Girls Empowerment and Maggotty Rats

This week I returned from one of the highlights of my Peace Corps experience to encounter one of the grossest moments of my experience thus far. The ALMA leadership camp for girls consisted of three days of workshops on entrepreneurship, leadership and self-esteem talks, reproductive health presentations, and condom relay races. I brought four very motivated girls from my town who I trust will help me bring this information to all the adolescents in town. We broke up the educational activities and lectures with volleyball games and water balloon fights. Many of these girls are forced into a premature adulthood of cooking, cleaning, and taking care of their younger siblings. The goal of this camp is to empower them enough to look for opportunities to continue their educations and avoid pregnancy long enough to pursue personal goals. I think these three days were among the most valuable in my service because they provided young girls with the knowledge and motivation to have a lasting impact in town. This type of intensive motivational and self-esteem building activities are required to facilitate true sustainability.

I returned home exhausted from three days of intensive activities and sleeping in tents to an awful stench in my room. Partially out of denial I attributed this scent to the avocado I had left in my room. After another day and a half the smell still hadn't gone away and my host mom mentioned that while I was gone she had put out rat poison and I should check my room for dead mice. I immediately knew that this was the source of the stench in my room and set out tearing the room apart to find the offending rodent. After pulling everything out from under my bed and searching amongst the random educational brochures, books, and art supplies that crowd my floor and shelves, I had almost given up thinking that the critter had died in my wall ( a potential but very probable disaster due to the cracks in the plaster and gaps in the adobe). I decided to pull out my clothes that were hanging up. I hadn't thought to do this because how could a rodent balance atop hanging clothing.? As I pulled out my first set of shirts a giant rat, approximately 8 inches long, plopped to the floor in front of me spraying maggots everywhere. The rat corpse was deep into the process of decomposition with the help of ants and maggots. I burst out of my room for fresh air as tears welled up in my eyes, my breath quickened almost to hyperventilation, and the gagging commenced. I still cannot understand how I managed to not puke but I know that I would have had I not gotten outside as quickly as I did. To make matters worse, there was no running water at the time and I had to get to a meeting in my capitol city so I threw all my maggot covered clothes in a tub and my host mom offered to wash them. Getting out of town for the rest of the day was necessary for me to minimize the scar left on my brain by the image of a maggot infested rat falling out of my personal belongings. This was just one of the worst experiences that I have had here in Peru and I have seen some pretty gnarly shit. This may make me some kind of freaky Peace Corps nerd but I often find myself appreciating the beauty of decomposition and nature's way to clean up after itself. I am grateful for the ants that eat and carry away the cockroaches in my bathroom every day and the vultures that land on my street to keep it clear of livestock and dog carcasses. I do not, however, feel the same way about the maggots that were attempting to help me do away with the rat that had fallen victim to the venom my family puts out to defeat them. Rats are my least favorite animal and after this experience I think that I will be even more horrified than ever at the sight of them.