Things are getting exciting in Callanca. I’m already working. I’ve given four presentations before groups of Callancanos ranging from 20 to 100 people. My Spanish is improving daily due to the rigorous formal and informal workouts it’s been receiving. People are starting to recognize me on the street and call me by name. My name here is Carlos. Sometimes Carlitos or Carlucho. I’ve already been to a wedding, a funeral and a birthday party. Here in Perú much cerveza accompanies all such gatherings. The cerveza here comes in 28-oz. bottles so there’s no kidding around. The custom is to use one bottle of beer and one glass and form a drinking circle. This can be a small circle of three or four people or a larger circle—an entire roomful of people. But generally there are many bottles of beer and many small circles and the circles intertwine from time to time so that everyone interacts with everyone else. The rules of the drinking circle are fairly rigid though the rules vary a bit from region to region. Here in Callanca, you accept the bottle and glass from the person to your right, fill the glass half-full, then pass the bottle to the person to your left. Then you drink. Then you dump the dregs and the foam onto the ground, the floor, or sometimes into a plate or onto a pile of napkins or into an abandoned glass, then you pass your empty glass to the person to whom you previously passed the bottle. You can also add a flourish to the act of passing the glass by rolling it between your palms to encourage the foam clinging to the inside of the glass to settle to the bottom before you dump it out. The drinking is serious stuff. I’ve seen groups of twenty people go through 8 cases (12 beers to a case) of 28-oz. bottles in a few hours. Don’t worry, I’m not participating in the entire marathon. Health-related excuses like diabetes work very well if you feel like retiring early from the festivities.
They also serve a home-brewed beer called chicha which is made from corn or grapes or just about any fruit or vegetable grown locally. They bottle it in 2-liter plastic bottles that previously contained Coke or the local favorite Inca Kola. They pass the bottle and the glass as described previously. There are couplets for the various flavors of chicha:
The food that accompanies these drinking binges is frequently outstanding. Pork, turkey, chicken, goat or fish—and occassionally the Pueruvian favorite, guinea pig—often smothered in a tantalizing sauce such as ocopa, a spicy peanut sauce. RIce and potatoes always come along for the ride. The food comes in a bowl with a soup spoon, which can be challenging when the meat is on the tough side. However, it isn’t considered bad manners to pick up the meat and gnaw at it like a starved animal. In fact it’s expected. If you’re lucky someone will pass you a roll of toilet paper and you can clean up afterward.
But I think I said I’ve been working, didn’t I? I met with the artesano association’s board of directors and next week the association (15 artesanos) is going to show me what kinds of art its members have been producing and in November we’re hoping to attend an art fair sponsored by the Peace Corps at the U.S. Embassy in Lima. It’s a fair attended solely by associations working with Peace Corps volunteers. The artesans do beautiful embroidery (I saw some at the wedding I attended) as well as weavings, wicker furniture and other artesanía. I’m impressed with what I’ve seen so far of their art so far.
I’ve also been working with the community to arrange some basic services such as a police presence. Many families raise livestock and occasionally some rustling occurs. By coincidence, soon after my arrival, the municipality (the district government) assigned two policemen to Callanca. Though I didn’t really have anything to do with it, the fact that I’d been talking to so many people about security problems and promising to try to arrange for police protection made it seem as if the arrival of the police was partly my doing. Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good. Eventually I’ll be working more directly with farmers and with milk and meat producers in Callanca to analyze and (one would hope) improve their business practices.
Callanca is a small community, 1500 people in the town proper, so I feel that within a reasonable amount of time I can get a grip on the needs and priorities here. However there are no hard facts available in the form of records or statistics, so everything is based on the opinions of individuals and every individual has a different opinion. Estimates of the population, for instance, range from 1500 to 4000 depending upon whom you talk to. Elections are coming up in October and opinions also vary wildly as to who will win the race for the mayorship of the municipality. As I’ve mentioned previously, a former resident of Callanca and one of my counterparts—the Peruvians that help me navigate the complexities of business and government in Perú—is running for mayor. I’ve heard from some people that she’s leading and from others that she has no chance whatsover. So you tell me.
The efficacy of life with my host family can be equally difficult to ascertain. Margot, my host mother, complains endlessly about anything and everything. She’s bossy yet passive-aggressive—if that’s possible. She received a payment-overdue notice for tuition at the kids’ school and posted it on the wall in the dining room so that the rich gringo would be sure to see it. She sighs a lot. One of her main complaints is money. There’s never enough. In this she’s not unlike your average American mom. But unlike June Cleaver, she offers up picturesque tales of family financial disasters—robbery, car theft, extortion, fraud. Her exaggerations are laughable. Chicken costs 8 soles ($2.80) a kilo when in fact I know that it costs 6.50 soles. Fish costs 15 soles a kilo when in fact it goes for 8–13. The blanket on my bed cost 100 soles whereas I’ve seen them in Chiclayo for 40. So it’s hard to know where the truth stops and life according to Margot begins. However, she has raised four relatively charming (and two of them quite intelligent) kids. So she must not be all bad. My host dad, César, drives a mototaxi and according to Margot is the cause of all the family’s financial difficulties. I, on the other hand, appear to be the solution. However, so far I’ve turned down a request for a loan and have ignored all other subtle hints for financial assistance or rescue—the late notice posted above the dining-room table for instance.
I’ve discussed all this with the Peace Corps’ regional coordinator and she quickly authorized me to move. But I’ve decided to attempt to hang in there since the only real drawback to living with the family is Margot’s sour disposition.
Conditions are rugged in the house but certainly not unbearable. They fixed the toilet (see previous posting for the gory details) and it turns out that they have a septic system after all. Margot had told me that they did not. She probably thought that it had been stolen. So not only do we have a toilet but a toilet that flushes—which represents the heights of luxury in Callanca.
Living with a Peruvian host family is a bit like The Beverly Hillbillies in reverse. So I guess that would make it like Green Acres, wouldn’t it? (The above for those of you old enough to remember those two series.) The food situation is a complete mystery. For instance yesterday for breakfast we each had a fairly large plateful of chunks of pork, rice and raw onions. Today for breakfast we each had one cup of canned milk blended with strawberries and two pieces of bread. Most of the lunches consist of half a plate of white rice and something else. Maybe a couple of ounces of chicken or fish. Maybe some lentils or some cucumbers or tomatos in lime juice. The suppers generally arrive late, eight o’clock or so, and don’t consist of much. Last night we each had a bowl of soup. Milton, the 13-year-old, brought me a spoon from the kitchen and before he handed it to me dried it with his shirt-tail.
But I haven’t gotten sick yet. So it would seem that hygeine in the U.S. is ’way overrated.
The aforementioned is not intended to trash any aspect of my living situation, neither my life in the community nor my life with Margot, César, Milton, Pamela and Nicole. The only things that frustrate me are things that seem possible to change given a modest amount of effort. And according to the Peace Corps that’s what I’m here for—to encourage the modest amount of effort that change requires.
Of course as much of the change has to come from me as from Callanca. I would be the first to admit that to the Campos Figueroa I must surely seem eccentric if not insane. I prefer to drink beer from my own personal bottle. And most often I prefer to drink but one beer. I prefer fruit and vegetables to huge heaps of white rice. I eat with a fork and not a tablespoon. I like to spend maybe an hour a day alone. (Please.) When free food is available, like at a wedding or a birthday celebration, I don’t eat five platefuls and also squirrel away a sixth to take home with me to eat tomorrow for breakfast. I like to shower with warm water. I have developed the spendthrift habit of flushing every time I use the toilet. (I’m getting over that one.) I shave my head. I have a beard. I wear a cap. I floss my teeth. I use shaving cream. And deodorant. I drink water and tea with my meals instead of eating my meal and then drinking water or tea afterward. I drink whatever I please with my meal, be it hot or be it cold, whereas everyone knows that some foods are hot foods and that some foods are cold foods (regardless of their temperature or spiciness—it’s like ying and yang) and that you don’t drink hot drinks after you eat hot foods nor cold drinks after you eat cold foods or you will get very, very sick.
Clearly I have a lot to learn. Fortunately, I have two years to get it done.
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