'In My Land'

Lately I have been trying to tell weather or not people have dentures or their original teeth. It turns out it is probably a 50-50 chance that I guess right and yet I have a very hard time telling the difference between fake and the real thing. One person gave me the hint of looking at the gums but I still struggle. Then the other night my host mom pulled a curve ball on me and disclosed that in fact SHE had dentures and could completely remove all of her teeth. I knew a few years back she woke up late one night with horrible pain from her teeth; so she took a cold shower at 3:00am to try and combat the fever and pain but even this fool proof technic did not work. So the next day she went into town where they plucked out all her teeth and gave her a brand new set. What threw me is that even this new set is bedazzled in metal work, something I guess I didn’t really expect. The conversation that night then turned to brushing teeth. I found myself making sweeping statements about the United States. “Well in my land we have the custom to brush our teeth everyday since the day we are born, we are careful not to give babies soda or artificial sugar” My host mom’s initial response was impressed nodding her head and agreeing that it was bad here how much sugar they give babies. She then made the point that the other day she went to the store to buy toothpaste for my host dad, after he had dental problems. The small tube of toothpaste put her out 14 soles, but it does the job, and my host dad gives it rave reviews. She pointed out that brushing teeth is a privilege, not something she could have afforded when she was younger. If it’s a choice between getting your baby fattened up with sugary food so that they are accepted as a healthy baby in the community or spending your money on a tube of toothpaste, the decision is pretty obvious.

            Later that week I was talking with some of the other volunteers about the statement ‘in the united states…’ We are asked a lot about what plants grow in our land, what’s the climate like, do men have more than one wife, are guinnea pigs really pets, are there farms/rural areas in America or is it all cities, is everyone rich and on and on. It is easy to reply with a simple answer that may be true for my family or in my small town, but it’s not a fair representation. I realized that in my response to my host mom I quickly reinforced the image that America was only rich privileged white blond people who can afford to brush their teeth, which is very far from the truth. I sometimes get frustrated at the seemingly narrow minded questions that I receive on a daily bases, such as a disbelief that anyone that is white could be poor, but then I realized that perhaps some of my statements and actions in fact reinforce this belief.

            My conversation with the other volunteers then changed to generalizations about the dating scenes, and how hard it is to understand the cultural codes of dating. We are taught in Peace Corps training that in general if you are dancing with a guy and you look them in the eye this means you are ready to get married. Thus on the dance floor most people are looking either at the floor or ceiling when dancing. Also if a guy enters into your room, you are ready to marry them, or expect them to call at least 20 times the next day. While these are also sweeping generalizations the point being is that beginning relationships may be some of the most complex social codes to understand between cultures. I found myself getting in trouble by making too much eye contact in simple conversations or dances.  We then tried to break down the cultural dating scenes of the States and it was something that we all seemed to understand but very hard to put into words. To imagine someone from our sites going to the States and trying to figure out that system was humorous, and this perspective shone light at the impossibility of us trying to truly understand the dating scene here.  It is easier to understand a culture through generalizations, and yet the implications of these statements lead to the United States coming off as a country of purely cities, that snows all the time, where they eat hamburgers, and pure vegetable salads, everyone moves through a lot of boyfriends/girlfriends, and everyone has perfect teeth. More important is to share personal experiences of not having artificial processed sugar as a baby, and this being something that comes from a white privileged girl from the states and not a representation of ‘my land’.