Diagnosis: Cranial Collapse Induced by Acute Frustration at Value Differences

So remember how I was talking about how badly I wanted a dog?  This is a decision I’ve thought over for years, scrutinizing the angles and the long and short term benefits and consequences.  Then my family got a new puppy.

My host brother Eber unzipped it from his jacket when he came home one evening and the family went nuts.  Now, he found it in alone in a park and what else could he do?  But everyone jumped out and started grabbing and shaking it and making it cry in their excitement and my head nearly exploded. 

All I could see was where it would go.  They have four dogs already, untrained and skinny.  They are not cruel to them by any means, but there is not a lot of extra love for them.  I give the dogs the most affection.  I even buy all the cat food and am the only reason all their kittens didn’t die.  I saw all this enthusiasm and how quickly it will diminish and there will be another skinny Peruvian dog that bites passerby.  This immediately following my inner anguish over a pet and loneliness was too much at that moment.  I yelled at my family and told them to stop shaking the poor thing. 

I’m starting to accept that Peruvians and I just have different values when it comes to animals.  I’m pretty far on the empathy and affection side from having a mother as a veterinarian and just being a softy in general.  And I’ll admit that I may be excessive on that side at times.  But there are some things Peruvians do that I don’t understand.  For instance, my brother David is a good, sweet kid.  But he’ll flick the puppy in the nose so it yelps and he’ll laugh.  And he doesn’t understand why I scold him for it.  It doesn’t compute that it’s an unkind thing to do.  It’s just how you treat animals. 

Cynicism seems like a real danger in some facets of Peace Corps work.  Hopefully being aware of the danger of it will help keep me from going down that road too far.

I’ve calmed down a lot about it and accepted that this will be another animal that I’ll be the chief source of affection for.  I’m trying to find a middle ground between my and my family’s values.  I scold them if they mistreat their animals.  Hopefully if they see how the dogs and cat respond to me, they’ll want to start being gentler.  I think this is something I’ll have to accept to an extent.  But sometimes I want to shake them like they shook the puppy and ask, “what the hell?”