Religion and Murals

With the Christmas season being officially over, I got invited to a party to take down the nativity scene at one of my best friend's house. The priest in my town recently declared it mandatory that people take down their nativity scenes by January 7th because after that baby Jesus is no longer an infant in the manger, he has grown up. I only wish the priest would mandate that people stop playing Christmas music after Christmas because that is just annoying. It is Peruvian tradition to elect a godmother for every event. I got to be the godmother of setting up the nativity and now there was a new godmother for taking down the nativity scene. It was a very pretty ceremony involving candles and singing and a few prayers. It was an honor to be part of such a special ceremony but it brought back some of the my discomfort with religion here in Peru. When I am asked whether I am Catholic, I respond that I am Christian and celebrate Christian holidays but I am not Catholic. Part of my reasoning for doing this is to suggest that there are people who are not Catholic or super religious out there and part of it comes from my need to be at least partially honest about who I am. Individuality is not a commonly accepted feature in my town and I don't want to overdo it. Anyway, despite the fact that I took some offense hearing my best friends say that people without Jesus in their hearts are lost and in the dark and do not have the capacity to love, I enjoyed being included in the ceremony as a cultural event and I really enjoyed the chicken and garbanzo bean meal that got served afterwards. Religion has always been a point of stress for me in the process of community integration and in my acceptance of the Peruvian culture in general. The Catholic Church is such a huge part of everything from public school to meetings in government institutions at all levels, to town festivals that it is necessary for me to accept but I am having a lot of trouble letting go of my perception that separation of church and state is hugely important to maintaining a functional government. All that being said, this is my overactive American need to criticize and analyze speaking. The Catholic Church is a strong force in my community and Peru as a whole which serves to unite the community and, although it restricts the individualism, the value, structure, and faith it facilitates make my community a positive and loving place to spend a couple of years.

The Peruvian custom is to say yes and I am much more direct than that. My mom bought me a "Getting in Touch With Your Inner Bitch" daily calendar and the inner bitch mantra is, "if something isn't right just say, "I don't think so."' The success of my work depends primarily on the voluntary participation of community members. I have been fortunate to live in a community where the majority want to support me and agree to go along with whatever crazy ideas that I may have (Typical exchange: "why would I want to save the leaves I sweep up off my patio?" "Well, it makes an excellent and free fertilizer"). Notice that I said agree to go along with and not actually go along with necessarily. Most of the time this works to my advantage because I can get the blessing of school directors, mayors, and other community leaders to start projects.

Recently, this usually delightful Peruvian desire to please completely backfired and led to my biggest Peace Corps melt down yet. I have spent the past few months securing materials, funding, and workers to paint a couple of environmentally themed murals in the elementary school and they turned out beautifully. First, I got the local archaeologist to lend me two workers for a couple of days to put the plaster up on the walls and then I got the guardian/groundskeeper of the school who is known as the artist of the town to create two incredible works of art that call attention to the importance of conserving our environment. I have not had such successful and visible projects in a while (our goals focus more on behavior change and education) so I am incredibly proud to have gathered such a wide array of support that culminated in two excellent murals with plans to paint more. What no one thought to tell me throughout this entire process is that the entire school including my two precious murals will be torn down in February. Not only that but up until I confronted the director and directly asked him if the rumors about the school being torn down were true, he kept asking for more murals. When I asked and he nonchalantly confirmed that all my time, money, and favors called in with local institutions were in vain, I launched into an overly emotional and angry diatribe about the lack of respect he had shown me and the others who had put work in. His response was "Well you would have been mad at me if I'd told you that I wasn't going to let you paint the murals." This directly points to the cultural habit of not saying no. I told him that I would have been perfectly fine with putting off the murals if he had told me they would be torn anyway. This director has been an excellent advocate of my work since I have been here and I hope we will be able to repair the damage that was done by this faulty communication leading to my outburst. It is one thing when people say that they will be coming to your meeting and don't show because of the culture of yes but it is a whole different level when someone wastes all the time and limited funding you have with no intention of warning you that it will be wasted. I learned a few things here, 1. Check the temper at the door before confronting someone about something that will inevitably be infuriating, and 2. Do some thorough research before embarking on big projects. I will see how fast this little episode gets around town but the upside is that school starts in mid-March so I have a whole 2 months for things to cool down before trying to mend fences.