Out of Touch

I went to pay for my landline phone the other day (yes, those do still exist...at least they do in Peru anyway), and they had cut my line for being 4 days late paying. And then yesterday, a mototaxi driver from my community and his family stole my cellphone I accidentally left in his moto. This same family apparently stole my camera that I left in their moto last year. I went back to them last year and they told me they didn't have the camera. This morning, I told my host brother about the cellphone and he replies, "and they have your camera, too". He's seen them using it at events at the school. My host family doesn't seem angry that they took the camera, but more that I would be stupid enough to lose my camera and cellphone in the moto.

Here in lies the difference: impoverished communities make way for a "finders keepers" way of handling lost goods. You leave your things out or in plain sight alone for a few minutes, and it is free game. The honor system is just plain different here. And my first reaction was ferocious anger with body shakes. Losing both of my means of communication at once along with the large amount of projects and responsibilities I have right now was just about enough for a breakdown.
Then I come in to our (as in the gringo's) local hangout in Olmos to talk to our friend Beto. He listens to me, offers to lend me a phone. He's sitting at his computer watching this inspirational video about passing on good deeds - kinda like the movie "Pay It Forward". I didn't realize that working in Peru would make me so bitter towards Peruvians. And I've come to expect that people are more likely to blow me off instead of contribute to projects, more likely to steal than return something I drop, more likely to see me as a walking dollar bill than a person. Being this cynical and untrusting isn't something I expected from Peace Corps. One volunteer from my group said, "I'm leaving this country more racist than I came in" and, honestly it can be really hard not to pre-judge Peruvians after all we see and go through. For example, I don't even try to start conversations with Peruvian men I don't know anymore, because I know that most will take that as a sign they should hit on me.

But the truth is that the problem isn't that Peruvians are bad people or that poor people of other countries would act differently. The truth is that dishonesty lies at all levels, but perhaps hides in more elegant ways with the rich. Truth be told, the real crime is that a family might have to decide between stealing a camera or not having a means to take photos of their growing children. It set me back 600 soles (about 200 dollars) to buy a replacement camera, but a family of 5-8 survives on about 400 soles a month in my community. Whether I like it or not, I represent the disparity between those who have plenty and those who barely get by.

I recently went to Lima, and it is incredible the difference between areas like Miraflores (the rich part of Lima) and the conditions of other parts of Lima, much less of my community. In Miraflores, I ate foods from all over the world, got a bacon cheeseburger and a mango-pineapple-passionfruit smoothie on the beach in the park of love. People talk about bigger ideas, politics, religion, music, art whereas in my community they don't even talk about what they are eating for lunch because it's just whatever they have that day. They talk about how this guy went to town, and pass the latest gossip. There's no room for bigger ideas when the basics of a healthy life can't even be met. I get frustrated that my little host brother can't remember how to play games, but the bigger problem is that he hasn't received the vegetables and fruits he needs to develop.

This is the struggle of living in a second or third world country and trying to work in development. You see the problems so clearly, and yet the solution is muddy - the causes of each problem are so complex. We as Peace Corps volunteers have to constantly remind ourselves that if development was easy, that there wouldn't be a problem. Greed, wealth disparity, and corruption become relative terms, because they appear in different forms at every level. I hear that the mayor of a small community is pocketing some of the money for a local project, but I also know how much the municipality pays him to support his family and can imagine how his family struggles.

If presented with the opportunity to take that camera back from the family, I wonder if God wouldn't be more upset with me for not just letting it go. I'm a bit out of touch, by I'm betting the "you don't need more than one tunic" Jesus feels the same about cameras.