My host grandma moved in a couple weeks ago. She’s my host
dad’s mom, no one really knows her age but somewhere in the 70s, and she is
losing her hearing. Or perhaps its selective hearing because sometimes she
decides she can hear me, and sometimes its just her talking to me with no pause
to see if I’m talking. Most of the time though I find myself shouting jumbled
Spanish at her for the whole neighborhood to hear, and she responds as if she
didn’t hear anything. She has brought a new dynamic to the house, which I will
attempt to explain in the following incidences that I have observed:
At dinner whenever we are eating meat I will inevitably end
up diving into the bones with my hands, and the juices will be running down my
hands. My host grandmother waits for these moments when my hands of are
particularly messy and just as I go in for the natural instinct of licking them
up she jumps in and waves at my host mom to get me a towel to wipe up my hands.
She always saves me from the cultural suicide of licking my fingers, for while
spitting on the kitchen floor, dropping food you don’t want onto the floor, and
sucking the marrow out of bones are all perfectly acceptable table manners,
licking the good juices off my hands does not seem to be appropriate. Good thing
they don’t have a maple syrup here for me to lick the plate clean.
She has a habit of showing up outside my door and peeking
her head in at me to see what I‘m up to. Most often I am sitting at my desk
staring at my computer, which faces the door. She won’t say a word, rather she
just posts up and watches me until I look up and smile at her. This is her cue
to comment on the fact that I am spending my time sitting. “Just sitting” she
says with a chuckle. I too will laugh at this point and then go back to my
computer work leaving her to stare at me until she gets bored enough. Other
times she posts up at my door is when she has found something of mine that I
left in the kitchen or outside my room. She will then lean against the doorpost
often in the darkness until I notice. She will then comment something along the
lines of “This scarf is very warm, I suppose you left it on the kitchen bench
for me.” She then reaches into the door, neither of us willing to move much
from our positions, so I stretch out from my seat, and she leans into the door
until final we make contact and I snatch the item back to place in my room.
Causing my Grandmother to chuckle to herself as she goes back to the kitchen.
Its funny in America often people go through the grandparent’s house to put
claims on the items they went after their passing, here my host grandma is
quite eager to put claims on my items that I should give to her when I go back
home, and I can’t fit much in my suitcase. So far her name is on my kitchen
pot, a broken water bottle, a teapot, a skirt that is clearly too small for
her, and the fixture that I store my clothes in.
The other day I am talking on the phone with a fellow Peace
Corps volunteer while peering out my window with my back to the door in my
room. I hear a startling growl and turn around to see my host grandmother at my
door. In a whispering snarl that seems a bit annoyed she tells me that the wind
has uplifted my underwear from where I had left them to dry. I clearly needed
to pick it up off the ground before it is an embarrassment to everyone. Most of
my underwear is grandma sized underwear anyways so I see no reason for being
embarrassed, but nonetheless, I cut my phone conversation short in order to
pick up my undies.
She refuses to take her multi-vitamins because she claims
that they make her sleepy. Whenever I come out of my room past 7:00am she makes
a comment about what a free woman I am that I can just sleep right through the
hours. Clearly sleeping too much is something that she is a bit self-conscious
about. I tell her that when my real grandma was alive she took a nap every day
at 3:00pm, and we all had to be extra quiet at these times. It was a big part
of negotiating when to visit my grandma as to not disrupt her nap hour. My host
grandma found this very peculiar and somewhat unbelievable. She would not be
caught dead sleeping too much in the day, and thus continues to refuse to take
her multi-vitamin pills.
After every meal we feed the dogs the leftovers. Without fail it is a conversation about which
dog eats what. One of them refuses to eat soup, and without fail my host
grandmother will comment on the fact the Zumba wont eat soup. He loves the rice
but never goes for the soup. My host mom responds as if this is still
interesting news, even though we talk about it everyday. The absurdity that a
dog would be a picky eater seems to really confuse my host grandmother.
Our favorite conversation to have is about what I have in my
land. She inevitably starts the conversation off with “There are no carrots in
your land are there” I will then correct her and say actually we do grow
carrots. She will then go threw a list of things that are usually within site
from where we are sitting, and ask if I have them back home. Finally she will
come across some random jungle fruit that we don’t have in the United States,
and she will be satisfied that she has discovered one thing that they have here
that we don’t have in the States.
I can’t imagine what changes in the world she has
experienced in her life. She was born in a very rural annex of our town, with
just about no contact with anyone outside of her village. She grew living
completely off of the land. As soon as the road was built in the 80s the rush
of modern day life hit the area by storm, and just about overnight new wonders
became accessible. Now the people have figured out how to make a living off the
land, and are even earning enough money to save up. The other day my host
parents bought a cow, and for justification they proclaimed, “money sitting in
a box doesn’t grow.” They intend to fatten up the cow to sell. Now my host grandmother has a foreigner living
in her house that comes from a completely different place, and clearly has a
lot more money. I would give anything just to see the world threw her eyes for one
day, just to better understand her perspective on this very confusing modern
lifestyle that is quickly catching up to everyone all over the world.
