After my first five days in Santo Domingo, I feel surprisingly relaxed. My big preoccupation during training was what to do with my time, and, as I somewhat expected, that all just sort of sorts itself out. Something to do presents itself everyday. With the combination of a continuing project and a sitemate (actually, two, Lillian has about a week before she moves to Lima), I don’t think I’ve had quite the site-arrival shock that other Volunteers have.
A favorite question of people here is, “¿Te acostumbras?” or, quite literally, “Do you accustom yourself?” During my site visit, I found it sort of off-putting. “Yes, I’ve been in your small town in the sierra of Perú approximately two hours, and now there are no mysteries. You all make perfect sense. I accustom myself! (cue jazz hands)” Then I realized people were still asking it about Ryan...after two years. “¿Ryan, él se acostumbra?” Two years!! They then sometimes follow it with an explanation that sometimes, people come and they don’t acostumbrarse, and then they have to go home, and it is sad. I have no idea who these un-acostumbrados people could possibly be. My stock answer for this question is now a patient smile and a “Poco a poco.” (Bit by bit? Day by day? I just noticed I don’t actually know how to translate that. Regardless, they accept it.)
I have had, if anything, almost TOO much presented to me to do on the project during the first week, and I’ve been trying to slow down and explain to Juan that I have other stuff I need to do during these first few months. Namely, acostumbrarme. I went to the campo this morning with Rachel, Lillian, and the president of their weaver’s association. I played non-competitive volleyball with some 11-year-olds outside the Municipality. The resulting bruises on my forearm indicate that I am not ready for competitive volleyball here (with girls of any age), because they are insane about it. And, also, I knit. They love me for it. Yesterday I was knitting with Flor on the front stoop, and an old woman came by and starting positively glowing in my direction. “Oh, her white skin is so beautiful...and she KNITS!” (with the latter part clearly being the more valued, as it should be).
The other thing I have been doing with my time is solving the small proyectos that come up in a developing country. For example, I had been dreading taking a shower here because there was no door on the shower, and you have to pass by the shower to get to the toilet. This made me apprehensive, for perhaps obvious reasons. Today, though, Lillian informed me that they sell plastic by the meter, so I went to a tienda, bought two meters of plastic and some packaging tape, and ta da! My dignity, for only S/.5.
My living situation is unreal, it’s so good. I can’t believe it happened by coincidence (Ryan knew Humberto from the municipality, and he happened to mention he had a room), and not through some sort of rigorous interviewing process. I started eating all my meals here, unexpectedly. I thought I would be treated more or less like the other tenants, but Flor has somewhat taken me under her wing, and part of that involves feeding me...a lot of food. She’s super-sensitive to my tastes, though, and to what she imagines an American would find disagreeable about Peruvian cuisine. Yesterday she gave me a plate of potatoes, and said, “I gave you rice last night, and I don’t want you to get bored of it.” What? I didn’t think the idea of the possibility of being sick of rice existed in this country. Amazing. Also, yesterday she casually asked me if Americans put lemon on all raw vegetables like they do here, and I said that in fact they don’t, and possibly even mentioned that I’m not fond of the habit. Today, she gave me a plate of spinach (picked from Juan’s farm), and said, “Here, I put less lemon on it for you.” A compromise, if you will. Also, phase one in my secret side project, Get Peru to Export Less of Their Abundant Spinach and Asparagus So I Can Eat It. Humberto and Flor are awesome in many, many ways unrelated to food, but I’m writing this post hungry, which is a bad idea. Like grocery shopping hungry. Also, food is something of a constant battleground between Volunteers and their families, so a good food situation is something to write home about...literally.
Upon coming back to this well-fed, I can share one adorable story about Flor. When I first got here this time, she ran up to me and immediately said, “Alyssa! I had a dream about you! I was waiting for you to come, but then you didn’t come. Some other gringa came, a bajita with black hair. And I cried because it wasn’t you.” Adorable, no?
I was sick my first couple days here, with an inexplicably painful sore throat. It was really the ultimate irony, as all Peace Corps Volunteers have to do during their first few months is talk, and that was the one thing I couldn’t do. I don’t remember if that’s actually irony. Sorry, language usage precisionists. But by the time it went away, I felt so relieved to be able to talk to people and thereby unreasonably confident in my Spanish, a good boost for the first week. Going to the Puesto de Salud here was also some sort of adventure. I didn’t actually need to see the doctor to get the amoxicillin that Dr. Jorge told me I needed, but I feel so guilty about the fact that antibiotics are non-prescription that I waited for the doctor to look at my throat with only the examination lamp in the room, offer to inject me with penicillin to see if I was allergic, and tell me that my throat was, indeed, bien rojo. As Rachel put it, sometimes we feel like we live in a reenactment: there’s an internet cafe in town, a TV and DVD player in my house, and everyone knows American movies, but the most basic things, like a flashlight to look down someone’s throat, are lacking. Poco a poco.
