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18 May 2009
Monday
6:45 pm
Well, the rains really started last night. And apparently, when it rains super hard, a little leak happens with my awesome zinc roof…. that drips exactly on my chest when I’m in bed. Woke up at 11:30 last night freaking out. Turned on the light. Lenin was not pleased, told me I was imagining things, and to go back to sleep. Three seconds later it was dripping on him, too, and he was up trying to rig my rain jacket over the mosquito net…. but then the absolute and complete monsoon let up a little and there were no more drips.
However, this is not cool. Since there will be another SIX MONTHS of rain.
Had efrazee, one of my best volunteer friends, come visit me in the MoPo the other day, stayed one night. Always fun to come see other volunteers in their sites.
For instance, she is only two hours away by bus, but all of the houses in her community are built with red bricks or with wood. Here in the MoPo there are no wood houses or brick houses. At all. The houses here are made of cement blocks or, more commonly, are made of adobe blocks and then have either a combination of cement or smoothed over mud (which looks like cement) for a clean finish.
In other news, regarding exchanging cultures… Or how I have The Boy trained. Or how machismo only extends as far as I let it…
So. I wrote before about Nicaraguan hygiene and how they brush their teeth for extended periods of time and iron everything - making me more of a slob than them because I don’t iron…
Well, that personal hygiene point aside, Nicaragua has a major trash problem. People throw stuff on the ground all the damn time. Out the bus windows. Literally, I have never seen dirtier roadsides than in Nicaragua.
Now, the MoPo has it’s stuff together. And every couple of months - everyone in the community knows what day but it’s a mystery to me - everyone comes out of their houses and cleans up the road/path around their part of the neighborhood. Of course they all burn it…. but I am used to that from rural Missourah.
So, back to training Lenin. In the beginning, we’d be visiting somewhere or doing whatever, and he’d buy a snack at the pulperias (tiny corner stores in various houses) and then throw the trash on the ground. I would give him a look, eyebrows raised, and point out the trashcan/box that was right there. And he would contritely - or huffily - pick it up off the ground and put it in the trashcan.
This happened several times. And he started doing it on his own without me having to say something. The breakthrough, though, came when we were on the bus to Wiwili to visit his family right after Easter break. Seven hour bus ride. Dusty. Dirty. It sucked. However, this bus - surprise! - had trashcans! All of the snacks we ate throughout the trip went in the can… until he bought a bag of water.
Sidenote: Purified water is sold in bottles and in bags. The bags cost less than a fifth of what a bottle can cost.
So he bought me a bag of water. And without even thinking, I threw the bag out the window. And he was like, “There’s a trashcan right there!” And I started laughing and said FINALLY! YOU are telling ME!
Training exercise one, complete!
Exercise two: Food. The men and boys here demand food from their mother or grandmother or whomever. As in, get me food. A command. Not a question. Not that this boy/man would be doing anything that would stop him from walking to the kitchen and getting his own food.
It annoys me to no end.
So sometimes we’d be in Mamita’s kitchen and he’d say, Molly, get me food. Usually in front of other women in his family. And I would fire back the retort of, “You know where the plates are. There’s the rice on the stove. There’s the pot of beans. Spoons are in the cupboard. Get it yourself.” Smiling and kind of joking, but not really. And he would either huffily get his own food, and then not talk to me for a few hours, or Mamita would dish up his food for him… and he wouldn’t talk to me for a few hours.
I explained to him that, besides being offended at being ordered to sacar his food, we eat differently and I don’t know how much of what he wants. For instance, I eat more rice than beans and no tortillas. He likes a lot of beans, hardly any rice, and several tortillas. Not to mention the drastic difference in the amount of salt we put on our food.
Logistically, I said, it makes more sense for him to dish up his own food. His response was that it doesn’t matter what I dish up or if he has to get up and go to the kitchen and add more salt or get more tortillas, the point is that I do him the favor of dishing up his food. I said no problem, as long as he doesn’t order me to do it. If he would just ASK, I would be happy to do it while I’m dishing up my own food.
So now he asks instead of ordering. Of course he still orders Mamita. And I don’t have any interest in letting that relationship be any of my business.
Also, occasionally he will ask me to make something for him. Well, once. I’d already eaten, and he asked me to make soup for him. This was at the point when his aunt was trying to tell me to cook for him and do his laundry. So everyone in the kitchen was looking at me expectantly. I was pissed and was like, I already ate. What’s wrong with rice and beans? Finally, I decided to take the higher road and make the damn soup…. with him. I was like, okay, you want soup? LET¨S make soup. Put the water on to boil. Cut up the tomatoes. Bring me some eggs... etc. And WE made the soup.
Now we cook together. And he has absolutely no problem in the kitchen.
However, there is a MAJOR issue between us - which is about the only thing that has made me very very angry… and that would be the issue of hauling water.
I’ve explained the hauling water business before, but a recap. Houses don’t have running water. Or even spigots at the house. There are community spigots. Each spigot usually has 6-10 houses that use it. Since I’ve been here, it’s been the dry season, and there’s only water from about 5:30-6:45 in the morning. One hour for 7 houses at my spigot to fill up buckets and haul them back to the house to do the dishes, cook, bathe, and wash laundry. The politics of who is next in line and all of that gets pretty tense. And the people who have to work and catch the bus or go to class are always the most tense because they would rather be getting ready for work/school instead of standing in line at the water pump.
The vast majority of water haulers are women, but my cousin hauls and the professor who lives next door hauls before he goes to work and then his wife takes over. So guys do haul, but it’s rare.
Water is kind of a big deal around here. To put it mildly.
So, in my house there are two of us girls who sleep here. Me and Jael - or Eyebrows. And two boys, Winder and Ozmancito. Milagro - Angsty Fro - sleeps in Mamita’s house (same house where Lenin’s room is) but bathes and does her laundry and hangs out at this house.
Jael and I are the ones who haul water for this house. Milagro hauls for Mamita AND this house. But for Mamita first.
So this is the background for the major issues between Lenin and me regarding hauling water.
When Lenin isn’t working all night at the border, he sleeps in my room. And he’s gotten in the habit of telling me to go haul water when we wake up in the morning. I was letting it go, knowing full well that after I bathed I would help haul… or if we got up too late then I wouldn’t. Not really caring what he said, but in the back of my mind wanting to ask why he doesn’t haul water for his house and his grandmother, Mamita. But not wanting to get into the business of that house and that relationship.
However. A few months ago there was sometimes water for an hour in the early evening. Lenin was sitting on my porch playing cards with some of the boys, and I was saw there was water and started hauling it by myself. I asked him for help. And he said he didn’t feel like it. I was pissed. And he knew it.
Last week the same thing happened. I had just been telling him how there was plenty of rain water, but no drinking water because there hadn’t been any water flowing from the spigots for the past few days. As we were leaving my room that evening to go make dinner (which I bought) we stopped to talk to our neighbor, the professor. It was then that I realized that there was water. I excused myself, ran back to get the three buckets, and go haul water.
After my turn was up and all three were full, I yelled to Lenin to please help me haul it back. And he didn’t. Not that I really NEEDED his help, but it would’ve been the kind thing to do. And all the women at the pump were asking me why he wasn’t helping. What could I say?
I was PISSED. And he realized I was angry, because I refused to look at him every time I walked by hauling water to the house. So after 4 trips, I was done. I came back to my room to take off my sweatshirt, fuming at the embarrassment of everyone asking why he wasn’t helping and him NOT helping. He started to push the door open and ask if I was angry. At which point I turned around, started yelling in English and cussing and crying and pushing him out of my room and slamming the door and locking it.
I was pissed.
I got myself together and went to Mamita’s house to yell/talk more. It took us a few days to get over that. Mostly because he’d never seen me crazy angry before.
So, this week we wake up and he tells me to haul water. And it immediately pisses me off. He goes to work that day, comes home the next day, we sleep, we wake, he tells me to haul water. And I finally snapped. And I told him that it was absolutely none of his business who hauls water for this house. That it’s between Jael and Milagro and I. And what about his Mamita? Does he ever haul water for her. He says he does. I say I’ve never seen it.
At which point I take a deep breath and tell him that from now on, hauling water is off limits for conversation. He cannot order me to haul water for this house. And Lenin, perhaps thinking of the ordering vs asking to dish up his food… asks me, well, what if I ASK you to haul water. And I was like NO, don’t ask me to, don’t tell me to, don’t SAY anything about hauling water. Ever again.
Literally the next day we wake up, he leaves for his house, I bathe and go to the pump. And who is sitting there with his Mamita’s buckets, but Lenin. He looked so damn defeated but I could not help smiling like an idiot. I was trying not to shine my beaming smile in his face and rub it in. But bless their hearts, all the women at the pump were like, ha! Look who’s finally hauling water! He glared at me, and I looked all innocent and simply said, I didn’t say anything.
So that is the water saga. The topic is still off limits. And I am still pissed that he wouldn’t help me. But a little of the anger was released seeing him hauling water (ONCE) for his own house.
Well, this has grown ridiculously long winded. If you made it this far, you must really love me.
Deirdre: everything still sunshine and marshmallows with YOUR latinlover..?
Sent at 3:24 PM on Tuesday
me: haha
i juuuuust wrote a longass blog about that
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mom
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;)
Just a grin and a hug! Mom ;)