So as you may have noticed, I have not exactly been posting regularly. This is because I have officially been moved to my permanent site for two years. I will give a long detailed description of my new site, the village of Tubará, in an upcoming blog post. Right now I just want to explain that posting will be a little more difficult. My first three or four months in Colombia were not your Typical Peace Corps Experience. I lived in a very nice house with a very independent family that essentially left me to my own devices. I had fast internet and could watch Netflix and go to the mall and find air conditioning fairly easily. It was nice but I could feel myself struggling with my experience so far. Was this really the Peace Corps? Was living this relatively easy life really what I had expected? Mind you, I still had to take cold showers and the mosquitos made me want cry and the heat was oppressive and training was exhausting and Spanish was exhausting and sleeping on a bed where the slats fell every time I moved was exhausting. So I had it kind of easy, but not that easy.
When I moved to Tubará everything changed, in the best way possible. I was finally living in a perfect little village and having my Typical Peace Corps Experience. But that also meant no internet. Ok there’s technically internet. If I walk into the town square (a whole 3 minute walk), I can sometimes get internet on my phone. Apparently the mayor was given the funds by the government to give wifi to the entire pueblo. However, as things often go in these small pueblos with no oversight, the funds seemed to have been redirected into a different sector. The mayor’s office, which is located in the plaza, gets internet and it extends maybe one block out. I live about a block and a half away. Anyway, I would never bring my computer there to answer emails or try to Skype. It’s not that I feel unsafe or anything like that. There are three reasons holding me back. 1) I don’t want to be that gringa (a term of endearment here, nothing more) sitting on my Mac answering emails and looking at Facebook while people lug chickens and sacks of grain past me. 2) I have also found out that the second the village boys learn that I have a computer or a phone or anything, they swarm me with requests to download games and can they please just hold it for a few seconds I promise I will be careful and I can show you how to download games there are just sooooo many games I can download. My protest that I don’t want any games on my devices falls on deaf ears. 3) I don’t want to be seen as showing off my possessions. Even though checking my email in the town square seems innocuous to me I know within a few hours everyone will be talking about the gringa with the silver computer and the iPhone. It’s a reinforcement of our differences that I’m trying to erase, not compound. And maybe I’m being silly but something tells me I’m not.
A few days ago another volunteer who lives in a pueblo about 15 km away sent me this text: “You were seen holding hands with a guy. I told my host dad it could not have been you… Right?” WHAT. Ok just to clarify, I WAS NOT holding hands with a guy. In fact I had been sick with Chikungunya, a virus like Dengue (more on that later), for over a week and had maybe left my house 3 times total. How on EARTH did a man an entire PUEBLO away in a world that BARELY HAS INTERNET hear that I was holding hands with a guy??
So this is the little bubble in which I am living. A bubble in which rumors spread amazingly fast despite a lack of infrastructure for internet or telephones or anything like that. Good old-fashion gossip. I can’t wait to hear who I’m dating next.
Ok ok ok back to the internet thing. After a month with no internet except frequent trips into Barranquilla I finally cracked and bought a USB modem, which magically gives me internet. No idea how it works but it’s awesome. I pay about 20 bucks for 2 GB of internet, which is less awesome. I don’t know exactly what that means I just know that I can occasionally go on Facebook and check a few emails and that’s about it.
But that’s all I really need right?
(Except when I go into Barranquilla to drink iced coffee and sit in the AC and Skype my parents and hungrily read the New York Times and CNN and the BBC and anything else I can get my news-deprived hands on)
Katrina (not the hurricane) in Colombia (not the university) 