Unidentical Twins

Normally when you think of identical twins you think of two parallel lives. Two people that have a connection that the rest of us simply cannot understand. Two people who have the same DNA, the same potential and generally a similar outcome. I always thought of twins as people who had a strange telepathic connection and were mirror images of each other. Since twins are generally raised in the same house I feel like it’s rare to see twins that look like night and day or are on different learning levels.

Recently however I learned that this perception I had is entirely false. Identical twins can look as different as fraternal twins when you toss in some chronic malnutricion. I had heard about the malnourished twins from one of my annexes in Tamno but silly me I thought that both of the children were malnourished not just one. I thought that they were suffering from the same fate but I could not have been more wrong.

I went up to Tambo seeing the two twins side by side for the first time. They appeared so different I did not in fact realize that they were twins until my health post told me. They are identical females a year old, Luz Maria and Luz Esperanza. Luz Maria, is reisgo bajo de talla, a little short for her age, but relatively on track for a community where nearly every child is suffering from some sort of malnutricion. She walks around with pudgy baby limbs and giant chipmunk cheeks. She has the curious look of a one year old trying to explore the world. She will stare you in the face while eating her apple, make eye contact with you and wonder off to find something else more intriguing.

There is a distant dullness present in her eyes. A sort of deep dullness that is barely recognizable. A faint hint that she is not to her full potential but none the less when she looks at your face you get the feeling that she knows what she is looking at. Even though there is the distant dullness present in so many of the children here Luz Mariacan walk and crawl and hold her head up straight. I wouldn’t be surprised if she started to say a few words, or sounds that may appear to be words in the near future.

Her sister, her identical twin sister, Luz Esperansa, who until the moment I saw her I assumed looked exactly the same as her sister is chronically malnourished. She is without a doubt the skinniest baby I personally have ever seen. When I was touching her hands I felt like I was touching the hand of a preme rather than a one-year-old baby. Also unlike most one year olds she did not really react to my fingers. It was if she was touching it but not trying to grasp it. Instead of trying to make a decision of what to do with the finger placed in her hand she simply let her hand slide away, almost as if my finger had never come into contact with her skin.

The look in her eyes is so vacant and distant it is as if there isn’t even a human being behind it. She stared off listlessly into space clearly not having any idea what she is staring at. Her face is so disproportionally small to her eyes that it looks as if her eyes may pop out of her head at any given moment. Unlike her sister who has chipmunk cheeks compliment her giant eyes, Luz Esperanza’s face is sunken under her eyes and her cheeks lay flat against the bone. The limbs of her body look as if they could break at any moment because there is not a protective layer of fat and muscle to surround the bone that lies underneath.

Apart from the vast physical discrepancies that are undoubtedly visible, there are other more startling and more dramatic differences between the two. There is a schism the size of the Grand Canyon present in their developmental skills. Luz Esperanza cannot dream of holding an apple yet, I doubt she could even hold a feather at this point. In fact she has barely even mastered the art of holding her head up straight, crawling or controlling any muscle motion. Her head is perpetually bobbing to the side as if it is too big for her tiny neck. Her head will stably sit up for about 30 seconds before her entire body flops, wiggles and her head looks as if it may break her neck. In fact, I never saw Esperanza even sit up on her own. When she was in the seated position either her mother or her sister perpetually supported her and her body movement is so floppy and jerky that she didn’t appear that she had any control over what she was actually doing. It was as if her persistent and dangerous sounding cough could cripple her body and force her crumble and fall to the floor because there was no brain to muscle connection.

Throughout training I heard about the difference in development between nourished children and malnourished children. My health post has discussed it incessantly during meetings of Programa JUNTOS in an effort to mejorar the situacion de salud in Cusicancha. It has always been a fact of life here; I have seen the dull distant look of mildly malnourished children in many of the children here. I have gone to the coast and thought that children were a solid 2 years older because they were so much larger than children in my site but there was something about seeing twins in such shockingly different states of mutricion and development that shocked me.

It left me to wonder how such a thing could happen, how to one-year-old twins end up in such a position of disarray? It is not as if one is a boy and one a girl, which I could understand because of the machismo culture. These are two girls, not even old enough to talk or make decisions. Is it that the mother simply chose one child over the other? Picked a favorite and decided to feed it better. Could it possibly be that she already has 8 other children and simply could not manage 2 more at the same time so one’s life fell to the wayside? Could it be as simple as one child was more demanding that the other so she won the perpetual food war over meager resources. What is it that leads to one twin having a future and other appearing that it may not make it though this exceptionally cold winter?

This made me wonder about the future of the children. What their life will be like as they grow older and recognize their vast developmental and physical differences. Already one child is walking before the other, soon she will be talking, running, giggling and making friends before the other. It made me think that they will be more like sisters than twins. The telepathic connection and secret languages I always envisioned twins having may never come to fruition. How can you have a secret language if one starts to talk nearly a year or more after the other? Will one child have to constantly look after her smaller; less emotionally, socially, and mentally developed sister? On a serious note will both of the twins survive to their 5th birthday?

It was starting to see the comparison of nourished to malnourished child side by side. Generally it is a far off concept, one kid is one the coast and one in the sierras so the comparison is too far apart to have a clear picture or the children are already at different ages so it is hard to say what is age and what is nutricion. But with twins the difference was undeniable. There was a clear picture in front of my face of what malnourishment does to a child. How malnutricion is devastating to a child’s future and the first three years of like can do irrecoverable damage. It leads me to wonder if this was a moment of Sophie’s choice where the mother only had enough for one or one twin genuinely trumped the other. Nutricion has shown itself to be the clear dividing factor between two people that had the same exact potential tearing apart two lives that had the potential to be bound together for all eternity.

Voley

Let me tell you a story about volleyball. It is a sport that is wildly popular in Peru, every kid starts to play when they are little and it is one of the two sports (soccer and volleyball) that dominate Peruvian recreation. I on the other hand am horrible at volleyball. I rank somewhere between a Peruvian 9 and 12 year old. It’s to the point where I am beginning to think that my community does not believe that I in fact played a sport in college. Every that I actually manage to hit the ball, even if it is entirely the wrong direction I get applauded from the director of my primary, my health post and whoever is actually playing at the moment. Kind of sad when you get applauded for sending volleyball straight towards the river, guess I never honed my volleyball skills in 7th grade gym class. Also probably doesn’t help that I am usually wearing about 8 layers when I am playing. Limited arm mobility.

Generally in any given game I either don’t play or get badgered into playing for a brief moment. I say a brief moment because inevitably there is a kid named Diego patiently waiting for me to fall, get hit in the head with the ball, totally not realize the ball is coming my direction or fly the ball into space, to take my place on the…almost said field...defiantly not a field…I know the word in Spanish…losa…but I now realize that I have no idea what a volley ball playing area is actually called. That is just how experienced I am. Court maybe. That is my one and only guess.

There was one time that I actually managed to play for more than 7 seconds and I got a point for my team, rather than the other team, which is my usual forte. My theory is that everyone was so distracted by the fact I briefly seemed to know how to play that everyone else seemed to forget to play at the moment. I got basically a standing ovation at the end of it. I feel like a little kid whose mom is proud that they touched the soccer ball once during the game.

Anyways I am now determined to look up the rules of volleyball and some information on the sport, considering I don’t even know where to start when I get on the losa, and have my sister teach me how to volley. I am also buying a lacrosse stick from a fellow volunteer because I feel that it is time to prove a. that lacrosse actually exists and b. I do know what I am doing in some sports, just not ones where balls are raining down on your head.

Untitled

I am trying to sit here writing a blog entry about the last month or so but I am seriously struggling to honestly order my thoughts or formulate a story of any kind. I think one of the problems is that I haven’t been writing down what has happened in my day to day. Another is that I don’t really have a clue what is going on. I am at a point where things seem routine, life seems normal, and yet my mind is on crack. My mind keeps wandering from bizarre dreams, to the sight of erect cow penises to mental breakdowns. Maybe the sight of a cow penis caused the mental breakdown. I think it’s a pretty solid. Sadly I will never ever be able to scrub that image out of my mind no matter how hard I try. Here is the mythical land of Peace Corps at times having trouble maintaining my sense of self or my direction. Instead of trying to collate my thoughts into a concise order I’m just going to start with some brief highlights and see where that takes me.

Vacation:

Went to the beach with about 15 other volunteers, contemplated life while staring at the “pineapples”- it was a palm tree dumbass. Good thing I never had a spring break in college. Got super dehydrated, probably should have died. Drinking in 100* plus 100% humidity. Made me miss the days of readily accessible electrolyte pills in the training room.

Cortisone Shots:

I had to get my first cortisone shot in my life down here in Peru. Let me tell you it hurt like a motherfucker. First let me begin with the diagnosis. I went to the orthopedic. I brought my Spanish-English dictionary with me and everything fully prepared to have to explain how my foot hurt, when and all the normal complicated things you have to explain to an orthopedic doctor in the states. Turns out I didn’t need the dictionary at all. Not by a long shot. I just pointed to my heal and said its swollen, hurts when I run, difficult to walk and causes pain in the morning. Quite honestly I forgot even the word for heel I just pointed. After about 30 seconds, one poke and an inquisitive glance I got the quickest diagnosis I have ever gotten, planters factitious. I’m 99% sure I used the wrong spell check word on the end of that one but who can really spell that word anyways? Promply after my diagnosis the orthopedic said that he was going to give me a cortisone shot. No physical therapy, no exercises, just a straight shot into the heal with a giant needle. While in the process of convincing myself I was not in fact scared of the needle the doctor jammed it into my heal and decided to wiggle it around a little. Don’t worry he said the comforting words “its supposed to hurt.” Clearly those charming words made me feel about a million times better.

The Wire:

This has nothing to do with anything. Its just an amazing show I discovered, you should all watch it. Fun things my host mother says to me:

• “You fell into the river because you are so fat that the rocks cant support the weight of your enormous body. Look (while rocking on the rock) it can support my body!” o Really let’s get serious I could be anorexic and I would have still fallen into the river. And to boot I threw Harry Potter 5 into the river. Have some sympathy woman. And I can see that muffin top popping out of your fleece pants.

• “You are too fat to walk” accompanied by a fun bear impression of how I was meandering up the hills o Cant a girl meander? Felt like I had entered a time portal and transported back to 5th grade when I was a 10 year old in petite woman’s clothes. Thought I had left the fat kid taunts behind about 10 years ago. Apparently not. Awesomeee. In fact I can walk asshole.

• “You don’t know how to do anything, you are going to die of hunger”

o Sorry I am not trained to cook with pure oil and MSG. And in fact I have made you dinner a few times, and you thought it was delicious thank you very much! Give a girl a chance to learn how to cook the Peruvian way, I promise I am not going to die of hunger anytime soon. I’m pretty sure my body is 40% potatoes at this point.

Don’t worry she actually is a very pleasant woman who is caring most of the time and jokes around. It’s just every now and again she sounds like my 12-year-old nightmare.

Trainings:

went to two trainings. • One was Early In-Service Training. Lots of logistics and materials during this training. Although it was strange to see everyone I hadn’t seen in 3 moths. It didn’t feel like three months at all and yet when I actually saw people it made me realize that in fact three months had happened. That the blur of time I spent in Cusicancha was actual time on a clock, not just some weird non-existent time in a parallel universe. It was nice to see everyone whoever strange it may have been. It almost put things in perspective and allowed me a time to breathe. Until I spent 16 hours on the side of the road in a bus paro.

• The second one was In-Service Training and Project Design Management. This training we had to bring a socio from our community. I thought I was going to bring the PERFECT person. That was until my health post told me absolutely not. That was the first time I had a disagreement with my health post, which is more like my guardian than my boss. It was super overwhelming to get yelled at in another language, because I kept missing key words and having no actual clue what they were saying. So after a very anxious day I changed my socio. Little did I know I was now bound to the energizer bunny on crack.

Prior to leaving it was a little stressful because I thought I would have to meet him in another city. Finding a Peruvian man without a cell phone in a different city sounded like my own personal nightmare. Luckily I did not have to deal with that. But then I had to deal with a 60-year-old man who talks as if he is a 7-year-old boy. The chattiest of the Cathy’s, constantly joking, occasionally about god knows what, always running around like the energizer bunny. Luckily as much as I wanted to kill him throughout training one of the biggest problems that I has was he was a little too excited to work and cracked out. It was like having that annoying 8-year-old boy asking you what everything is and making jokes that are moderately politically incorrect constantly staying in your ear. And all in all those are not the worst problems to have. Luckily I got to send him along his merry way and have 3 more days of training free and clear.

The second training that I had was Project Design Management. Probably the most productive training that I have had thus far. By the title of the training I can assume that you get the general meaning of what the training is about.

Alcoholism:

the Peruvian Presence

I recently had a meeting with the Red de Salud presenting my community diagnostic, although I was nervous I had already presented in front of 100 people at my community meeting so it was less stressful than I thought. But back to the point. During the presentation I talked about alcoholism in my site, how it exists, how people identify it as a problem and potential programs to work in prevention. When I mentioned this detail the head of the Red agreed whole-heartedly with me that there was a presence of alcoholism and that apparently my town was semi-notorious for it. I didn’t really realize until that moment how much of a presence there really was. My site mate down the road has only one alcoholic in his town, and has never seen people in drinking circle. My site mate up the road is a mostly female population because all the men work far away in the mines. That leaves my site, right smack dab in the middle, the site with the oldest population of my district with a distinct presence of alcoholism.

I am not saying that there are drunks breaking windows and lighting things on fire but they are there. About 4 to 5 times a week there are between 8 and 10 men standing in a circle drinking on the street and another 5 or 6 you can find drunk sitting somewhere alone. These numbers may sound small to you but consider my population is about 200 on a good day so I would go so far as to say that at least 60% of the families are affected by alcoholism or occasional alcohol abuse. Recently after a birthday party I had to help walk my host dad home. He has a bad habit of drinking until he falls occasionally and not eating dinner when he gets drunk. The first man to get drunk and not eat I have ever encountered in my life.

On occasion I myself have had to run away from drunken men, or tactfully step away and say I have a very important meeting with my computer. During the same birthday party where I had to walk my father home the birthday boy thought it was his personal mission to tell me he loved me and dance the night away with me. luckily we were dancing whino, a type of dancing where it is stylistically correct to shove your partner and stomp on his feet. It became a special to watch me dance with him that every time he did the rest of the party would sit down and watch. Slowly the birthday boy would inch closer and closer to me, trying to throw his arm over my shoulder and maybe move in for the kiss. I on the other hand took every effort I could to move to the other side of the room, stomping on his foot or shoving his drunk ass away from me every chance I could.

One of the more disturbing things that I started to notice once I realized how much alcoholism existed in my site was the presence of young boys. My host mother owns a tienda so often times you will find a group of men sitting in her tienda drinking, especially on a weekend night. When the men are drinking on a weeknight or multiple nights in a row there will often be a presence of a young boy, one of their sons, sent to monitor. If the mother doesn’t want her husband to drink, or wants him to return home for dinner young boys are used as the control tool. I think that they are meant to monitor their dads, ensure they don’t drink too much, or at the very least make them feel guilty for drinking too much.

I don’t really know if this is the best system to employ, because really how much control does an 8 year old have over a fully-grown man? Also what sort of example are you setting for your son? If you are sending your son along to control his drunken father all he is seeing is men drinking, occasionally out of control. Their example is that men can drink and it is not necessarily their responsibility to control how much they drink or how often. What does that really say for the next generation? I have seen a young girl running after her father imploring the tienda not to sell him liquor because he stole her mother’s money. Entire families sitting in the tienda waiting for the father to finish his conversation so they can eat dinner. And a drunken man passed out in front of my tienda, still unidentified.

I know there is an unsaid tiff between the wives of alcoholics and the owners of the tiendas. The mothers and wives think that the tiendas should stop selling when the man is clearly inebriated. The tienda on the other hand view it as a business and really is it their responsibility to stop a man from drinking. Don’t get me wrong many of the tiendas will stop selling to certain men at certain points but it brings a question to my mind. What is the level of social responsibility of the community to prevent alcoholism? When you can see it is a prevelant problem in a community so small is there anything you should do about it as a community member or let the problem lay? Do the tiendas actually have responsibility to their fellow community men?

It should be interesting to see what happens during my town anniversary, the acceptable party time in my town.

Teaching Children:

I now have way more respect for every teacher I’ve had

Since January I have been teaching children, especially the kindergarten kids and the 5th and 6th grade kids. I must say I like the kindergarten kids way more than I like the kids from 5th and 6th grade most of the time. For one thing most of the activities I do with the kindergarten kids are arts and crafts activities I make up on the way to class that day. I generally pick up water bottles and figure out some sort of activity to do with them on they fly. Little kids are the easiest in the world to entertain The 5th and 6th graders not so much, they are of the age to be opinionated and not disciplined at the same time. I am never going to teach middle school when I return to the states. You don’t get paid enough for that shit; I am learning that now considering I’m currently paid roughly nothing to help out with their class. Anyways you never know what you are going to get with the kids, sometimes super attentive, sometimes the whiniest people in the whole world. I have learned the hard way to never assign anything resembling homework and expect it to actually be done.

I also learned that capture the flag is probably the most captivating thing that has ever happened to 5th and 6th graders. I forgot how competitive that game gets, there was hair pulling, shouting, leaving the boundaries and calling out cheating all though out the game. I felt like I had to watch every single one of the kids the entire time in order to ensure fair play.

I then tried to teach the 1-4th graders the very same game. It however did not go over that well. Maybe it was my Spanish skills, maybe it was the fact they were young but whatever it was it completely failed. Instead of attempting to capture the flag all of the kids simultaneously ran to the other side, picked up the flags and ran back to their same sides. The game lasted all of 7 seconds. My explanation took longer than the game itself.

Machismo:

it exists

Machismo, male superiority basically, is a phenomenon that exists in my site. It is subtle but defiantly there. I have to say at first I didn’t even notice it, little things, but slowly but surely I recognized its presence. Some things that are so minute like the men get served before the women every time took me a while time to pick up on. Other things like my own personal habits took me even longer to realize. The main habit that has changed is cleaning up after men. Since my mom’s tienda is under construction right now and previously served the workers in town for the new water system I have eaten with a lot of men. Not a single one of them knows how to take their plate to the sink after they are done eating. Sometimes they will just stare ate me woefully until I take their plate to the kitchen. Others just straight up expected it.

I realized it about a month ago when a man just straight up handed me his dirty plate and I took it to the kitchen without a second thought until I arrived to the kitchen. If some guy who wasn’t a very good friend or boyfriend just handed me his dirty plate in the states I would have said what the fuck do you want me to do with this? Here on the other hand I dutifully walk to the kitchen and help washing. It makes me wonder if I am just fitting into the culture or if part of me is changing. It is hard to tell at this point; especially since I am wrapped up in this little world I call Peace Corps.

All in all this is a brief synopsis of my life in the past month; in the best way I could find to organize my thoughts. If I am being honest with you the past month or so I have had way too much time to think and started to feel less and less like myself. There were moments where I didn’t even know who I was or what grounded me. It felt like I was floating away and there was no one there to catch me. I didn’t know where I was or what I was doing, or what was inside of me. When you have too much time to examine your own life you sometimes don’t necessarily like the answers that come up.

Sometimes your mind becomes so clouded that you cant actually tell what the prob

lem is if any. In a world so foreign, so far away from the life that you became accustomed to and the friends you depended on it is easy to loose site of yourself. To feel forgotten and start acting like you are forgotten, or simply forgetting what defined. Not the superficial defined you like fresh kicks, but what actually defines your identity, your soul, and your core being. The problem is you have to figure that out first.

Super Sweet Quinceañera

Recently I experienced my first quinceanera and I must say that it was the definition of my super sweet quinceanera Huayatara, Huancavelica style. For starters it was in a stadium basically, a giant concrete structure with a roof. I would go so far as to call that a stadium, but than again my standards of just about everything have fallen dramatically. I recently went on a clothing-shopping trip in a grocery store. Pure class I know. Anyways so it was in a giant concrete structure decorated with white and purple chiffon with an area up above for a 12-person band. The chairs were all covered in white silky cloths and there were puff pastries, tiny lucuma and maracuya flavored cocktails and cookies for days. Also there were about half a dozen white and purple cakes arranged neatly in a tower. Now on a complete tangent let me tell you something about Peruvian cakes. They are a complete cock tease. At every Peruvian party there are about a dozen cakes because they are given to the birthday boy or girl, newlyweds or graduate by their madrinos and padrinos but they are pure decoration. All you get to do is stare at and take photos of the pretty cakes you will never get to eat. And the real thing I wonder is if it is a birthday what the hell does the birthday kid do with all that birthday cake. Do they give it away later? Or just attempt to eat 11 cakes? If they are giving it away later or eating a massive amount why not share with the people who came to their events? In case you can’t guess I really like cake and I think it is cruel and usual punishment to use it as merely decoration. Also I highly doubt that there would be alcohol served at any 15 year olds birthday in the states. Anyways the party was an interesting event. For starters I was simply not wearing enough clothing to stay warm in the slightest. I had spent so much time trying to convince my new doctor to come and telling him that it was not in fact cold in Huayatara that I had convinced myself that it was warm. 50* in a concrete structure. Not so warm. The most interesting part of the quinseanera was when the youg girl was presented. She came out in a white and purple dress with a hoop. And by hoop I do not mean hoop skirt. I mean it looked like someone straight up sewed a hula-hoop inside her skirt. It made for a very interesting moment when she had to sit in a chair. There was a long moment of her trying to figure out how she could sit down without having to lift her skirt up to an inappropriately high length or sit and have the hoop expose just about everything. It was finally resolved. And then her father changed her shoes. I asked if it was a tradition, if silver shoes meant something. My obstetrician told me that it meant nothing just apparently something the girl wanted to do. Interesting choice. Anyways I felt like I was watching Cinderella Peru version. I didn’t quite know what to do with all of that. After watching her father get down on one knee to change her shoes there was a series of brief speeches, which was adorned by a drunken man peeing on the stage. He later tried to give a speech, got kicked out, fell on his face and generally struggled. But at least he was in a cowboy hat. Promptly after her presentation the birthday girl changed into a red tight short dress, one of those homecoming dresses that looks like the girl might get pregnant after the dance. Pretty standard Peruvian dancing, which I am getting better at, but still kind of suck at. Apparently I was dancing too fast at one point. I contest it was my effort to stay warm while wearing a cardigan roughly as thick as a piece of tissue paper. I haven’t danced around that many 15 year olds since I was a senior in high school. The only time I felt like I was just far too much was at the end of the Hora Loca. For those of you who don’t know the Hora Loca is an hour around the middle/end of the party where suddenly there is a DJ mix, shockingly similar every time, glitter, clowns, silly streams, occasionally fire and dancing in a circle. Everyone dances around in a circle while the clowns run around pulling people in to dance together or just make general asses of themselves. I got pulled in twice. The first time I danced with the clown and a very scared looking Peruvian boy. the second time was when the circle was looking more like a clusterfuck that a circle and the clown tried to get me to drop down low. I looked around and realized I was dangerously close to dancing in a Shaker high school dance and ran for my life. 15 year olds grinding is a scary site once you are 22.

The Strangest Job

Peace Corps motto de jour is that this is the hardest job you will
ever love. The longer my service goes on the more I contend that it is
the strangest position someone can choose to put themselves in
professionally for 2 years. It is one of the only jobs where
self-awareness, thinking and “me time” can become a burden rather than
a welcome gift at the end of a long day. I personally believe that it
is the only job where over 50% percent of the employees would probably
fail a mental health test on any given day. The only business where
almost every employee has cried or stared forlornly off into space for
longer than is generally considered socially acceptable in the past
month or two.

Its is probably one of the only businesses where the last time you had
sex and how much you miss it and how sick you were last Tuesday are
polite dinner-time conversation. I feel genuinely sorry for whatever
unfortunate soul takes me on my first date when I return to the
states. I have a deep seeded fear I will get frustrated with a piece
and just casually pick it up with my hands in a 5 star restaurant. I
also contest that this is one of the only professions an American can
enter where you can eat with your hands while talking to your Mayor.
Basically what I am trying to say is that it is defiantly not your
typical job and therefore it does not have your typical outcome.
What has really started me thinking of all these things was talking to
my fellow volunteers and realizing many of us are in the same place,
and yet not in the same place at all. The Peace Corps is so
individualistic that it is sometimes like comparing apples to oranges.
The daily battles that you face can make you feel like you are on
another planet, even if you are only 5 km away and everyone in your
town knows everyone within a 15 km radius.

Our lives can be so different on a day-to-day that it often is hard to
even compare it. There is commiseration. There are many shared
experiences. But life, plain and simple daily life, is not shared with
anyone really. You are the only one that can provide perspective on
what you just saw because John was 100 miles away when you got trapped
on the side of the mountain. Plain and simple some of your closest
friends may never see something so mundane as the inside of your room.
At the end of the day you are the only one that can decide if you are
going crazy or it was just having an off moment. While you can ask
friends for advice sometimes asking a Peace Corps volunteer for
emotional advice is like the blind leading the blind. Because honestly
none of us have any idea what the fuck is going on. At the end of the
conversation you may inevitably come to the conclusion that you have
no idea what the fuck you are doing. Or why the initiative you took is
now turning out to be one hellish mistake. Occasionally on a horrible
day and you make the decision to call a friend and find out they are
having the most productive day in South America. Why am I watching
paint that is already dry while you are helping with a dengue
vaccination campaign or already have a grant for S/.7,000? The
contrast can be so startling at times, you want to hate them for
having their shit together, but you cant really. What if it’s just
that day? What if it’s just their site? And really do they actually
have their shit together or does it just appear that way? There are so
many factors that it is really hard to tell purple from yellow
sometimes.

The one thing you have to constantly remind yourself is to not play
the “I’m better/worse than you game,” because you will always loose.
I’ll admit it I am one of those people that is secretly hyper
competitive and always has to win over my competitor of the moment.
This doesn’t extend to every facet of my life, for instance I hate how
competitive “Words With Friends” is, probably because I’m terrible at
Scrabble. But I generally like to win against a fellow competitor.
Even if that competitor was blissfully unaware that we were competing,
I was winning. Because lets get serious I always do. But here I can’t
use my competitive drive in the same way because it just leads to more
confusion and wondering if your answer is fact completely wrong. When
in realty there is no right answer.

There is only grey area. Let me tell you the first time you are
scorned in another language it can be overwhelming. Even if its not
technically your boss and you are not technically in trouble the
simple language barrier can make it feel like the most confusing thing
since the invention of the internet. Maybe I am alone here but
9-year-old Katie was very very confused by the Internet. So much so I
hoped it was a phase that would go away. I didn’t have time for
dial-up when there were Skip-Its. That and I didn’t realize my sister
set an email up for me until I was 21.

One of the most unexpected things that I have begun to realize that
many of the cultural factors I used to define myself are no longer
there. I have to find new ways to remind myself of things I once
easily knew to be true. You are the one that has to force yourself to
do anything and believe in will work out. There is just no other way
around it. There are new definitions of initiative, common courtesy
and relationships. For every time you get annoyed at someone cutting
you in line you have to channel that frustration into something more
productive, because if it builds who the fuck knows where its headed.
I have just learned to become equally as aggressive while standing in
lines. Sorry senora your time is not more important than mine when we
are getting on the bus at the same time. There are times when patience
and Mid-Western niceness are not a virtue.

Being so culturally isolated you begin to learn about yourself. Your
limits, your capabilities, your desires and how confused you really
can become. And trust me I could become very confused very easily
before. It generally took me about 10 minutes to get a joke.
I was recently reading a blog called 1000awesomethings or something of
the like; 2 of the 1000 “awesome things” struck me quite intensely,
me-time and thinking. Unlike almost every other American my life is
filled with me-time and thinking. I actually have to sometimes make a
conscious effort to stop having me time and thinking about things.
Partly because I would drive myself crazy and partially because I feel
the compelling urge to be productive. You have so much time to think
about your life that eventually it comes to the point you over analyze
ever misstep, accomplishment or random thought that comes into your
head.

Really if I wanted to have a whole day of me time I very well could,
and no one would scold me about it. They would wonder what I was doing
but there is no clock to punch or pre-set daily schedule. Once I
actually did stare at my room for about two and a half-hours before I
realized the time. I’m not even sure what I was even thinking about to
be quite honest. Maybe the fact the ceiling paint is an awkward shade
of off-white-yellow. Or that the hole in my floor looks progressively
more and more like a penis as the months go on. These are the
important investigations of my daily life.

I am not accountable to them in the way I was in every other job.
There are days where I am hyper productive, others not so much, and it
has nothing to do with the weekend or sense of days. My only real
sense of time is that I have to get up around dawn and accomplish
mostly everything before 2pm or after 6pm. I have learned is one of
the core elements of the Peace Corps experience is that time changes
meaning in a multitude of ways, not just a new perception of 9-5. You
have more time to yourself. Time to dream about fresh coffee with
Yours Truly natzo fries and an egg slider. Time to contemplate that
cereal costs 1/10 of your monthly income and everything you are eating
is laced with MSG. Peru, hate to break it to you MSG is not a
seasoning. It is actually illegal in several states in the USA, that’s
how much it’s not a seasoning. Time to have dreams that merge your
daily life into South Park and Sex and The City. Let me tell you
Carrie Bradshaw should not interact with Eric Cartman and Cusicancha
all in the same dream.

Its not that I didn’t stare off into space in my other jobs, trust me
I did. My staring off into space at my EPA internship is the reason I
know all the NBA teams and what city they are from. But here it is
different. In my internship I was in a freezing cold cubicle staring
at a computer and gossiping most of the day. I was at least
accountable to be physically in the office for 8 hours, but here no
one cares where I physically am. Half the time no one is the wiser. I
have a bad tendency of telling one person where I am going but not
giving them the full details and moderately disappearing. It still
holds true here. I think my host mother has almost called the police
about twice now.

You are so out of your element in the Peace Corps that it is as if
your self-awareness becomes hyperactive. You are the superman of
thinking about your own life. A weird superpower I never knew I could
possibly have. Any unresolved relationship or feelings you had will
have time to resurface. Any self-consciousness that you had will
inevitably find the time to rear its ugly head. Any music that you
loved in the states will get played on your iPod 68 times. Often the
steps you took to maintain your self-identity are now null and void in
such a foreign environment. You have all the time in the world to
learn about yourself. Even if you thought you had it pretty set in
stone beforehand.

Fun fact I still freak out about crickets because from far away it
looks remotely like a cockroach. But mice I can have a pleasant
conversation to while they crawl in and out of my shoes. I currently
have a mouse named Felix in my room. We share rice. Not really that
would be fucking disgusting. But he does in my corner and the thought
of killing him gorses me out more than his existence.
Every day in the Peace Corps, whether it’s about you, your community
or some random thing you would prefer to never know. Like what
vertical birth looks like. Today I found out that now that the rain is
over the ice starts. Aaawweeessooommmmeeee. Because I didn’t already
think every day “holy crap this is the coldest I have ever been in my
life.” I blame retroactive amnesia for my daily commentary on how cold
it is.

One of the third year volunteers recently told me that you have to be
your own advocate in this game because there is no one there to watch
your back. It’s really true. You have the office in Lima that’s very
supportive when you get robbed or need resources. You can have friends
by your side on the phone, provided you have the same phone provider.
If you have different phone providers, don’t expect a daily call that
costs saldo. Which is a luxury greater than gold on the Peace Corps
salary which is so high you don’t even have to do your taxes. But this
is more of a safety net than a vigilantly watching out for you.
If you are one of the lucky few you will have friends only an hour or
so away there to help guide you. They can be there when everything
seems to be tie-dye, sparkly, neon carnivorous dolphins on land. I
don’t know why but that is my metaphor for really fucking confusing
and strange. Just go with it. But at the end of the day it comes down
to only you. You were the only one that was there, the only one with
an American cultural perspective staring at the picture in front of
you. You are the last line of defense.

If I am being honest I don’t know I ever really fully depended on
other people in my day to day besides my family and my college
lacrosse team on the field. I was a girl you could know for 2 years
before knowing some of the most ordinary details. I sometimes got to
the point where I felt like I was self-reliant to a fault. That was
until I got here I never realized that I was still dependent on things
that were distinctly a part of the world I had built. Distinctly part
of the world I was born and raised in; external forces that had guided
me for years. When you have this much time to reflect on your own
life in a world that is so similar and yet so dramatically different
at the same time you can actually see yourself changing. See yourself
adapting to the new world in front of you. Having to redefine yourself
while still attempting to maintain the parts of yourself that you hold
dear. It’s a balancing act. A balancing act that at times makes you
feel like you are a 95 year old on rickety stilts and other times like
you are Roberto Louango durante de game 7 of the Play-offs. That can
make you feel like a sloth or the most insightful than Google.

Rain Rain Rain

So it’s the rainy season. I’m sure you could guess that by my witty and complex title. Anyways I’m glad that the rainy season has actually started to produce rain because in January there was a concerning lack of rain and many people were joking about starvation, having to sell off animals and lack of papas crop. Happy cuddly jokes. The rain comes normally in the afternoon. Some days the whether even tricks you into thinking that it will be nice with sunshine and joy in the morning and then a foreboding grey mist around 1 pm. Some days it is just a torrential down pour the whole day. On those days it’s a real struggle to motivate out of your room. Especially because when someone sees you outside they remind you of the fun fact that you are in fact getting wet. I have figured out however that I am taking one long ass vacation next year in the end of February.

Let me describe late February here for you. It is like Cleveland March, pre-global warming, with about 500,000 less people. If any of you haven’t been fortunate enough to experience a Cleveland marzo imagine a gray land, filled with drizzles and clouds, which tries to be warm sometimes, but inevitably fails and pours rain. Now in Cleveland it sucks because all you want is spring and hailstorms keep knocking lacrosse goals on your head but in Cuiscancha it is just down right depressing. Some days I would only really see 1 or 2 people on the street because everyone else vacated to the coast.

So in this daunting of rainy seasons where I wander around in 5 sweaters, uggs, 2 pants, 2 socks, scarf, hat and glove. Every day I think I have never been this cold in my life. Normally I mutter this under my breath and then remember that I in fact said this exact same statement yesterday. Somehow my retroactive amnesia made me forget that I am slowly freezing to death. I am never moving to Serbia. Besides reading the Hunger Games and watching Harry Potter 78 times I have decided to start teaching English with the jovenes of my community. I have learned that teaching English, or a class of any sort can be really fun and rewarding but it can also make you want to blow your brains out.

I tired to have vacaciones clases to teach English. But my classes would range from 2-12 boys ages 4-12 and my stomach was inevitably doing a dance with the devil. As much as I would like to believe I am Mother Teresa and taught them all English and inspired their young minds there were several days I just wanted to punch them all in the face. I should not be a kindergarten teacher. Ever. Lesson learned. When I had to drag a 4 year old off the table he was crawling across to bogard all the blue colored pencils I knew it was not meant to be.

I also am never having more than 3 children because if they are all boys one may end up at the bottom of a lake one day. Usually my vacaciones clases would dissolve into paper airplanes and coloring because that was the only thing that could hold their attention for more than 15 minutes. Fun fact I now know how to make a very good paper airplane. Also I am sure the municipality expected paper airplanes to come flying out of their building when I asked to use the auditorium. My mother would be so proud of the work I have accomplished in Peru. Now a hoard of boys knows the colors and the word “airplane” in ingles.

After my somewhat epic fail of vacaciones clases I read The Hunger Games trilogy in tree days. That’s the thing about the Peace Corps you can have a day where you do 5 encuestas, plan a charla, do an English class, go for a run. And you can have days where you read the entire Hunger Games trilogy without batting an eye. There are days where you feel super productive an on top of thins and others where you wonder what on earth you are really doing here. I must admit I was having a very befuddling day and feeling like I was doing absolutely nothing and failing at my plans, I wanted to have English clases for adults but was slowly losing all my motivation. Well this day I cried in the most melodramatic fashion to a Snow Patrol song. It was to the point where I was mocking myself because I was so perfectly timed to the music I felt like I should be in a movie. And then of couse as I sat down I snapped my headphones out of my ear as per usual, and snapped myself out of it. My clumsiness never fails to amaze me. On an unrelated note I went surfing the other day and I now understand why my mother never let me surf. Sometimes I really wonder how I’m still alive.

Yesterday I went for a run with my doctor and enfermera. On the run there is a tiny waterfall in the road. Normally I just trot right through the water and keep on going. I actually never realized that I had another option. When I was with my puesto on the other hand I realized that the bridge to nowhere was actually not just a random bridge in the sky it was a bridge over the waterfall. We climbed up a not so defined path and walked over a slick wood bridge with no handrails over a gushing waterfall. I figured that this would be a bad time to tell them that I am in fact afraid of ledges, and kind of afraid of heights. And generally afraid of walking on slick wood. I just don’t have that kind of walking skill. I think something happened in my development, I learned how to crawl, then walk, but some how never managed to learn how to walk in a straight line or not stumble over my own feet. One of my friends commented that he loves my walking style because it is completely arbitrary. Try walking next to me…it can be dangerous because I generally walk in a soft zigzag rather than straight forward. And sometimes walking can lead to stitches. You just never know with me.

Another fun thing I did in the rainy season was accidently almost adopting a dog-named Charlie. The day started with major hopes of productivity. But when I tried to work but the light was gone and inevitably the day that the light is gone is the day that you have let your computer completely die the night before. And then se fue the agua tambien. And of course the day that the water goes away is the day that you don’t guard any water. Don’t get me wrong last night I thought I should defiantly guardar water in case there wasn’t any the next day. Low and behold there wasn’t. Right after I had cooked myself some applesauce for breakfast. I just wanted to make sure that the dishes were good and dirty apparently. At this point I ceased my hopes of attempting to do any work.

During lunch there was no light so my host mom accidently walked in on me in the bathroom and then during dinner I somehow managed to step into the pot of lentils from lunch. She had quite a hoot from that one. What can I say I have got skill. On my way home from lunch I saw a pile of puppies and as a gut reaction I said they are so cute I want one. The response I got was absolutely not what I expected. One of my nurses said then go and take one. I’m used to dogs being owned by people and sold, not just randomly wandering ready for the taking. I picked up a dog and played with him. Even went so far as to name him Charlie. The love affair lasted about a day; until I realized my room is about the size of a shoebox and I am not even 100% sure I am allowed to have dogs in my room. Sadly I returned him to his mother, realizing he would inevitably grow and there was a high probability he would give me flees. I love dogs, but I hate fleas more.

Also now that my English language skills are slowly slipping away into the world of Spanglish I use phrases like guard water or I’m advancing. Who guards water r advances? But honestly I can’t think of a proper English synonym. So it’s guard water. Deal with it.

Anyways my awkward Snow Patrol, lack of people induced depression resided the first week of March when people started to return. Fortunately for me the girl who I had taught Christmas songs to in December returned, with the memory of an elephant begging me to sing Christmas songs for her. That and Justin Beiber, which I vehemently denied knowing. Anyways when I was washing my clothes in the river, which may or may not be filled with cow poop, my young little friend bombarded me with song requests. There is nothing like singing Christmas songs while hand washing your towel in a river to really make you appreciate a washing machine. She then preceded to prostatlize me, call me fat (fairly typical of Peruvian society), pick up my granny panties and ogle at their enormous size, and call me ugly when I took off my glasses. I have to admit I contemplated drowning her until she gave me a baked ava (kinda like a lima bean).

Two nights before I was set to leave for a Peace Corps training in La Libertad my health post had a unsa to celebrate the opening of the new Casa Materna. A Unsa is a party that revolved around a tree, literally. During the day the celebrants find a eucalyptus tree and chop it down. Then at night fall there is a band that plays songs that go on for about 15 minutes and all sound shockingly similar while everyone dances around a tree and slowly chops it down. Hypothetically a man and woman are supposed to partner up and stay together the whole night. Unless you are crafty and manage to ditch you far too drunk, mildly creepy partner. Anyways there is dancing the whole night until the tree falls over. And there is also an excessive amount of talc and baby powder. During the festivities the men and women are fighting by throwing baby powder on each other. Needless to say by the end of the night I was covered with a nice layer od mud and baby powder.

At one point I tried to chase after one of my socios Pablo, an enfermera, at the health post. He went off sprinting in the other direction. His run looked so much like Michael Cera in Super Bad that I had to hold together my laughter. There is something about a perfectly upright run with flooding pants that just gets me. anywyas as we went off running I was of course in Uggs, not the best running in mud shoes. Actually I would highly recommend against ever trying it. I was also wearing a bandeau, which is like a strapless sports bra with -0 support. So as you can see I was not equipt to go running after a tiny little sprinting man. When I was about to enter the plaza my bandeau fell down so I had to simultaneously try to run without slipping on the mud, hold a fistful of baby powder and button my shirt so I didn’t flash my mayor. As I tried to turn a corner there was just too much going on and I almost ate shit on concrete. At that moment I realized it was probably better to hold on to the light post to prevent falling face first than continue my futile chase. I would like to say I did successfully put a fistful of baby powder on Pablo’s face, at a moment that required far less sprinting.

So this is a general summary of what my life was like in February. Now I am doing planning and trying to figure out meeting to make real moves towards projects.

Carnivales

So carnivales is a celebration in February that celebrates…well I’m not quite so sure. Maybe it’s the celebration before Lent, maybe its something else, maybe I’ll just never know. Anyways so carnivales in Huancavelica is a celebration. Of course. It is a time of pride and dance competitions. So anyways the first I heard about carnivales was January 26^th, when I got a call from my site mate Allie. We had been planning on going down to Ica the first weekend in February but she called to inform me that there was a carnivales celebration and we should probably go down the weekend of the 28^th instead. I was quite skeptical so when she came down I made her get off what turned out to be the only combi of the day and inevitably made us walk most of the way down to the nearest city, Huayatara, but that’s a whole other story. Needless to say I now believe when people tell stories about walking uphill both ways. Because I have now officially done it. In sperry’s. Logically. Anyways Allie had heard all about carnivales where I had still heard nil as of the 2^nd of February. I was becoming more skeptical. The 3^rd of February there was suddenly a community meeting held to discuss carnivales.

In my ever so humble opinion the 3^rd of February is a little bit late to have a meeting about a dance competition on the 5^th of February. Really taking it down to the wire. The first meeting that we had was to decide whether or not we were even going to participate. Since we are the district capital it was a matter of pride to participate. People kept talking about how bad it would look if we didn’t participate. Anyway there was a general consensus we should participate, even though some of the speed bumps like participants and music had not been addressed. Throughout the entire discussion when someone would point out a flaw in our plan to participate, or mention things like who was going to sing, someone would chime in Allie is going to be the chanto therefore Katie has to be it and we have to win. I was sitting there playing with my phone only moderately paying attention, not quite sure why I had become an argument point. Inevitably whenever I was completely not paying attention was when someone would point in my direction. I decided it was best to put the phone away and at least I could pretend I knew what was going on. When it was my turn to vote I just said “si” and hoped for the best.

The next day we were supposed to have a meeting to practice the dance at 4pm. At around 4 I headed out to see if anyone was in the community building, but it was raining, hard. There was no one in the community building. And anyone who saw me from their house simply shouted “it’s raining! You are going to get wet!” Thank you captain obvious. That is why rain coats were invented. After taking a lap and checking twice I decided to take refuge in my host mom’s house because in reality I was getting wet and now I was getting wet for no reason whatsoever. At 5 my mom sent me back down to check. Still no one. At around 6 the rain stopped so we checked again at 6:30. Nada. We decided to eat dinner and check after dinner. When we headed back down around 7:30 there was just a huddle of people. No one was dancing or really making plans, there were just people there.

Whenever it seemed like people were going to give up on the whole concept of dancing in carnivales my mom would whip out a drum and start banging on it to raise spirits. For the next two hours we sat there not making any movement forward or backwards. There were only women which was a problem because the choreography calls for men and women, but people were not ready to give up. At 10 I threw in the towel and went to bed. I was sad that we wouldn’t be dancing but I didn’t was to sit around for about 6 more hours to see what was going to happen.

Low and behold the next morning when I woke up we were dancing. I went to eat breakfast and was asked if I was going over to the local after breakfast to dance. Maybe something had come together in the 8 hours I was asleep. Turns out things did not actually come together when I was in bed; somehow people just got some fire under their belly the day of. Naturally. Maybe it was the carnivales music that started to play at 5 am. In case anyone was thinking of sleeping in. people were running around in a flurry starting to get dressed and ready. Originally I was put in a blue skirt and a white blouse to be a dancer. That was until my mother came over and pulled the skirt down past my natural waist…

I have an oddly high natural waist it can be confusing. Anyways as she pulled it down she deduced that I was too fat for the skirt and it just wouldn’t do. Also on a side bar there is no such thing as political correctness in Peru. If you are fat you are called fat, if you look Chinese you are called china, if you have acne they ask you why. Anyways I had to change outfits at that moment. I went from being a dancer to a chanto, which is kind of like a clown that dances on the outside. I was given a long red skirt, a brown hat, told to wear my hair down, and was in rain boots. Keep in mind my hair was kind of tangled and I was also in my transition glasses, it was a cloudy day and so they were an awkward shade of grey. I have actually never looked spiffier in my entire life.

At promptly 8am we began our first dance rehearsal for a competition at 9. At first my host mom told me to dance around the middle. Just hop and skip. Then there was a general consensus that I should actually dance around the outside. Right before we went to present ourselves to the mayor some members of the dance group decided that I should put a balloon in my ass. After getting a balloon stuffed in my pants I was then treated to the best motivational speech ever. “Even if we loose it doesn’t matter because we still have to participate.” I felt very very motivated. In case I didn’t already look cool enough. After dancing in front of the mayor and my entire community and several of my annexos my host mom decided that the ass balloon was in fact ugly and it should be moved to my belly. Because that is so much better. Anyways we presented ourselves in the parade and then we ran back to the community building to a brief practice before the actual dance. Thankfully my host mom also decided that the belly balloon was ugly and it got popped.

After what I can only say was the briefest dance rehearsal in the history of dance competitions we headed up to the basketball court where the competition would be held. On the way up I was handed a 1.5L bottle of coke alcohol, just to add to my décor. The dance competition is broken into two parts, one 10-minute presentation and one 30-minute presentation. Luckily we were the last to go so we had time to get our shit together. During the other 10-minute presentation a wool square cloth was put on my shoulder to create a satchel. And a baby was added to it. And the embarrassment grows. During my main competitor Allie’s dance performance she was invitiring all the judges to liquor. Basically she was just running around serving everyone drinks. I on the other hand was explicitly told not to do such a thing. Apparently you loose a point by doing such a thing.

Several people sternly told me at that I should not do what Allie was doing. I should dance around the outside and generally nothing more. The 10-minute presentation went along swimmingly. I was dancing around on the outside, holding on to my bottle of alcohol hoping that my baby didn’t fall out of my back. I felt kind of pathetic when my arm started to hurt from holding a 1.5L bottle.

After the 10-minute performance we were sitting on the side waiting to do our 30-minute performance. Somewhere in between the first and second performance one of the dancers came up to me and told me that I was going to urinate. I was standing right next to blaring speakers so I was not sure that I heard the man correctly. Urinate really? How was that going to go down? I needed more information. I walked around to several more people in an attempt to get a full story. I had put my bottle down because of my aching arm and as I was running around trying to find out more information on the urinating information everyone seemed more focused on the fact I put the bottle down than the fake urinating I was supposed to do. I walked around to several people and I figured out that I was supposed to put a chamber pot underneath my dress and pull up my skirt a little and pretend to urinate. I felt that I was getting a handle on things so I walked away in order to pick up my bottle everyone had been making a hullabaloo about.

Just when I felt that I understood what was going on I was hit with another curve ball. My host mother came running up to me and told me that plans had changed. I was not going to urinate. I was in fact going to give fake birth. And then cry over my fake dead baby. Loudly and dramatically. And just for added measure when I found out this little fun fact about the birth it started to rain. Just for dramatic measure. Luckily I had a white tank to under my white t-shirt or else it really would have been a show. Anyways I then had a smaller baby stuffed into my belly tied to a string that was going to come out of my skirt at an unspecified time. Of course as we went to dance it started to rain even harder. Exactly what would happen in my life. Everyone just reiterated that I should be very loud and dramatic when I gave birth. I’m pretty sure I was supposed to tip over before I gave birth and super melodramatic when I was crying over my dead baby. And naturally to make me pregnant another balloon was stuffed into my stomach and I was told to dance slowly as if I was pregnant.

And so we started to dance. I was waddling along except this time I had two babies to focus on not letting fall out. I thought it would be bad form for my baby to fall out of my stomach before I was supposed to give birth but maybe that’s just me. about half way through the dance I was pulled over by the other chanto dancer who had the chamber pot. I thought I was being pulled over to give birth. No such luck. There was a pair struggle scene. Basically where the boys whisk off the girls. Entirely unprepared for this moment I toppled over when he went in for the sideways hug. And hten we were fighting on the ground in what I can only imagine was a fake sex scene. I had so many props attached to my body at the moment I became seriously concerned one of them would be wasked away in the rain. And that my white shirts would be ruined in the mud I was currently sloshing around in.

About 2 minutes after being knocked over onto the concrete I was beckoned over again to give birth. I was moderately tipped over and then told that I should have the baby come out of my skirt. Suuupppppeeerr classy. I was shouting labor pains. And by that I mean making a semi loud noise and trying to control my laughter. Almost immediately after my baby was born it was whisked away from me. I was not sure whether or not it was dead at this point or not so I didn’t start to cry yet. I was kind of just standing in the middle not sure what to do. Looking entirely clueless but what else is new. I danced around a little bit. My baby had been put in a box so I was not sure if it was dead or not. I kept an eye on what they were doing with the baby. Then they pulled me over for the “funeral.” I stood there with my dead baby in a box and cried loudly in front of my mayor, my health post, my host family and basically anyone I had ever met in Cuisucancha. I basically just fake cried for about 2 seconds and then burst out into uncontrollable laughter. I had no idea how long I was supposed to dance or how much longer the dance was going to go on.

Luckily the dance ended pretty quickly after the funeral and the dead baby but of course I was thrown another curveball. The short little man who was the other chanto and had served as my birth attendant came up to me and whisked me away on his back. All of the other girls that had been whisked away were in an even height proportion but I was about 5 inches taller and 50 pounds heavier than him. He could only get me about 4 yards before he had to put me down. It was a shining moment in my life. at this point I realized that I should just give up on the concept of shame because it would be a useless emotion to hold on to during these two years.