In the shadow of another Volcano

Try to imagine this: you wake up and your wooden house is like a microphone, better, a speaker for the wind and the rain. you feel for split seconds, like the house will collapse in on you. All alone, no one around. Warm sleeping bag. you look at the clock and it reads 7:34... you are going to be late so you drag your lethargic body closer to the howling Pacific ocean, out of bed as you dress yourself. You throw flour and water and salt in an old pot and knead it to a dough, squash it flat and put it on the fire to make some rudimentary chapatis.
Rubber boots, rain jacket, dark sky. Goats are gone and havent been milked in 24 hours - you need to find them and herd them back into their barn.

This was me: so Checho (Sergio) and I got on their tails; we tracked their footprints and their droppings. We walked all the trails and even through thick rainforesty bush. This was where they spent the night - droppings and the strong smell of goats. After two hours of tracking we finally found them. We spent the rest of the day weeking an overgrown garlic field in the scorching sun and making sharp creamy goats milk cheese from the lat, eventual morning milking.
Checho has been the sole worker on this farm for 2 decades. But I could quite literally write a book on him. I wont right now but sufficed tro say that a grade 5 education seems to be sufficient to see the inequality in the world, the corruption of governments and corporations, sufficient to keep bees, to manage tourist cabins, to farm, to fish and weave fishing nets from plants that grow in the field (befor the age of plastic!!) to build close to 10 houses singehandedly,to be compassionate and to raise some of the most polite, sociable, fantastic, well adjusted and musical kids around. And thats not an exhaustive list! I could listen to this guy for hours. He is, despite, or perhaps as a result of his bizarre superstitions, one of the greatest story tellers Ive ever met. Working with Checho is like being at an Arlow Guthrie Concert all day long!
But Checho is poor. He also understands that this country is built to keep the poor poor and make the rich richer. But in rural Chile the first thing you do is you shar. At lunch time Checho and I wander down the hill to the shore of the pacific ocean, to his red Alerce shingled house and I sit in the wood fire heated kitchen with the family - standing out but also fitting in. I with the little boy Daniel and we all laugh together, all seated around a little table and a hot meal. When there is meat or fish I don{t eat it but I try not be be a bother - I simply pick it out (its probably from next door).
Living in a house by myself, (the farm owner Matias old house, also built by Checho) - a house full of revolutionary magazines, vestiges of a fighting past, red student publications and pamphlets on sustainable organic agriculture; drums, flutes, guitars, amps, bases, tamborines; paintings and colourful shawls and old single-lense reflex cameras - living here I realize finally and with clarity that I need other people. Coming home after working all day to an empty cavernous, quiet house is heavy and depressing...

Yesterday after work I walked through the fields and picked fresh cholards, zucchini, garlic, chives and lettuce. With the flour I bought at the bottom of the hill I made little pizzettes (pizzas) with roasted zucchini, chives and fresh goats milk cheese.
Other days ive spent hours picking blackberries in my front garden, to make a sort of jam and fresh peas, well, they seem to be a different species from the frozen variety!!

Anyway here in Puerto Montt, a grimy port town, I am spending one day to catch up on emails etc. I spent the night at a pension (a sort of cheap hostal) where the old man has offered me work (and has told everyone he meets about me). He has also suggested that I work on the Navimag ferry going south, which could sounds like a good idea... but I have other plans...And Ill tell you waht they are...

Later