Initial Culture Shocks
Culture shock is a natural occurrence when living far away from home. At this point of my life, I felt the most culture shock when I moved to the greater Los Angeles area. It’s similar to getting a new phone. Learning all these new buttons and functions can be a bit of a nuisance. It’s not that you pull your hair out and have a panic attack, but having to learn new things is different – a shock.
Last weekend, I made good friends with two Argentine guys. One of them and I kept contrasting Peru with our home countries. We agreed that neither culture is better or worse, but different. In this post, I’ll try to avoid opinion and analysis in favor of merely reporting what I see.
I’d been to South America before, so I was ready for a difference in rules and customs of traffic. But I’d be lying if I said I knew exactly what to expect. The first thing to notice is the use of the horn. You hear less honking in Midtown Manhattan during rush hour than Arequipa any hour of the day. In most of America, the horn is used to alert another driver of danger or if you’re mad at that other driver. In addition to these, the horn is used in Peru to alert a driver that you are in the next lane, to pass a car, when you have been sitting still for a few minutes, and various other reasons. If a cab sees you on the corner and wants to let you know he’s available for hire, he may honk. When approaching an intersection and the driver doesn’t want to stop, he’ll honk. One day I was crossing the street at a stoplight for which I had the green. The light turned yellow when I was about halfway across. One of the taxis waiting at the red light honked, I assume to let me know that his green light would be coming soon. The decibel level outside my apartment is higher than any place I’ve lived or even visited during all waking hours of the day.
Constant honking is probably necessary for the difference in driving style. There are very few streetlights in the narrow, short streets of Arequipa. Cars, taxis, combis (buses), and pedestrians all navigate the streets by getting in where they fit in. I’ve seen cars, including taxis and combis, turn right from the left lane in front of a car going straight. At intersections with stop signs, stopping is optional. But who has the right of way? Whoever gets there first. Right of way here is like a game of chicken. If two cars are each headed in contradictory directions, each one will continue to drive until one stops. This is how lanes are changed as well. The right to any space in the street is determined by who can get there first, which usually involves enticing another driver to back off.
I take a combi to work every day. A combi is the public transportation equivalent to a bus. The size of these combis ranges from a little larger than a 15-passenger van to one of those old VW buses. The insides are hollowed out with benches against the walls and rails along the ceilings for standing passengers (these little dudes can stand up inside). You enter through a door behind the passenger seat, which is managed by a cobrador, or attendant.
The cobrador is responsible for collecting money, announcing the combi’s destination to passersby on the street, and punching the timecard. A second person is needed to take money and make change because the driver is preoccupied with navigating through traffic. In fact, the combi doesn’t really stop at many clearly defined bus stops. It will pick up anybody along the route and drop anybody off anywhere, but it doesn’t really stop. Sometimes you literally jump on while it’s still moving and the cobrador runs alongside and hops on afterwards. The combi doesn’t have a big, illuminated sign on the roof like buses in the States. Instead, it has a few cutouts reading its final destination and major stops taped to the inside of the windshield. So a cobrador is also needed to announce the destination to those who don’t see or read well. The cobrador is screaming out the side door almost the whole time the bus is in motion.
Finally, the cobrador is responsible for punching the time card. Similar to the time cards I used to punch when I worked minimum wage jobs in the mid-nineties, time-clocks are located on various street corners along the route. In traffic, you can see a cobrador literally sprinting down the sidewalk among pedestrians, punch his timecard, and run back to the combi to hop on. This saves the combi from having to stop at the bus stop. As you’ve probably pictured, the bus can be absolutely packed. Being 6’3 and 225 lbs, I feel especially out of place because I can’t stand up straight or fit into many places. Plus, I’m (A) a gringo and (B) dressed business casual.
Dogs running the streets without leashes are quite common. I haven’t seen a leashed dog yet. Within my first hour here, I saw a prowling dog and froze up like a deer in headlights. Roy told me to relax. I came to see that they are quite domesticated without leashes and they never bite anybody. I see at least a dozen dogs per day running free. You can walk by them as if they were human and they never bark or snarl or try to get you to pet them. Sometimes, especially at night, I’ll see packs of six or seven dogs running around together. I developed and shared a theory with a local about the dogs. I told him that all the Arequipeño dogs that didn’t have a fear of cars in their genetic DNA were naturally selected out of the gene pool by this hectic traffic. This, I thought, explains why I must’ve seen a hundred dogs running the streets, but I haven’t seen any dead ones. He told me my theory is wrong. Drivers hit dogs often, but they dispose of them immediately. They stop the car and dispose of the dog? How? Where? They throw them in the trash, he told me.
Having been to South America before, I knew about the little trash-can next to the toilet. The first few wads of used toilet paper go in the toilet, but the rest get folded and discarded in the trash can. What is new to me is that I haven’t found a functioning hot water faucet yet. My shower has a box affixed to the shower-head. After turning on the cold water, I turn the switch to this box on to heat the cold water as it leaves the shower-head. It doesn’t get very hot but does guarantee that I am in and out of the shower quickly.
Public toilets are almost never stocked with toilet paper. The overwhelming majority of public toilets do not have a toilet seat affixed to the bowl. You can see the holes where a seat was affixed at one time, but I assume they were all removed. If you need to sit down, you sit down on the bowl. In my office, somebody took the time to type, print, and place a sign over the toilet which reads “DEMUESTREN SU CULTURA, APRENDAN A USAR EL SERVICIO HIGIENICO.” This loosely translates to “SHOW SOME CLASS, LEARN TO USE THE BATHROOM PROPERLY.” This toilet does not have a seat, there is never toilet paper or paper towels, and the lock on the door doesn’t work.
More little things coming later.
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