I had two deeply creepy events happen the other day.
First, I was walking down the hill by my house to head into the town center. It's all rutted and full of dips from the rainwater flowing down and animal paths. The dips fill with water during the rainy season and it's super muddy. There was sun in morning and it made the puddles of water opaque with reflections of the sky. They only became transparent when I was right on top of them. I was wandering along looking at the lovely patches of sky sitting on the ground and bam! dog carcass. It took my brain a bit to process what I was seeing. It was a white and fuzzy dog and I thought it was a lamb at first. It looked like it had fallen asleep underwater. My conclusions are that somebody drowned it or it died and they dumped the body. I noticed earlier that there were lots of bones and dog skulls around my house. I asked my family about it and they said that people from town take their dead dogs out to the campo so street dogs will eat the bodies. It has a brutal logic to it.
Then, as I was walking back home later in the day, I passed a drinking circle of tipsy men. Public drunkenness is not nearly as much as a taboo or viewed as unsavory as it is in the states. Especially on a Sunday and a holiday. I said buenas tardes to the men and one stumbled over to saludar me. I thought he was going for the standard cheek peck but he ended up kissing my neck. I don't know if it was intentional or the beer altered his aim, but I was so incredibly creeped out. My revulsion went down my spine and I said chau and power-walked away. That's a sensitive spot that previously had only been kissed by fellows I liked and generally not by surprise. Ugh and yuck.
I have a funny relationship with this place and it's still in development. Earlier that day, I was on top of the world. I had a sunny morning and ran/hiked/walked up a mountain much further than I had ever been able to go before. I was up so high and saw clouds on the other end of the valley. I raced the rain home and made it by only a few minutes. I felt so awesome.
Of course, I got over the creepy stuff quickly, but it's interesting how much of my experience is a pendulum swing. In the very beginning, Diego said that the Peace Corps is full of "high highs and low lows." I've found that true so far. I've had a bunch of wonderful times coupled with times of intense illness or sadness. I think I'll find a center with time.
I'm having difficulty wrapping my head around this place. How can a place be so beautiful, warm, and dynamic and at the same time troubled, harsh, and dirty?
It's like a relationship with a person. When we first are getting to know people, if we like them, we focus on their good qualities and tend not to look at their bad ones. The same with people we decide we don't like. We only want to see what we don't like and try to downplay any redeeming aspects of their personalities because it makes disliking them more complicated.
But with all of my good friends and romances, I've loved the whole person. I've found that really loving someone is loving them with and not despite their faults. It's disappointing to see the bad stuff at first, but you get over it and it becomes an important part of the person you love. I have to get there with Carhuamayo. I've been impressed by it's good qualities and shocked by it's bad. They are still separate in my mind. I think that with time, I'll be able to integrate the two and love Carhuamayo for everything that it is. After all, the ugly parts are why I'm here and I need to look at them and be intimately familiar with the problems if I'm going to make positive changes in my work.
Realizing this is the first step, I think. Action and involvement will make me feel better and help me understand my new world better. Today, I'm going to propose my healthy cooking classes to the mayor and the health post. Arriba y adelante!
No comments:
Post a Comment