My Kooky Doña

My new ¨Host Mom¨ is an interesting lady. I feel kind of wierd calling her my Host Mom, because she´s more like my land lord that I ocasionally hang out with than anything else. But PC Bolivia requires us to live with a host family (to live within the same walls/compound as a family). Don´t get me wrong. She´s a fun lady. She deffinitely likes to have a good time and make sure those around her are having a good time too. She´s the first one to pass around the wine at parties and trying to hook people up and make them dance together. But she´s kind of umm.. how can I say this in the nicest possible way...a bit ditzy.

She comes up with these completely random ideas. One of the first days at the house she tells the other girls renting rooms that I only eat vegetables, nothing else. And they look at me and ask ¨Verdad?¨ with surprise. And then I have to set the record straight ¨I eat everything. I eat meat. I ate pork yesterday WITH YOU!¨Hello! That actually was the first meal she offered me so I felt obligated to eat it. It was a thick chunk of pork. Consisting of a thick layer of skin (with a few hairs poking out) and fat. There was virtualy no meat to be found on it. Me and Julia just kept digging in with our knives searching futilely for the meat. ¨This is so disgusing. Are we really going to have to eat this?¨I keep thinking to myself. Thank God Julia was there to explain that usually we don´t like to eat the skin and such...just the meat. ¨Oh...I eat everything.¨ My Dona replied with a laugh...clearly. Of course I could have said this myself, but I hardly knew the lady at that point and didn´t want to seem rude not eating what she offered me. So we choked down a few forkfuls of fat saying ¨¡Que rico!¨ (how delicious!) all the while thinking of the brain worms that we´ve been warned uncooked pork can give you. While I´m on the subject of strange foods... I´ve actually been pretty lucky so far. The strangest thing I´ve eaten was guinea pig at my host families house which is actually like a fattier chicken. Not really that good, but not that bad either. I´ve managed to steer clear of the intestines, chicken feet, tongue and stomach offered to other volunteers.

But back to my Doña. The other day I was making cookies in the kitchen. She asks ¨What are you doing?'¨. ¨Making cookies¨ I reply. Then in the next minute she asks the lady that helps out around the house (the empleada) what I´m doing. The same answer ¨Making cookies¨. Ok maybe she didn´t understand me... yet again. Then thirty seconds later she aks her son. ¨She´s making cookies¨ he tells her. ¨Cookies?¨ she asks again. ¨Cookies.¨ says the empleada. Am I in the Twilight Zone or something? What is going on here? Oh yeah, and another time I asked her if there was a hot shower downstairs that I could use. I was sick and it was freezing cold and I was dreading the thought of using my cold shower. She yells back into the house to her son ¨Is there hot water?¨. ¨No only cold¨ he replies. What?! Did she really not know if she had hot water or not in her own house? I was baffled. Hot water is not something you have from one day to the next. You either have it or you don´t. They don´t have hot water heaters down here. It´s pretty rare to see them. What most people do is buy this contraption they put over the shower head. The water passes through an electrical current and quickly heats up. You know how we were always told water and electricity don´t mix? We´ll aparently down here in the southern hemisphere it´s all right.

Also she´s partaily deaf and doesn´t annunciate very clearly so our conversations have been pretty rediculous. So not only can she not understand me, I can barely understand her. Just the other day I was walking to the market with her. She asked when I got back to town and I told her yesterday at about five. Short and simple answer. Then we run into her friend and she tells her ¨Allison got back from Tarija this morning¨. I didn´t bother to correct her. Things like that happen all the time. But at least she has stoped introducing me to people with ¨This is Allison. She doesn´t understand spanish.¨ There´s nothing like being told you can´t speak spanish to help your confidence. Especially with someone you´ve just met! I got kind of pissed after several times with that introduction and told her, obviously aggrevated, ¨I understood that! I don´t undstand every word, but I generally get the idea. I´m still learning.¨ Muchas gracias!