Thursday 1/26/17 - Plumbing This morning we had my favorite breakfast: crepes filled with homemade mora (blackberry) jam, along with coffee, yogurt, ham, and cheese. Antonio worked in the school garden for 3 hours this morning. Next week, Rosa has to cook breakfast and lunch at the school. It is a requirement of parents in the community, and if they can't devote the time, they have to pay a fee instead. The government helps to subsidize the food that the students are fed, and the families pay $12 per child per school year toward food. Additional food is also grown in the school garden. The government also helps to subsidize school uniforms (anakos and blouses for the girls, and white pants, white shirts, and ponchos for the boys). The families pay a nominal amount for these, but sometimes the sizes are way off. Luckily Rosa is a good seamstress. The families need to purchase green and blue sweaters (sacos) for each child separately in Otavalo. For lunch, we had corn, beans, llapingachos, and salad. This afternoon, Antonio and Rosa started the washing machine installation. They chose the location for the machine (a nook under the stairs), and ran some water pipes along the side of the house. Yupanqui helped to dig the trench and remove some rocks. They asked Craig some questions about the water hookup. Antonio needs an additional connector, which he will buy in Quiroga tomorrow morning. While they were looking at the water hookups, 3 little neighbor girls appeared in the yard. These were the owners of the little black piglet who has been mooching off of our piglets' food. He kept evading them, as they chased him around the yard. Their mother appeared with a rope, and also tried to catch him to no avail. Eventually they gave up. It was time for Rosa to feed our pigs, and I knew this would be a good opportunity to catch him. He can never resist food. I stood a little distance away from the food bowl, and Craig alerted me when he was approaching. I was able to grab him. He squealed and wiggled around, trying to get loose. I was having none of it! This guy was going home once and for all. It was raining and he was wet. He was surprisingly heavy, and I held him away from me in case he decided to pee on me. We thought for sure the neighbors would come running when they heard the commotion...but they didn't. We walked up the hill looking for them. Rosa's sister and nieces (the neighbors on the other side) were walking by, and they got a big kick out of seeing me carrying the screaming piglet. We all started to laugh together. We weren't sure which house it belonged to, and nobody seemed home. Rosa came over and led us to the backyard of the house right next door. The mother appeared and didn't even acknowledge me. No hola, no smile, no gracias. She simply took the pig from me by one ankle, turned her back, and walked away. Sheesh! You're welcome, lady! And not 10 minutes later, the piglet was back in our yard eating our piglets' food again! It is apparent that they didn't really want to recover their piglet after all; they would prefer for it to eat our food. I think that since Rosa has (unwillingly) provided food for this piglet since it was born, she should have some claim to it! It began to rain, and the piglets huddled under the tarp in their pen. The chickens, in an attempt to stay warm and dry, perched atop the piglets. It is starting to dawn on the kids that we are leaving the day after tomorrow. Sisa was sad when we were talking to Antonio about our ride to the airport early on Saturday. In order to ease the transition a bit, we brought them a wooden toy plane which contains wooden figures of a pilot and three passengers, along with their suitcases. We gave it to them before dinner, and they were quite pleased. Sisa said that one of the male figures was Achi Taita (Craig) and the female one was Achi Mama (me). Then she said that we were waiting for the plane to go to India. She knows us so well! For dinner, we had soup, chicken fried steak, rice, peas, and cauliflower. As we came back to the casita after dinner, we noticed that Abuelita was not in her usual sleeping spot in Antonio and Rosa's bedroom (she insists on sleeping on the floor on a tortora reed mat in the traditional way). And there was a fire roaring in her outdoor kitchen, much later than usual. Antonio explained that they had moved the mother and baby guinea pigs to the outdoor kitchen, but they were vulnerable to animals such as roaming dogs. So, Abuelita is currently sleeping in her outdoor kitchen to baby-sit the guinea pigs!

Abuelita in her outdoor kitchen Antonio and Rosa laying pipe for the washing machine Steph returning the neigbor's piglet Yupanqui, Sisa, and Achi Taita See all photos from this day