Some Observations about Customs and Critters
Originally Written September 2, 2009
Dear Readers,
I look forward to the second year of my service. This first year is not yet finished yet (that happens at the end of November) but I think that the second year will be far more productive, if that’s the right word. Things in Rinconada have already started to pick up. That’s not to say of course that there still aren’t difficulties or challenges that leave me shaken or completely baffled.
Little by little projects are going. However, in Peace Corps-speak, the idea of a “project going” is a very vague one, and one that has caused me a lot of grief. Just to succeed in arranging a meeting is a success. It’s a given that the meetings will start at least an hour late, and the lack of punctuality is usually a small joy for me because it gives me time to read while I have the feeling of “accomplishing” something, namely waiting for people to show up at seven for the meeting that scheduled for five. For me, the frustrating thing I’ve noticed is how unbelievably clunky the meetings are. Every meeting I’ve been to has at least forty-five minutes of uncoordinated discussion or people filling out papers that is begging to be streamlined. Often in crowds I succumb to doodling in my agenda or notebook. It doesn’t help that most of the gatherings are done in buildings with awful echoing acoustics and nothing can be heard anyways.
One has to take things with a grain of salt in Peace Corps life. I used to be driven insane by the things people would talk about on the road. “Are you going uphill/downhill?” “Ah yes, going up/down.” Of course I’m doing that. That’s like asking Waldo to his face if he’s wearing a striped shirt. Nowadays, however, I’ve come to be more at peace with it. You just accept it in the same way that Americans will ask you “How are you doing?” and then not even wait for a response. In other words, it’s just another form of acknowledgment.
Allow me to recount a typical story of hospitality. The simple matter of dropping a message off at a neighbor’s become quite an affair if you were not planning to spend much time with them. Every time I’ve had to pass along a notice to someone they have invited me to sit down and take a rest for a while. It’s a nice gesture and one that I’ve come to expect, although not one I’ve really come to always enjoy yet. Yesterday I was passing along notes to town authorities about a meeting I have coming up next week. I entered the front room of a house where several men were passing the time. Hanging from the rafters were fresh carved off slabs of beef and the smell of blood wafted around the room. I gave my note to the local authority who was slicing up oozing beef on the table and then told them I’d be on my way, as I had a whole stack of notes to give out. But everyone insisted that I stay for a moment and have a bowl of beef soup. I was unable to politely refuse and offering a guest food is something that has happened to me often out of generosity and respect, so there I sat. Now, I really love beef. But for a reason I can’t quite figure out, the local beef I’m not too crazy about at all. I guess it’s the taste, basically. Also, I can be very squeamish. Eating a bowl of beef soup in a room smelling of blood with red raw meet all around me and being chopped up on the table inches from my bowl made it difficult for me to enjoy my impromptu meal. So after eating mostly just the noodles and plantains in the soup I told them I was full, which they seemed to accept and that I had to continue passing out notices. I hope that wasn’t culturally insensitive of me.
Here’s a story I hope y’all like. One late night a couple of weeks ago I was stung by a scorpion while trying to smash it with my sandal. In order to keep from passing out from the sensation of having my toe chewed off with a blow torch I tried to make it back to my bed. I pushed through my bedroom door and stumbled over my chair and collapsed on my bed where waited for my vision to return while I consoled myself that I probably wouldn’t die because my host mother told me she had been stung three times in the course of her life. After blood returned to my head I got up and walked out to wake her up. I didn’t want to climb the hill to get to the door of the house, so I stood in the street and shined my flashlight into her window on the second story and called her name. She asked me what was wrong and I told her a “firetrucking” scorpion stung my “firetrucking” foot. She just replied “Ohhhh” and then giggled. A few moments later she came down to my room and poured some rubbing alcohol onto the wound and said something about a candle and my toe. A bit to my dismay I thought she wanted me to stick my toe in a candle flame, which didn’t seem very healthy, but I also wondered if the burning flame would really register much above the burning venom. Thankfully she was only suggesting I drip hot candle wax on the wound, which I did. It did sting, but as I had thought, I could barely feel it. Afterwards, I went back to stomping on the scorpion, which had been crippled and rendered nearly motionless but had stayed alive through the whole ordeal. Orfelinda finally killed it with a stick.
I’m sure her treatments did any good, but the next day my stinging had gone down to where I could walk without a limp, and by day three I couldn’t tell anything at all had ever occurred. Truth is, I don’t blame the scorpion, and actually I think they are really cool and beautiful bugs. I’ve found a few in my room and have always had to kill them, which is a real shame, I think. If I knew of a way of safely getting rid of them without getting stung, I would do that instead. I try not to kill the animals I find, even if the Peruvians in the area don’t like them. I’ve spared every tarantula and snake I’ve come across, and every time I find a snake dead on the road I feel bad for it.
Orfelinda has also acquired a new puppy, a dirty grey-brown campo dog who still piddles on floor and then sits in it. I think he’s cute in his own helpless way; he’s got floppy ears and is slightly larger than my size 11.5 shoe and he once fell off a rock and into a bowl of dirty water. He waddles crookedly along and likes to antagonize the sleeping pig who shakes water off on me after I’ve poured it on him with the watering can to cool him down in the sun.
And finally, my last observation about animals:
Chickens can fly, if only for short distances. For example, I’ve learned that a chicken can fly faster than a bucket’s worth of water I’ve flung at it. I did not know they could move that fast.
I think I’m running out of animal stories. I’m aware that this blog has not really had any linear patterns from beginning to end, but the truth is I wanted to put something light out there. Peace Corps is like life in a lot of ways: confusing as hell and full of chances for you to second guess yourself. This last month has overall been good, but has had its emotional lows too and I wanted to write something that would be cheery and convey some of the lighter or more amusing moments I’ve had here. Even the scorpion sting was funnier than hell I thought. I don’t know why I thought that. It’s a laugh I’d rather not relive, though.
Hope all is well.
Tristan
Dear Readers,
I look forward to the second year of my service. This first year is not yet finished yet (that happens at the end of November) but I think that the second year will be far more productive, if that’s the right word. Things in Rinconada have already started to pick up. That’s not to say of course that there still aren’t difficulties or challenges that leave me shaken or completely baffled.
Little by little projects are going. However, in Peace Corps-speak, the idea of a “project going” is a very vague one, and one that has caused me a lot of grief. Just to succeed in arranging a meeting is a success. It’s a given that the meetings will start at least an hour late, and the lack of punctuality is usually a small joy for me because it gives me time to read while I have the feeling of “accomplishing” something, namely waiting for people to show up at seven for the meeting that scheduled for five. For me, the frustrating thing I’ve noticed is how unbelievably clunky the meetings are. Every meeting I’ve been to has at least forty-five minutes of uncoordinated discussion or people filling out papers that is begging to be streamlined. Often in crowds I succumb to doodling in my agenda or notebook. It doesn’t help that most of the gatherings are done in buildings with awful echoing acoustics and nothing can be heard anyways.
One has to take things with a grain of salt in Peace Corps life. I used to be driven insane by the things people would talk about on the road. “Are you going uphill/downhill?” “Ah yes, going up/down.” Of course I’m doing that. That’s like asking Waldo to his face if he’s wearing a striped shirt. Nowadays, however, I’ve come to be more at peace with it. You just accept it in the same way that Americans will ask you “How are you doing?” and then not even wait for a response. In other words, it’s just another form of acknowledgment.
Allow me to recount a typical story of hospitality. The simple matter of dropping a message off at a neighbor’s become quite an affair if you were not planning to spend much time with them. Every time I’ve had to pass along a notice to someone they have invited me to sit down and take a rest for a while. It’s a nice gesture and one that I’ve come to expect, although not one I’ve really come to always enjoy yet. Yesterday I was passing along notes to town authorities about a meeting I have coming up next week. I entered the front room of a house where several men were passing the time. Hanging from the rafters were fresh carved off slabs of beef and the smell of blood wafted around the room. I gave my note to the local authority who was slicing up oozing beef on the table and then told them I’d be on my way, as I had a whole stack of notes to give out. But everyone insisted that I stay for a moment and have a bowl of beef soup. I was unable to politely refuse and offering a guest food is something that has happened to me often out of generosity and respect, so there I sat. Now, I really love beef. But for a reason I can’t quite figure out, the local beef I’m not too crazy about at all. I guess it’s the taste, basically. Also, I can be very squeamish. Eating a bowl of beef soup in a room smelling of blood with red raw meet all around me and being chopped up on the table inches from my bowl made it difficult for me to enjoy my impromptu meal. So after eating mostly just the noodles and plantains in the soup I told them I was full, which they seemed to accept and that I had to continue passing out notices. I hope that wasn’t culturally insensitive of me.
Here’s a story I hope y’all like. One late night a couple of weeks ago I was stung by a scorpion while trying to smash it with my sandal. In order to keep from passing out from the sensation of having my toe chewed off with a blow torch I tried to make it back to my bed. I pushed through my bedroom door and stumbled over my chair and collapsed on my bed where waited for my vision to return while I consoled myself that I probably wouldn’t die because my host mother told me she had been stung three times in the course of her life. After blood returned to my head I got up and walked out to wake her up. I didn’t want to climb the hill to get to the door of the house, so I stood in the street and shined my flashlight into her window on the second story and called her name. She asked me what was wrong and I told her a “firetrucking” scorpion stung my “firetrucking” foot. She just replied “Ohhhh” and then giggled. A few moments later she came down to my room and poured some rubbing alcohol onto the wound and said something about a candle and my toe. A bit to my dismay I thought she wanted me to stick my toe in a candle flame, which didn’t seem very healthy, but I also wondered if the burning flame would really register much above the burning venom. Thankfully she was only suggesting I drip hot candle wax on the wound, which I did. It did sting, but as I had thought, I could barely feel it. Afterwards, I went back to stomping on the scorpion, which had been crippled and rendered nearly motionless but had stayed alive through the whole ordeal. Orfelinda finally killed it with a stick.
I’m sure her treatments did any good, but the next day my stinging had gone down to where I could walk without a limp, and by day three I couldn’t tell anything at all had ever occurred. Truth is, I don’t blame the scorpion, and actually I think they are really cool and beautiful bugs. I’ve found a few in my room and have always had to kill them, which is a real shame, I think. If I knew of a way of safely getting rid of them without getting stung, I would do that instead. I try not to kill the animals I find, even if the Peruvians in the area don’t like them. I’ve spared every tarantula and snake I’ve come across, and every time I find a snake dead on the road I feel bad for it.
Orfelinda has also acquired a new puppy, a dirty grey-brown campo dog who still piddles on floor and then sits in it. I think he’s cute in his own helpless way; he’s got floppy ears and is slightly larger than my size 11.5 shoe and he once fell off a rock and into a bowl of dirty water. He waddles crookedly along and likes to antagonize the sleeping pig who shakes water off on me after I’ve poured it on him with the watering can to cool him down in the sun.
And finally, my last observation about animals:
Chickens can fly, if only for short distances. For example, I’ve learned that a chicken can fly faster than a bucket’s worth of water I’ve flung at it. I did not know they could move that fast.
I think I’m running out of animal stories. I’m aware that this blog has not really had any linear patterns from beginning to end, but the truth is I wanted to put something light out there. Peace Corps is like life in a lot of ways: confusing as hell and full of chances for you to second guess yourself. This last month has overall been good, but has had its emotional lows too and I wanted to write something that would be cheery and convey some of the lighter or more amusing moments I’ve had here. Even the scorpion sting was funnier than hell I thought. I don’t know why I thought that. It’s a laugh I’d rather not relive, though.
Hope all is well.
Tristan
posted by Tristan | 10:26 AM
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