One thing about living in another culture and country is that I experience seemingly strange things on an almost daily basis. At least they seem strange to me. But they are often everyday occurrences for people here, who don’t give them a second thought. Here are a few examples (many of which are related to animals):
- Pig in a bag. People here often transport pigs in large plastic/vinyl bags, the same types of bags they use for potatoes and other produce, as well as sand and gravel. So I guess it’s not uncommon to see a pig in a bag even though I had been here for a couple of months before I caught sight of one. The other day, as I walked up the street, I noticed one of these bags in the street – not right in the middle of the road but sort of to the side. And as I looked, it began to wiggle and squeal a bit, making the bag slighting roll and quiver. The owner was nowhere in sight.
- Dog on a bus. As I sat on the bus recently, I looked up to see a woman escorting a medium-sized dog off the bus by the scruff of his neck. After being ejected, the dog tried repeatedly to reboard the bus and a man standing near the front had to kick him off several more times before we departed.
- Sheep on the roof. Another recent bus incident involved sheep. Peruvians transport many things on the local bus, as well as on the roofs of their cars, including their animals. Though I have now regularly seen various types of animals in containers either within or on the tops of vehicles (kittens, chickens and guinea pigs come to mind), the sheep were a first for me. As I sat on a bus in the town of Calca the other day, waiting for the bus to leave, I noticed two things. The first was a woman boarding the bus with a lamb in her arms. The second was another woman attempting to hoist one of her sheep into the air so that it could be carried up a ladder onto the roof of the bus. Unfortunately for her (but maybe not for the sheep), her sheep was not very cooperative (nor was its companion sheep tied to the same rope) and the woman ultimately was not able to wrangle either sheep onto the bus before it departed.
- Young shepherds and other working kids. As I walk to or from my volunteer job just outside the main part of the town of Lamay, I regularly pass very young children shepherding animals up the road towards their pastures or homes. I see two pairs of kids frequently. One includes a boy of maybe 10 or 11 with his sister of possibly 4 or 5 years old. This boy is in charge of his younger sibling as well as about a dozen cows and several sheep. The other shepherds are a pair of sisters, the older one about 11 years old and the younger one closer to 3 or 4. These girls are generally tending a group of 8-12 goats, along with 2-3 cows and sometimes some sheep as well. Another recent example of kids working is the 12 or 13 year old girl who cut my hair last week. She takes overflow customers in her dad’s barber shop and wields not only scissors and an electric razor, but also a straight razor. And last is the 11 or 12 year old kid (my best guess) working the grinding wheel at the machine shop I visited this week. The level of responsibility (and freedom) that very young kids here have is astounding to me and very different from what I think most of us are used to seeing in urban areas of the U.S.
- Dog gauntlet. Recently, a dog in Lamay took to following me to and/or from my bus stop to the place where I volunteer. Maybe he was looking for a new master. He followed me to the bus stop and laid down near my feet while I waited for the bus a couple of times and also followed me from the bus stop up to my workplace in Lamay – a distance of almost ¾ mile. On that trip, he was forced to walk the gauntlet of other town dogs strung out along the main road through Lamay. Almost every dog along this street (maybe 8-10 of them on a typical day) challenged him in some way – growling, barking or making some other threatening, territorial gesture. He generally held his ground or just continued walking, sometimes giving a teeth-bared snarl or growl in return or pausing to pee on a wall to tell them he had just as much right to be there as they did. He was quite disappointed when we arrived at our destination and I left him outside the gate. He looked in at me somewhat mournfully as I continued on. This experience is a classic example of that fact that there is often no human filter between the interactions of dogs in Peru – no owner anxiously restraining their beloved pet on a leash to prevent a conflict with another dog. Here, the dogs need to work things out on their own in whatever manner they see fit and as you can imagine, it isn’t always pretty.
Getting to experience these little day-to-day examples of cultural differences between my home in Portland and my temporary home here is one of my favorite things about life in Peru.
Matt
