ya durn tootin'

Grandma deserves to be a blog all to herself. My abuela is a sweet old country woman who has lived in Corral de Arena her entire life. We call country living the 'campo'. Campo literally translates to field and refers to the countryside, a rural area. It refers to farming people who live outside of the city. In the States, these people would be your country folk, your hillbillies, those rednecks I grew up simply referring to as family. (A good part of Texas would fit into this category.)

In some ways, my abuela here reminds me of my country grandmother in the States, Mamaw. My abuela is always shucking peas to go with the rice. Mamaw shucked peas in the car on our road trip to San Antonio. Before I left for Peru, Mamaw and I spent a great deal of time together on the road from Texas to North Carolina. In that time, a lot of silly expressions came out of her mouth. I tried to get my old phone working to share a couple of them with you, but I can't find the charger. I'm sure that you all can imagine the slang and accent of a hillbilly. I think that my abuela here would be comparable to that, except imagine that my grandmother was talking like that and at a rapid pace.

In the campo, they use “pues” as a filler word. It isn't used in any sensible way, but is thrown at the end or in the middle of sentences, kinda like a “ya know”. So between the slang, filler words, accent, fast-talking and her only having two teeth, we don't really communicate very well. On my end, I speak about at the level of a three year old. I can say that I'll hungry and that I'm going to the bathroom, but the rest sounds pretty ridiculous. The grammar part of my speech needs some work. The other day, I was mad a one of the transportation dudes and I started to tell him off. Thankfully I didn't because I figured out later that what I was really going to say would have translated to “you cannot take advance to me”.

Back to grandma. We don't communicate very well, but we have a lot of smiling and laughs between us. I'm the clueless gringa and she's an old country woman who catches me by surprise. I still can't get used to her grabbing the mother hen by the feet and taking it across the patio with her walker. The hens upside down, freaking out and clucking while she slowly shuffles herself to the cornmeal. The first time I saw her doing it, I ran to get my camera. Wish you could have been there.

A few weeks ago, I made this coffee I had been saving for a special occasion. I had a bag from a hotel in Fredricksburg, Texas. The coffee was grown there, and I had saved it for nearly a year. It was supposed to be enough for just one pot of coffee but I stretched it to make three. I offered my abuela a cup of coffee and she turned it down, which was not a surprised. Although Peru grows excellent coffee, everyone drinks instant coffee. My family in Corral de Arena takes it a step further and drinks Ecco – a non-caffeinated grain drink that the Mormons use. (For weeks I thought it was the “coffee” keeping me up at night; really I must have been nervous to fall asleep.) But abuela turned me down, so I offered a cup to my host mom. She said yes and I made her a cup with a ton of sugar, like they like it. She took a sip, told me it was hot at the moment, but then sat it down in front of my abuela and told her she could drink it if she wanted to. And I laughed at the ironic exchange. My abuela took one sip of that lovely cup of coffee I had been looking forward to for a year and made face, shaking her head side-to-side in disgust. Without a moment in between, she added a spoonful of Ecco, took a sip and nodded in approval. I hit the table laughing in disbelief.

When I first visited Corral de Arena, I was introduced to her arthritis. She is constantly in a great deal of pain in her legs and hands. She's now taking herbal medicine that seems to be helping. When I visited the first time, I was convinced that the problem had to do with how she cared for her feet. I didn't know about the pain in her hands. I would see her walking around usually with only one flip-flop. What foot the flip-flop was on would change throughout the day, but I couldn't imagine walking around with all that grime and no protection. People in the campo have incredibly worn out feet. It is hot, so people generally wear sandals if they wear shoes at all. But the dirt, heat, and animal poop make it impossible to have clean feet. Living here has given me a new perspective on the woman who washed Jesus' feet with here hair and tears. Those feet were probably like campo feet.

It is a mix of comedy, warm feelings and sadness that I feel for her. It hurts me that she doesn't have someone that she feels comfortable with and that would take care of her feet. I don't want to say that my family doesn't take care of her. My host mom moved all the way from another department after her dad died so that she could take care of her mother. My host 'brother', Edwin, is always helping, and her son-in-law, Cesar, stays for weeks at a time simply to be with her. This is more of an observation about the things that are lost with age...and the humor that follows. Today she was walking around with a comb in the back of her hair, looking pretty gangsta. It made me chuckle when I noticed it as she got up from the breakfast table. I'm pretty sure she was distracted by the call to breakfast and forgot it was there. Combing her hair and washing her feet are probably things her husband, Inocente, would have helped her with before he died in 2007. We visited his grave the other day. They paid a group of guys with a keyboard, guitar, and a singer/speaker to do a service at his graveside. She wept for him and seeing her made me reconsider whether marriage was actually worth the pain of losing them in the end. Often she's surrounded by family, but much of that time nobody is listening or paying attention. I find myself tuning her out when she's trying to tell me something. I just assumed that I won't understand her.

But with all of this, I think she's a pretty happy old woman. She has her grand kid around to make her laugh and give her kisses. Rosa's family will care for her for the rest of her life. Despite all of the fumes from a wood burning stove that is often lit with plastic bags, she has made it to a very old age. I'm very impressed at her ability to sleep through all sorts of ruckus, still working in miserably hot summers, and the fact that she doesn't get sick after licking raw meat to make sure it is salty enough for cooking. Here's to Grandma Rosa – the funny old woman that makes living in the campo more lively. I'm glad for everyday that I have to listen to her spontaneous howls to scare off foxes, or to call the sheep to get water. Today at lunch, she made me jump in my seat when she started howling in a high-pitched whooping voice. She also hisses at the dogs, cats and chickens to keep them away from our food. My favorite is her special gibber-gabber for the goats and the sheep. Salud, abuela, here's to more years of your hootin' and hollerin'.


***Since writing this blog, Mamaw has sent me an mp3 player full of the bluegrass and country music she grew up loving. I love my country grandma and must say that I've got a soft spot for the music. Love you, Mamaw.