September 27, 2006- Living the tranquila vida

If there is one thing that has repetitively been discussed amongst my friends and I here in Peru, it is the idea that nothing fazes us anymore. Peru has already made us numb to life’s little surprises, an idea that is reinforced, rather unnoticed, every single day. I like to think about this concept every day before I go to bed though, because I don’t like thinking that I am blind to something that used to captivate me so. A general rule of thumb I like to follow in attempting to predict or plan my days here is that those things I expect, will never come to be, and those I never expect will either happen later on today, or tomorrow. Of course, I can’t really think of especially illustrative examples of this personal theory, so instead, I will just relay the details of the day I had today, and hopefully you will be able to extract some major differences between routine happenings in Jesus, and those that occur in the U.S.

My main counterpart, an obstetrician, was really slow to warm up to me. While everyone else in my town greeted me with open arms, she, who was the only person I cared about accepting me, greeted me with reluctance and sideways glances that I interpreted as evil. You can imagine how frightened this made me to come to work, initially. Yesterday, an astonishing turn of events took place, though. I worked side by side with her in her office, like usual, but she actually started asking me questions about my personal life! And then, mid-day, she told me that she wanted to take me up the street to try dulce de higo, a dessert that is typical to this region (figs boiled with cinnamon and sugar, and served with a caramel sauce). I made her repeat herself four times, because having dessert with her was the last thing I envisioned us doing a couple of weeks ago, when she had this strange inclination towards giving me dagger-like stares. So we climbed up the mountain a bit to this woman’s house, who is famous for the dulce de higo she makes. Instead of serving us though, she told us and showed us (for 20 minutes) a painful (to look at) hernia on her belly that she said made it impossible to cook. She suggested that we visit her neighbor’s house, who also on occasion cooks dulce de higo. We later found ourselves in the middle of a barren, dirt-floored living area, waiting for two plates of dulce de higo. It wasn’t a store, nor was it a restaurant. It was a stranger’s house, and we were about to heartily partake in dessert consumption from someone we didn’t even know. Does anyone realize how madcap this scenario is? Let me put it into perspective. You are visiting a friend in an unfamiliar neighborhood in the U.S. You park your car far away from his/her house, because we all know what a hassle parking is in the states. It’s summer time, and while navigating the neighborhood you get a little tickle in your throat. Wouldn’t some icecream, or jello, or even a cold Coca Cola be nice? So you stop at the first house you see, stroll into the living room of this unknown family, and order from them whatever it is you desire. They offer you their couch, and bring you (with a smile) whatever your palate is craving, as though they were born to serve you. Oh wait, this would NEVER happen in the states. Only in Peru, I tell ya, only in Peru. I wonder if it is even worth mentioning how delectable the dulce de higo was. Its flavor made me completely disregard the risk of being poisoned by a stranger.

There are definitely some personal and universal boundaries in the states that just don’t exist here. I have noticed this not only in Peru, but also while I was studying abroad in Argentina. In many restaurants in Argentina (or on the streets, if I was eating and walking), people (I am not talking homeless people, I am talking well-dressed business people), would oftentimes interrupt my meal to ask me if they could try a bite of my pasta, or cake, or whatever delicious entity I might be shoveling into my mouth at that moment. This caught me of guard for a number of reasons. First, I am very territorial over my food. I’ll give you some of mine, but only if you give me some of yours, a tit for tat sort of philosopher I am. Second, do I even know you? Third, I didn’t get to taste my food before ordering it, so isn’t that sort of unfair? The more I thought about it though, the more I liked the idea. With how indecisive I am with sorting through restaurant menus, it would be really helpful for me if I could mingle amidst the tables, tasting what everyone else chose off of the expansive menu. I think it would accelerate my selection process by leaps and bounds. Maybe we should really reevaluate how private and cautious we are in the U.S. There are definitely some pretty awesome things that we are missing out on. I was never really great at establishing boundaries for myself in the states, so maybe I have found my niche here in Peru!