Really? It’s just gonna keep getting harder?

8-31-10

I’ve been in El Salvador for almost exactly 7 months now.  I was talking to Joanna on the phone (what else do I do with my evenings, really?), and she pointed out that it feels like the cultural stuff is getting harder, not easier.

I get what she’s talking about.  When we got to this country, there was the immediate and obvious culture shock.  We had to use latrines.  We took bucket baths.  We rode the bus everywhere.  We slept under mosquito nets.  We saw bugs and scorpions and bats and rats and frogs on a daily basis.  We ate beans and tortillas at every meal.  We got sick, and then sicker.  We joked about parasites and amoebas and felt kind of bad ass in spite of it all.  We got better.

We got used to it.  There’s not a volunteer in my group who doesn’t find it routine to wash their clothes in a cement pila and cook every meal on a gas stove.  As big a pain as it was to adjust to everyday life here, as it turns out, that’s the easy part.  That’s the “culture” you get used to quickly. 

At seven months in, Joanna and I, and other volunteers, are all starting to hit culture walls.  Stuff you can’t just get used to and accept.  Joanna’s counterpart tries to treat her like his personal assistant, rather than what she is – an independent worker, someone meant to be an advisor and educator when it comes to the community’s health.  Why does he treat her like this?  Because she’s younger than him, and she’s a woman.  This is a society that to me resembles what I imagine 1950’s America looked like, in terms of gender-relations.  Even men who, like Joanna’s counterpart, pay lip-service to women’s suffrage, still believe that when it comes to their own personal lives, men are the heads-of-household and their final word is law.  That makes a man’s opinion and agenda automatically more valid than a woman’s, no matter how you paint it.  They may be rational, they may discuss household decisions with their wives, but when it comes right down to it, even if a woman has a job outside of the house, it is still her responsibility to cook and clean and care for their children and husbands, no matter what.  In one of the houses in my village, there’s a sign painted on the door of the cookhouse that just makes my blood boil every time I pass it – “La cocina es para las mujeres.” – the kitchen is for the women. 

And these tend to be the more liberal-minded men.  Especially here in the campo (country), Salvadoran culture is very machismo.  The attitude amongst men is the more women you sleep with (regardless of your marital status), the more macho you are.  This attitude also means that a man on the street has the right to spew whatever disgusting piropos (cat calls) he wants at a passing woman, and she should just walk by and pretend it’s not happening.

In my time here, I’ve also discovered that, culturally speaking, Salvadorans are often passive and non-confrontational in the extreme.  (That is, provided that they’re not a group of men on the street corner, trying to prove to each other how macho they are.)  They don’t like to talk to people they don’t know well, because they have pena (shame, or embarrassment).  They don’t want to stand up in front of a group to talk because they have pena.  They don’t want to admit that something is bothering them because they have pena.  I hear it from people over and over, every day of every week.  And yes, this attitude is much worse in women than in men.  I once went to a meeting and saw a woman so crippled by her own embarrassment that, as we went around the room introducing ourselves, she couldn’t muster the courage to do anything but whisper her name as she stared at the floor.  Mind you, this was with a group of perhaps 12 women, half of whom she already knew.

Being an outgoing, center-stage, love-the-limelight kind of gal, it’s hard for me to relate to this attitude.  It’s not like simply meeting a shy person.  I knew lots of quiet, shy people in the States.  (After all, they were the only ones who let me talk endlessly about myself without interrupting.  It was win-win.)  But that’s not what this is.  This isn’t about a few people wanting to follow rather than lead, or some women who naturally have timid personalities.  This is a national characteristic!  People here (especially women) use the phrase “Tengo pena” (“I’m embarrassed”) as a crutch – an excuse to get out of doing something, anything that they don’t want to do.  It justifies and supports their ability to stay in their homes and avoid trying new things and meeting new people, no matter how advantageous those new things and people might be for them.

Is it across the board?  No, of course not.  For example, I’ve talked with Cruz (my counterpart’s wife and my host mother when I first got here) at great length about her difficulty struggling with her own pena, and how hard she tries to leave that aside and not be afraid to speak up.  There are a number of other wonderful women and girls that I’ve met in this country that are witty, bright, and outgoing.  They’re the epitome of what every Salvadoran woman should be able to be.  And certainly the attitude of machismo isn’t the only cultural issue we have to deal with.  But now that we’re actually working closely with Salvadorans, not just living as guests in their community, we discover more and more cultural differences to do battle with. 

Like the way people view time.  If a meeting is set for 2 pm, what they really mean is “around 2 pm”.  People might show up at 2, but they also might not show up until 3.  Which can make getting things done difficult.  I was talking to my friend Kyle the other day, and he told me that his ADESCO decided to cancel a meeting because it was going to rain in the afternoon and most people wouldn’t show up.  Kyle pointed out that it was the rainy season, and it was most likely going to rain every afternoon for the next 3 months.  They cancelled it anyway.  I’ve also learned that people are so non-confrontational that they’ll lie to you because they’re worried they might hurt your feelings.  If I try to organize a meeting, and go door to door asking people to come, probably every person will tell me that yes, they can make it, I can count on them being there.  And then no one shows up.  I finally had a Salvadoran explain to me that they’re lying, because they’re worried that I’ll think they don’t like me if they say no to my face.  So they just say they’re coming and then don’t.

Every day feels like a silent battle, and I’m waging a war against cultural quirks that I don’t completely understand.