To be brief

I found a piece of cardboard and wrote a sign and had an impromtu rowboat business on the bolevard. I rowed tourists into bees nests and through piles of river trash in the floating shanty town of Belen. Lomo ran free causing mischief on the Bolevard but always came back. Then one day somebody stole him. A friend arrived. My dog company has been swapped for human company, now we are two girls and no puppy and this blog is false advertising. I missed Lomo sorely but he hated the boat, I had to run after him in the mornings to get him on board, so I spose it’s for the best. I left my brand new boat for a more rotten, smaller boat. I lived on a raft under the Bolevard. We fixed up the boat on the raft, balanced with hot tar in hand on loose planks with hazardous nails and slippy river mold, and the raft lurched on the waves if a speedboat came by. They were the most casual family I have ever met. There were about 9 of them. We used the raft as firewood. The kitchen sank into the water. There were too many rats. The little boy peed lavishly on the floor in a wide fan with his hip thrust out. We watched incredulously. Even Lomo goes outside to pee. We ate sat on the floor with our hands because all the spoons had fallen into the river. The little boy had thrown the telephone in the water. The hatchet had fallen in the river. The river went down. The water was very dirty. The river is everybody’s toilet. The rio Itaya (river in front of Iquitos) has no current. The baby was miserable, boney with swollen stomach, wailing all day. We took a poo sample to the lab and he was being eaten alive by parasites. The doctor was amazed. ‘where do you live?’ he asked as he handed us the long list. I grew disgusted by the water. You could see it through the gaps between planks in the room, we slept just above it, it was everywhere, on the plates we ate on. It reflected yellow. Our stomachs hurt. We had chronic diarrehea. Finally I became convinced Iquitos was trying to kill me. It was time to leave. We piled everything into the boat and left abruptly, parasite riddled. We would struggle with our stomach ailments on the river but Iquitos would not trap me …

Washing clothes in pee water. Barbarian pee child behind. He peed and occasionally pooed on the floor inside. I stepped in his pee many times. Boat in the background. I could conveniently dock it here at least.

The toilet

The neighborhood. Of people who built their rafts right by Iquitos but don’t quite live in Iquitos. Our house is the one with the long walkway. As the river goes down they move the rafts out with the water. The river looks sparkly here but don’t be fooled it is damn contaminated.

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