Chapter 14

Friday 23.12.2016

Yesterday I also thought the weather would give us a nice day, and then came the storm and the tempest. On the day before Christmas it really seemed to be a nice day. The sun shone evenly into our valley, there was not a single cloud in the sky. Slowly my thoughts sorted themselves. I absolutely had to go back to the village to look for the right one. The main solar system had to be checked and connected as far as possible, so that the village also got electricity again. Furthermore, I wanted to have the container warehouse put in order. I sent my assistants there to do their best. Later I wanted to check out the Christmas program and discuss with Luisa what food there should be for Christmas. I had already reserved three geese for the first holiday and two young goats for the second day. Olivia and Alejandra should attend our Christmas party. Luisa and Cara had to cook for eighteen people.

The rest of the morning is quickly told. We managed to turn on the electricity for the village again. I had only taken Priya to watch. Alonso completely suffering from the physical exertion showed me his new home. Two women had each lent the couple a mattress from their double beds until theirs were usable again. Carmen was in the village today to help with the harvest of vegetables and potatoes. Other women piled up washed-away earth on the beds. Two baskets filled with Coca leaves stood in the saloon. The Indios obviously had their own way of celebrating the Christmas days. Nevertheless, Carmen asked me if we would come to the service. The villagers scheduled it for 5 on Christmas Eve; of course, I agreed.

On the way back, I saw from afar how the fire was smoking in front of the container warehouse. My assistants had even burned the oilpaper from the bicycle packaging, which I wanted to pick up. At least it was okay for me also. Sula came running excitedly that she would like to have the bright red bike. I shook my head, showed her the two BMX bikes, with which they should drive the mine road in the future. When she pouted, I grabbed her under the chin and said: “The bicycles will be raffled. Who gets which bike will show. All girls are the same, including you, Sula.”

I frantically searched in the containers and boxes for Christmas presents for the village. Two containers were still unopened. Fortunately, the table of contents hung on the door of the container I checked. Again, many different toys were to be found. A large box included expensive cutlery, cake forks, cake lifters, corkscrews and porcelain dishes as if for a gala dinner. In the neighbouring cardboard were sets of kitchen knives, kitchen utensils, pots and pans. We also found napkin rings, fine cloth napkins, tea towels, flower vases made of crystal and metal. There were white aprons for the waitresses and white gloves reaching over the elbows. Obviously, great festivals should be celebrated in the valley.

Finally. I found something suitable for the people in the village, six boxes of everyday glasses, plus large coffee pots, several sets of small plates, and cake plates. Even small soup bowls, flat and deep plates, and serving plates were found, once made of good porcelain, but in larger numbers we dug out complete food, coffee and tea sets made of simple material. Sula and Babette emptied sixteen smaller boxes. After the departure of Luisa, Carmen, and Alejandra, there were still sixteen people in the village including the married couples. In each cardboard box, two pieces were cleared of everyday objects and protected from damage with pieces of cardboard and crumpled paper. On top of that, I wanted to ask Luisa to give her heart a push and branch off 200 grams of salt and 300 grams of sugar from her supplies each. This was urgently needed in the village. Since we didn’t know if we would ever be able to replenish our supplies, this would really be a gift from the bottom of our hearts. Luisa refused to hand over some of our supplies, but I instructed it. Luisa left the kitchen indignant, while Cara, Esther, and Priya weighed everything in plastic bags as prescribed.

Later I showed Luisa how little the 3.2 kilograms of salt and the 4.8 kilograms of sugar from one of our storage bags were. Besides, it would be for her mother too. “You can get over sugar, but not salt. Without salt, life is more likely to end. In the cellar we had found fourteen bags of salt with 25 kilos each. If you use one bag in the kitchen every year, we can live on it for 14 years.” Luisa nodded in dismay. Perhaps she was also ashamed of her selfishness but I was concerned about more. The villagers should feel even more strongly that they belong to us and that we would share with them, even if it would be difficult for us.

My plan was that we go to the village for the service; each of us should take a cardboard box and hand it over personally. I called Zarina and Fahsai to me. They arrived uncertainly. “A question, ladies. We are all going to the village for the Christmas service tomorrow. Do you want to come with us or are you guarding our house? You have a completely different confession.” Little Fahsai had also developed quite a bit of self-confidence. She resolutely said that she was praying to Allah and therefore she wanted to stay here. Then there was a whisper to Zarina, who was still swaying. After all, Zarina also stayed. Would they like to be alone? I could rely on those two. However, I had to give Zarina the code for the gate and practice opening and closing. Perhaps it was necessary to leave the central office or let one of the girls in. On this occasion, I thought about whether it might be better to give the code to all women and girls. At the moment I had entrusted him only to Sula and Olivia. There were good reasons for this, but the reasons against it weighed more heavily for me. Until now, everyone had to tell Sula or me where she was going when she left. That advantage would be gone. For example, should there ever be serious arguments between the girls, they could only react angrily or completely desperate in our premises. If, as happened once, the gate was not properly locked, I would immediately know whether I had to hold Sula or myself accountable. If too many girls knew the code, there could still be a problem. It was almost scary, but the thought of a raid by foreign forces just did not let go of me. And, unfortunately, it was not unfounded, since Rus wanted to settle here and had partly stocked up with heavy weapons.

For 9, the normal start of night’s rest, I had announced a room and house tour. I was sure that the girls had prepared their rooms especially well today. Since 8 only the order-loving Priya was in the main hall, all the others were in their rooms.

I whistled on time at 9. Everyone stood tense next to the open door. “I’m not doing any checks today. The exam makes the girl from the opposite room. Only Babette has no counterpart. That’s where I’ll do it. And be thorough. If I find something then both have to suffer. However, you can also fix the shortcomings together. You have ten minutes now.”

Upper floor Palazzo - picture

Soon the girls were at the door again. “Was everything all right with Isabella?” I asked Priya. “Now, yes.” was a clear answer. “How was it with Ananda?” – “We still wiped the sink dry and cleaned up the dresser.” – “Sula, what did you have to say about Zarina’s room?” - “Nothing. It is fine.” – “Well, we’ll see together. If Zarina’s room is in order, it’s enough for today.”

The order of the room looked really very good, but the work shoes were heavily soiled. “Whose shoes are like this, too?” I asked, showing the shoes to the girls. “With whom it is necessary, you have a few minutes to clean them behind the terrace. And be careful, so that no dirt falls into the house. Otherwise, you all have to wipe the whole house again.” Almost everyone took the opportunity to clean their work shoes, some also additionally the sports shoes.

In my opinion, it was necessary right now to demonstrate how important order was for us. Of course, I also wanted to show at least once in two weeks who has the absolute say here. From my time in the army, I knew how important discipline and order were. Once torn down, it was hard to bring everything back to standard.

Some wanted to show me their clean shoes, but I was only interested in the principle. So, I waved her through to her rooms. Everyone had to go to bed. A new idea had occurred to me. Babette went from room to room, put out the light and said to everyone from the door “Good night, Daja.” - “ ... Ananda.” - “ ... Kira.” ... In the future, I wanted to use this from time to time as an award for particularly good achievements of individual girls. It worked and Babette was satisfied. Then there was a night’s rest for everyone.

In the office, I watched the Christmas program from the architect’s tablet before going to bed. It was in German, but the recordings and the songs were great. I managed to burn the broadcast on CD-Rom. I quickly tried to see if it was running on the DVD recorder. Yes, it was in very good quality. The sound was also very appealing, even a little loud. I quickly reined in the volume because of the night’s rest upstairs. Ramona and Luisa turned the corner and briefly watched the program. “I suppose it’s Christmas with you already?” Ramona mocked.

“This year I am a father for the first time and have thirteen lovely children. This is going to be a Christmas like never before in my life.” Ramona took my hands, put one on each of Luisa’s and her belly. Soon there will be fifteen.” – “From my point of view, there are seventeen. Carmen and Olivia will definitely give me a child as well.” I objected. My tone just didn’t get better with the women today, but tomorrow is also another day.

Saturday Xmas Eve

On this day I was awake very early. It had occurred to me again that although I had gifts for the village and for the children, but what about my three wives and Olivia? Before breakfast I went to the container warehouse. There were still tons of boxes and cartons in the last not yet fully sighted container, which I had emptied not even a third of yesterday. Behind another row of large boxes with household items, blankets, warm children’s jackets in small sizes up to 128, so not suitable for our girls, umbrellas for children and adults, two large packages of tampons, and one with panty liners, there was a box across the entire width of the container. There were also pallets stacked on it with as yet unrecognisable contents. I drove the pallets into the hall with the forklift. Hopefully, I broke open the giant box in the container. According to the overview, it was designated with household items, curtains, and fabrics. On top of it lay curtain and suit fabrics. Then, to make matters worse, I found only ammunition for the Russian submachine guns, the hunting rifles, and for all the pistols we had found in the valley. Two solid wooden boxes contained hand grenades. Among them I found a lot of smaller projectiles for anti-aircraft or anti-tank guns. There were also four boxes of MG ammunition belts. Finding four signal guns with loads of ammunition ended my search of the goods smuggled into the country. I climbed over the box. On the left and right I found two small guns each, for which I had already found the projectiles in the box. In the middle between the guns and on the guns, I had a certain success, 50 boxes of women’s shoes from size 35 to size 42, plus leather sandals, the finest tights, and stockings, two boxes of blouses, and two boxes of skirts for women. Unfortunately, there were no pants or even jeans underneath that we could use more urgently here, especially if our girls continued to grow like this. Also, I would have preferred to see work shoes or flat shoes, but it was a surprise box. Luckily, I knew that Luisa and Ramona had the same shoe size 40. I quickly picked out a pair of sandals and a pair of chic women’s shoes in their size, plus two tights. The blouses were hot fashion, certainly well suited for Ramona, but not for Luisa and for Carmen. I packed a cardboard box for Luisa and Ramona and added a skirt.

The containers were filled with so many, sometimes under our situation useless things, but something very important was missing, toilet paper. Kitchen rolls or paper napkins were also very limited. Soon they would be consumed. So far, I had hoped to find some more in the containers, but the hope was now gone. I had to discuss this with Ramona and Luisa, which was the most hygienic way to clean you after defecation. How did the people in the village do it? I was extremely uncomfortable with the idea of living without toilet paper, but there was no choice. We didn’t get newspapers either, even books were in short supply, so no paper reserves at all.

On the way back, I filled a large construction bucket with earth, sawed off the smaller Christmas tree I had chosen. It was one of the typical conifers here in the valley, a young araucaria. Before the girls came downstairs, I managed to get the bucket and the tree to my office unnoticed. Under the crystal chandelier, the Christmas tree should shine. It looked like an elf’s Xmas room. The many boxes with inline skates, safety helmets and knee and elbow protectors framed my desk. For Olivia and Ramona, in addition to the boxes of shoes, I had prepared a box of blouses. They were very youthful, frivolously cut and more suitable for slimmer women. Priya had picked out the two boxes with the nicer maternity dresses last week, but it was still too early for my wives and Olivia. Olivia was in her seventh month, her tummy could be felt, but she didn’t need a maternity dress yet, she was still slim. On the other hand, Luisa was only pregnant in the fifth, Carmen in the fourth and Ramona in the third month. But more beautiful new women’s dresses besides the maternity dresses did not exist in our valley, unfortunately.

In the evening I had Priya search all stocks of paper goods together. After all, each person in the house was given three rolls of toilet paper and two packets of paper napkins. Everybody should use it sparingly. It was a strange feeling to imagine how to keep yourself clean without paper, but we had no choice. Ramona had promised me to show the children how to keep themselves hygienically clean, sure not now, but after Christmas. Nevertheless, I looked to the future with concern in this question.

Luisa got the order from me to collect the smaller plastic bottles with detergent. Maybe you could use it as a bum shower. I hoped our doctor knew a better method.

For breakfast I had come up with a first surprise. Isabella had practiced playing the saxophone ‘Jingle Bells’ for half the day yesterday in the guesthouse. To do this, I had copied this song from the Rieu program on Isa’s tablet. The Nicaraguan was a natural talent. She had played the flute and pan flute at home, just for herself and her friends, learned every song herself. She was now playing the saxophone as well as some people couldn’t after two years of lessons. I nodded to Esther and she got six copies of the text so that two girls could always sing from the sheet together. I wanted to hear Isabella first, as not to embarrass her in any case. But she did it better than we were able to perform the difficult-to-sing lyrics to it.

Then I had planned a few words. “Good morning, dear women and young ladies. Christmas starts today. It is the feast of peace and human love. From today, every quarrel and envy is forgotten. We are a team, which has come together well. You all learned English well in less than five months. In mathematics, everyone is great. In Peru yesterday there were certificates in the schools. All thirteen of you get a ‘very good’ in English and Mathematics for the first five months. I thank your teachers Ramona and Lenya.” My short break was finally used to applause with some tutoring from me.

“How will this Christmas go for us, you might ask? We should enjoy our first Christmas together and be grateful for the fact that we have managed to live quite well without any big problems in the best of health. Our Christmas celebration starts at 5 this evening with a joint catholic service in the village. We will present gifts to all the people there. Then we come back to find some Christmas gifts. Fortunately, we still have some presents for this year. Is everything clear?”

Everybody nodded. “When we are in the village, Fahsai and Zarina will guard the house and do some small work. Dinner will take place today at about 7. After that there is a Christmas evening program. I have one more request; each of you sang solemn songs at home for Christmas or Ramadan. Practice this, perhaps in pairs or threes. I would be happy for it to be sung tonight under the Christmas tree.”

“We have a Christmas tree, Kira exclaimed with delight! I stopped her euphoria, “Let’s see if we can get it decorated. If you can make a crane or another figure out of paper or can collect a few cones, flowers, or seed stands, please put them in the two boxes in front of my study. Until noon it’s leisure time.”

All our girls were gorgeous. After an hour, the basket was filled with twigs, flowers, and seeds. Daja made small copper wires to hang the pieces on the small suppositories and fruit stands. There were four beautiful cranes in the craft box. Priya brought straight hair bows with flowers. Now we had had enough, because I attached threads for hanging to the wrapped bright-coloured Russian confectionery pieces from the cellar warehouse.

For lunch there was rice with goose meat; everything that was not used for roast goose when slaughtering our three geese; neck, liver, heart, and stomach. Today I had contributed to the recipe, because that was my mother’s speciality for lunch on Christmas Eve. All the girls ate the rather greasy stew with great pleasure. The vegetarians and vegans would have had their great hour to blame us. But the environmentalists could not insult us. I could claim, our so-called ecological or carbon dioxide footprint was not only climate neutral, it was negative. We only used renewable energy sources, we didn’t buy any things, and we made sure that the slopes became more and more wooded. Our wastewater in the main house flowed into two huge septic tanks and served to irrigate the large garden area. Every year, a septic tank had to be shut down for a short time and then the settled waste had to be scooped out or pumped out. The site manager had this let done by my workers shortly before the handover at the older pit. I knew exactly the system. The pumped out contaminated water fertilized the planted trees at the bottom of the slopes and contributed to the formation of two new groves.

Zarina and Fahsai had also planted a larger number of plants in our garden. The shoots from the seeds were still very small. They had also dug up young plants under the existing trees on the other side of the valley and placed them in the best soil mixed with the olive-shaped alpaca cot. Initially, they were evergreen laurel trees, but for the fall we had grown the first seedlings behind the guesthouse, from which, hopefully, powerful eucalyptus trees and native araucaria, which grew larger than 35 meters in good conditions, grew. In our valley there were excellent conditions for the growth of trees.

During my stay here in the Andes, I had read right at the beginning that too many eucalyptus trees were being planted in Peru. Nevertheless, I planned to have eucalyptus trees planted to the left and right of the wide access road like an avenue. From the wide river valley there was always a cool wind. I hoped that at some point the mighty trees would stop the wind from our houses, but instead steer it towards the wind power plant. That would take at least another fifteen years. Was it really worth planning so long-term? “Better do it than I would have done it then.” that was my motto. Suddenly I was worried, how would we be in fifteen years. I quickly wiped the thoughts away. “Today is Christmas. Stay calm, Michael.”

I took Priya to the guesthouse. She was to become our ‘electrical engineer’. We went on foot. Along the way, I explained to her my plans for her future contribution to the team. Alejandra and Olivia were already excited when we came to the guesthouse. They could not wash, nor could they iron. I also wanted to have the washing machines in the basement in the main house installed for a long time. Damn. The many open problems gradually grew over my head.

To check the power supply and to reinstall we were not allowed to act rashly to prevent complications. Also, it should be a first lesson for Priya, how to deal with electricity. At the beginning I explained to her the system of the power supply and the two main switches. They were neatly labelled ‘cellar’ and ‘hotel’. She should turn off the main switch for the basement. Already we were standing in the dark. I shone with a flashlight, Priya turned on again. Olivia almost crawled into us to learn everything with, she was extremely interested. But I told her that only Priya or I can do such work. Olivia assured me of that. It would only be so interesting, she knew too little about life and technology.

Then we looked at the individual fuses behind the main switch. What was the problem? Without asking, she turned on the fuse switch for the washing machine. Oops, we were in the dark again. The FI fuse of the main switch had tripped immediately. Frightened, the girls looked at me. They quickly realized that you couldn’t just turn on a fuse repeatedly, because the whole system suffers. So, I went step by step with Priya. On the machine, I showed her how to check if there is still electricity. Then we opened the front side panel, Water ran towards us. The important equipment had water in the wrong places, in the control device and on the drive. Priya and Olivia blew through the long monster with a vacuum cleaner. I had expected the problem, because the water was really very high in the basement. I quickly got a warm blower out of the tool bag. You could almost watch as the inside of the three-meter-long plant dried off. I left the ladies alone for ten minutes, took a cold beer and smoked a cigarette. When I came back down to the basement, the system was running as I had suspected. I was upset, pretending to be outraged. Priya did not yet know exactly what she could do with it. If the large washing machine could no longer be repaired, everyone would have to wash his or her panties in the sink.