#15 - Face-paint and folly

17/02/2011

I have acquired a ridiculous number of mosquito bites in the last couple of days . I have a few on my back but it´s mainly my juicy, muscular legs they´ve gone for - they know a tasty dish when they see one.
They´re so damn annoying though, I just want to scratch!!!

Today was the first time I´ve not showered in the morning - in fairness I had a shower yesterday evening but I´m usually really conscious about such things and yet it didn´t bother me that much.
I suppose it´s good practise for when we´re washing in rivers/not at all, and maybe it will make me more conservative with use of the power shower in my bathroom at home.
Or maybe it´ll make me crave it even more.
I really could do with it now - my feet are pretty dirty cause we´re walking around everywhere in flip flops so dust and mud gets picked up really easily, and the shower-head isn´t removable so there´s no way of focussing the spray on my feet.
I´ve done my best but they´re looking more hobbit-like each day.

Lunch was chicken off the bone, which was nice but it´s so much easier eating fillets. The rice was in a delicious yellow sauce though so that more than made up for it.
Rice is pretty standard here, and apparently it´ll be the staple when we´re in the tribes.
That, and boiled plantanes.
Certainly going to be interesting - I´ll try to resist the urge to smuggle in sweets or chocolate.

The afternoon was absolutely classic.
Our lessons were on mime and clowning, both of which are brilliant tools for connecting with the kids apparently. First we learnt basic techniques and then we had a go ourselves.
Half of the group were clowns and half, including me, were mimes.
This involved an oval of white facepaint, black eyes and I improvised a thick black monobrow. I then finished off with a small dot on each cheek and pink lipstick.
Suffice to say I have some brilliant pictures that I can´t wait to show you all.

I then put my pyjama bottoms on and we all went down the road to the panaderia still in full dress - the clowns were also in the colourful overalls.
We interacted with some of the local youth which was fun, and we also got plenty of beeps from passing cars.
I decided to put on a brunette wig back to front, the resulting look being that of an escaped goth transvestite mental patient. Whenever I waved to someone they just walked faster. Now I know what it´s like to be Luke Hammond (wonder how long it´ll take him to read this and reply).

Dressing as a mime, and in particular the pink lipstick, was probably more enjoyable than it should have been for me and I felt very empowered.
I had a similar experience a few months ago where I dressed as a devil woman for halloween which involved a skintight black dress, red wig and red lipstick. Both times I have got into the role rather too readily.

We spent the evening playing an energetic and very competitive game of Dutch Blitz (which I won much to Christina´s chagrin). Andrew then asked me to shave him which was a weird experience and when you take into account that I removed a thorn from his foot the other day, it´s really rather suspect.

We were then shown a YouTube video of two botflies being removed from someone´s back.
I´ve seen similar or worse before - I particularly recall one of a man lying down and his wife squeezing pus out of a cyst in his back.
There was another one which I was sent a link to of the work of these people: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dnepropetrovsk_maniacs.
I´m not going to describe it but it was and probably always will be the worst thing I´ve ever seen.
Read the article and see why.

So all in all it was a very interesting day; the facepainting and resulting activities being the clear highlight.
On a couple of occasions tensions arose within the group though only briefly; one was over washing up, with certain parties intimating that other parties hadn´t done their share etc. The other was not explicit but all of us guys detected that the girls were perhaps growing tired of some of our joking around, so we promptly stopped and all was well.
It´s bound to happen, especially when we´re taking so much information in and being so tired and spending such intense amounts of time with the same small group of people.
All we can do is pray that the inevitable spats that occur won´t be severe enough to disrupt our unity long-term, and that we can put aside all little issues and go out and do our absolute best to spread the Word.

Neeeed sleeep.
Goodnight.

JG