October 17, 2008

The hardest working people in miles, working 5 days a week 8-4pm in the office, and who knows how many hours outside of it, but they are never in the office without smiles on their faces. The morning starts with a smile, handshake or hug for everyone, and around the circle again every time a new face enters the room. For an hour or so we catch up on the week’s events, drinking tea and coffee as everyone arrives. I’m not in the office everyday and so I share my thrilling stories of my adventures in the outside world as we joke and laugh. They love to hear what’s going on in the Capital whenever I have work to do there, committee meetings etc, and without fail we talk about how much hotter and uncomfortable it is there as opposed to the climate here in the foothills.

Today is unusual, as there is a serious, political corruption conversation going on. Although it’s difficult to be super productive and efficient in the beginning of your Peace Corps service without being fluent in the language, my inability to understand their conversations and communicate my personal opinions from day one here has kept me out of the political and chisme (gossip) circles. They know now that they can ask my opinion on topics, but that I’m not going to sit around and share the silly office gossip. When I share my opinion it's because they've asked me personally and they all fall silent waiting to hear my response. My response is usually laced with a female inspiring message that leaves all the women in the office like "Hell yes I should be allowed to leave the house whenever I want!" Which is unfortunately a big problem with some of couples here.

Not knowing the language right away has also given me the opportunity to get to know the people and the culture before sharing my opinions on things, which are typically quite different from what they are used to hearing. It is really beautiful coming from the world’s melting pot, to become part of a country with such a strong culture (though theirs too has roots on three or four continents). The food, music, dancing, speech and customs are their own and they have great pride in it all. My experience here over the last 8 months is that sometimes the tradeoff for having a strong national culture is tolerance and an open mind. For example, of the approximately 9.8 million people in this country 95% of them declare themselves Catholic. Although I am involved in and supportive of the church here, I believe that it a major cause of abstinence only promotion and homophobia, which I am not supportive of.