Living alone?

When I moved into my house a couple of weeks ago, some of the excitement of living alone had worn off and, thus, my first night was passed in a state of melancholy. However, my spirits began to pick up again as soon as I ate my first piece of whole wheat toast with peanut butter rather than a plate full of fried plantains topped with cabbage or that dreaded bowl of soup chock full of plantains, potatoes, cassava, rice, pasta, and another unknown bland carbohydrate.

Ironically, I seem to have less privacy now than when I lived with a host-family. Unless I hermitically seal the house and otherwise pretend that I’m not there, I have visitors. They come in the front, they come in the back, and they peer in the windows. Some are genuinely interested in visiting while others are just nosy. The latter kind just wanders in and starts looking around. There is also that breed of visitors that I am wholly unaccustomed to – the mute loiterers. Seemingly contented by my mere presence, they silently follow me around as I continue to uncomfortably go about my tasks as if they were not there.

My neighbors surpass the limits of any kind of friendly-neighbor scale. Unfortunately or perhaps fortunately (I haven’t yet decided), they have chosen to express their kindness almost entirely in the form of food. The first night my landlord gave me around 5 pounds of potatoes. On the second night, when they discovered that I wasn’t making tortillas, they disappeared and came back with two, which quickly turned into a steady flow. I now have tortillas coming at me from all sides. The grandmother was thrown into a tizzy when she realized I also wasn’t eating beans and she herself presented me with my own personal pot. They make sure to check up on my egg supply and they’ve given me more than enough tomatoes and green peppers. I think they’re afraid that I may very well starve on their watch so they’re watching very closely. I even caught grandma peering in my window more than once.

My neighbors aren’t the only ones giving me food either. I’ve been given an entire head of lettuce, a squash, two ears of corn, eggs, and cassava. On one day alone I was given four pieces of cake, four plantains and two tamales. Really, it’s too much food for one person to consume. I actually attempted to give the corn away to a needy family and instead they just cooked it for me on the spot.
The squash recently went bad and, because I felt guilty about wasting food, I attempted to dispose of it by throwing it into the trees behind my house under the cover of night so that no one would notice. Unfortunately, I threw it straight into a wet towel which I didn’t see in the dark, making a huge racket in the process. Part of the squash stuck to the towel and half of it ricocheted back onto the house. I ended up having to wash the towel and the house to dispose of the evidence. I never found the other half.

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One of my neighbors recently complemented me on my pee bucket which I had left outside to dry. She literally told me how nice it was and started estimating how much it must have cost me. It wasn’t until I caught myself telling her that I thought the color was really nice that I realized how absurd the conversation was to begin with.

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Some young boys (third grade and younger) paid a visit and told me that they liked my ponchito. Maicol, the 4 year old that has a crush on me told on them. I had to ask him for clarification because I didn’t know what that word meant. He pointed to his crotch and told me they were malcriados (badly behaved.) Obviously, it means vagina. Honestly?! They are in primary school!