What a cock!

Of all the creatures that roam around Lupasso (name of both the street and my office building), this rooster might be the ugliest.

As you can see from the picture, he's got these big bulgy eyes, dirty ruffled feathers, and a lanky balding neck. And despite this, he walks around slowly, arrogantly raising his head and bearing that gross neck of his.

Every morning, this gangly little fella flaps up onto my window sill and salutes the rising sun. At 5:30 a.m.. For two hours. Then his brothers from across the valleys echo back, competing for territory, American Idol style.

I never realized that those cartoon images of roosters crowing at dawn were actually not exaggerations.

At the same time, these pests might actually be useful as alarms (and eventually food). My life here is much more governed by daylight hours than I ever imagined, and when I look out my window at 5:30, people, mostly women, are actually getting up, setting fires and beginning to boil water. Dusk comes early near the equator, and with scarce electricity, day actually ends with the sun. Staying up until midnight means enduring 6 hours of darkness, with not much to do but maybe go for a beer, read by candle-light, or (as I've been told, this might be the central reason for its prevalence here) spread HIV. So getting up early is the only way to maximize time.