Things are heating up politically here in Urubamba. The election is next weekend, Sunday the 5th, and the two candidates for president are very controversial. Peruvian elections start with a number of candidates that are eventually reduced to two. Somehow the two selected candidates, Ollanta and Keiko, are leaving a whole lot of people feeling like they have to choose the lesser of two evils. With Ollanta, a lot of people are worried that he will bring Peru into an age of pretty extreme socialism, reminiscent of Hugo Chavez's Venezuela. As for Keiko, she is the daughter of Fujimori who was previously the president of Peru but was sentenced to 25 years in prison for crimes against humanity. She has also made it clear that she plans to pardon him, and will be bringing with her a lot of the same people that worked during her father's time in office.
Both a Keiko headquarters and an Ollanta headquarters have been set up in town(they also happen to be right across the street from each other...awkward), political slogans and symbols are painted on tons of buildings/houses, and its pretty common to see people driving around with megaphones yelling about the candidates they support. However, most of my friends here really don't want to vote for either and are worried about the outcome of the election. It will be interesting to see how things play out here!
In other news, today I made fertilizer consisting of alfalfa, chicken guts, fish heads, peas, sugar, chicha (alcoholic drink made by chewing up corn and spitting it back out again...literally), cow shit, and chicken shit. MMMMMMMmmmmmmmmm
Besos
Hannah
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