As another volunteer said in her blog, it is becoming harder and harder to know what to write about, because many aspects of my life feel so normal and uninteresting, or I forget what might be interesting to someone in the United States. So here are three topics have almost nothing to do with each other, except that they are all topics very basic to my life here:
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| This is how much dust I picked up in my somewhat-weekly room sweep. |
My life here is a dusty one. I live in eternal, rainless summer (except for the rare el Niño years). My trip to Chachapoyas was the first time I had seen and heard real rain in 5 months. So in Monsefú, between the desert-like climate, the proximity to the ocean, and the constant piles of construction materials in the streets (rocks, cement mix, sand), there are a lot of particles whipping around in the air, finding its way into everything. My eyes, my nose, my mouth, my electronics, my food, etc. My family sweeps the inside of the house twice a day, attempting to battle Mother Nature who wants to place a brown film over every surface. When I am outside of the house, I have learned to walk with my eyes almost always half-squinted, less a wind picks up and smacks me in the face with 100-year old dust from the deconstructed adobe house I am passing. My sensitive, eczema-ravaged skin is not happy with me; I've developed some itchy, dry patches and every few weeks, my eyelids rebel against the abuse and swell up. The floor of my room is uneven, unfinished cement so I seem to generate more dust that I am get rid of when I attempt to clean. In order to clean a dusty area, you first have to splash water all over the place to keep from creating unbreathable clouds when you sweep. Many people also try to help the situation by throwing their dirty water outside on the street or other dusty areas. Opinions are divided on whether this actually improves the situation or not, since we are then always subject to walk through dirty puddles.
Appearances.
People observe and comment on many aspects of each other's appearances. And the comments are very far from what the US considers politically correct. There's a totally different treatment of the topic of weight here, so people are completely honest with each other when it appears that someone has lost or gained weight. I actually appreciate this part of the culture, because considering the amount of rice I am eating on a daily basis, I want to know if my host family thinks I've gained significant weight. But some of the comments are just jaw-dropping. For example, one of my favorite people in Monsefú is a 25-year old woman named Evelyn, who has a beautiful singing voice and is very involved in the Catholic Church. She also happens to be very significantly overweight. A few months back, I went to a sit-down party for the priest's birthday. At the end, everyone grabbed the balloons off the wall to pop with their hands, in a symphony of loud cracks (Peruvians love explosions and loud noises, a topic for another day). When all the balloons were gone, another church-helper yelled, "Wait, there's one more balloon to pop!! and ran over to grab Evelyn around the waist. I couldn't really read Evelyn's expression to see if she enjoyed the joke or not, but everyone else found this hilarious, including Padre Alfonso.
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| Here are Chino and Nacho, two popular Venezuelan Reggaeton singers. Chino is on the right. |
Race is also treated very differently here. Someone whose eyes are slightly slanted is nicknamed "Chino," even if he is clearly Peruvian with no resemblance to an Asian. My host dad, who you may remember from the video is fairly dark-skinned, considers himself black and any time that someone makes a comment about something being dark or black, he says "Sin insultas!" to jokingly imply that we are insulting him. In both childhood and adulthood his nickname has been Negro. He and my host brother also make some pretty shocking commentary while watching black soccer players, saying things like "Ohmigod, where did he go?? He's so dark that I can only see his eyes and teeth, haha!"
I've had a few conversations with Peruvians about how these topics are treated differently in the United States, especially about the Chino thing... I say "you know, not all Asian people are Chinese, so shouldn't we say Asiático?" and the response I have gotten multiple times is "Oh, no, I don't call him Chino because he looks Chinese, but because his eyes are Chino" (while pulling on the corners of their eyes!!) I then of course cringe and say that gesture is considered really offensive in the United States, which just gets a response of laughter, "Really?! Well it's not here!"
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| Members of one of the artisan associations in town |
In most families and place in the provinces of Peru, gender roles are very clearly defined. This of course means that women generally do all of the cooking and cleaning in the house. As a result, I can't plan any meeting with artisans until 4pm or after, because all of the artisans that have families are too busy preparing and cleaning up lunch before that. It also means that many artisan groups depend on having soltera (single) women members, who can go to fairs and other events that involve traveling. Some husbands blatantly won't let their wives travel for fairs, or married women will say that they just "can't" leave the house, because what would their family do for lunch?
Being a young gringa woman here definitely attracts plenty of unwanted attention, and I am not just talking about piropos (cat-calls). The harassment here is a whole other level than I have experienced in Spain or elsewhere- it involves a lot of whistling but also HISSING, LIP-SMACKING, and disgusting sexual faces and comments. It's all completely cowardly, because they do it once your back is turned or right in the moment you are passing them, so that it's too late to react. I try my best to preempt the harassment, by making direct eye contact without a hint of a smile and giving a very stern "Buenos días." That usually works, at least in my site.
A mototaxi stop is right in front of my house, so everytime I cross the street I have to pass a group of 4-6 young guys, who used to make lots of comments at me. I knew this was not something I could accept for two years, so one day I had had enough, and I turned back around and asked them each what their names were. They all hid their faces and only told me their nicknames, and I told them that I'm living here and I find it really disrespectful when they make noises at me like that. We had a brief conversation about how they didn't mean to be disrespectful and just wanted to tell me how beautiful I am. Right. But it's been a bit better since then. They still giggle when I pass, but they don't say anything to make me mad.
The worst of the sexual faces, sounds, and comments seem to happen in Chiclayo. I can usually tolerate it or at least choke down my desire chase them down and punch them in the face, but every once in a while I lose it, like this weekend. First it was the old man (around 70), smacking his mouth at me and making comments as I passed him on the street. It really made my skin crawl, so I was already bottling that up when I crossed through a park with 3 other girl volunteers, and a 16ish year old boy on a bench starting commenting on how delicious we were. I whipped around to face him and he just about jumped out of his pants. He bolted off the bench and started walking away before realized how cowardly that looked, so he turned back around and scratched his head, looking quite unsure of himself. I ask him how old he was (no answer), and told him that was really rude, and he mumbled an apology. I felt great, until we passed back through the park, and from the other end of the park, he and two friends were whistling at us and screaming "HELLO! HELLO!" You just can't win. Sometimes (most times) confronting it makes it worse.
I've become much more acutely aware of my female-ness here in Peru, because of the ways I and other women are treated. I've been indirectly told that I muddled in men's affairs. I've also been told that women are more domestically abusive than men. Dealing with these kind of things as a Peruvian woman (not to mention the actual physical and verbal domestic abuse that is rampant) explains why a lot of independent women are so fierce about their feminism here... the younger generations of girls are growing up in (hopefully) a world that gives them more power to express their opinions and decide their own futures, but it's still a very unequal situation they live in. For my experience here, the positive outcome is that I am learning to embrace or understand the girl-power sort of stuff that I avoided in the United States.
I meant to write about a fourth topic in this post, religion, but I think this has turned out to be long enough already, so I'll save that for later. I hope my readers don't find this blog too depressing or negative, while these aren't super fun parts of my daily life, these things don't get me down that much because I've grown accustomed to them. I also think Peru is also making my sense of humor much more dark and sarcastic... I'll try to be a little more cheery in my Christmas post! Miss you, family and friends.
Being a young gringa woman here definitely attracts plenty of unwanted attention, and I am not just talking about piropos (cat-calls). The harassment here is a whole other level than I have experienced in Spain or elsewhere- it involves a lot of whistling but also HISSING, LIP-SMACKING, and disgusting sexual faces and comments. It's all completely cowardly, because they do it once your back is turned or right in the moment you are passing them, so that it's too late to react. I try my best to preempt the harassment, by making direct eye contact without a hint of a smile and giving a very stern "Buenos días." That usually works, at least in my site.
A mototaxi stop is right in front of my house, so everytime I cross the street I have to pass a group of 4-6 young guys, who used to make lots of comments at me. I knew this was not something I could accept for two years, so one day I had had enough, and I turned back around and asked them each what their names were. They all hid their faces and only told me their nicknames, and I told them that I'm living here and I find it really disrespectful when they make noises at me like that. We had a brief conversation about how they didn't mean to be disrespectful and just wanted to tell me how beautiful I am. Right. But it's been a bit better since then. They still giggle when I pass, but they don't say anything to make me mad.
The worst of the sexual faces, sounds, and comments seem to happen in Chiclayo. I can usually tolerate it or at least choke down my desire chase them down and punch them in the face, but every once in a while I lose it, like this weekend. First it was the old man (around 70), smacking his mouth at me and making comments as I passed him on the street. It really made my skin crawl, so I was already bottling that up when I crossed through a park with 3 other girl volunteers, and a 16ish year old boy on a bench starting commenting on how delicious we were. I whipped around to face him and he just about jumped out of his pants. He bolted off the bench and started walking away before realized how cowardly that looked, so he turned back around and scratched his head, looking quite unsure of himself. I ask him how old he was (no answer), and told him that was really rude, and he mumbled an apology. I felt great, until we passed back through the park, and from the other end of the park, he and two friends were whistling at us and screaming "HELLO! HELLO!" You just can't win. Sometimes (most times) confronting it makes it worse.
I've become much more acutely aware of my female-ness here in Peru, because of the ways I and other women are treated. I've been indirectly told that I muddled in men's affairs. I've also been told that women are more domestically abusive than men. Dealing with these kind of things as a Peruvian woman (not to mention the actual physical and verbal domestic abuse that is rampant) explains why a lot of independent women are so fierce about their feminism here... the younger generations of girls are growing up in (hopefully) a world that gives them more power to express their opinions and decide their own futures, but it's still a very unequal situation they live in. For my experience here, the positive outcome is that I am learning to embrace or understand the girl-power sort of stuff that I avoided in the United States.
I meant to write about a fourth topic in this post, religion, but I think this has turned out to be long enough already, so I'll save that for later. I hope my readers don't find this blog too depressing or negative, while these aren't super fun parts of my daily life, these things don't get me down that much because I've grown accustomed to them. I also think Peru is also making my sense of humor much more dark and sarcastic... I'll try to be a little more cheery in my Christmas post! Miss you, family and friends.
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