This last week has been a good one (then again I haven’t yet had a bad one, but it’s a good way to start a paragraph).
On Sunday I was goatherding and once again it was so wonderfully chilled out. I love taking them along the ridge, it’s so much easier and they seem to enjoy the fact that I’m not always fretting and shouting at them. Also the views are stunning and you can take advantage of the fact that they can’t double back, to take some photos. The only difference between this time to the others is that we have a new addition to the family here in Durika.
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On the Friday night the baby goat got its first views of its new life (I say ‘view’, when it gets dark here it gets very dark. If the moon isn’t out then it’s pitch black, so its views wouldn’t have been too exciting). But she is so cute. Anyway, from 2 days old she is taken out shepherding so that she gets used to following the crowd.
So when I set off I had 40 goats running ahead of me, with a wide rimmed hat stuck on my head, my camera slung over one shoulder, my machete over the other, and pine branch in one hand to whip the goats into shape and a 3 day old goat clasped to my chest by the other. I carried her for the first bit but I soon had her dancing round my feet and doing random, sporadic jumps/ spasms of joy. Having an adorable baby goat has its ups and its downs.On the upside, she is great fun to photograph as well as laugh at when she does something stupid. Because she’s so small she often can’t even see over short grass let alone the long stuff they usually graze on, so she will often get ‘lost’ and start calling out in panic. In actual fact she is less than 2 meters away from you but to her you could be in the next valley. One down side is that although she weighs next to nothing, next to nothing starts to weigh next to a lot when you have been carrying her for the last few kilometres up the hill.
But the major draw back is, she’s so cute that she’s very distracting. On more than one occasion I was so busy trying to take yet another picture of the little fur ball and I wouldn’t realize that I couldn’t hear let alone see any of the other goats. In the, what I thought was only a couple of seconds, time, they had managed to munch and march either far ahead or down one side of the bank to where I didn’t want them to go.
But it all worked out in the end, but as soon as she arrived back at her pen she collapsed from her long day out. Bless.
Over the last 3 weeks I have somehow managed to avoid milking on the schedule. I really enjoy doing it but I had always had another job to do. So when I found out that on Monday that I was doing Milking I was delighted.
I got everything ready and started milking at 5.30am to be ready for the person shepherding at 6.30. That gave me an hour to get the 11 goats milked. It doesn’t sound too difficult but bearing in mind that I often get cramps in my hand when I milked, I was determined to go extra hard so as to get it done in time. But it went well, the only slight glitch was when one goat managed to unexpectedly move her leg, step in my bucket and tip out half the contents. But as they say, ‘there’s no point crying over spilt milk’, this time literally, so I just made sure nobody saw my mistake and surreptitiously continued. Its not that it mattered much, its just it wouldn’t do any favours for my milking cred.
Most of the goats aren’t producing half as much milk as they should be so they went really quickly, but, I think her name is ‘Subia’ or something, but she’s the mum of the baby, so has a lot of milk. The only problem is, she has tiny teats!!! It almost felt like you were milking her with your fore-finger and thumb!!! Needless to say the combination of a lot of milk and tiny teats meant that it took a lot longer than the others.
But despite all that, I did it in 40 mins which gave me another 20 mins to puff out my chest and feel good about myself.
But as a bonus, that afternoon, I was speaking to Eugo and he mentioned that he was very busy and also had to do afternoon milking. So, in relieving him of that job, I managed to milk 2 in one day. Smiles all round!
It’s really strange to think that we only have 4 days before we leave the community to start our adventure up Durika Mountain, and 5 days before we actually start walking. I remember Eugenio mentioning the trip in the taxi after I had just landed which was around 2½ months ago! So to now be counting down in days as opposed to months is crazy.
This afternoon, after our Spanish lesson, we went to Eug’s cabin to discuss a couple of things about the trip. He also showed us photos from previous trips. OH MY GOSH!!! If I was excited before, it was nothing to after seeing those pictures. They were absolutely stunning and they just made me want to pack right then and head off. I am so looking forward to doing it. I realize that it’s going to be hard, mentally as well as physically, but that’s what makes it so well worth it. So when Everhard (Eugo’s friend from Germany) arrives with my package, I’ll be able to get everything together and see how much space I have left for all the food.
As you can probably tell I’m quite looking forward to doing the expedition, but I have been trying really hard to enjoy the things that are currently taking place as opposed to looking forward to things in the future. But when you have something like this you just can’t help it. Also, recently, I think its probably because its only around 3 weeks to go, but I’ve been thinking about things I’m going to do when I get home or when I get to the airport. I know I shouldn’t, and should just live all the experiences that are here in the time I have left, but it’s very difficult to do.
But, I am love it here, waking up in the mornings to some of the views we experience and seeing some of the wonderful things here are just incredible. It is teaching me so much about all sorts of different things and I feel so much better off because of it. Abbotsholme taught me so much and one of the most important things it did for me was allow me to be who I wanted to be and become a person I am totally content with being. But what it also did was keep me in a bubble. The bubble allowed for so much but this gap year and this experience here is the opportunity I need to experience the things the bubble didn’t let me deal with.
Well, in a few minutes we are going to go up to the restaurant to watch a movie. I love watching movies especially with a group of people. It doesn’t matter if it’s a Disney film, film with a moral or simply a feel good movie, but just the action of watching a movie something I thoroughly enjoy. With that on top of a good week so far, just makes me smile.
Buenas Noches
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Just to confirm, yes, we did get popcorn as well.
