains, and is infested with things that are so ugly even their mamas don´t love them.
While fumigating the house I did my best to try to stay dry, try to stay on the ladder, and try not to scream at the top of my lungs every time the wind blew and knocked some dust onto my shoulder. I did a good job at most of those...only screaming thrice.
After I completed 4 Sections of 10 and not a scorpion or ugly spider to be seen I start going nuts with the pesticide. At this point my house is soaked worse than the Waterfalls video by TLC and I´m oddly feeling a little like T-Boz, getting all my ganas up to finish this job when I see something moving around in the rafters. Long story short. It´s a god damned snake. Mosquito nets can go to hell.
So by Sunday night I have tried to hunt this snake in my roof for days...only taking Friday off to take a 2 hour nap in the middle of the afternoon after a trip to Metapan. By Saturday there is a large full skin of the snake dangling from the rafters of my house. He´s taunting me....
Sunday afternoon arrives and I am sick of thinking about it so I go to my house to work on my garden (I have a garden...esta fregado). On my way out of the huge front door of my house I look up to my left and see the cocky bastard curled up in a ball on my rafters. He thinks he can take a break from hiding on my watch. No way in hell was I letting that happen.
I cut down a really long stick with my machete and when I returned he was still descansando. From about 10 feet away I poked him (i think poke is an understatement, I nervously tapped him), lifted him into the air with the stick and he fell the 8 feet to the ground like that´s where he wanted to be. Calm.
We looked at each other for what seemed like a fortnight and I can imagine he was thinking something along the lines of ¨What the hell, dude? Don´t you know I am a snake?¨ slithered (what other word would you use to describe the way a snake moves? Anyone?) in the direction of some lamina i had in the corner of my house. So you know what I did while his back(?) was turned? I stabbed him with my machete in the tail! UH!
That´s when he got pissed...
So I am standing there, and since the initial drop I had somehow (and I really don´t remember how) changed my large, long stick for a fucking broom - aren´t I a gladiator?, and I start to realize ¨Holy hell, Greg! This is a god damned snake in closed quarters and you have a broom in your hand! Wake up, moron!¨
Recap numero dos: This is not my first snake experience in La Peña. The first one involved a snake longer than I am tall but I took no part in its killing. I just watched a 40 year old with a really large pointy stick, a 16 year old with a pistol, and a 15 year old with a machete beat the piss out of it until they threw it in the woods. I was scared then and I was watching. This time I had to change my ropa interior.
So I changed the broom for a shovel, trapped the snakes head under the shovel when it lunged at me (for the tenth time) and cut its head off with the backside of my machete. If only I could have had a shovel and a machete I probably would have won Nationals senior year, right?
This is the result:
He was really only just over 3 feet long at 92 centemeters but it was the biggest adreneline rush I have had in a long, long time.
And now my town wont stop talking about how ¨Gregorio se la mató!¨ which I think is infinitely cooler than winning Nationals if only because my praise is in Spanish.
Other strange things about my town!
Virgen
There is a man named Virgen (pronounced Beer-hen). How much pressure do you think comes with a name like this when you´re Catholic? I´d be bullshit with my parents if they named me this. Talk about false advertising...the guys got 3 kids. He was really embarassed when he asked me how to say his name in English and I said ¨Pollo baracho.¨
Santos y Santos
There is a man named Santos and he is married to a woman named Santos. That´s weird. You can justify it by saying ¨Well, Greg, I am sure that a Jamie has married a Jaimie somewhere along the line.¨ Well that´s true. But no man named Gregory has ever married a woman named Gregory...and if they have, poor choice.
Marvin
My host parents, Santos y Marta (thank Dios), were married over 30 years ago. They have had 7 little babies since then, all of which are no longer babies. That, though, is besides the point. After they were married and already commenced having babies the sister of my host father (Miriam) had a baby (they named him Marvin) with the brother of my host mother (I have no idea what his name is. He lives in the capital of the United States. Miami.) That one is hard to explain in words but I think that his parents are also his uncle and aunt... I think.
8 días
I don´t know why, and I really sincerely cannot figure it out, but when something is a week away everyone in this country says ¨Ocho días.¨ Today is Monday. If I had a meeting next Monday I would be incorrect if I said in ¨7 días¨ or in ¨una semana.¨ What is a week or seven days in English is EIGHT DAYS in El Salvador. I don´t get it. Eff them. DOn´t they know I am American and I am always right?! I have white skin!
Tío Chepe´s kids and Don Santos
Don Santos has an uncle. His name is Tio Chepe. Tio Chepe is the brother of Don Santos´ mother. That makes Tio Chepe his uncle, right? Well, Tio Chepe has 14 kids. The youngest of which is like 5 years old. Don Santos, my host father, is 54. Tio Chepe is 77. Technically, Don Santos has a cousin who is 5 years old. That´s 49 years difference. That is strange enough. It gets weirder.
Don Santos does not think that these children are his cousins. He has explained to me that somehow (and maybe it was lost in campo translation) he is the second uncle of these kids and they are NOT cousins. If anyone can explain this in whatever language you can muster please e-mail me at GregCormier17@gmail.com. I would sincerely appreciate it.
Don David
Don David lives across the path from us. He has a molino. He´s an old man. While censusing, and I don´t remember if I already wrote about this, I found out he was 67 years old. When I asked him what his wife´s name was he had his eldest son Carlos (8 years old) run and ask her ¨Mama, cómo se llama usted?¨ This means a litany of things. One of which is that he doesn´t know his wife´s name. That´s ludacris. Ludacris is an understatement. That´s the most fucking absurd thing I have ever heard. Secondly, and all three of his children were present, the children do not know the name of their mother. Try that one on for size. Mother´s Day. Eff you, Mother´s Day. Mother´s Day is a national holiday and they close every business in the entire countryin appreciation of Mothers in El Salvador. These little children don´t know their mother´s name!
After that I asked her how old she was. She is 27 years old. Go nuts with that one.
Sorry for the delay between blogs, and sorry I wasn´t too funny this time I am kind of in a hurry. Maybe one of these days I will actually tell you about what I am doing down here as far as working goes, but for now you´ll have to settle with Strange Stories from Greg Cormier. I think I should have a BET special, don´t you?
I´ll leave you with some pictures from my life
