I didn’t make it to the colegio (primary and secondary school) this afternoon, spacing out with a book and napping instead [I had a sinus infection]. Damn sinuses, and damn me for surrendering so readily to the excuse! I was a little overwhelmed this morning by how quickly the mayor seemed to move (and especially speak), whisking me off to the Health Post where a blustering nurse methodically rushed through patients, grumbling almost cheerfully about the Post being understaffed. Strange that I from Chicago, USA, should feel overwhelmed by speed in the Peruvian campo, but I suppose I appreciate a slower pace while I’m adjusting and still learning the language.
While I half read, half napped, I was also thinking about how incredible it is that in the U.S. we can dump used water down a drain instead of using it to water the dirt. That we think it’s a novelty to cook over an open flame—I’m not surprised that we enjoy it because for some reason food tastes better coming out of a charred sartén [pan] than a shiny wok on a gas stove, but I am more baffled by our ignorance in finding this to be a novelty. That we rarely wash anything by hand (that’s what dishwashers and mesh laundry bags are for). That we don’t bathe in rivers or out of buckets. I can already feel the shock of returning to the US after this experience creeping up on me—how did things happen this way? Life here is so much more difficult in very basic ways and yet no one seems to notice.
Perhaps the human spirit needs to struggle against something. The easier we make our lives, the more we will invent new plagues to worry us—ironically, these troublesome inventions have become measures of progress: industry, philosophy, culture.
My life is now basically a camping trip—except isn’t that statement kind of insulting? Really my life is now a little closer to that of the majority of people on Earth, and my American mind has the arrogance to compare it to the bizarre way that we deprive ourselves of our easily acquired luxuries and call it a vacation. Like kids playing cowboys and Indians, we sometimes play at poverty.
Meanwhile, somehow everything works! Drains, toilets, gas lines, storm sewers, government people who show up if it breaks. People to hold accountable. Obviously there are plenty of rough edges—things do break, corruption and mismanagement happen—but the rest is smooth enough that we can distinguish the bumps as way out of the norm. We hated Bush for his failed response to Katrina, but when a huayco [land slide] wipes out a village, everyone just quietly invades a new area and crosses their fingers for a deed to the land some day.
I wonder if two years is going to be enough for me to wrap my mind around this.
No comments:
Post a Comment