Rage Anatomy

Peace Corps can make you a worse person. Maybe that's counterintuitive, but too much of a different culture can make you a reactive, overly angry, cynical bad person. I am seriously starting to worry that I will need anger management soon, because I'm starting to fly off the cuff at everyone. Well, pretty much only the men. Because several of them seem to be aspiring to jerk-faceness.

Here is a brief list of all the different kinds of rages that can result:

Body rage- The anger felt when you have a million things to do and then your body succumbs to a parasite, or you eat some slightly bad cream and nothing gets done for the next several days even though you had them off.

Chichero rage- The anger felt when a chichero band wakes you up at 4 or 5 am in honor of the patron saint, every day of the week. I'm pretty sure Jesus would have been anti-bands and fireworks at 5 am. Doesn't that go against the whole "Don't be a jerk to your neighbor" deal? Now I get why my students wanted to add "The Right to Sleep" to our list of human rights last year.

Misinformation rage- When a taxi driver tells you that a bus is going to pass soon and then you wait at the empalme for over an hour. Or  conversely when the bus decides to abandon any pretense of a schedule and leave early and you are stuck stuck stuck.

Parrot rage-I know my host mom loves it, but I hate our catcalling/cackling/shrieking/whistling/yelling parrot. He is the worst pet. This leads me to greater appreciation of our rabbit. He is a great pet. He is extremely silent and hops in an extremely cute fashion.

Piropo rage- Nature hath no fury like a woman who's been street harrassed too many times. Especially if it is by a man in uniform, ie police, army or naval officer. In theory, I have many smart sounding retorts to the ever common catcall, but if you catch me on the wrong day, it sounds more like this incoherent babble.

To a soldier who made the mistake of doing the annoying hiss- hiss- hiss thing at me: "NO!!!!!!!!!! YOU ARE A MAN IN UNIFORM!!! BAD!!! BAD!!! UNACCEPTABLE!!!GAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

To a random vago dude who called me mamacita while I was on my way to do aerobics : "WHAT IS THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH ALL OF YOU MEN??? YOU ARE SO UHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. ENOUGH. ENOUGH. NO MORE. " (At this point all of the kitchen staff of the local hotel come out to watch, talk about embarrassing.)

So clearly I need to work on not getting so bent out of shape and try to have some real conversations.

Rooster rage- The furiousness still experienced upon being woken up too early by the fighting cocks. When I was telling my boss that I thought a bunch of them had died because it had gotten quieter of late, he said "You seem really gleeful about that." Probably true. I was never a vegetarian because I liked animals I guess.

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Luckily, I got out of site recently, for work purposes, but it was good to have a break. Now, I am a little less crazy. I really need to start doing yoga again. Maybe next week when it is less loud. Fiestas Patronales are not the best for quiet moments of self reflection.