Whom do Peruvians call monkeys?

In the house where we stay at the moment we noticed a “sensational” newspaper. We looked quickly through the news and our eyes caught a small message in the left bottom corner.

“Mono manda a la basura a la OEA.” This could be translated as “Monkey sends OEA to the trash bin”. Here OEA (Organizacion de Estados Americanos) means Organization of American States, which unites 35 countries of American continents and Carribean. The message is very short and is talking about the president of Ecuador, who is dissapointed about the last political actions in Colombia. He blames the OEA for that. He also says that now the OEA is worth only to be thrown to the trash bin of history.

The Ecuadorian president is a monkey? Exactly! The same as in Lithuanian they call Latvians heads of horses (zirgas galva), here in Peru they call Ecuadorians monkeys. While on the other side of the border, in Ecuador, they refer to Peru people as chickens.

Nicolas grating yucca for making yucca starch

These nicknames we have already learned from Nicolas with whom this January we stayed for 2 weeks in Pantoja – the first village after crossing Ecuadorian-Peruvian border. They have a military base over there and once in a while we had a morning entertainment by soldiers of the base. At 6.30 a.m. they were running circles with guns or wooden trunks around the village and singing songs about the monkeys (having in mind Ecuadorians) and their blood. Then they were arriving to the school’s football field (in front of our house) and making different exercises for the next half an hour. It was really interesting and at the same time strange to hear that in the Peruvian military songs they express disrespect to their Ecuadorian neighbor.

Peruvian military gathered each morning in front of our house at 6 am for doing excercises

So far to the news from the local newspaper. News – or not – about us are that we are still stuck in the worlds biggest city without road access – Iquitos. My (Augustas) malaria is fully cured. I am making my last blood tests, and the results about the other possible diseases (dengue, leptospirosis) will be known in two weeks.

Coming week we are hoping to finally get back to the road. The first “highways” are 3 days away by cargo boat ($25) or few hours by an airplane ($50-$100). We are checking possibilities for free rides by airplane, which is not as easy in this part of the world. In case we succeed it would be perfect for us, because yesterday we did a grand calculation of our savings. Left are only 1200 EUR. Once we will get back to the road, we will be heading towards a place where we could earn some money for our trip. We still don’t know where that will be… (any ideas welcome!)