Que Onda Guerro, Beck

A few days ago, I got out of the outdoor cold shower, dried off, wrapped the towel around me and walked back into my room.  Previously, I brought both a towel and a change of clothes into the shower with me, but after a week and a half of watching my entire host family wrap towels around themselves and walk around the property, I figured the white girl could do it, too.  In my room, I got dressed, put lotion on and realized that my legs were in dire need of a shaving.  Some girls in my training class have decided that these two years would be shaving free years, but I can’t do it.  First of all, I have dark hair, secondly, I don’t like the texture.  The legs are being shaved.

That evening, I returned from classes, asked Mama Olga for a bucket, used my bandana as a wash cloth and shaved my legs in the backyard.  Kimberly, my four year old niece, stood in the doorway, asking me what I was doing.  “Estoy afeitando mis piernas.”

“¿Por que?”

I didn’t have an answer off hand.  Because I don’t like hair?  I have a mountain on my head.  I like shaving?  That’s not true.  Mama Olga quickly came to my rescue.  “Mami, es una cosa que hacen las gringas.”

Exactly.  It’s a gringo thing.  For the past few years, society has been making fun of things, branding them “White people problems.”  It’s probably been extended before to actions, but in case it hasn’t, it’s a white kid thing.  I’m pretty sure my host family is making a list of all the weird things they see me do, of “Cositas Gringas.”

It all started when I asked for more vegetables one day during lunch.  All the women looked at me, giggled and gladly filled my plate up with more vegetables.  The next day, while helping Mama Olga cook my dinner, I was chopping ají and ate one of the slivers.  She looked at me and asked if I always eat raw vegetables.  I quickly explained it as a cultural difference, and she explained why they don’t eat raw veggies in Panama.

They call me out on all my cultural irregularities, from putting milk in my coffee, doing yoga in the mornings, dancing without rhythm and being skinny.  The words they use to describe me to my face are telling.  Instead of using delgada, meaning slender, they call me “La flaca”.  The skinny.  Everyday, Mama Olga watches how much I eat and tells me she worries about me.  Women here have more curves than average, and a skinny American white girl with no curves sticks out.  It’s a white girl thing.

I sometimes feel as though I’m being observed as a science experiment.