I woke up the next morning and had to use the bathroom with unfortunate frequency. I had a horrible headache and my stomach was in angry knots. Ellie spent the whole morning literally asking me the same question. “What do you think made you sick?” “I have no idea.” We said those two things to each other maybe twenty five times just that day. I don’t understand why the people around here repeat the same things over and over again all the time, but it drives me crazy. She also kept trying to talk me into going to see a doctor at the hospital, which is against Peace Corps policy, and in this situation, TOTALLY unnecessary. She kept taking my pulse with her fingers too, like I was going to keel over and die from diarrhea.
Before we left, a neighbor came over and invited both of us to a party that night, which Ellie tried to persuade me to come to. I lied and told her I had a meeting with a friend of mine to prepare for our English classes. She tried to convince me to convince my friend to come too. Somehow, I knew my friend would not be interested…
We took a mototaxi up to Cabracancha and I sat around in the health post watching some nursing interns make a powerpoint that they copied word for word from a manual. Health promoters showed up and then the powerpoints started. I figured I was in for a boring 45 minutes of all the powerpoints I had had read to me the day before. Magically, they dragged out their two powerpoints to 3 AND A HALF HOURS. I got to miss probably about twenty minutes in total from my trips to the bathroom with the toilet that didn’t flush.
Death would have been a sweet release.
At the end of the powerpoint hell, she told me to come to their health promoter meetings every time they have them. I told her we’ll see, because I didn’t want to tell her again, in front of all her promoters, that I need to focus on my own community first.
We went to someone’s house for lunch, where I drank some tea, still unable to eat, and called my friend to vent about how miserable I was. Fellow volunteers are great for that, partially because they can actually understand and imagine the horror of the situation and partially because they’ll reserve judgment and tolerate your less than pretty moments because they know you’ll return the favor. We are all prone to tiny bursts of compacted frustration, which release themselves as a kind of belligerent angry whine.
After lunch, I was dragged off to the library to see how in need of my help it was. The whole room was filled with piles of dirt and stacks of bricks. Ellie started pulling books of the shelves behind the bricks and putting them in my lap. Cool. Books. She then told me to teach English classes in that room on Saturdays. I had to tell her, yet again, that I couldn’t do all these things for Cabracancha before I did anything for my own community. That’s when she asked me to come again to the health promoter meetings. I said nothing, and when Ellie put the books back, I walked to the doorway of the library to signify that I was ready to leave.
I spent the next two hours in blissful silence, happily reading my book, waiting for Ellie to finish her day so we could go down the hill. I felt a little like I was waiting in my Mom’s office, and wanted to just leave, but all my stuff was still in Ellie’s house. Finally we headed out, but there were no motos, so we started walking. I was terrified that before we got into town I was going to shit my pants. I was hoping the fact that I had nothing in my system would help me out, but I knew all bets were off. Ellie decided it was a good time to take me on a tour of the school down the hill. The whole walk down, we had the same conversation over and over again.
“I wonder what got you sick.”
“I don’t know what got me sick.”
“I wonder what got you sick.”
“It’s part of the experience, not a big deal, I just don’t feel great.”
“Yeah, other volunteers were sick too…I wonder what it was that got you sick”
This conversation x 10, occasionally interspersed with this conversation:
“Doña Carmen didn’t come to the meeting!”
“I know.”
“Violeta said she was going to tell her about it.”
“I don’t know what happened.”
“Doña Carmen didn’t come to the meeting!”
…
This conversation x 15
The other problem with the repeated conversation, is that Ellie has a tendency to get in my face when she talks, so that she is staring at me, about six inches away. This in itself makes me uncomfortable, but it’s worse when you’re having the same conversation for the millionth time. I’m guessing that exasperation is not really a common expression for Peruvians because I’ve never really seen it here, I just see people raise their voices a lot when they’re frustrated, but American exasperation must be a new one because I’m pretty sure about 24 hours in with Ellie, I wasn’t doing a great job of hiding it anymore, and she did not seem to notice.
I told Ellie why I needed to walk fast down the hill, and she still stopped to talk to five different people for at least ten minutes each. I kept telling myself I was almost free, and tried not to think too hard about how effective my rain jacket would be as a strangulation device.
By the time we got back to her house, I was late for my fake meeting with my friend, and Ellie insisted on giving me some coffee, which magically also included food. I told her I was late, and she expressed to me her bafflement at the fact that I stick to my appointments with people. She told me to come back and stay at her house with her that night. I lied and told her my friend had asked me to come stay with her in her community.
Then I got the hell out of there.
I was so relieved to get to the hostel I almost cried. I felt so manhandled and exhausted and sick and dizzy from lack of food and nonstop Spanish for twenty-four hours. I had also felt completely robbed of any kind of freedom.
A disclaimer about the lying – we were actually instructed on how to lie well during training because sometimes, given the stubborn insistence of Peruvians, it can be really hard to get out of something you don’t want to do without an outright lie. Polite decline NEVER works (except sometimes with my host family), and vagueness, which would give the message fine in the States, is ineffective. They need concrete details about why you can’t do what they want in that instant. I am constantly terrified of being caught in a lie here, so most of the time I try to stick as close to the truth as I can, but it’s not easy.
Once I was in a hot shower, thinking back on the torture of the last twenty-four hours, I managed to have a little perspective. First positive thought: at least my host family is nothing like that family. They are a little bit odd, and pretty quiet, but they are loving, there is no real machismo, and they don’t make my ears bleed. Mishel may keep to herself, but at least she isn’t constantly screaming or throwing her dog on me, or biking over me or peeing on the floor. Second positive thought: at least my health workers aren’t like that. They work hard, are kind, supportive, and helpful, but don’t manipulate or badger me, nor do they have the same conversation quite so frequently. They also are willing to talk a bit slower so that I don’t get dizzy.
No comments:
Post a Comment