When old demons cross continents to haunt me again

I've been a busy, and at the same time, not so busy girl since I last posted.  It's the day after Christmas and I'm currently hanging out with some friends watching Mona Lisa's Smile.  I'm going to do a quick summary catch up of the time I've missed, and am going to do my best from here on out to be me more thorough with my blog posting.  Sorry!  It's all about developing a routine, so I'll work harder at that for now.

Last time I updated, I had just learned how to make Tamales, and had painted my room, Griseria was really creeping me out but I was trying to laugh it off, and I was being overzealously harassed about my weight by curious and not so PC Peruvians.  I have forgotten to mention that while Kate and Diamond were over and we were hanging out in the kitchen with Griseria, she decided to start killing all the flies, which meant smacking them with the same rag we use to wash and dry dishes, wipe the table, and other random things.  She would then pick up the fly with her fingers, hold it out to us with a proud grunt, then throw it in the fire.  It was a bit disturbing.  I eventually started to lose it.  I had enough of her coming into my room and staring at me in the morning, so one night I had the brilliant idea to lock both the doors that lead to the room which eventually leads to my room.  I had also bought fruit and yogurt to eat in the morning so I didn't have to eat rice and potatoes, and so that Griseria would have no reason to wake me up.  I told her that evening that I didn't need to be woken up in the morning because I had my own breakfast and was going to feed myself.

 The next morning I woke up the rattling of the door, which persisted a strangely long time, only to recommence with the other door.  Griseria went back and forth, rattling the doors maybe four times each before she walked away.  Then came back about ten minutes later and did it all over again.  It wasn't like she was knocking to get me, she was just rattling the doors to try and open them.  I started laughing in my bed and the sheer determination, but it eventually started to annoy me so badly that I got up and pretended like I just happened to wake up.  I was VERY excited when my host mom, Celina, finally came home.  She has a much better concept of privacy, and is considerably easier to communicate with.  She also is a touch more sanitary with things in the kitchen and doesn't stand in doorways and stare at me.

That day, the day after we had painted my room, I went into town again to get a couple more things for my room.  While walking around town, I walked by a guy who sneezed and I, politely, said, "salud", or bless you.  About four hours later, this same guy came up to me and tried to talk me into buying little pills I should put in cold water and drink to help me lose weight.  It was really important, he said, because if I didn't lose weight, all the fat in my heart was going to kill me.  I walked away and was, needless to say, really frustrated.  I had been in site less than a week and felt totally accosted about my weight.  I tried my best to shrug it off but was already thinking thoughts like, "I hate this town."

Later that afternoon, when I was getting in a mototaxi to go up the hill back to my town, some woman was trying to get in and sit down.  We already had four people in the mototaxi, and four is usually really pushing it.  The woman actually said, "I can't fit because that girl is so fat." I pretended not to hear.

The whole ride up the mountain was miserable because there were three people squeezed on my side and I could feel my left hip bruising against the metal bar.  The moto was also so weighted down that every time we hit one of the huge rocks embedded in the road or a pothole, I thought my spine was going to snap because there was no give, no spring, to the moto.  About halfway up, we got a flat tire.  And of course, this flat tire was on my side of the mototaxi.  Everyone started insisting that it was my fault that the mototaxi broke down because I'm so fat.  Then they started joking about how I needed to lose weight or I was going to break every mototaxi that goes up our hill and then our town would be stranded up there.  When another moto came to take us the rest of the way up the hill, they had a 20 minute argument about whether or not they would actually let me in the next mototaxi because I might break that one too.  They kept talking about it and I finally had to say, "Maybe it is not my weight, maybe it's the fact that we've put five people in a mototaxi and this road is covered in large rocks and potholes."  No one had much to say after that.  I felt like crying the rest of the way up the hill.  Everyone I was introduced to had to comment on my weight when I met them, and thus far, every time I'd gone into Chota it was all anyone could talk about.  I spent the rest of the ride up the hill feeling miserable and wondering how I would be able to build relationships with anyone in my community if every person I met offended me in the first three minutes of conversation.  I had already heard from plenty of people that Barbara, the volunteer I was replacing, was too serious.  I was beginning to realize why she was serious, she probably felt like she had to defend herself against all the comments.  Anyone would put up a wall.  But I knew that I couldn't be happy if I had to spend two years feeling defensive.  I was prepared for weight comments, but it'd gotten to be to much and I didn't know what to do with myself, or how to fix it.  Right before getting to my house, when we stopped to let out two other people, they addressed me simply as "Gringa".  ENOUGH LABLES!

Katie H. and me at Swearing in in November 

I managed to hold it together until after I got out of the mototaxi, paid the driver, and walked halfway up the hill to my house.  I popped down on a rock, picked up my cell phone, and called Katie H., the friend I had talked to while being stared at by Griseria a couple days beforehand.  She's a friend of mine from training who had already done Peace Corps in Zambia, is the most positive and at peace person I think I've ever met.  She's around the same age as my brother, Ned, and she is my Peace Corps big sister.  I called her, she luckily picked up, and I burst into tears.  It was the first time I had cried at site.  However, Katie calmed me down.  She was super supportive and sweet, and encouraged me to call Sarah, a third year volunteer and Peace Corps Peru's volunteer HIV/AIDS coordinator.  She and I had a great conversation during training about the difficulties of dealing with the Peruvian tendency to comment openly about other people's weight.  She was also really sympathetic and helpful, and encouraged me to occasionally let people have it, but to find someone I trusted to explain that commenting on my weight was really offensive.

Sarah and Me at Swearing in in November - sadly she has now left
Peace Corps, finished with her service, to travel around South
America a bit and then head home. 

Ultimately, I felt really stupid.  I don't remember the last time I actually cried because someone had commented on my weight.  I've for the most part accepted where I'm at and have been trying to move forward with the goal of being as strong and healthy as possible.  I'm easily able to joke about it, partially as a defense mechanism, and I'm more used to jokes about my weight coming from my own mouth and making other people uncomfortable, not the other way around.  I felt really stupid for being sensitive about it, and really frustrated that I couldn't just ignore it, but at the end I decided that the amount of attention and comments I'd received about my weight would give any fit, confident woman an eating disorder, and that I was handling it alright.

I ended up going to my health post a few days later and talking with the two workers there, Silvia and Violeta, and explaining to them that comments about my weight were really offensive in my country.  It took a really long time to explain to them, but they eventually got it and said they would spread the word that people shouldn't talk to me about that.  I felt stupid again, I didn't want people to feel like they had to be on guard around me, especially when I hadn't met them yet or gotten to know them.  In the end, I knew I wasn't going to be able to be myself, to be friendly and happy and outgoing, if I all I ever heard from people was about how fat I was.  I figured active and maybe a little awkward was better than hurt, alienated and furious.