Flooding

It’s been raining most of the time, day and night, for the past few days. I knew my usual route would be terribly muddy. This is what one section of it was like the previous day.

 So I decided to walk home from the highway on the road that cuts across the pastures instead.

The pastures are flooding badly. Each family in the valley has a specific area to take their cows, sheep, donkeys & horses to. They take them out each morning and bring them back to their homes each evening. Some of the pastures are completely flooded now, forcing those families to stake their livestock in less desirable locations or keep them in the barns and bring in fodder. This was all dry land, with animals grazing on it, last week.

These cows have lost half their usual pasture and did not seem very happy about it.

 The road flooded, but we all had to use it anyway.

My feet got wet. By the time I got home, my pants were soaked up to the knees.

These women had gathered beans and were waiting under a tarp for their ride to show up. They had many bags of produce to take to the market in Jauja.

 Harvesting was probably not much fun with this much water in the bean field.

I met some of my students on the road. “Senorita Elena! Buenas tardes!”

Peruvians tend to just ignore the rain. In any case, they had their boots on. In my English class, these girls are learning numbers. This morning we played Bingo, in English.

The best thing about this rainy season flooding is that the water birds come much closer to my house. They fly in to enjoy the new ponds that have appeared. I like watching them.