September 10th, 2006- Whooooeeee, it´s raining cats and dogs in Cajamarca!

That is the one downside of living in this region- the rainy season. I asked my host dad just how bad the rainy season is here, and he said it just rains a tiny bit each day for a few months. Today’s rain makes me think he may have been telling me fibs though, because it’s not even rainy season yet, and I would file this rainfall under T for Torrential. I thought I would use this rainy day to address some cultural differences I have noticed here, because I don’t think that any of my entries have really focused on that gem of a topic. Let’s establish ahead of time that I am generalizing, because I have still only been here for a short time. This entry is going to jump around a bit because I have a few subject matters to discuss, so please forgive its disjointed nature.

Let’s first discuss things that are fairly obvious, such as dress. In the cities, people dress as they do in the United States, or maybe a little less formal than in most U.S. cities. Sneakers are not very common here, though. Men wear loafers, dress shoes, or boots, and women wear sandals or dressy boots. It seems that women in the cities prefer wearing dress slacks over skirts. Shirts adorned with English words seem fairly popular and fashionable, but something funny is that the phrases on the shirts don’t usually make sense, and sometimes, they make the person look downright ridiculous. For instance, today, I saw a girl wearing a shirt that said “Fat Birthmark” on it. Personally, I love birthmarks, but prefer when they are small, rather than fat. And doesn’t something have to be three dimensional to be classified as fat, anyway? Weird. Regardless, my clothing doesn’t make me stand out too much in the city, but in the campo, it’s a different story. The majority of the women in my site wear muted neon layered skirts, with different colored neon sweaters. They wear forest green or maroon wool socks pulled up to right under their knees, and typically wear dark laced shoes that resemble orthopedic nursing shoes. They are seriously like little walking Technicolor rainbows, and I might start dressing like them soon. I figure how can I even think about missing home when my clothes are so distracting to me? Color coordination is apparently not practiced here. I wonder if each color they wear is symbolic of something, because there are some interesting color schemes going on here, and I can only think that they must be representative of something.

Communication style. Peruvians love to talk, and interrupt, but one good thing about them is that they don’t mind being interrupted mid-thought, so they are in no way hypocritical. They seem a bit repetitive, almost as if they focus endlessly on small daily details to avoid discussing anything meatier. They have good senses of humors, and are not nearly as conservative in conversation topic as I was expecting them to be. For example, my first night with my host family (a family from the campo, where people are traditionally more reserved and conventional), my host mom spent the evening showing me pictures of she and my host dad making cakes in the shape of penises. What a fabulous ice-breaker that was for us! Generally, I think that Peruvians are not very expressive about their emotions. This bothers me because I feel as though they don’t trust me with certain information, even though I know it is just part of the culture. It took forever (3 weeks) for my host family in training to tell me that their father was really ill and needed surgery. If they had told me sooner, I could have helped them earlier.

Customer service, or lack thereof, has been bothersome to the majority of us (Peace Corps Volunteers). My best piece of advice, restaurant-wise, is to never enter an eatery in a parched state, because it usually takes longer for your drinks to come out than your food. In my favorite eatery in Cajamarca this makes no sense, because the table I frequent is right next to the glass case where the drinks are stored. This means I can see my drink, and imagine how nice it might feel on my desiccated throat, but I can’t have it until my waiter decides that he wants to serve it to me. Also, most restaurants don´t serve a full menu during the week. Instead, they have a different 3-4 course meal chosen for each day, and if you don´t want to eat what the special is for that day, you have to find another restaurant to eat at. Even more confusing is service in stores, pharmacies, or bakeries. While the concept of a line exists, the concept of first come first served does not. Literally, in a line of ten people (the first person obviously deserving service first, since he/she has been waiting the longest), the salesperson very well might help the tenth person. Why? I don’t know. Ask Peru. Onto pharmacies and bakeries. Don’t even get me started on how needlessly complicated buying things in these two places is. Let’s say I want a piece of cake, which I often do. I go to the glass case, point out the cake I want, and the person helping me takes it out of the case. At this point I am usually salivating. But no, I can’t get my cake now. I have to wait for him to fill out a little paper specifying what type of cake I want, and then wait some more as he fumbles around to find some really important stamp. Then, with my official bakery paper, I have to walk to a little box at the front of the bakery, where there’s ALWAYS a huge line. Here, I have to get another stamp on my paper, and take it back to the initial guy that helped me so I can finally retrieve my cake. Usually, by this point, I don’t even want it anymore. Screw Weight Watchers, come to Peru and try to eat junk food! It’s almost too difficult to bear, and much easier to buy fruits and veggies elsewhere. Pharmacies follow the same procedure, so I wouldn’t suggest going there in an emergency.

Peruvians seem to have very different belief systems than us about small things (that can make BIG differences), like refrigeration. Many people here (such as my family, and the families of many other volunteers) think that refrigeration is evil, because to them, cold things make people sick. In hypothetical terms, if my family witnessed me eating a piece of noticeably rancid meat paired with a cold beverage, they would blame my subsequent trip to the toilet on my cold beverage. It’s not worth arguing with them because this, to them, might as well be empirically proven. “Do they at least put eggs, mayonnaise, or milk products in the fridge?,” you ask. No, no, and no. Am I still a little hesitant to eat these products in their unrefrigerated state? Well, I was, up until yesterday that is. I mentioned before that the closest city to me (Cajamarca, which is 45 minutes away) is famous for its dairy products. Knowing this, yet having access to none of these delicacies in my town, is making me crave them like pigs crave truffles. Of course, my cravings nag me most when I am not going into the city, and by some stroke of fate, I stumbled upon some yogurt yesterday in a nearby store. I bought it, and immediately felt that while it was stored in a refrigerated case, the case had not been plugged in. I couldn’t control my hunger, though. I wanted it so bad that I figured I would just give it a try. It was definitely curdled, it had definitely lost its vanilla flavoring, and it definitely didn’t aid in my adopting of the Peruvian philosophy that refrigerators are malevolent. Disregarding all of these things, I definitely ate it. I feel pretty good today, so does this mean that refrigerators are a money making hoax? I am still not entirely convinced. One last food difference that I can remember is that people here have a fear of mixing avocado and dairy, which means that all of you CA fans of chicken, cheese, and avocado sandwiches should be dead by now. Beware!

One heavier cultural theme that seems to permeate all of society here is this subtle (or sometimes not) racism, or classism, as some people refer to it as. I guess if I were to choose an –ism term for it, I would call it colorism, because the people being discriminated against aren’t really a different race, nor are they a minority. Whenever I would invite my host family in training to Lima with me, my host dad would tell me that he doesn’t go into Lima very often, because he is ostracized nearly every time he visits. Oftentimes in stores, store owners react negatively to his darker skin (which isn’t even what I would classify as dark), and won’t serve him because they think he is a thief. Many times they even call him this and force him to leave. He lives about 45 minutes outside of the city, and he has to deal with this every time he goes in for supplies that he needs for his house or job. Lighter skin is glorified here, and this concept is definitely mirrored in mass media. In all advertisements and commercials, the models are Caucasian-looking, even though the majority of Peru’s population has a more indigenous look. In my first week of Spanish class, my teacher told me that one of Peru’s most serious problems is its lack of unity amongst the people. I guess that segregation based on skin color is where this disunity is most marked. It seems as though skin color often coincides with socioeconomic class, because people in the campo with less money typically have darker skin, whereas many of the wealthier people in the cities have whiter skin, and look Northern American or European not just because of their skin, but also their body type. Many people in the campo are tiny and look as though they didn’t receive proper nourishment when they were younger. I have heard that this topic of classism/colorism is being extensively researched here in Peru, and I am curious to know what ideas exist for contending with something that is so engrained in society.

I don´t know what category this next observation should go under, but many people I have driven with here don´t use their seatbelts. Instead, they just drape the seatbelt over them in case a police officer passes (because buckling up is the law). If you are going to go through the trouble of making it look like your seatbelt is on, why not just buckle it?

I suppose that is enough for now…