July 24th, 2006- Stop, drop, and roll...respectively, or it won´t work

It would be unfair for me to fail to dedicate at least one entry to parties in Peru, and how they continue to surprise and delight me so. Sometimes, like last weekend, the parties get so out of hand that people, such as myself, catch on fire. While I previously thought that our endless elementary school lessons on what to do if your body is engulfed in flames were a bit overkill, last weekend, I was quite thankful to have such lessons drilled into me. Let me preface the details of my combustion though by describing the stylistic details of the parties here. First off, community parties typically take place in outdoor enclosed soccer fields equipped with cement turfs. There is usually a live band that plays through the night, local provisions cooked by the area’s community members, and some form of additional entertainment (which last week, came in the form of homemade firework displays). Personally, I think one of the most enjoyable aspects of fireworks in the U.S. is the distance that exists between the display and its audience. In my opinion, this space is needed to fully appreciate the beauty of these dangerous entities, but strangely, no such space existed between last week’s fireworks and us partygoers. Instead of shooting them into the sky, the party organizers thought it might be fun to strap large plastic contraptions onto their bodies with which to shoot fireworks off from in every direction out into the party. To the Peace Corps volunteers that attended the event, this obviously seemed a little troubling, but considering none of the Peruvians seemed uneasy about this, we chalked our frantic shrieking and limb-flailing initial reaction up to inexperience, and finally decided to silently observe the display with the best of them. It was during this time that one of the organizers came charging at us, still spewing out fireworks. When I turned to run and seek refuge from the flames, I found myself up against a fence. It seems pretty obvious that when you shoot fire at a person, especially one who is wearing synthetic materials, that she will catch on fire, but hey, what’s the harm in that? I suppose it was all done in the name of fun, and even after a few burn holes in my fleece and a small dose of post traumatic stress disorder from the event, I can still say it was one of my best nights spent here so far.

Moving on. We are approximately half way through our training and things in that respect are going well. I am worried because I have grown quite attached to my Spanish teacher, who I spend a considerable amount of time with, and I am really wishing that I could take her to my site with me in five weeks. Last week during class, she was explaining to us how she has had thyroid cancer and how she needs to have a check-up soon to make sure that no more operations are needed. She is so young, and she is fine at the moment, but I became so filled with sadness at the thought of her suffering. The strength of my reaction really surprised me because I have never formed relationships with people so quickly. I think I may have similarly touched her as well though, because today she told me in Spanish that I had the heart of a melon. She said this with affection in her voice, so I guess it was a compliment, but I am not a big fan of the melon (particularly the watermelon), so I feel conflicted about that compliment. It’s better than comparing any part of me to the papaya though, because seriously, what a poor excuse for a fruit that one is. I digress. I feel like everything here- emotions, experiences, thoughts, are so intensified and a bit more difficult to process. I have also grown very close with two girls in my group, and since it is painful for us to go for 6 hours without venting to and laughing with one another in English, I am wondering how two years without them will be. While training is necessary, it is giving us all a false sense of what life at our sites will be like.

Speaking of our site placements, we had our second and most important interviews last week with our placement officers. In these interviews, we further articulated what we would like to have and do within our respective communities. I expressed that I would like to be in a rural community in the Andes or foothills, that I’d like to be surrounded by greenery, and that it would be cool if I had a toilet, but that I guessed that such amenities weren’t completely necessary. I don’t really remember my other requests, but I do remember how difficult it was to specify exacts, considering I still have a very limited understanding of this country and its needs. In about a week, we should all know exactly where we are going, and then we will be able to visit our sites for about a week to meet our new families and the communities we will be working with for the next two years. I suppose this will be the culmination point of our entire training- the scariest but most exciting time for all of us during these ten weeks. I look forward to it. Right now in training, we are continuing our language training, and doing practice projects within the neighborhoods we currently live in. My group is collecting information from community members (predominantly those who are parents) for young mothers, and creating an informational pamphlet that can be distributed at local clinics. During our first community meeting, I almost murdered four children who thought that it would be fun throw rocks at one another, and make an unmanageable ruckus during our discussion. Their parents didn’t seem fazed by this, which made me think that these distractions might be a constant within our presentations and projects here. That’ll surely take some getting used to. Is now a bad time to ask myself if I actually like children?

I don’t think I have described my new family here, who I can’t get enough of. They are far more liberal than the majority of the families here, and they are always encouraging me to drink and party with them, to stay out late to explore (as long as I am being safe), and to invite my friends over for dinner and sleepovers. Many volunteers are having trouble with their families because they feel as though their families are treating them like children, not letting them stay out past a certain time, and not really allowing them the same freedoms they had in the U.S. That is how my first family was, but this family is far more flexible and understanding of my situation. One thing that is considerably different here is the conclusions that people jump to when they see you with someone of the opposite sex (we are living in such a fishbowl here, and gossip is RAMPANT). They almost refuse to believe that this person is just your friend, and they continue teasing you about it for ages after the sighting. Typically, people of the opposite sex are not allowed in your bedroom, and it can even sometimes be weird to have them enter your house. My family is pretty relaxed with this, but I still get nervous about inadvertently offending them.

Yesterday provided some comic relief in our household. First, my host mom, who is small and always smiling (she reminds me of a carebear for some reason, and because of this, I naturally have the continuous urge to tickle and hug her…which is sort of strange, come to think of it) came home from work completely exhausted. She had been up all night the night before dancing at a party, and then had to put in a twelve hour work day cooking at a retreat for priests. I told her to go straight to bed and that I could prepare myself dinner, but she insisted on taking me out for pizza in the closest town, and then watching her favorite program on television. While she was viewing that program, I was talking to my dad on the phone while witnessing her eyes flicker shut and her head bob as she sat at our dining room table. Ten minutes into my conversation, she fell to the ground, knocking our entire table over with her, and landing with our placemats sprawled all over her body. “SARA! Estas bien? Que paso?!!!???,” I exclaimed. This woman leaped to her feet and stared quizzically at me as though she had never seen me before, probably wondering what the hell I was doing in her house and why the hell I was using her phone. When she finally came to, she explained to me that she had been having a nightmare that we were having an earthquake, and in her panic, I suppose she sort of created her own earthquake. Right, as I said before Sara, you should go to bed, in your bed, not at the dining room table.

The night gets even more hysterical. At around 1:30 am, I awake with a rumbling in my tummy. For some reason, people do not stock their refrigerators here, but instead, they shop everyday for food, which doesn’t seem efficient since the closest supermarket is an annoying bus ride away. This means that when I am hungry at ungodly hours of the night, the lone ketchup packet and pineapple rinds that are in the fridge probably aren’t going to satiate me. I had this brilliant idea of taking some cheese curls off of a display in my mom’s store, which is situated at the front of our living room. “I’ll just pay her tomorrow at breakfast,” I thought to myself. But before I could work out those logistics in my head, I knocked over the entire display, breaking the display, and two glass bottles beneath it. This startled me so much that I ran into my room, and reemerged (as a pathological liar, apparently) to find my sleepy host mom in our tienda, wondering what the heck had happened. “Gee Wiz, Sara! What in the world happened out here? Did Tom (our diabolical cat) wreak havoc out here, or what?” This is when she explained to me in her bewildered voice that Tom had been sleeping with her the whole night. “Oh,” I mumbled, “Well, it must have been an earthquake then,” and I ran abashedly into my room, without the cheese curls, by the way. You might think I am a bad person for lying (and I do too), but I can’t even explain how much pressure we are under to make a good impression with our families. One of the volunteers already fell through his neighbor’s roof, and that was quite a debacle, so anything I can do to keep my family viewing me in a favorable light, I will do (and that includes telling white lies, as established last night).

More lies and deception, a la Lindsay Buck. Shortly after my single-handed destruction of my host mom’s tienda, I came out to use the bathroom only to find our precious Tom batting around what looked to be a bird. But no, it couldn’t be a bird, because Tom had not been outside all day. Must be a toy, but how strange if it is a toy, because people don’t care enough about their pets here, nor do they have enough money to splurge on cat toys. All I can say for sure about the thing that was being batted around was that it was not moving. The next morning at breakfast I was informed by my host sister that Tom had gotten into our parrot cage (the cage of the parrot I didn’t know we had), and had gotten hold of their prized pet parrot. My host mom, with tears in her eyes, insisted that the bird was not dead, but instead, that it had escaped Tom’s wrath and had flown to find freedom. “Did you see anything last night, Lynchee? (oh yeah, that’s what they call me. It’s not so offensive here, as it might be in the south of the United States). “Umm….nope, nothing is coming to mind, Sara (as I sat there with the dead parrot’s image burnt into my mind). Are lies okay, sometimes? I sure as heck hope so, because just last night for me was a little out of control.