In a world where everyone is known by his or her distinguishing physical characteristic, it is no surprise that mine is “white.”
One of the more rambunctious little people that I work with at the German/Ecuadorian NGO, Chino (called “Chinese” by everyone, including his grade school teachers and family) informed me that after a week’s absence my skin was much whiter and my eyes much bluer. I protested in vain that the previous day I had stood under the toasty Ecuadorian sun for 4 hours so there is no scientific basis for his claim. If anything, redder and bluer might be more fitting.
My week away from site was spent in a remote mountain community helping to build a water system with a motley crew of high schoolers from Connecticut called Builders Beyond Borders. After months of minimal sensory stimulation from the vast technological world I was bombarded with youtube, Rebecca Black, and Broadway references. I tried to keep up for the first two days and then it dawned on me that I had become the washed up older person trying to remain hip.
The fact that I just used the word ‘hip’ underscores my uncoolness and solidifies my argument.
Though I was ashamedly behind the times, it was highly entertaining to hear the talk of the day. It brought me great pride to hear the ‘talking muffin’ joke and know that the comical classics are still in circulation.
After a week in Tingo-Pucara, I left with a new scarf (thank you indigenous women that chuckled at the sorry excuse of a scarf I spent all week knitting -and did not finish- and who then donated a longer better scarf to my pitiful hands-like-meat-claws cause), diarrhea (inevitable), runny nose (ambient temperatures did not inch past 48 degrees fahrenheit), and a sense that the world is indeed going to be ok because it is filled with wonderful young people.
They complained a bit about having to dig so many trenches, but then again who wouldn’t given blisters, rain, diarrhea, jet lag, and 10,000 feet above sea level…
6 days after first taking hoe to ground, a bent toothless woman turned a faucet and two parts hydrogen one part oxygen spurted out of a thin metal tube. Behind her a straw hut sighed in the afternoon wind and a crowd of Americans cheered like the Mets had finally won a World Series.
Thanks for reading.
