It feels so much like Peru today. Sitting in the cafe of this fancy lobby, the airconditioning almost too cold after the sweltering heat outside. Only this time, I’m not a Peace Corps volunteer, sworn to a life of living at poverty level, and I am a guest in the hotel. I have a right to be in this place, and buy a drink because I want one, not because I am afraid that without it they will ask me to leave. But the rum that slides down my throat is still a treat; still an abnormality on a Saturday afternoon. This stolen weekend is a luxury, a rare chance to relax in bright white sheets that I don’t have to wash, watch a tv full of channels that I don’t have at my houses, and meet with friends rarely seen. Like Peru, the people watching is supreme, like only it can be in places where you are just one anonymous person among many. And like Peru, I am an underdressed stranger to the city, trying to pass for a local, pretending I belong. I take a sip of my drink, close my computer, and for the first time in a long, long time, feel that peace that was so prevalent during my Peace Corps days. The extreme comfort of luxury, accompanied by the unhurried satisfaction of having nowhere to be and nothing to do. With a smile, I open my book and settle in to while away the afternoon.
September 1, 2011
Upon my re-entry to the corporate world, I did something that my childhood self would never have imagined possible – I became hooked on coffee. And I’m not talking about the syrupy, sugar-filled goodness that comes with the green Starbucks stamp of approval on the side. I’m talking about the coffee that is brewed in the office, and reminds me of the evil twin of really cheap rum – drinkable and gives the desired effect initially, but can lead to death, or at least a painful headache.
The initial appeal of office coffee is not high – it does not come with a cozy, intellectually-stimulating atmosphere, free wifi, or itunes song of the day – but it does have one distinct advantage: It is hot and readily available. I think that is really the key to the success of other debilitating habits, such as fast food. It is not something that you would ingest if you were required to make it yourself, at least not in the beginning. It is something that is there for you in a down moment and so you force yourself to gulp it down. Then, after a few more of those moments occur, it becomes a symbol of help and a path to satisfaction, something warm to hold in the bitterly early hours of the day, something to delay your eight-hour layover in front of the computer, to comfort you as you tackle the day’s emails and to give you hope that at some point you will wake up enough to concentrate. Then it becomes a routine, and you no longer really taste coffee; you taste happiness.
However, I somehow have never really mastered the art of mixing things into the coffee. I like cream and sugar in my coffee (my gateway drug was Starbucks, so of course I do!) but I still do not know the correct quantity. I partly blame this on the fact that my mind’s morning haze has not yet cleared when I first mix the cup, which is why I never really seem to remember how much to put in. But then, I think this may also be a subconscious move on my part to require that I drink more coffee. Take a sip, not enough cream so add some. Take a sip, too much cream, add coffee. Take a sip, now it needs more sugar, add some. Take a sip, now it’s half empty and too sugary, add coffee. And the cycle continues. I always envy the people in books and movies that know exactly how much to put in “Two sugars please” or “just a little cream,” is all they say while I’m sitting there cringing at the idea of someone else making my coffee and therefore preventing me to make adjustments as I go.
And then the day comes that there is no coffee. It’s run out or you’re the first one in the office and you come to the realization that you have never, in your life, made coffee. Despite drinking it every day, you’ve never actually made it. After a few agonizing, panic-filled moments while you try to work on without it, you find someone to show you how to make it and life is able to continue, but for a short period of time you are subjected to visions of life without caffeinated joy. A life that feel like a beach without water, which is really just a desert.
I think I may have a problem.
November 18, 2009
Remember the idealistic setting they would always show in the fifties for the domestic housewife? The spotless home, the aromatic dinner in the oven, the pearl-sporting wife. It all looked so peaceful, so sweet, so… misleading. I have recently been attempting to make dinners from scratch, and quite honestly, I am surprised that more housewives don’t turn into serial killers. Not because the job will drive you crazy or anything like that, but because of the things that preparing and cooking a chicken will desensitize you to. Preparing a chicken is something that, given the right soundtrack and lighting, would give any kid nightmares for a week. Think about it. My grandmother was completely unfazed by the idea of snapping a chicken’s neck. I myself just spent the last 15 minutes sawing through the bones of tonight’s dinner, and it occurred to me that if one of the neighbor’s kids were to peek through the window while I did that, they would probably think a crazy person had moved in.
It starts off all neat and sanitary, the chicken in it’s colorful, plastic covering and me in my apron with my hair carefully pulled back. Then it’s off with the plastic and I’m making contact with the cold, lifeless skin of the bird, peeling it off the flesh with my bare hands, hands that just an hour ago had been receiving a manicure. I attempt it daintily at first, reluctant and inexperienced with the job, but soon I am tugging determinedly until the skin rips off. Once the flesh has been laid bare, out comes the knife and I am cutting it up into chunks, doggedly sawing through bone, my hair escaping the tie and becoming disheveled in the action, until everything has been separated and will fit into the pot. Then as it all boils, I occasionally stop by to scoop out the fat that has risen to the top, no longer concerned about what it all used to be.
Seriously, after doing that for a decade, I am sure that most people would be come desensitized to cutting up other things. So kids, stop ticking off your mother. She may be wearing pearls, but you have no idea what she is capable of.
November 14, 2009
Tell me something. Are you wiser, once you’re older? I am twenty-six and I don’t feel wiser than I did at eighteen, and that seems wrong. One could accurately suggest that life has taken me in didactic circles, round and round, showing me something and then bringing me right back to it once I’ve forgotten what was taught. You learn to love, then get your heart broken, which teaches you to toughen up and put up your walls, until one day when you let down those walls and let yourself hope again, and then the cycle starts all over. Or you exercise everyday for a month, then miss a few days, then miss a month, then six months, then realize it’s time to renew your gym membership and start the chain of events all over again. Or you get motivated, you pick a goal and shoot headlong for it, blocking out everything else, but then someone or something catches your eye, you get distracted, and the one thing you set out to do falls by the wayside until you finally return to it, wipe the dust off, and try again. Or maybe it is a different cycle for you, but undoubtedly, there is a cycle. It seems to me that there should be a way out of the maze. An ultimate combination move that if you could just get the sequence down, you could move on to the next level.
Unfortunately, at twenty-six, I am no closer to figuring that move out than I was a decade ago. If we are constantly following a 360 degree path, then what is it that we are orbiting around? What is it that has such a pull on us that we cannot get more than a certain distance away from it before going back? Is the key to free yourself from these desires, or is it to submit to them, or is the point to learn to give them up, or what? Myself, I think this gravitational pull that we cannot seem to escape is what the religions of the world are trying to address. That what you are seeking in each instance listed above is love, acceptance, and purpose, which is what religion tries to provide. And despite the skeptical tone in those last two sentences, I do think that makes a certain amount of sense. What I have yet to see is someone who has stopped circling, and that makes me wonder if it is possible. What if the purpose of each person is to simply wander in a slowly shrinking circle, again and again, in the hopes that after a lifetime of circling, they may have actually learned something true?
I guess everything in nature is a cycle, and it would be foolish of me to think that life would be exempt from that pattern. But still, sometimes I wish I could stop circling and just be there already.
October 13, 2009
My stomach has yet to decide how it feels about American food. Most days it is fine, but then there are days that it kicks into high gear and my food begins to rocket through my body at record speeds. And this doesn’t always occur at the most convenient moments. For example, I was at a football party the other day, and we were all in the living room watching the game, eating, drinking, and in general carrying on in the loud way that you do when watching sports. Suddenly, the chips and queso seemed like a veeeeery bad dinner choice. I sat on the couch and tried to act inconspicuous as the first wave of cramps and chills washed over my body, hoping and praying that it was just a touch of indigestion and everything would return to normal if I promised not to eat any more Little Caesar’s fast and ready pizza. My hopes sank (along with OU’s possibilities of beating Miami) as the next set of goosebumps marched their way down my arms. I had no choice but to ask the owner of the house where his bathroom was.
Why is it that you can be at the loudest event ever, but the moment the bathroom door shuts you are immediately hit with the conviction that everything outside that door has stopped in an effort to find out what you are doing? While part of you realizes that no one has even noticed that you left the room, the rest of you insists that they can hear every move you make and as a result you spend the entire, agony-wracked time trying to make as little noise as possible. You could be having a KISS concert in your living room and you still, the moment that bathroom door shut behind you, would be trying to micromanage every rectal contraction for fear that your lavatory activities may overwhelm Ace Frehley’s guitar solo , capturing you during what really is one of man’s most vulnerable moments.
I thought I had gotten over this fear during my stay in Peru, thanks to the combination of nearly constant attacks on my lower intestine and the complete lack of privacy in all Peruvian bathrooms. I quickly lost my very American rhypophobia (fear of defecation) solely for the reason that I could not be picky about where and when I used the bathroom. My main hope was only that there was a bathroom. And so, at some point, I stopped caring whether or not people could hear me, and I was really hoping that attitude would continue here in the US. Unfortunately, it would seem that it hasn’t and this makes me sad. Can’t we all just admit that everyone does it and stop considering it something to be ashamed of? I mean, if you think about it, the only people who don’t poop are dead. Therefore: To poop… is to live.
Here’s to life.
September 19, 2009
Before returning to the US, all volunteers must undergo one last medical check to insure that we don’t bring any fun new parasites or diseases back to the home country. After a series of blood tests, stool samples, and cotton swabs, we are given the American seal of approval and shipped back stateside. But from what I’ve experienced so far, there is one thing they forgot to test for: PCD, the Peace Corps Disorder. It’s similar to OCD, in that you find yourself doing things that you know aren’t really necessary but that you feel you must do nonetheless, but the difference is that these are habits that you picked up during your service. Here’s a few of my own PCD habits that I’ve noticed:
- Before sitting on the toilet, I turn on the water in the sink for a second. This habit made sense in Peru, because if the water wasn’t on I would have to go grab a bucket of water from the other side of the house to manually flush the toilet. After a couple of weeks in country, I forced myself to stop doing this, but it still makes me a little anxious to use the bathroom without the test-run in the sink.
- Every time I use the restroom, I am acutely aware of the location of the trashcan. Peru’s sewage system is not able to handle toilet paper, and therefore you throw it into the wastebasket instead of the toilet. After training myself to throw it away automatically, I am now un-learning that lesson. Thankfully, fishing toilet paper out of a trashcan is much easier than correcting a breach of TP etiquette in Peru.
- As a volunteer, many items that are commonplace here are incredibly valuable. Ziplock bags are one example. Here, you can pick them up for next to nothing at your local grocery store. Not so in my last place of residence, where we would cherish the baggies that were included in a package from the US and use said bag for all kinds of things over the next two years, until the plastic had long since stopped being clear and the seal at the top had been canceled out by the many holes on the sides. Each time I open the kitchen drawer and see that little box of sandwich-sized bags, I have to fight the urge to take some and hide them in my room, just in case we run out at some point.
- I haven’t quite adjusted to having such easy access to the internet at all times. Every time I am walking down the hall of my parents’ house, I catch a glimpse of the computer out of the corner of my eye and get an urgent need to check my email. When you live in a town without internet, you take the opportunity to get online whenever you can, especially if you’ve found a place where you can check it for free. It is almost painful to walk away from it, despite the fact that I know it will still be there, free and available, whenever I want to use it.
- Having lived in a desert where water is a precious commodity, letting the water run while I wash the dishes still makes me nervous, like I am going to get caught and punished for being so irresponsible. I just can’t seem to get over how much water I am using to clean a single dish.
September 9, 2009
September 1, 2009
Walking around on US soil is unsettling in a very discreet way. Everything is so familiar, and yet so foreign, all at the same time. Simply sitting outside on beautiful day feels so wonderful and so wrong, because the air has a different feel. It’s not a difference of temperature, because lately the temperature has been very similar to winter in Piura. I think it has something to do with the scents of the mass amounts of vegetation in the area, as opposed to the dust that is normally being carried by the breeze at my Peruvian home. Everything is so green here, so nonchalantly decadent. The difference in the landscape is distinct, but only at first. After that, the difference is still there, but in a way that you can’t quite put your finger on because the green is everywhere and so it fades into the background. It’s like how you don’t notice how bright it is outside until you walk into your house and in comparison it is too dark to see. The dryness of the desert has been so imprinted on my mind, I am so accustomed to seeing it out of the corner of my eye, that some where on the edge of my consciousness I am still looking for it, still trying to make this place match that land. In the same way, I keep trying to fit myself into this place.
Similarly, my parents have recently moved to a new town, so while I have come home, I haven’t returned to the building that in my mind constitutes “home”. This new house is filled with the same furniture as my home – the piano, the wonderful couches, the dining room set – and so at times I forget that this isn’t the same house. Then I turn around in the kitchen and the microwave is in the wrong place or the dvd player is not hooked up, and I remember where I am.
My first morning back, I went to church with my parents. As I sat there, I couldn’t get over how many gringos there were in the room. I felt like I should know who they were, because where I lived, if there was a gringo around I either knew them or would go up and talk to them. I had thought that when I returned I would have a sense of belonging; that I would stop feeling like an outsider. But sitting there, I still felt distinctly different from everyone around me. I no longer stood out like a sore thumb (I wasn’t taller than everyone in the room, for example), but there was no connection, no sense that I was a part of that group of people.
Everything is the same, yet everything is different. I went to Walmart, which I knew would be an interesting experience. I spent 15 minutes trying to pick out a shampoo. The vast array of choices was confusing enough, but on top of that I kept trying to find the equivalent of the Spanish brands I had been using, trying to remember what the logo looked like without the actual words. What color was my version of Pantene Pro-V? Red? Silver? Blue? Do they use the same color scheme no matter the country? I find myself reminiscing about Peru the way I would about the US during my first few months of service. At times in those months, I would search stores in hopes of finding a place that sold Dr. Pepper. Yesterday I did the same thing, only this time I was searching for the type of yogurt that they sell in Peru. By the afternoon I was exhausted, and it took me a while to figure out why. Then it hit me – it was siesta time in Peru. The stores should have been closed and I should’ve been resting. Guess I’ll have to learn to live without my siesta from now on. The trade off though, is that no sheep wake me up at six in the morning anymore. I like that part.
September 1, 2009
I must admit, I was more than a little nervous about coming home. Although it wasn’t so much the arriving part as it was the nineteen hours of travel part. After having been a stranger to the US for almost a year, the airport was kind of a crash course on the American culture. Those of you who have spent a significant amount of time outside the US probably already know what I am talking about, but for those of you who haven’t, let me explain.
Even without ever leaving the airport, you can learn a lot about a country’s culture. When I checked into my flight in Lima, my luggage was 3 kilos over the limit (but hey, considering I was packing 2 years into 2 bags, I didn’t feel like that was too bad). However, with only minimal effort on my part, the rules were bent and I didn’t have to pay extra. That, my friends, is Peru. Nothing is set, whether we are talking traffic rules, prices, or even laws. However, on every other plane that I tried to board, I found myself scrambling to comply with some new rule that they had come up with while I was on my way there. I went from being allowed three carry on bags to two, and then back to three on a later flight when one of the bags was too big and they had me take stuff out of it (which happened to be the things I had stuffed in there to make two bags). Standing in line is also something that Americans take very seriously, and I found myself fighting the urge to slip to the front like I would in Peru, where everyone pretends they can’t see all the people waiting.
And then there is the difference in prices, which is jaw-dropping. On one flight, the only food available you had to pay for. The lady next to me didn’t speak English, and because of a three-hour stop in immigration she hadn’t had time to buy anything for lunch. When I told her the prices, she was shocked. When I then explained that they didn’t accept cash, only credit cards, she thought I was lying. Most places in Peru don’t take cards; almost everything is done in cash, so she thought that bringing $20 along would keep her well fed until she landed. In fact, $20 would keep you fed and buy you a hotel room in Peru, but on a flight from Miami, it gets you nothing. Not even a pair of headphones to watch the inflight movie ($2, cards only). Land of the free started sounding very ironic right at that moment.
But when I finally landed late that night, I was more than happy to embrace my family and my culture. Instead of a Peruvian taxi trying to overcharge me, my parents’ car was waiting. Instead of a crazy traffic and horrible roads, I was able to relax on a smooth ride home, not once wondering if I was about to be involved in a head on collision. I poured myself a glass of water, throwing in some ice with a huge smile. And then… I did a practice leap into every bed in the house, before settling with a contented sigh on my parents’ couch, something I have yearned for many, many times.
More thoughts on my first days in the US will follow, but for now, it’s good to be back. I’ve missed it.
May 9, 2009
In a few months time I will be returning to the American way of life, and so today I decided to do a test run. I had a meeting that was set for 8:00 a.m., so I figured if I was getting up that early, I might as well make a day of it. Throughout the day, I worked, cooked, cleaned, did laundry, showered, worked on my computer, and talked on the phone. Sounds very American, I know, but while the verbs are the same, the actual actions were very different.
First, work. For my 8:00 meeting, I managed to stop hitting the snooze button by 7:45, threw on some clothes and put my hair in a ponytail, ignored the makeup but remembered to brush my teeth, and arrived at 8:30. Now, I realize that showing up thirty minutes late for a meeting would not exactly earn me a promotion in any US corporation, but here it meant that I was about an hour early. Realizing my mistake, I headed back home, made breakfast burritos with homemade tortillas, worked on my “to do” list for the day, then headed back at about 9:30 for the meeting. I had another meeting that was supposed to start at 10 (aka 11), but the school was having its Mother’s Day celebration today, so we rescheduled for next week. Of course, this was decided by the fact that no one showed up, which meant that I got to go and talk to the different associations later on during the day to pick another time.
However, in true American fashion, I was not idle while I waited (fruitlessly) for people to show up. I cleaned. I threw my sheets in soapy water to begin returning them to their original color, then cleaned my room while they soaked. During the cleaning process I found a scorpion in my bed, which is always comforting. I also found a ton of spiders, but those I left alone. Now, I realize that leaving spiders and their webs where you find them is decidedly un-American, but most of those webs were stuffed with mosquitoes, proof that they were paying enough rent to continue living in my room. Like they say, my enemy’s enemy is my friend. An hour later, my room was much cleaner (with all of those spider webs I can’t honestly call it clean) and my sheets were drying on the line, but I was incredibly dirty and sweaty.
I distinctly remember maintaining a consistently higher standard of bodily cleanliness in the US, so I headed for the shower. But despite the use of soap and running water, the showering experience here is completely different than that of the US. For instance, when you enter the shower you spend the first ten minutes hunting mosquitoes. The green fungus growing on the walls hides them really well, so they can only be spotted when they are flying. As a result, you spend those ten minutes kicking and slapping the walls, with some mid-air clapping going on as well. It’s like a very weird form of the hokey-pokey, only without any singing and with the risk of large welts and loss of blood if you don’t do it right. And when you do finally start the water, you still spend the entire time randomly slapping yourself every time you think you feel a mosquito. Even so, after all that, you leave with at least three large mosquito bites, generally in either the middle of your back or other, more inappropriate, areas. And what do you do the moment you get clean? Put on bug repellant, got inside my mosquito net, and inventoried the new purses that we just got in (pictures will be coming soon).
In the evening I called my parents, using a calling card and having to hang up and call back due to bad connections. Now it is 11:00 at night and I am typing away on my computer, partly because I felt like writing, and partly because the light from the screen attracts all the mosquitoes that have managed to get inside the mosquito net, and if I don’t get them while I type, I’ll make sure I get them before falling asleep. Yeah, not so sure that people in the US are in the habit of smashing mosquitoes on their laptops or using them as mosquito bait. But I what can I say? I’m easing back into the American world a little bit at a time. Poco a poco.
