The Passing of the Egg

It was about 7 in the evening the other night when we had visitors—visitors that some family members are not extremely fond of.  It had been a hot day and was probably about 90 degrees in our apartment.  We were all sticky and tired.  Soon after the visitors left, Iris became restless and irritable, just plain cranky.  As she’s generally pretty cheerful and my mother-in-law heard Iris grumbling from the hallway, she knocked on our door, sure she knew the problem, but also the cure. 

As for me I would have attributed Iris’s discontented state to the heat and being tired.  My mother-in-law, on the other hand, declared negative vibes from a bad aura to be the culprit.  Nevertheless, true to a strong Peruvian remedy for that superstition, she also had a solution. 

As I prepared warm water to put into Iris’s little bathtub so she could feel clean and refreshed, Iris’s uncle followed her abuelita’s commands to “go buy some eggs at a nearby shop, and quickly!”  Returning with three eggs at room temperature, she took one out of the little sack.  As I undressed Iris for her bath, her grandma began to move the egg in a circular motion above her head then methodically massage every centimeter of her little body with the egg.  Iris began to calm down. 

Once again our opinons differed.  I believed she’d calmed down because she was free of her clothes and ready for her beloved bath and perhaps the massage was relaxing.  My mother-in-law insisted that the eggs had absorbed the negative energy and to prove her point put the egg into a cup of water and as a few bubbles from the egg white were slowly drawn upward to the water’s surface, the great negativity from evil eyes was disappearing.  She then threw the egg out of the house into the street. 

After a nice long bath and some warm milk, Iris was as happy as a lark—undoubtedly because of the passing of the egg.

three months and full of surprises

Since she turned three months, Iris has been very active, curious and full of surprises.

Some of the many faces of Iris:

I left her on the floor for less than a minute 

and came back to find that 

she'd decided that her big toe would make a nice snack.  

One Brick At A Time

Life is built one brick at a time.  Over the past week or two I’ve had the gift of watching three men build steps, create a cement roof and begin to lay the bricks for a third story on our neighbor’s house.  With five gallon buckets, sand and crushed rock and a manual cement mixer, they work under the sun’s strong rays, tensing their muscles and breathing deeply as they climb with their heavy loads to continue their labor. 

It’s not just those men making progress.  It’s the old woman selling her fish each day.  It’s the homeless man in the heat of the day selling one more Chiclet for 10 cents getting that much closer to food for one more day.  It’s the baby learning to roll over, the taking the bullet out of an injured patient, the teacher imparting knowledge, and the lawyer fighting for a client’s freedom that all lay one more brick each day to make this world a brighter place.  

Living like a fish in water

Like a goldfish brought home from a pet shop and placed in a bowl full of water, I know I’m in a different environment from that in which I grew.  Yet when asked to describe the new water, I can’t, and what I used to know seems a distant memory that often escapes me.  That being said, I have moments when I’m startled by my environment before being jolted back to reality.  

Living in the city of Chiclayo has been a challenge for me.  Sometimes I get sick of the constant buzz of traffic, horns honking, people asking for money, and the exaggerated formalities in the workplace, but often times I go about my days without taking much notice of those things.  They don’t irk me all the time.  And then there are the things that I love: the fresh produce in the markets, the dancing that accompanies every fiesta, and time spent with Igor and Iris.

In some instances I’m caught off guard, living in my own world, where my everyday life surprises me.  The other day, while Iris and I were in looking out the window at the Pan-American Highway, we saw quite a number of motorcycles go by, which really isn’t unusual, but having forgotten my surroundings, I asked myself if Sturgis or some other large motorcycle rally was going on.  At other times, I suddenly realize that someone in the street below my window is speaking Spanish, only to remember a moment later that everyone around me speaks Spanish all the time.  On other occasions, I’ve marveled at how black a baby’s hair is compared to Iris’s, just to remember that she’s part of that less than 1% here who doesn’t have black hair.  Probably the most unsettling of those moments is to wake up hearing some birds chirping thinking I’m at home on the farm, to looking around for a confused moment wondering where I am.  A peddler of olives, fish or tamales is sure to call me back to Chiclayo.

So you see, my life in Lambayeque is different from my life in Nebraska; at the same time it’s not so different.  I’m well adapted, so I can’t tell you exactly what it is that makes Chiclayo Chiclayo, but know that it is a place of chaos and extremes and contradictions; home nevertheless.