Saturday, March 17, 2012

Why I Stay

Staying a third year in a small Quechua town without many amenities may have seemed like a wild decision, a flight fancy, a desperate escape from the real world. During my weaker moments, I say the same. Over the past two and half years, I have had moments of painful frustration, agonizing self doubt and absurd awkwardness, yet these only highlight the true fulfillment and joy I´ve found throughout my Peace Corps service in Musho.

Sometimes, when groups of volunteers get together, there is a bad habit of getting into out doing one another´s complaints: Well, I don´t have hot water; well I don´t have any water; I don´t have cell service… etc. It´s an easy trap to fall into, as if we feel that by enduring hardships we prove ourselves as volunteers, as adventurers. However, endurance has always been a prerequisite for Peace Corps. As a friend of mine said, most of us applied imagining living in a straw hut in Africa, to find ourselves with cellphones and cement walls, our biggest lack close grocery stores and intellectual stimulation.

I stay in Musho not through some wish for self-flagellation or need to prove myself. If I prove anything over these two years, it will have little to do with my fortitude as an adventurer and more to do with an acquired patience and ability to bite my tongue. My reasons are two sided: one is idealistic and perhaps a bit foolish. The project I am working on this year, a Center for Early Childhood Development is unique in our region. The infrastructure is challenge enough, but I feel that my work and relationship with mothers here gives me an opening to actually encourage them to use this future center. In my hopeful moments, I know I am staying because there is a need in my community and I hope that my first two years gave me the abilities necessary to fill it. My second reason is far more selfish—I like it here. I like paying $1.50 for a three course meal, being given random gifts of produce by my neighbors, agonizing over Quechua verbs (and seeing Editha´s face light up when I finally produce an intelligible narrative), watching the subtle changes of seasons, knowing that I am important to people here and that by my presence I may make some change.

This week, several volunteers in our department were given the choice to leave Peace Corps, stay in their sites or change sites, based on the danger of transportation in their area. All of them would kill me in a game of “Who´s site is harder?”—Their sites are isolated, underserved by health and education personal, mostly Quechua speaking and often without Internet or cellphone service. However, when of think of them leaving, I think of my reasons for staying and hope that they consider the same reasons. By virtue of their sites being harder, I know that they have an amazing ability to introduce change, as slow and painful, as the process may seem. In the heat of the moment, a trip home might seem appealing, but you can never come back in the same way.
Earlier this week, in the midst of painful illness, I went through my wallet and found a free waffle coupon that expires in September. It was a call to homesickness—to 24-hour restaurants and fountain sodas, to big breakfasts and free refills on brewed coffee. Still, though, Waffle House will still be there in December, even if I do have to shell out $1.99 for a waffle. Opportunities and openings here are ephemeral and don´t come often. I wish I had a way to make those volunteers realize that.

Monday, March 12, 2012

Quechuata allí kosa yachakullaykaa!!




This weekend was another round of intensive quechua classes, four hours a day of grammar, vocabulary and painstaking practice. For me, the classes are always a bit frustrating. As soon as you walk out the door, perhaps with a bit of spring in your step after mastering the tricky “ku” suffix, you hear quechua. On my way back up to Musho every afternoon, I was surrounded by Quechua in the car. Straining my ears and trying to look nonchalant, I would try to understand the conversation around me. Inevitably, I would get lost.

Quechua, you see, is a language of suffixes. You may with one word: “sha” (to stand up) then add on “-mu” (directionally towards me) then “-rku” (directionally upwards) then “-ri” (quickly and just a little) to get “shamurkuri-“ which still must be conjugated and only the will mean “coming uphill for a little while.” I can also make it a question by adding “-ku” to the conjugated verb: “Shamurkurinki-ku?” “Are you coming uphill for a little while?” Quechua says with one maddening word what we say with 8.

However, what frustrates me also fascinates me. There is a suffix for humility and politeness (-lla, which changes the sense of any verb “Shamulla-“ would be, to come in a very humble and polite form) and a suffix for action realized on behalf of a community or group. There is a suffix for shared action (fighting, kissing, talking) and a suffix for meaning to help another person to do something (making the verbs learn, eat, sleep into teach, feed and put to bed).

Though I am no linguist, I like to think that these overly-specific, maddening suffixes not only act as a thorny barrier to my understanding but also show a lot about the Quechua culture. Our professor compared “-lla” (the suffix for politeness) to “por favor” (please, in Spanish), explaining that while you can use please in a tone of annoyance or demand (or sarcasm, in the States, “puh-lease…”), “-lla” could never be used that way and thus adds infinitely more courtesy to whatever action is realized. To work on behalf of the community is different than working for yourself, as kissing as a shared action is very different than kissing as a individual act.

Once I remember reading (probably in preparation for our rather bumbling journey to see Liesel) of a bilingual man, Japanese- English, who felt that his personality actually changed depending on the language that he spoke. In Japanese, he felt less selfish, more inclined to consider group and community. I wonder if the same thing happens to Quechua speakers. If so, I feel as though it gives far more reason to promote and cherish the Quechua language. With it´s demise may also come a diminished politeness and gentleness, a Spanish brashness and arrogance. For instance, I have been catcalled only once in Quechua and it was “kuyaqmi” (I love you) whereas it would take pages to note all the catcalls I´ve heard in Spanish. In 10 years, I want to know what language Musho will speak and what sort of changes that will bring about. In the mean time, I will suffer through pages of verbal and nominative suffixes in a quest for understanding.

Quechuata allí kosa yachakullaykaa!!

This weekend was another round of intensive quechua classes, four hours a day of grammar, vocabulary and painstaking practice. For me, the classes are always a bit frustrating. As soon as you walk out the door, perhaps with a bit of spring in your step after mastering the tricky “ku” suffix, you hear quechua. On my way back up to Musho every afternoon, I was surrounded by Quechua in the car. Straining my ears and trying to look nonchalant, I would try to understand the conversation around me. Inevitably, I would get lost.

Quechua, you see, is a language of suffixes. You may with one word: “sha” (to stand up) then add on “-mu” (directionally towards me) then “-rku” (directionally upwards) then “-ri” (quickly and just a little) to get “shamurkuri-“ which still must be conjugated and only the will mean “coming uphill for a little while.” I can also make it a question by adding “-ku” to the conjugated verb: “Shamurkurinki-ku?” “Are you coming uphill for a little while?” Quechua says with one maddening word what we say with 8.

However, what frustrates me also fascinates me. There is a suffix for humility and politeness (-lla, which changes the sense of any verb “Shamulla-“ would be, to come in a very humble and polite form) and a suffix for action realized on behalf of a community or group. There is a suffix for shared action (fighting, kissing, talking) and a suffix for meaning to help another person to do something (making the verbs learn, eat, sleep into teach, feed and put to bed).

Though I am no linguist, I like to think that these overly-specific, maddening suffixes not only act as a thorny barrier to my understanding but also show a lot about the Quechua culture. Our professor compared “-lla” (the suffix for politeness) to “por favor” (please, in Spanish), explaining that while you can use please in a tone of annoyance or demand (or sarcasm, in the States, “puh-lease…”), “-lla” could never be used that way and thus adds infinitely more courtesy to whatever action is realized. To work on behalf of the community is different than working for yourself, as kissing as a shared action is very different than kissing as a individual act.

Once I remember reading (probably in preparation for our rather bumbling journey to see Liesel) of a bilingual man, Japanese- English, who felt that his personality actually changed depending on the language that he spoke. In Japanese, he felt less selfish, more inclined to consider group and community. I wonder if the same thing happens to Quechua speakers. If so, I feel as though it gives far more reason to promote and cherish the Quechua language. With it´s demise may also come a diminished politeness and gentleness, a Spanish brashness and arrogance. For instance, I have been catcalled only once in Quechua and it was “kuyaqmi” (I love you) whereas it would take pages to note all the catcalls I´ve heard in Spanish. In 10 years, I want to know what language Musho will speak and what sort of changes that will bring about. In the mean time, I will suffer through pages of verbal and nominative suffixes in a quest for understanding.