*Negotiation pun. Fischer and Ury anyone? Nope, I dont miss college at all, I swear.
Word of the Day
La ama de casa-housewife, although it literally translates as "owner of the
house"
Tangent time! In a medical anthropology class I took sophomore year of
college, we had to read this book called Body and Emotion, by Robert Desjarlais.
I'm more interested in the anthropological study of power structures, so I
wasn't actually that interested in the anthropologic study of the body, so I
kind of dismissed it as fluff at the time. Lately, however, I've been thinking
a lot about one of the main concepts from the book, embodiment.
Essentially, in an ethnography of Nepalese shamans, Desjarlais contends that
there are some insights about culture that can only be gained through miming
the actions through which a society functions and expresses itself. I'm
starting to think that there's some validity to his theory, partly because as
an extranjera, I often am not privy to so many of the actions that
enable daily life. This is because Peace Corps pays our host families (aka the
women of our host families) to do the majority of household chores for us
during training. Therefore, as a gringa I am simultaneously sexually
objectified to an extraordinary degree yet also have a mobility and freedom
that sets me apart from Nica women. For example, these dudes shouted Barbie!
Barbie! at me in the street the other day which was quite possibly the funniest
and least accurate cat-call that I have ever receieved. At the time though, I was
going to hang out at a cyber cafe, without too many responsibilities, something
that's pretty much unheard of for most women here.
Occasionally, however,
when I am able to do household chores and such, I do feel more Nica in the
sense of sharing the same actions that constitute every-day culture. For example, carrying a heavy pail of water, un
balde, into the house and washing myself with scoops of cold water from a pana,
a bowl used for washing. Or doing my laundry, which my host mom taught me to do
on Sunday. No, there is not a washing machine. Laundry, for the most part in
Nicaragua, is hand scrubbed with bars of detergent and rinsed on a pila, a
stone tablet. There are of course, certain motions that accompany the act of
washing that the majority of Nicaraguan women perform expertly. It's fascinating to watch my host mom, who is
basically a super hero, wash clothes. BAM! BAM! BAM! the clothes are done. I was feeling proud of
my feeble attempts to emulate her movements until I got my sundried laundry
from the clothesline and realized that my black clothes were dotted with
completely obvious white soap splotches. #gringafail.
Anyway, here are some other random observations, mainly quotidian and
mundane:
·
Instead of saying Hola! or Buenos Dias! to each other on the
street as in the rest of Latin America, Nicaraguans greet each other with
"Adios." This leads to
comical exchanges with would-be admirers on the street yelling
"Goodbye" (the literal translation of Adios) to try and attract our
attention.
·
Nicaraguans, like many Central Americans, use vos instead of tu,
to refer to friends and family. There are two words for you, one that is formal
and implies respect, usted, and one that is informal, vos. Vos
is generally only used between people who have confianza, or trust in each other. Confianza isn't
something that is given freely to anyone immediately outside the family unit,
but something that is earned over time. It's really interesting to see the
different patterns of people who use vos with each other. For example,
one of my training mates uses vos with her host mother, whereas I would
never do that since my host mother is much more traditional. The majority of
people, even people close to her such as her daughter in law refer to her as
"Dona," another term used to denote respect. Beyond differences in
personality and upbringing, I think people's willingness to use vos with
each other varies between the different regions of Nicaragua. Today for
example, we had meetings with the training director, who's from the Atlantic
coast (where people are stereotypcially more open and friendly), and he used vos
with me, which took me aback at first.
·
Nicaraguan table manners are generally very relaxed. Plates aren't super
necessary if you're eating bread with a cup of coffee. Most food, including
meat, can be eaten with your hands. In many families, tortillas are served with
every meal, which facilitates hand eating. There's even a riddle about their multiple uses. Soy tenedor, cuchillo y comida? Quien soy?/I'm a fork, a knife and food.
What am I? However, since my host mom is best friends with the owner of one of
the best bakeries of the town, our family usually eats bread, which is less
useful for scooping things, so she usually has forks at the ready, especially
for the gringa. The ama de casa typically serves everyone in the family.
This leads to routines where I chase after my host mother as she brings my
plate across our patio to the table, feeling guilty/useless, and desperately
wanting to defy the culture on this particular item. Generally speaking, you
don't have to wait for everyone to be seated to begin eating. In fact, if you
were to wait for everyone to sit down, especially the ama de casa, you
could be waiting about an hour.
·
When the electricity goes out, which happens occasionally, although not
usually for more than a few hours, people refer to it as "luz". Hay
luz? Hay agua? Is there any electricity or water? I sometimes hear family
members asking each other this when they wake up in the morning. It's never
really a big deal when the electricity goes out though, as opposed to the panic
that ensues in such situations in the US. I can only imagine this phenomenon
will worsen as we become every more dependent on the i-phone and the internet.
Here, life pretty much goes on. I'm sure the unpredictability wrecks havoc on
small businesses, but people work around it.
·
Churches are the main cornerstone of civil society here. Our small town
boasts at least 8. When we asked the youths in our English group to give a
number, they all basically stated "There are a lot..." Exact number:
still unknown.
·
Bandas de guerra, or marching bands, are a big part of the culture. They're guaranteed to
perform at any major parade. Sometimes, they also play at 5:30 in the morning,
which made for an excellent alarm clock.
·
There are a lot of non-verbal forms of communication here. Whistling, at
various decibles, for various lengths of time, can mean anything from
"Damn, look at that Barbie shaped gringa" to "Hey you, come over
here" to an expression of joy, judging by the gleeful whistles that
eminate from the billiards hall on a regular basis. My unfortunate inability to
whistle is severely hampering my ability to integrate into the culture.
Additionally, hand motions are used to indicate a ton of things from "I'm
leaving" to "I have diarrhea" to "He's pretty rich."
If I ever get really bored, maybe I will make animated gifs to show you, because
they're pretty awesome. Also popular is shaking one's fingers and snapping them
together, which I can describe just about as well as I can perform the gesture,
which is to say, not at all.
I'm going to shut up now because this is the longest post ever. Adios
(Goodbye) for realz.
