Monday, November 06, 2006

Just call me "THE DESTROYER." It´s "mí vida."

The Destroyer. This is the name that I have given myself within the last month or so here in Bolivia. For those who know me well, it comes as no surprise that I maintain my clumsiness here in Bolivia, sometimes at the expense of certain items that belong to my Bolivian family.

My family first got a glimpse of my inelegance within the second week of my stay here in Cochabamba. One evening I was walking with my Bolivian brother, Jorge, who had picked me up from fellow HCA Associate Natalie’s house so that I would not have to walk home by myself in the dark. We were talking and I tripped over a large crack in the sidewalk, scraping my wrist up pretty bad (photo is in my online Bolivia photo album). Now I have small scars on my wrist – but I guess that is the price you pay for the first “recuerdo” (souvenir) from Bolivia. In all fairness, it was dark and the sidewalks in Bolivia are nothing like the sidewalks in the US, torn to pieces due to lack of maintenance and earthquakes. This excuse worked with my family for a while…that is until I cut my foot on a rock just last week while walking in pure daylight, haha.

Since then my family, not my “cuerpo” (body), has suffered the effects of my inability to be cautious, careful, or just conscientious of my own strength or the largeness of my body. I have broken the showerhead in my bathroom (causing my family to buy a new one), stained a beautiful tablecloth due to spilling soup and Coca-Cola (both on separate occasions), pulled out a door handle trying to get a door unstuck (causing Jorge to work 2 hours to fix it), and scraped off a large portion of Teflon from the bottom of Juana’s pan while cooking no-bake cookies, not realizing that I should have used an older pan because melting and stirring sugar in a pan would cause such damage (she was not as forgiving about this one).

The worst and probably the most embarrassing moment of clumsiness and unawareness of the largeness of my body came last Thursday when we visited the Cementario for Dia de Los Muertos. It was not a terribly sad day, as it is not supposed to be, but it was the first year that my family would be visiting their son in his final resting place (check out my October 28 blog if you do not understand). Our first visit was to the permanent niche of my Bolivian “abuelo” or the father of Nestor, my Bolivian host father. Upon arriving, I discovered the customary practice of cleaning the name plate along with changing the flowers that had been placed there the year before. Deciding to be the good “hija” (daughter), I told Juana that I would help her take off the thorns and petals and cut the stems of the roses that we had bought for the niche, helping her place them in the now clean vase. On my second rose, I had cut the stem too short and thus, one less rose in the vase (oops #1). Reaching for another rose, my butt graced the vase, knocking it over and breaking it – a vase that had been used by the family every year for 25 years since the man had died (BIG oops #2). To my horror, I cried out loud all the Spanish I knew to ask for forgiveness and to tell them that I was sorry. To my surprise, all my family could do is laugh – their response: “Es tú vida.” Translation: It’s your life.

My family assures me to this day that the incident at the Cementario is okay, the vase only cost one or two pesos (about 12 or 24 cents), and that it was a blessing in disguise because the day was fun as I continued to provide a bit of entertainment for them. We ultimately bought a new vase, said a small prayer, and continued on to the final resting place of their son. We took the short rose along (what we had named by this time “my accident”) in order to place it in the son’s smaller vase along with beautiful white flowers that we had also previously bought. What did I do while walking? Dropped the damn rose on the ground (oops #3). That’s right, and I nearly caused three or four people to fall down as I stopped the large flow of traffic in order to save this rose from being trampled. As I stood up, my family just gave me a look and all I could say is “Es mí vida.”

Needless to say, I was not allowed to touch the vase, or anything else for that matter, for the remainder of my time at the Cementario. Now, it’s is just a matter of time until THE DESTROYER strikes again.

1 Comments:

At 11/09/2006 6:09 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hope I can get this to stick Your family probably thinks you are a clutz.. Probably your clumsey because the circut is over loaded and your not thinkin strait Grandpa thoughts were ' She her mothers daughter' We both really enjoy reading your blogs. And had a good head shake over this one YOU BeCareful Remember we want to be able to seeour little girl in one piece come 2 years Remember we love you Granma

 

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