Wednesday
You know, I don’t think there’s a better way to spend a Wednesday afternoon than marching around a place named after the 3rd of May in a Matador outfit. I’m still not sure whether we were opening the festival or promoting it. We were handing out flyers (got a kid to hand out mine) but it was also the first day of the festival so it could have been either, or both. Michael was the Nutty Professor, and he sure looked nutty in his oversized glasses. His pocket dictionary finished off the professor look but that wasn’t part of the costume, we just never leave home without them. I decided to be a Spanish bullfighter for the day. The children hadn’t a clue what I was, and and they weren’t getting any wiser from my bull impersonations. It was like a very mini St. Patrick’s Day parade. We had stilt-walkers, people with massive fake heads, a witch, a fairy and some others I couldn’t quite make out. People from the town came out to see what all the noise was about but I’m not sure they could see our flamboyant procession due to the Dust Sphere we created. Breathing was a bit of a chore as was the heavy costume in the winter heat. The weather has gone a bit crazy here since the whole global warming thing but that’s for another night. One child almost had a nasty accident off the side of a cliff when she cleaned her nose on my outfit, but I just smiled and blew my whistle like a good matador.
After the parade I tried to make small talk with some girls about it. I wanted to ask them if they had been marching with us. I used my hands to make what I thought was the universal sign for walking. But they just looked at me completely puzzled as to why my fingers had just taken off across the table.
On the whole, people are extremely understanding in Casa Del. On our first day the boss, Ruth, had shown us all 5 floors and explained what happens where and how we should handle various situations with the kids, what kind of things the get up to, etc. I thought after that we should arrange for her to get some sort of acting award. We hadn’t a clue what she was saying yet had gotten so much information from her. She had acted out the whole thing. My favourite mime was the ‘Teenagers kissing the corner one’.
I got my wish of being placed in the library on Wednesday. I’m not too sure how these Homework Clubs work but I’m pretty sure the student isn’t supposed to be chatting up some young one while the helper draws random objects from the solar system. He was shocked when I suggested he do his own Pluto. I should probably have told him that Pluto isn’t even a planet anymore. At least he got some drawing practice. One woman sat next to me with the ‘Encyclopaedia de Peru’ and went through it page by page with me for almost an hour. It was only when I spoke at the end that she fully understood my level of Spanish. Still the pictures were cool and the big words are almost the same as English so I did get some of it.
I tried to help some older kids with their extremely advanced looking maths but was called over to the English table just as I’d pulled my thinking face for as long as I was going to get away with it. I sighed and explained how the Señor would have to help them. English isn’t a big thing here, most people have no use for it. Everyone seems to know the colours in English, but that’s it. I went through the names of the animals with some people. We then had a conversation where I had to answer in Spanish and they had to answer in English. There was lots of acting and giggling but we got a lot of information out of each other.
The English homework they have is strange, and hard for me to help them with. The only way the teenagers seem to learn the language is by translating it from English to Spanish. So I mimed what the English meant and they wrote what they perceived me to be doing. Luckily I always have my dictionary close by.
In a random act of Peruvian kindness, Abel, a guy I work with came up to me and measured my wrist. I was a little perplexed but let him work away regardless. He returned an hour later with a friendship-type bracelet. Michael appeared some time later with a matching one. Even after all the measuring, the bracelets didn’t really fit either of us but after we swapped they were just right. I’ll never take it off!
The people have been so good to us here that I have decided to meet them half way and change my name. Absolutely no one can say Claire. I’ve lost count of the amount of times some kid has asked me my name, said ‘What?’ a few times, and then sort of said ‘ok’. They then whisper something to Michael to which the answer is always “Claire, CLAIRE”. For the first few days I was ‘Clink’, then ‘Ka’. I had settled on Claro for a while but was uncomfortable with that also being the word for ‘of course’. Today some kid said ‘Cara’ and I think I like that one best, it being the Irish for friend. So from now on I may be introducing myself as that.
The good people of 3 de Mayo finally seem to believe myself and Michael that we are not a married couple. Well, I think they thought it. Everything I say on this blog is a ‘guesstimate’ because we’re never entirely sure what’s going on. I made a shocking discovery last night as to how these rumours may have started. Every time we do something strenuous like cleaning the Casa (we do that twice a day) I like to turn to the person next to me and say “Soy casado”, just to show off my bit of Spanish. I’m almost certain that was what someone said to me one day whilst acting tired. So I presumed that’s what it meant. But someone felt the need to find out whether my parents are still married and asked if they are ‘casado’. When I came round my shocked daze I scrambled for my dictionary hoping she had just asked whether my parents are tired but doubted she would point at her wedding ring while asking that. When I reached the C section of my book I discovered that I had indeed been telling everyone for days that I’m married. I’d said it after cleaning, before bed and some random times when I’d run out of other Spanish words. It was almost as bad as the time I told my co-worker Betty that I drove a cooker. I’d been warned that if you get one letter wrong in a Spanish word it could mean something totally different. Cansado is tired and casado is married. I should probably be putting ‘a’ at the end because I’m female but that’s a bit beyond my current capabilities.
Tomorrow I will have to set the record straight and reassure the people of this town that I am infact single.
Tags: 2 - Peru
cybersusst