The thing about being pregnant in a Latin American country is that you get more respect. In the UK my experience was more “OK you’re having a baby not a heart attack. Get on with it.” The fellahs at work used to laugh at me when I complained about the elevator not working. “Pregnancy is a condition, not an illness” they droned, while admitting that the sight of me waddling up the stairs provided hours of amusement. Cheeky sods.
The NHS treat you like you’re a whiney wimp if you want to see an actual doctor instead of some overworked trainee midwife who looks at you incredulously if you expect to be weighed and examined once a month. They inform you with great condescension that you can have a £100 voucher and two “home visits” after giving birth. If you put £3 (exact change only) into a little machine they might even give you a blurry photo of the foetus at 20 weeks. I had friends who never saw the same midwife twice throughout the pregnancy and birth. And a doctor? For what? If anything goes wrong at the last minute – they assured me – we’ll find one. I had visions of some passing GP, fresh from administering swine flu vaccinations, being stuffed into scrubs and cutting me open after hours of unsuccessful labour under the disapproving eyes of burly Jamaican nurses: “Gyal, wha yuh bawlin’ so fuh? Ent yuh have a chile already?”
My first child was in fact born via emergency C-section so I feel I had some cause for concern. But she was born in the Dominican Republic and that is a different thing entirely. First of all, not only do the medical professionals there take good care of you, but the community as a whole feel they have a vested interest in your welfare. I got bombarded with unsolicited, contradictory and often utterly ludicrous insights and directives from formerly pregnant women, extended family members, co-workers and total strangers. The more remote the personal experience of childbirth was from the advisor (whether through age or biological impossibility), the more emphatic and insistent the advice. I had elderly women telling me that I must drink lots of stout and eat okra so the baby would “slide out easier” and men lecturing me on hormonal changes and breastfeeding.
Far from being embarrassed by the process, men in the DR treat pregnant women with a kind of lascivious appreciation of fecundity. In the UK and Trinidad and Tobago a pregnant woman seems to be considered hors de combat and therefore an unfair target for sexual innuendo. In the DR I regularly got comments in the street along the lines of “¡Ay chula, ese barriga te queda muy bien!” (Aye, cutie, that belly looks so nice on you”). Which, at the risk of offending all right-thinking feminists, I must admit does wonders for the ego of a seven months pregnant woman waddling up the road to keep her doctor’s appointment.
Peruvians are a bit more respectful in general and don’t tend to shout at women in the streets. But the power of the barriga is strong. There are dedicated parking spaces at supermarkets and preferential lines at checkout counters and banks and even where there aren’t, a judicious waddle goes a long way in Lima. I am enjoying myself immensely. I jump queues to go into places I have no interest in entering. I hover at pedestrian crossings trying to make traffic grind to a halt. I have even conquered the infamous Peruvian police.
Despite the fact that a recent UN report said that Peru should have more police per capita – there are currently 1 per 1,200 people as opposed to the recommended 1 per 250 – they seem to be everywhere. They are particularly keen on directing traffic and stopping motorists to check their papers and are reputed to be uniformly corrupt. “Con 10 soles se arregla todo,” you are constantly told by Limeños. This is apparently the going rate for ‘fixing’ any infraction (whether real or imagined). 10 soles is roughly £2 so, depending on how sinful you are, it’s a bargain. This accepted emollient practice was explained so earnestly to Smuggies by one of my brothers-in-law that she wrote in an essay on Ways to Help Save the Environment that “shops and other businesses should bribe people not to litter”. Even so, the sheer visibility and forbidding appearance of the police can be intimidating.
Last Sunday we went to Mistura 2009, the Second Annual Gastronomic Festival of Lima held in the Parque de la Exposición, the largest available open space in the capital. Peruvians are deadly serious about their food. After all, this is the birthplace of the potato and the country has several distinct climatic zones with the resulting variation of ingredients and cuisines. There are 2,000 varieties of potato, 2,016 varieties of sweet potato and 35 varieties of corn and Peruvians use them all. If you go to the market and ask for sweet potato they ask you what kind. You tell them camote, they ask you what colour. And so on. Their favourite pastime is eating, closely followed by talking about what they have eaten and what they plan to eat in the future. It all gets a bit much. In my view there are only so many times I can have a gripping discussion on the infinite combinations of raw fish, lime juice and onion. But Peruvians disagree. Food outlets outnumber other shops in malls 5 to 1 and restaurants have employees with menus prowling the streets and flagging down motorists to lure them into their respective establishments.
In fact, the only thing that Peruvians respect more than a pregnant woman’s belly is their own, so you can imagine the crowd in attendance at the food festival. An estimated 300,000 people attended and about 200,000 of them were in the line ahead of us on Sunday. No preferential line here! Just an unending queue of patient Peruvians (many of whom had arrived in busloads from the provinces) stretching around the entire perimeter of the Parque de la Exposición, overseen by police of every variety.
After about 20 minutes in line with little progress I asked husband for some money and told him I was taking a walk. I edged my way to the crowd control barriers at the very front of the queue, unzipped my jacket and aimed my belly at the nearest policeman with what I felt was a defenceless look. “Disculpe jefe…” I began. He took one look at my barriga, which – me being fairly tall and him being an averaged sized Peruvian – hit him about eye level, and said hastily “¡pase señora, pase!” and ushered me straight to the ticket office. There was a respectful shuffling back of the crowd and I emerged two minutes later with our entry tickets. When I returned to the very back of the line to retrieve my law-abiding husband and father-in-law they were astonished.
My husband is still convinced that I bribed the policeman and I have continued to say to him in tones of great condescension, “stick with me, I’ll show you how to manage in Lima”. You may think I’m being cruel but it's payback time. The first time he traveled to Trinidad alone he tried to tip some lady traveler who helped him through immigration. She refused and gave him her phone number instead and I’ve had to live with hearing all about his “encantos masculinos” ever since.
Wednesday 30 September 2009
Saturday 19 September 2009
And then Jesus Said to the Rabbis...
About seven years ago my youngest niece and I were in a shopping mall when she dropped her box of M&Ms. In one fluid motion she snatched the chocolates off the floor, made the sign of the cross and stuffed them into her mouth. Seeing my quizzical expression she explained, “If you make the sign of the cross Jesus will take all the germs off.”
Now that’s the kind of pragmatic approach to religion I approve of. If Jesus is going to be hanging around claiming to be the Messiah he might as well make himself useful by cleaning a few candies.
But these things can be insidious and He and His relatives should stay off my turf.
Having been initiated into the mysteries of First Communion gift-giving, my daughter came home from school last week highly excited after her first Religion class. They had watched movies about the Bible she said. So much for the “context which reflects the multicultural nature of our society.”
The movies were obviously aimed at the pre-indoctrinated and were in Spanish, so what she gleaned from them was interesting, if presumably unintended. They had clearly made a big impression and before she had even changed out of her school uniform I had received what seemed like the Twitter version of the life of Christ.
“Mum, Jesus and his mum and dad were riding around on a donkey and then they all had to go to this place like a big market with a temple and you had to take an all-white sheep to the temple like this (arms crossed offering an imaginary sheep up for celestial approval) and if the sheep had even one stain and wasn’t all-white they wouldn’t accept it. But you only had to give sheep if you were rich. If you were poor you had to give money. And if you didn’t have any money or sheep and you had bad thoughts if you even put one foot in the temple like this (a tentative toe thrust forth) you would just drop dead. The people didn’t kill you, God did, because he KNEW! And then they all went back home but then they couldn’t find Jesus and they looked everywhere. “Jesus, Jesus, have you seen Jesus?” And finally they found him in the temple talking with all these old guys, I forget their names. (“Rabbis?” “Yes. Mum, have you seen this movie??”) Jesus was asking them lots of questions because he was very curious. And then later on when he grew up he got married and they all went to this cemetery and...(“He got married?” “Yes Mum, he got married. There was this girl see...” “Did he have children?” “No Mum, don’t be ridiculous, if he had children, then his children would have had children and there would still be little Jesuses today.”)...and they all went to this cemetery and they saw Jesus’ father on a tombstone with his arms crossed like this...(“Jesus’ father? You mean God?” “Yeah, God. He had died of old age. Or maybe it was on the cross, I don’t remember.” “I think it was Jesus on the cross.” “Oh yeah, so God must have died of old age.”) Anyway, then later on Jesus went to the desert and the Devil appeared and started to ask him questions and offer him things. (“How did the Devil look? Was he all red and have horns?” “No Mum, I know a lot of people think that but Jackie (her last nanny) said that the Devil is always very good-looking.” I smiled reminiscently and agreed. “So the Devil was very good-looking?” “Oh yes.” “And what did you think of Jesus?” “Well he was a bit hairy.”) And every time the Devil tried to get Jesus to prove things he said I only have to prove things to God my Father and the Devil was getting very grumpy. And then Mum, you know it was very bad in those days because on Saturdays you couldn’t do anything. You couldn’t cook, you couldn’t sleep, you couldn’t watch TV! But Jesus was telling everybody to go and do things. (“Ah, a bit of a rebel then?” “No Mum, he was just helping out”) And one day the guards caught Jesus telling people to do things and they took him to the temple and kept asking him why he wouldn’t follow the rules and he kept saying “No, it’s all about the Love” and he didn’t have a sheep to give them and they said “where is your sheep?” and he said “No, it’s all about the Love” and then because he didn’t have a sheep he dropped down dead right there in the temple and they hung him on a cross. And the teacher says that these days you don’t have to give a sheep, you just have to pray. And Mum, did you know that Catholics have a big table with bread and wine and guess what?!!”
“The bread and wine get turned into something else?”
“Yeah, into Jesus’ body and the wine gets turned into blood!!”
“Doesn’t that strike you as pretty creepy?”
“But Mum, the wine at your wedding tasted great!”
“That was ginger ale you were drinking.”
Out of this blizzard of information she seems to have extracted two key lessons:
1) Precocious questioning of adults is a Good and Blessed Thing; and
2) God is the Answer – no matter what the question.
Being an Olympic-class manipulator she lost no time in putting these precepts into practice.
She had a spelling test coming up and I was trying to get her to focus on practicing the words.
“Spell technology.”
“T-E-C-N-“
“No, start again.”
“But why?”
“You missed out the H.”
“No, I said it, you just didn’t hear it.”
“Yes you did”
“No I didn’t”
And so on. And on. And on. Every word had to be debated, every error converted into an aural failure on my part rather than a lack of concentration on hers. Losing patience, I told her to shut up and just spell the freaking WORDS!!!!!
After a prolonged power struggle and repeated attempts to re-litigate the issue she completed the spelling list and was dismissed. Pausing at the door before stopping just short of slamming it she sniffed, “I don’t care what you say! God knows what is in my heart.”
“Then maybe HE can take the bloody exam for you!” I yelled after her in a fury, “and while you’re at it, have a word with Him about transubstantiation because you’re getting tuna sandwiches for lunch for a week!”
Now that’s the kind of pragmatic approach to religion I approve of. If Jesus is going to be hanging around claiming to be the Messiah he might as well make himself useful by cleaning a few candies.
But these things can be insidious and He and His relatives should stay off my turf.
Having been initiated into the mysteries of First Communion gift-giving, my daughter came home from school last week highly excited after her first Religion class. They had watched movies about the Bible she said. So much for the “context which reflects the multicultural nature of our society.”
The movies were obviously aimed at the pre-indoctrinated and were in Spanish, so what she gleaned from them was interesting, if presumably unintended. They had clearly made a big impression and before she had even changed out of her school uniform I had received what seemed like the Twitter version of the life of Christ.
“Mum, Jesus and his mum and dad were riding around on a donkey and then they all had to go to this place like a big market with a temple and you had to take an all-white sheep to the temple like this (arms crossed offering an imaginary sheep up for celestial approval) and if the sheep had even one stain and wasn’t all-white they wouldn’t accept it. But you only had to give sheep if you were rich. If you were poor you had to give money. And if you didn’t have any money or sheep and you had bad thoughts if you even put one foot in the temple like this (a tentative toe thrust forth) you would just drop dead. The people didn’t kill you, God did, because he KNEW! And then they all went back home but then they couldn’t find Jesus and they looked everywhere. “Jesus, Jesus, have you seen Jesus?” And finally they found him in the temple talking with all these old guys, I forget their names. (“Rabbis?” “Yes. Mum, have you seen this movie??”) Jesus was asking them lots of questions because he was very curious. And then later on when he grew up he got married and they all went to this cemetery and...(“He got married?” “Yes Mum, he got married. There was this girl see...” “Did he have children?” “No Mum, don’t be ridiculous, if he had children, then his children would have had children and there would still be little Jesuses today.”)...and they all went to this cemetery and they saw Jesus’ father on a tombstone with his arms crossed like this...(“Jesus’ father? You mean God?” “Yeah, God. He had died of old age. Or maybe it was on the cross, I don’t remember.” “I think it was Jesus on the cross.” “Oh yeah, so God must have died of old age.”) Anyway, then later on Jesus went to the desert and the Devil appeared and started to ask him questions and offer him things. (“How did the Devil look? Was he all red and have horns?” “No Mum, I know a lot of people think that but Jackie (her last nanny) said that the Devil is always very good-looking.” I smiled reminiscently and agreed. “So the Devil was very good-looking?” “Oh yes.” “And what did you think of Jesus?” “Well he was a bit hairy.”) And every time the Devil tried to get Jesus to prove things he said I only have to prove things to God my Father and the Devil was getting very grumpy. And then Mum, you know it was very bad in those days because on Saturdays you couldn’t do anything. You couldn’t cook, you couldn’t sleep, you couldn’t watch TV! But Jesus was telling everybody to go and do things. (“Ah, a bit of a rebel then?” “No Mum, he was just helping out”) And one day the guards caught Jesus telling people to do things and they took him to the temple and kept asking him why he wouldn’t follow the rules and he kept saying “No, it’s all about the Love” and he didn’t have a sheep to give them and they said “where is your sheep?” and he said “No, it’s all about the Love” and then because he didn’t have a sheep he dropped down dead right there in the temple and they hung him on a cross. And the teacher says that these days you don’t have to give a sheep, you just have to pray. And Mum, did you know that Catholics have a big table with bread and wine and guess what?!!”
“The bread and wine get turned into something else?”
“Yeah, into Jesus’ body and the wine gets turned into blood!!”
“Doesn’t that strike you as pretty creepy?”
“But Mum, the wine at your wedding tasted great!”
“That was ginger ale you were drinking.”
Out of this blizzard of information she seems to have extracted two key lessons:
1) Precocious questioning of adults is a Good and Blessed Thing; and
2) God is the Answer – no matter what the question.
Being an Olympic-class manipulator she lost no time in putting these precepts into practice.
She had a spelling test coming up and I was trying to get her to focus on practicing the words.
“Spell technology.”
“T-E-C-N-“
“No, start again.”
“But why?”
“You missed out the H.”
“No, I said it, you just didn’t hear it.”
“Yes you did”
“No I didn’t”
And so on. And on. And on. Every word had to be debated, every error converted into an aural failure on my part rather than a lack of concentration on hers. Losing patience, I told her to shut up and just spell the freaking WORDS!!!!!
After a prolonged power struggle and repeated attempts to re-litigate the issue she completed the spelling list and was dismissed. Pausing at the door before stopping just short of slamming it she sniffed, “I don’t care what you say! God knows what is in my heart.”
“Then maybe HE can take the bloody exam for you!” I yelled after her in a fury, “and while you’re at it, have a word with Him about transubstantiation because you’re getting tuna sandwiches for lunch for a week!”
Wednesday 16 September 2009
The Talk
I knew it was coming and should have been better prepared.
I assume that in the lives of all parents comes the day when they have to have The Talk with their children but, just the same, I was caught off-guard and think I made a bit of a hash of it.
I am of course not referring to sex. That was taken care of when she was five and came home from school announcing that she was going to get married to Guillermo, a boy on her bus. When my “hmm, that’s nice dear” didn’t satisfy her she insisted “and do you know what you do when you get married Mummy?”
“What dear?”
“You kiss, lie on the bed and have sex.”
That got my attention.
“And who told you that?”
“Sophia, a girl on my bus.”
“And how old is Sophia?” (Through gritted teeth)
“Sixteen.”
The next day I rampaged into school and read the riot act about the shocking lack of supervision which allowed teenagers to proselytize sex on the school bus. It turned out that Sophia was actually eight years old. A note was sent home to her parents about inappropriate conversations while in-transit but the damage was done.
I spend several traumatized hours on amazon.com trying to find sex education books for five-year-olds. They all seemed a bit advanced but I managed to find two, one which was nicely illustrated with a serenely smiling, fully clothed woman producing a grinning baby after a “special cuddle”, a vague process of tadpole transfer, and the gradual growth of the resulting fertilized egg. The other put the whole process in the context of a swimming race (starting off at Sperm School, with all the tadpoles being instructed via blackboard and diagrams on how to swim a straight line and head directly for the egg) and introduced a rather spurious genetic twist which suggested that successful sperm produced babies destined to be a second Michael Phelps (“Sammy wasn’t great at maths but he sure could swim! He was a winner!”)
The result of all this was that my daughter, who has badly wanted a sibling for some time, took it upon herself to follow myself and my husband around (particularly at bedtime), urging “special cuddles” and explaining in great detail how his tadpoles would be travelling to my egg via both our belly buttons, therefore Bigboy and I reading newspapers while relaxing on opposite sides of the bed was not an option.
Having achieved her goal of getting me pregnant she is now working on a PowerPoint presentation illustrating the process, which she intends to use to assist Bigboy when the time comes for him to explain sex to her (as yet unborn) brother. She is convinced that Bigboy will make a poor job of it and will need all the help he can get. Also, according to her, boys are dumber than girls and therefore need things explained better.
So no, it wasn’t about sex. This was the Religion Talk.
She has of course been exposed to the R-word for some time and counts herself as an enthusiastic Christian in the same way as she is a devoted fan of Santa Claus.
Christianity as her religion of choice has been influenced by her last two nannies. The first was a Jehovah’s Witness who would occasionally take Smuggies to the Kingdom Hall when I was away on travel duty. I banned her from dragging my daughter round the neighbourhood on their Saturday morning annoy-the-ungodly routine. When Smuggies questioned this, I asked whether she would appreciate me poking her awake on a weekend to tell her that I believe that the sky is orange and that watching TV is evil and insisting that she believe the same. She saw my point. She did, however, develop a taste for Bible stories.
The next nanny was also a Christian – though of a less annoying and far more pragmatic variety – and when Smuggies started worrying that “Mummy says she doesn’t believe in God, what will happen to her?” she soothed, “we’ll just have to pray for her.” So now my daughter is given to ostentatious nightly appeals to Gentle Jesus Meek and Mild who she implores in loud and pointed whispers to “bless Mummy and TAKE CARE OF HER” (subtext: even though she is an ungodly heathen).
On my first day of school my father gathered myself and my siblings together and said, “They will ask you what religion you are. You tell them you are a practicing atheist.” We were officially excused from Religious Instruction classes. I went anyway because I, too, found the Bible highly entertaining, but there was never any danger of me developing an allegiance to a deity as psychotic as the one lauded in the Isaac and Abraham story.
Smuggies on the other hand, has never been to a religious school (mine was nominally Anglican). At her last school, which follows the International Baccalaureate (IB) programme, they learned about religion in the context of cultural differences. In one segment they were allowed to choose different religious symbols and illustrate them in art class. She, predictably, chose Christianity and came home proudly bearing an unconvincingly rendered stuffed cross made of grungy grey denim and foam rubber. When I refused to let her sleep in my bed clutching this creepy object she explained patiently “there’s no need to be afraid Mummy, this isn’t the actual cross they crucified Jesus on.” My (Catholic) colleague at work found this hysterically funny and posited that perhaps the Romans had velcroed Jesus to the cross. (Which of course would put His suffering and sacrifice on our behalf into an entirely new light.)
I had as yet made no serious concerted attempt to convince her of the illogicality of religious belief since she might then start demanding inconvenient truths about Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, though it has to be said that all of these provide more tangible benefits and less horrendous consequences for non-compliance. I have instead encouraged her to think logically and for herself.
However, when we decided to relocate to Peru – a country so Catholic that at Easter it is de rigueur to visit seven churches in one day – I realised that the delicate balance between the atheism of the majority of my family and the lure of Jesus and his cherubim was about to be upset. Resorting once more to amazon, I bought her a great little book called ‘Maybe Yes, Maybe No: A Guide for Young Skeptics’ by Dan Barker.
Barker doesn’t mention religion at all until about halfway through the book. Instead, he demonstrates – by way of a ghost story – that “you should prove the truth of a strange story before you believe it.” He then teaches the essentials of critical thought through the application of scientific rules such as:
Check it out;
Repeat the experiment;
Try to prove it wrong; and, most importantly
Always Ask Questions.
And it seemed to be working. I didn’t shove the book down her throat. I waited until she had to practice her English reading anyway and then presented it to her. She got interested and read it in one sitting and seemed to have been adopting proper scientific methodology if the increase in “but Mum, why...?” questions is any indication.
But then she started school.
I had toyed with the idea of sending her to a local school but was told that all schools in Peru – other than private ones following the international curriculum – required children to produce upon enrolment baptism certificates not just for themselves but for both parents and, no doubt, all their ancestors. So off to an International School she went. I was slightly reassured by the brochure which insists that religion is taught “within a context which reflects the multicultural nature of our society”. I am hoping that this refers to global society rather than Peruvian society, which is fascinating but not noticeably multicultural – particularly when it comes to religion.
But this all became – pardon the pun – academic. Turns out that about 80% of the students are Peruvians, whose parents no doubt want the advantages of an international education within the comfort zone of familiar religious norms. On top of that, it seems that Catholic children take First Communion around the age of eight, so recent First Communion celebrations are currently the talk of the school yard among my daughters’ classmates.
I don’t know much about such things but, according to Wikipedia, in Latin American countries First Communion involves parties, girls wearing “fancy dresses and a veil attached to a headdress, as well as either long or short white gloves... Gifts of a religious nature are usually given, such as rosaries, prayer books, in addition to religious statues and icons. Gifts of cash are also common.” These days I understand that the distribution of party bags to school mates is also a feature.
Parties? Fancy white dresses with gloves? Gifts? Cash?!! Now they are speaking Smuggie-language!
She came home from school yesterday with a few post-communion trinkets and a million questions. Why hadn’t she done her First Communion? What is First Communion? How had she overlooked this lucrative revenue stream?
So we had The Talk.
First I had to explain the difference between the various Christian denominations. “Which ones are the ones that knock on doors?” “And what do Catholics believe in?”
I then pointed out that there were many other religions in the world and many contradictory and illogical beliefs and that she should keep asking questions and not automatically believe everything she heard. I touched on the role of religion in war and the important role of scientific enquiry in the development of the human race.
“So Mum, if God didn’t make us, where did we come from?” And there she had me.
I was buggered. I had omitted to prepare. I had forgotten to brush-up on Darwinian theory for nine-year-olds.
I gave it my best off-the-cuff shot but my burblings about the big bang, primordial soup, amoeba, and fish crawling out of the sea and growing wings and feet and then learning to use tools began to sound about as convincing as the virgin birth, resurrection, angels with flaming swords and burning bushes that talk. And worse, none of this gobbledygook seemed to involve presents or cool necklaces. How do you get a child to grasp the concept of evolution when it doesn’t involve presents?
I was losing my audience and it was incredibly tempting to throw up my hands and say, “You know what? God did make us. And it only took seven days. Now eat your dinner or you’re going to hell.”
I assume that in the lives of all parents comes the day when they have to have The Talk with their children but, just the same, I was caught off-guard and think I made a bit of a hash of it.
I am of course not referring to sex. That was taken care of when she was five and came home from school announcing that she was going to get married to Guillermo, a boy on her bus. When my “hmm, that’s nice dear” didn’t satisfy her she insisted “and do you know what you do when you get married Mummy?”
“What dear?”
“You kiss, lie on the bed and have sex.”
That got my attention.
“And who told you that?”
“Sophia, a girl on my bus.”
“And how old is Sophia?” (Through gritted teeth)
“Sixteen.”
The next day I rampaged into school and read the riot act about the shocking lack of supervision which allowed teenagers to proselytize sex on the school bus. It turned out that Sophia was actually eight years old. A note was sent home to her parents about inappropriate conversations while in-transit but the damage was done.
I spend several traumatized hours on amazon.com trying to find sex education books for five-year-olds. They all seemed a bit advanced but I managed to find two, one which was nicely illustrated with a serenely smiling, fully clothed woman producing a grinning baby after a “special cuddle”, a vague process of tadpole transfer, and the gradual growth of the resulting fertilized egg. The other put the whole process in the context of a swimming race (starting off at Sperm School, with all the tadpoles being instructed via blackboard and diagrams on how to swim a straight line and head directly for the egg) and introduced a rather spurious genetic twist which suggested that successful sperm produced babies destined to be a second Michael Phelps (“Sammy wasn’t great at maths but he sure could swim! He was a winner!”)
The result of all this was that my daughter, who has badly wanted a sibling for some time, took it upon herself to follow myself and my husband around (particularly at bedtime), urging “special cuddles” and explaining in great detail how his tadpoles would be travelling to my egg via both our belly buttons, therefore Bigboy and I reading newspapers while relaxing on opposite sides of the bed was not an option.
Having achieved her goal of getting me pregnant she is now working on a PowerPoint presentation illustrating the process, which she intends to use to assist Bigboy when the time comes for him to explain sex to her (as yet unborn) brother. She is convinced that Bigboy will make a poor job of it and will need all the help he can get. Also, according to her, boys are dumber than girls and therefore need things explained better.
So no, it wasn’t about sex. This was the Religion Talk.
She has of course been exposed to the R-word for some time and counts herself as an enthusiastic Christian in the same way as she is a devoted fan of Santa Claus.
Christianity as her religion of choice has been influenced by her last two nannies. The first was a Jehovah’s Witness who would occasionally take Smuggies to the Kingdom Hall when I was away on travel duty. I banned her from dragging my daughter round the neighbourhood on their Saturday morning annoy-the-ungodly routine. When Smuggies questioned this, I asked whether she would appreciate me poking her awake on a weekend to tell her that I believe that the sky is orange and that watching TV is evil and insisting that she believe the same. She saw my point. She did, however, develop a taste for Bible stories.
The next nanny was also a Christian – though of a less annoying and far more pragmatic variety – and when Smuggies started worrying that “Mummy says she doesn’t believe in God, what will happen to her?” she soothed, “we’ll just have to pray for her.” So now my daughter is given to ostentatious nightly appeals to Gentle Jesus Meek and Mild who she implores in loud and pointed whispers to “bless Mummy and TAKE CARE OF HER” (subtext: even though she is an ungodly heathen).
On my first day of school my father gathered myself and my siblings together and said, “They will ask you what religion you are. You tell them you are a practicing atheist.” We were officially excused from Religious Instruction classes. I went anyway because I, too, found the Bible highly entertaining, but there was never any danger of me developing an allegiance to a deity as psychotic as the one lauded in the Isaac and Abraham story.
Smuggies on the other hand, has never been to a religious school (mine was nominally Anglican). At her last school, which follows the International Baccalaureate (IB) programme, they learned about religion in the context of cultural differences. In one segment they were allowed to choose different religious symbols and illustrate them in art class. She, predictably, chose Christianity and came home proudly bearing an unconvincingly rendered stuffed cross made of grungy grey denim and foam rubber. When I refused to let her sleep in my bed clutching this creepy object she explained patiently “there’s no need to be afraid Mummy, this isn’t the actual cross they crucified Jesus on.” My (Catholic) colleague at work found this hysterically funny and posited that perhaps the Romans had velcroed Jesus to the cross. (Which of course would put His suffering and sacrifice on our behalf into an entirely new light.)
I had as yet made no serious concerted attempt to convince her of the illogicality of religious belief since she might then start demanding inconvenient truths about Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, though it has to be said that all of these provide more tangible benefits and less horrendous consequences for non-compliance. I have instead encouraged her to think logically and for herself.
However, when we decided to relocate to Peru – a country so Catholic that at Easter it is de rigueur to visit seven churches in one day – I realised that the delicate balance between the atheism of the majority of my family and the lure of Jesus and his cherubim was about to be upset. Resorting once more to amazon, I bought her a great little book called ‘Maybe Yes, Maybe No: A Guide for Young Skeptics’ by Dan Barker.
Barker doesn’t mention religion at all until about halfway through the book. Instead, he demonstrates – by way of a ghost story – that “you should prove the truth of a strange story before you believe it.” He then teaches the essentials of critical thought through the application of scientific rules such as:
Check it out;
Repeat the experiment;
Try to prove it wrong; and, most importantly
Always Ask Questions.
And it seemed to be working. I didn’t shove the book down her throat. I waited until she had to practice her English reading anyway and then presented it to her. She got interested and read it in one sitting and seemed to have been adopting proper scientific methodology if the increase in “but Mum, why...?” questions is any indication.
But then she started school.
I had toyed with the idea of sending her to a local school but was told that all schools in Peru – other than private ones following the international curriculum – required children to produce upon enrolment baptism certificates not just for themselves but for both parents and, no doubt, all their ancestors. So off to an International School she went. I was slightly reassured by the brochure which insists that religion is taught “within a context which reflects the multicultural nature of our society”. I am hoping that this refers to global society rather than Peruvian society, which is fascinating but not noticeably multicultural – particularly when it comes to religion.
But this all became – pardon the pun – academic. Turns out that about 80% of the students are Peruvians, whose parents no doubt want the advantages of an international education within the comfort zone of familiar religious norms. On top of that, it seems that Catholic children take First Communion around the age of eight, so recent First Communion celebrations are currently the talk of the school yard among my daughters’ classmates.
I don’t know much about such things but, according to Wikipedia, in Latin American countries First Communion involves parties, girls wearing “fancy dresses and a veil attached to a headdress, as well as either long or short white gloves... Gifts of a religious nature are usually given, such as rosaries, prayer books, in addition to religious statues and icons. Gifts of cash are also common.” These days I understand that the distribution of party bags to school mates is also a feature.
Parties? Fancy white dresses with gloves? Gifts? Cash?!! Now they are speaking Smuggie-language!
She came home from school yesterday with a few post-communion trinkets and a million questions. Why hadn’t she done her First Communion? What is First Communion? How had she overlooked this lucrative revenue stream?
So we had The Talk.
First I had to explain the difference between the various Christian denominations. “Which ones are the ones that knock on doors?” “And what do Catholics believe in?”
I then pointed out that there were many other religions in the world and many contradictory and illogical beliefs and that she should keep asking questions and not automatically believe everything she heard. I touched on the role of religion in war and the important role of scientific enquiry in the development of the human race.
“So Mum, if God didn’t make us, where did we come from?” And there she had me.
I was buggered. I had omitted to prepare. I had forgotten to brush-up on Darwinian theory for nine-year-olds.
I gave it my best off-the-cuff shot but my burblings about the big bang, primordial soup, amoeba, and fish crawling out of the sea and growing wings and feet and then learning to use tools began to sound about as convincing as the virgin birth, resurrection, angels with flaming swords and burning bushes that talk. And worse, none of this gobbledygook seemed to involve presents or cool necklaces. How do you get a child to grasp the concept of evolution when it doesn’t involve presents?
I was losing my audience and it was incredibly tempting to throw up my hands and say, “You know what? God did make us. And it only took seven days. Now eat your dinner or you’re going to hell.”
One thing you have to say about atheism, it is never the easy option. But, la luta continua, so I’m off to surf amazon again.
TO BE CONTINUED...
TO BE CONTINUED...
Thursday 10 September 2009
In Search of Creative Solutions or "So your Honour, that's when I snuffed them..."
Well the water heater is fixed so I don’t have to bathe in a bucket anymore. On the other hand, life inside the pumpkin is getting increasingly stressful on the sleep front.
The bed is not that large and I find myself every night trapped between my daughter the nocturnal contortionist and my husband, who snores for Peru. My daughter refuses to sleep on the camp bed provided for her (it is really uncomfortable) and even if she starts off in it inevitably crawls in next to me at her first opportunity.
Her fertile imagination has made her terrified of the dark, being alone, doors, diseases. The other day I asserted my right to watch CNN instead of the Disney Channel and have paid a heavy price because she is now paranoid of swine flu. She seems to think she can catch swine flu from herself so she sits in the room rubbing antiseptic gel onto her hands and getting me to scratch her head when it itches. The TV remote control gets the same treatment even though she’s the only one allowed to use it.
Once she is asleep she grows an extra set of limbs and thrashes around while I try to protect her unborn brother from pre-natal decapitation. And for those of you who are now saying to yourselves “I told her so, should have trained her child to sleep in her own bed years ago” (you know who you are!), why not turn your self-satisfied omniscience to finding a cure for snoring?
I’m not talking about a benevolent buzzsaw here. This is the Hallelujah Chorus without benefit of tuning fork. I lie in bed at night with the words of that old limerick running through my head:
There once was a man from Calcutta
Who anointed his tonsils with butter
Thus reducing his snore
From a thunderous roar
To a soft, oleaginous mutter.
As the volume, tempo and pitch rise and fall I think to myself: did I marry the wrong nationality? Should I be seeking some similar culinary solution? Some pisco down the gullet? An ear of choclo inserted into each nostril?
As the hours pass I fantasize in verse:
An enterprising chick in Peru
At her husband’s snoring debut
Solved the problem right quick
With a dynamite stick
Two clothes pegs and super-stick glue.
So far my family members have survived each night unscathed (and wake up rather more rested than me!) but if we don’t find an apartment soon I cannot take responsibility for what may happen.
In other areas things are improving. I am slowly weaning my mother-in-law off my arm, though she still tends to loom over me at unexpected moments like a benevolent Norman Bates.
Daughter starts school Monday so I have been buying a most comprehensive uniform in grey and red which involves many layers. Shirt, tie, tunic, knee socks, jumper (or chompa as they call it here), and jacket for daily wear and an equally complicated kit for sports. In true schizophrenic latino fashion the shop assistant also sold me dark blue lycra shorts to wear under the tunic so the boys won’t see her underwear in the playground but, in the same breath, advised me to shorten the skirt to a couple of inches above the knee.
Smuggies starting school is a Good Thing. In addition to her getting an education I will now have access to the TV and will not have to deal too often with the recent excess of creativity which has resulted from prolonged inactivity in the house.
Over the last week she has designed and made a dress for her abuela fashioned - with the assistance of a pair of paper scissors and glitter glue - from an airline blanket she nicked off Virgin Atlantic. This was greeted with cries of delight but regret that – unfortunately – it did not fit. She then designed herself a rather sexy blouse by cutting out the crotch of a pair of tights and putting her arms through the leg bits as sleeves. Again, with liberal application of glitter glue.
It is not that I object to her creativity. It is most admirable. But you try explaining to a psyched-up nine-year-old that she can’t wear her work of art in public because the non-cognoscenti might think she is actually walking around with a pair of torn panty-hose around her neck.
She then decided that husband and I had not had enough time together and needed to go on a date. She persuaded her abuelo to drag the kitchen table and two dining chairs up on the roof where she jury-rigged a spotlight and set up dinner for two. I was required to put on a dress and when poor Bigboy got home he was stuffed into a tie and had his hair brushed. Then we were both herded upstairs and offered an extensive menu written in yellow highlighter on white paper (i.e. completely unreadable) which turned out to consist of a choice of leftovers served with great élan and much broken crockery from running up and down the stairs in the dark. All to the delighted stares of the neighbours since most roofs in Lima are used for hanging washing and nothing else.
Today she has been planning a great surprise which involves much secret research on the internet and I caught her packing my underwear into an overnight bag. I told her that whatever she is planning we can't afford it, so now she is trying to extract her wobbly tooth with a length of dental floss so the tooth fairy can subsidize the trip. This is accompanied by a gory blow-by-blow commentary. "Oook ummy, dere's blud!"
Enough! Let school begin.
The bed is not that large and I find myself every night trapped between my daughter the nocturnal contortionist and my husband, who snores for Peru. My daughter refuses to sleep on the camp bed provided for her (it is really uncomfortable) and even if she starts off in it inevitably crawls in next to me at her first opportunity.
Her fertile imagination has made her terrified of the dark, being alone, doors, diseases. The other day I asserted my right to watch CNN instead of the Disney Channel and have paid a heavy price because she is now paranoid of swine flu. She seems to think she can catch swine flu from herself so she sits in the room rubbing antiseptic gel onto her hands and getting me to scratch her head when it itches. The TV remote control gets the same treatment even though she’s the only one allowed to use it.
Once she is asleep she grows an extra set of limbs and thrashes around while I try to protect her unborn brother from pre-natal decapitation. And for those of you who are now saying to yourselves “I told her so, should have trained her child to sleep in her own bed years ago” (you know who you are!), why not turn your self-satisfied omniscience to finding a cure for snoring?
I’m not talking about a benevolent buzzsaw here. This is the Hallelujah Chorus without benefit of tuning fork. I lie in bed at night with the words of that old limerick running through my head:
There once was a man from Calcutta
Who anointed his tonsils with butter
Thus reducing his snore
From a thunderous roar
To a soft, oleaginous mutter.
As the volume, tempo and pitch rise and fall I think to myself: did I marry the wrong nationality? Should I be seeking some similar culinary solution? Some pisco down the gullet? An ear of choclo inserted into each nostril?
As the hours pass I fantasize in verse:
An enterprising chick in Peru
At her husband’s snoring debut
Solved the problem right quick
With a dynamite stick
Two clothes pegs and super-stick glue.
So far my family members have survived each night unscathed (and wake up rather more rested than me!) but if we don’t find an apartment soon I cannot take responsibility for what may happen.
In other areas things are improving. I am slowly weaning my mother-in-law off my arm, though she still tends to loom over me at unexpected moments like a benevolent Norman Bates.
Daughter starts school Monday so I have been buying a most comprehensive uniform in grey and red which involves many layers. Shirt, tie, tunic, knee socks, jumper (or chompa as they call it here), and jacket for daily wear and an equally complicated kit for sports. In true schizophrenic latino fashion the shop assistant also sold me dark blue lycra shorts to wear under the tunic so the boys won’t see her underwear in the playground but, in the same breath, advised me to shorten the skirt to a couple of inches above the knee.
Smuggies starting school is a Good Thing. In addition to her getting an education I will now have access to the TV and will not have to deal too often with the recent excess of creativity which has resulted from prolonged inactivity in the house.
Over the last week she has designed and made a dress for her abuela fashioned - with the assistance of a pair of paper scissors and glitter glue - from an airline blanket she nicked off Virgin Atlantic. This was greeted with cries of delight but regret that – unfortunately – it did not fit. She then designed herself a rather sexy blouse by cutting out the crotch of a pair of tights and putting her arms through the leg bits as sleeves. Again, with liberal application of glitter glue.
It is not that I object to her creativity. It is most admirable. But you try explaining to a psyched-up nine-year-old that she can’t wear her work of art in public because the non-cognoscenti might think she is actually walking around with a pair of torn panty-hose around her neck.
She then decided that husband and I had not had enough time together and needed to go on a date. She persuaded her abuelo to drag the kitchen table and two dining chairs up on the roof where she jury-rigged a spotlight and set up dinner for two. I was required to put on a dress and when poor Bigboy got home he was stuffed into a tie and had his hair brushed. Then we were both herded upstairs and offered an extensive menu written in yellow highlighter on white paper (i.e. completely unreadable) which turned out to consist of a choice of leftovers served with great élan and much broken crockery from running up and down the stairs in the dark. All to the delighted stares of the neighbours since most roofs in Lima are used for hanging washing and nothing else.
Today she has been planning a great surprise which involves much secret research on the internet and I caught her packing my underwear into an overnight bag. I told her that whatever she is planning we can't afford it, so now she is trying to extract her wobbly tooth with a length of dental floss so the tooth fairy can subsidize the trip. This is accompanied by a gory blow-by-blow commentary. "Oook ummy, dere's blud!"
Enough! Let school begin.
Sunday 6 September 2009
Barefoot, Pregnant and Bathing in a Bucket
I thought I had accomplished my exit from London with considerable aplomb. No long speeches or those icky farewell emails copied to All Staff Global where half the recipients have no clue who you are. Nope, some cheerful "see you laters" and a typically chaotic exit from MH with Charlene yelling at taxi drivers and my nearest and dearest colleagues milling around in the lobby waiting to wave me goodbye and retire to the pub.
It all went according to plan until we were about to board the plane at Heathrow the next morning and I realised I had forgotten my Kindle in the airport hotel. I cried from Heathrow to Schiphol with KLM flight attendants pressing water and tissues on me and no doubt wondering whether the crazy pregnant lady would do something unpredictable and force an emergency landing.
After being very supportive and concerned, once daughter had established that I had recovered she did not omit to point out "when you put me on a plane at the airport I never see you crying but you lose your electronic book and look what happens." Ah! Nine-year-old emotional blackmail, nothing like it!
So here I am in Lima missing my coven and my 3rd vice and getting used to being unemployed.
Spent the first weekend trawling round maternity clinics trying to get signed up to give birth to the baby Inca. They all say "ah señora, you're eight months pregnant? We're going to need all the monthly payments in advance..." I felt like Mary being dragged round Bethlehem on a donkey on Christmas Eve. And them fuckers at the NHS never put proper notes in my records. Every time I went for a blood test they just scribbled "bloods" instead of putting what the test was for so now I have to do a whole set of them again. I guess there's a reason the NHS is free.
We are staying with my in-laws, the three of us living in a bedroom painted pumpkin orange with matching curtains and sheets. The climate here is weird, coldish in the morning and hot in the afternoons but always either foggy or smoggy. It is officially the tail end of winter here and Limeños seem determined to insist on their seasons. Despite the temperature never dropping below 12 degrees they all walk around in boots and jackets. At home my father-in-law, a teeny tiny fellow with cheerful bushy eyebrows, walks around in fuzzy pyjamas and one of those knitted caps from the Peruvian highlands with ear flaps and strings, looking like an ethnically correct Santa's Helper.
My mother-in-law follows us around anxiously begging us to put on socks. She is convinced that we have arrived in Lima after a life of extraordinary luxury involving deep-pile carpet. "I know in the Caribbean you are used to warm weather, but you must wear shoes in the house here. The floors are dusty. Put on socks! You will catch a cold!" In vain do I remind her that we have spent the last six years in London where the depths of a Lima winter is often equivalent to a breezy summer's day.
My efforts to prove that my background and lifestyle is as middle-class as hers have been somewhat interrupted by the fact that, while Limeños would not dream of leaving the house without well-layered protection, they seem to think nothing of bathing every morning in bloody cold water! I, on the other hand, would laugh in the face of anyone who suggested that I put even a toe in the water at Brighton Beach at the height of summer. Since the heater in the house is broken, my in-laws now labour up the stairs every morning with a pot of boiling water so I can bathe in a bucket. Of course they won't let me carry it - I'm pregnant. My embarrassment is only very narrowly outstripped by my utter refusal to freeze my ass off even for hygienic purposes.
I am not allowed to leave home alone because, according to my husband, Lima is terribly dangerous, particularly for people like me who look so obviously foreign - by which I suppose he means that I am taller than most people and don't have straight black hair. Since he is working all week my mother-in-law accompanies me everywhere.
My mother-in-law is very nice but all mothers get a bit much after a while, particularly when one is pregnant. My own mum is a hoverer...circling around the periphery of my tolerance, occasionally seizing an opportunity to rush in and snatch shopping bags from me or put a hand on my forehead in a futile effort to take my temperature before I snap her hand off.
My mother-in-law is more of a clinger. She captures my arm and gives me lectures on pre-natal nutrition (Nada de grasa. Nada de gaseosa. Nada de condimentos. Nada de sal. ¡Mucha leche!); and marital relations (¡Tienes que poner reglas! ¡No gastes tu proprio dinero! ¡El tiene que mantener su propria familia como hombre!), stroking my hand all the while, gazing at me with great concern and sighing "¡ay hija!" by way of punctuation.
Since I no longer have the excuse of having to check my blackberry every five minutes, I am having to adjust to life with only one functional arm.
It all went according to plan until we were about to board the plane at Heathrow the next morning and I realised I had forgotten my Kindle in the airport hotel. I cried from Heathrow to Schiphol with KLM flight attendants pressing water and tissues on me and no doubt wondering whether the crazy pregnant lady would do something unpredictable and force an emergency landing.
After being very supportive and concerned, once daughter had established that I had recovered she did not omit to point out "when you put me on a plane at the airport I never see you crying but you lose your electronic book and look what happens." Ah! Nine-year-old emotional blackmail, nothing like it!
So here I am in Lima missing my coven and my 3rd vice and getting used to being unemployed.
Spent the first weekend trawling round maternity clinics trying to get signed up to give birth to the baby Inca. They all say "ah señora, you're eight months pregnant? We're going to need all the monthly payments in advance..." I felt like Mary being dragged round Bethlehem on a donkey on Christmas Eve. And them fuckers at the NHS never put proper notes in my records. Every time I went for a blood test they just scribbled "bloods" instead of putting what the test was for so now I have to do a whole set of them again. I guess there's a reason the NHS is free.
We are staying with my in-laws, the three of us living in a bedroom painted pumpkin orange with matching curtains and sheets. The climate here is weird, coldish in the morning and hot in the afternoons but always either foggy or smoggy. It is officially the tail end of winter here and Limeños seem determined to insist on their seasons. Despite the temperature never dropping below 12 degrees they all walk around in boots and jackets. At home my father-in-law, a teeny tiny fellow with cheerful bushy eyebrows, walks around in fuzzy pyjamas and one of those knitted caps from the Peruvian highlands with ear flaps and strings, looking like an ethnically correct Santa's Helper.
My mother-in-law follows us around anxiously begging us to put on socks. She is convinced that we have arrived in Lima after a life of extraordinary luxury involving deep-pile carpet. "I know in the Caribbean you are used to warm weather, but you must wear shoes in the house here. The floors are dusty. Put on socks! You will catch a cold!" In vain do I remind her that we have spent the last six years in London where the depths of a Lima winter is often equivalent to a breezy summer's day.
My efforts to prove that my background and lifestyle is as middle-class as hers have been somewhat interrupted by the fact that, while Limeños would not dream of leaving the house without well-layered protection, they seem to think nothing of bathing every morning in bloody cold water! I, on the other hand, would laugh in the face of anyone who suggested that I put even a toe in the water at Brighton Beach at the height of summer. Since the heater in the house is broken, my in-laws now labour up the stairs every morning with a pot of boiling water so I can bathe in a bucket. Of course they won't let me carry it - I'm pregnant. My embarrassment is only very narrowly outstripped by my utter refusal to freeze my ass off even for hygienic purposes.
I am not allowed to leave home alone because, according to my husband, Lima is terribly dangerous, particularly for people like me who look so obviously foreign - by which I suppose he means that I am taller than most people and don't have straight black hair. Since he is working all week my mother-in-law accompanies me everywhere.
My mother-in-law is very nice but all mothers get a bit much after a while, particularly when one is pregnant. My own mum is a hoverer...circling around the periphery of my tolerance, occasionally seizing an opportunity to rush in and snatch shopping bags from me or put a hand on my forehead in a futile effort to take my temperature before I snap her hand off.
My mother-in-law is more of a clinger. She captures my arm and gives me lectures on pre-natal nutrition (Nada de grasa. Nada de gaseosa. Nada de condimentos. Nada de sal. ¡Mucha leche!); and marital relations (¡Tienes que poner reglas! ¡No gastes tu proprio dinero! ¡El tiene que mantener su propria familia como hombre!), stroking my hand all the while, gazing at me with great concern and sighing "¡ay hija!" by way of punctuation.
Since I no longer have the excuse of having to check my blackberry every five minutes, I am having to adjust to life with only one functional arm.
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