Whew. Things continuously surprise me about Zaruma. Things that leave me scratching my head, wondering who in the hell decided what was appropriate and what was not appropriate. Here's my top five list of appropriate behaviors that befuddle me.
5. Male teachers talking about sex/sexual organs/pornography with married female teachers Maybe I'm just an American prude. Maybe I'm repressed. Maybe I knew really prudish old men in the States. But I can't get over all of the sex jokes I hear from older male teachers on a regular basis. Today, for instance, an older female teacher was talking about her laundry machine. A male teacher then started joking about his male appendage getting caught in it. Something like that. The female teacher laughed hysterically while I stared on in half confusion, half horror. And they say Ecuador is such a conservative country. Bah! I'd love to see something similar go down in the Bible Belt.
4. Singing is appropriate anytime, anywhere The mystery singer on my street turned out to be one of my neighbors, Diego, who works in the meat shop next to where I live. Almost every day, he belts out some song about far away love or beauty. At all times of the day: in the morning, when they're cutting the meat, in the afternoon, when they're bored, whenever he has a free moment. There are two teachers who walk into the office and greet the teachers by singing ballads. This is mainly a male phenomenon. It might be part of the machista culture. Males who normally are expected to be strong and stoic can let their emotions out by drinking copious amounts of booze on the weekends or by singing. Or maybe it's more of a "fuck it, I'm a man in Ecuador, I can do anything" type of attitude. I'm not sure. But there is much more bursting into random songs, a la Oklahaoma or South Pacific, than anything I've seen in America.
3. It's perfectly to discuss medical conditions, or personal problems, with people you barely know This might be part of the chisme, or gossip, that comes from living in a small town, or maybe people are just more open. I met a woman the other day at a party. She started telling me about her daughter, who was an acquaintance. "She suffers from depression, she's had a hard hard time with it," the woman told me. We hardly knew each other, and she was already telling me about some of the biggest struggles in her family. Similarly, when I got back from the States, and had put on an extra 7 or so pounds thanks to the gallons of Starbucks peppermint mochas I'd consumed, the teachers felt the need to comment on my weight to me and to others. "Andrea, you've put on some weight!" the gym teacher said, as if I'd been blind. Another teacher turned to my sitemate Jacob and asked him, "Don't you think Andrea's put on weight?" Similarly, the teachers like to talk about which female students are gaining weight. It's a spectator sport in a small town. In Washington, the go-to conversation is politics. Here, it's gossip or physical appearances.
2. Reina competitions, or beauty contest, which showcase 13 to 18 year old girls walking around in bikinis, is normal and celebrated Again, American prudery. But these damn reina competitions are something I don't know if I'll ever get used to. The girls who compete in them are usually about 14 or 15. Depending on the competition, they parade around a stage in either a dress or a bikini. The audience, mostly male, but often times scattered with families and groups of teens, cheers and hoots. The judges, who are always middle aged men, then huddle and decide who the queen should be. The biggest competition is for the queen of Zaruma, a title held by one of my students, who admittedly is gorgeous, vivacious, but so so vain. In the reina for Zaruma competition, the newspaper writes articles about the different contestants. They have photo shoots. They get interviewed for the Zaruma television channel. They have multiple days of competition. Beauty and youth are really really important here. But it makes sense, though. After they're 18, many of these girls get married or go on to school. This is their "pure" time, the time when they go from being little girls to beautiful women. After 15, when they have they're quincenera, they're considered real women. Being the queen of Zaruma is like being the head cheerleader and the prom queen. So many girls here want that crown.
1. Music that plays in the streets, all the time It's a Thursday night. Tomorrow is a work day. Yet tonight I've heard two different music groups on my street. The first one was a guy with a guitar whose music was probably recorded and blasted from one of my neighbor's houses at 9pm. That was kind of annoying, but not too bad. Maybe they just wanted everyone else to join in on the good time. But then, the icing on the cake was when the Jehovah's Witnesses decided to crank up the sound in their church, which is on my block, and blast Jesus music from 11 to 1230 tonight. WHO decided this was OK on a school night? No neighbors went outside, outraged. No police came to break up the party. Nothing. This is one of the greatest mysteries of Zaruma. The constant, unending concert that happens right outside my house, almost nightly. Even the roosters are in on it. Someimes they start crowing at 1 or 2 in the morning. By 5, there is a whole rooster orchestra, crowing from every hilltop and every corner of the city. Sometimes, they coordinate their crowings, and other times, they sort of mimic each other.
On a really good night, the rain will chime in and come down in buckets, waking everyone in Zaruma up. Like last night, where it seemed like Noah's flood was about to be upon us as it dumped buckets at 2am. On a really good night, like the night before last, the newborn baby will wake up in the middle of the night, crying. Since my host family thinks that me having a glass window in my kitchen will prevent ventiliation, the sound of the baby crying travels from my kitchen right into my room, so it sounds like there is a baby in a cradle right by my bed that is howling. So sometimes this is all really stressful. The noises, the constant criticism of physical appearances, the strange relationship between conservative small town cultural and open sexual jokes, etc.
But before you think that all I do is bitch about Zaruma, let me let you in on some of the good things that I'm starting to dig. One of them is my barrio. My neighbors are very close-knit, which is kind of hard because they don't understand what in the heck a young, unmarried girl is doing away from her family (gasp!), unmarried (double gasp), without kids (aaaaaaah!), in her prime child-bearing years, in a foreign country, LIVING ON HER OWN. I'm like this strange, tall, gangly, white alien to them. But they do nice neighborly things like have monthly lunches together and they have a big Christmas party. I like living in a place where everyone looks out for everyone else.
Another thing i love is how family oriented everyone is here. My host dad and mom are the best parents to their kids and the most supportive and caring grandparents. The grandkids are ALWAY over at the house, and always loved and looked after. I had my students write me paragraphs about themselves, and a few of them wrote sentences like this: "My mother is the most beautiful woman in the world." How many American teenagers would write a sentence like that about their moms? Openly? That they would share with their class? I don't think many. One of the perks of this Catholic, Virgin Mary worshipping town is the emphasis on motherhood. I love how much people here openly love their moms. It's cute. It makes me think about how much I love my own quirky, no bullshit taking, spontaneous, deeply affectionate mom. Go Mom!
Lastly, we are in pineapple season. This means that all the vendors are selling big, juicy pineapples for the ripe price of 1.50. Which is nothing, when you have money. I have four dollars left in my bank account which has to last me until....I don't know, a day from now, so the pineapples will have to wait. Still, I am totally spoiled by the food prices here. Fifty cent mangos. One dollar for a pound of apples. Forty cents for a pound of potatoes. I really live in fruit paradise. I'm nodding off. It just started raining. I love the sound of rain falling lightly on a tin roof. This is my lullaby, most nights. Good night, y'all.
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