I Can See Russia From Here

Back in the 80s Gary Trudeau’s Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoon Doonesbury ran a strip about longtime characters Rick Redfern and Joanie Caucus, two professionals who get married and have a baby. Rick comes home one day to find Joanie bathing their son in the bathtub.

“Hi” he says, “can I help?”

“No” she replies, “ 'help' implies that the responsibility of caring for our child is solely mine and that you are doing me a favour by offering. Go out and try again.”

Rick goes out and re-enters the bathroom.

“Hi. Can I co-parent?”

“No” says Joanie, “you always get the floor wet”.

And this is the problem you see. While one wants to insist on one’s hard-won right to equal help from the male half of the parenting equation, at the same time one is utterly convinced that he is in need of serious training before being let loose on a real live baby. And who has the time? Or the training materials?

My husband, aka Señor I’m Too Practical To Worry About Minor Details So Just Tell Me What To Do In Two Words Or Less Before I Lose Patience, is not going to stand still long enough for me to explain to him why it is not a good idea to doze off in front of the TV while balancing the baby on his paunch or instruct him in the fine art of diaper changing (“Yes, you got the location for the Pamper right but now there’s poo all over the bed. You have to clean him a bit before removing the dirty diaper from underneath his bottom! No, just holding him upside down under the shower is not a better idea”). So, unless I can borrow someone else’s baby, I have the choice of letting him practice on my own child or doing it all myself. Neither option provides any relaxation or time off for me because who can sleep with the anxiety of wondering whether one’s husband is accidentally boiling the baby in the bath?

In addition to forfeiting my conjugal rights to assistance, and possibly due to the trauma of being described as ‘housewife’ on Smuggitos’ birth certificate, I very nearly slipped into the Sarah Palin approach to motherhood.

Having been a working mother and sole breadwinner for many years, it is somewhat difficult to let go of the notion that I am free to make financial decisions at will. The novelty of being followed around a supermarket and cross-questioned as to the necessity of purchasing face cream or a particular brand of soap palls very quickly.

The day I was due to be booked into the maternity clinic there was an ad in one of the daily papers for a Peru Country Manager with an international NGO which specialises in organising working vacations for people (mostly from the US) who want to volunteer with various charitable projects aimed at assisting the less fortunate. It looked interesting so I sent off an application letter and CV and hastened off to give birth. A couple of days after Smuggitos was born I received an enthusiastic email saying that the Vice President for Operations would be in Lima within the next few days and could I meet with her?

Bearing in mind that I had recently been sliced open like a side of beef and could not yet walk unaided, it wasn’t the most enticing prospect but I thought of the price of face cream and said yes. I had to get my husband to drive me to a mall, borrow a wheelchair and prop me up in a beauty salon because after three days in the clinic I looked like Don King on a bad hair day. He also agreed to drive me to the hotel where the interview was to take place, steer me through the door and wait for me outside.

So – like ex-Governor Palin dribbling amniotic fluid while giving a speech – with a double dose of painkillers for breakfast and a post-operative velcro girdle I turned up at the appointed hour and called the VP from the reception desk only to be told that she’d mistaken the day and could I please come back tomorrow.

In the car on the way back home I swore profusely and threatened to tell them where to shove their prospective job. “It’s entirely your decision mi amor” said my husband and, in an apparent change of subject, inquired how many diapers per day on average I thought Smuggitos would be using.

I went back the next day.

I had at first omitted to fill in the part of the application form which asked for my last salary. The fact that it was to be quoted as an hourly rate indicated that this was hardly going to be a job which would keep me in the style to which I would like to become accustomed. When the VP insisted on knowing my previous remuneration package I first smiled modestly and said it wasn’t relevant as I would not be expecting a commensurate salary. The VP then named a salary range which would no doubt dazzle the inhabitants of one of Lima’s poorer slums and asked whether I was still interested in hearing more about the job. Keeping the cost of lamb chops firmly in mind, I said yes.

Basically on alternate fortnights I would be expected to act as sherpa to a group of do-gooding tourists paying to spend their holidays painting orphanages and teaching English. The other fortnights would be administrative work done via email from any location I felt like. Nothing too intellectually challenging but flexible enough to be attractive. “Right” I thought, “I can carry the baby around in one of those slings they use in the Peruvian highlands and breastfeed him while I’m waiting for flights to arrive.” The gringos would love it, a real live Baby Inca to add a touch of authenticity to their trip. Maybe I could carry a tin cup and collect tips, charge extra for photos.

A couple of days later I got a call from the States. Apparently they thought I was the greatest thing since sliced bread and was by far the best candidate but, given my previous salary, they doubted very much I would stay long in the job so had decided to give it to someone else. My dreams of financial independence evaporated.

Of course, having now rediscovered the realities of taking care of a new baby, getting rejected was a Good Thing.

My husband keeps muttering darkly about the exorbitant price of diapers and powdered milk and I have noticed that on purchasing the Sunday papers he invariably hands me the classifieds section first. Well he can sod right off. The only reason he gets to read the Sunday papers at all is because I’m taking care of the baby.

So I am temporarily acclimatising myself to reminding my husband to pay the light bill as he rushes off to work every morning. Once I’ve got Smuggies off to school; fed, bathed and changed Smuggitos; arranged by telephone in tortured Spanish the installation of internet and telephone; lugged a large bag of dirty clothes to the lavanderia on the corner; walked to the supermercado and back with the shopping; and made daily progress on unpacking my books, I can settle down in front of the TV and watch some international news. And when I see Sarah Palin on her book tour or burbling some fresh incoherency on climate change, cradling her baby all the while, I don’t despair. Very soon I’m going to get tired of playing house and will need a real job before I lose touch with the international arena. But until then, if I sit on the steps of the balcony and really crane my neck, I’m sure I can see Russia from here.

Suffer the Little Children

Despite advertising itself as following the international curriculum, my daughter’s very expensive school is international only in the sense that it charges in US dollars. In her last school, in a class of 23 students on average there were 18 different nationalities. Here, the students are predominantly Peruvian and Catholic. They have Religious Instruction classes where they learn hymns and compose acrostics on JESUS CHRIST. Other religions are superficially examined under the rubric of ‘Traditions’ in their Unit of Inquiry class.

There is a House system, meant to promote teamwork and camaraderie but in reality increasing the pressure to conform – all perceived infractions are not just punished on an individual basis but also attract demerit points for your House. So if you fuck up you have to deal with your own sense of failure as well as the opprobrium of your schoolmates. And, just to ensure that gender roles are well inculcated from the get-go, the Houses are headed by House Masters assisted by House Mothers.

Poor Smuggies has therefore been struggling to cope with the shock of moving from an environment where diversity was the norm to one where conformity is essential. After a joyous first day where she was the toast of the girls in her class, things went rapidly downhill. The teacher told me that she was repeatedly pestered with questions as to why she had not done First Communion. She replied politely at first but after continuously being badgered she said “my Mum doesn’t believe in God, so I didn’t do it”. I understand from the teacher that this caused great consternation among the students including the conclusion that “your Mum must be a very bad person”. Smuggies defended me valiantly and insisted that I had even been voted the coolest mum in the school by her former schoolmates but it seems she has been marked for all eternity from that day.

To this initial setting apart was added the inevitable challenge of finding a niche in an already established social order. Girls are in a minority in her class and there is a strong clique led by Florencia, an Alpha female with the much-admired talent of being able to hold her breath and turn bright red at will. She apparently rules the assorted Alejandras, Andreas and Antonellas with an iron fist. Initially welcomed as a new recruit, Smuggies fell afoul of her when, having refused an order to be the counter in a game of hide and seek when it wasn’t her turn, she was told that she was to count “because I say so. And if you don’t I will make sure that no one plays with you ever again.”

Smuggies resisted and the sentence of ostracism was carried out with all the girls of her class swearing a solemn oath never to play with her again. She has been spotted by the teacher hiding behind walls on the playground. When asked why she is not mixing she pretends that she’s playing hide and seek with someone who is at the present moment hiding.

She understood much faster than I did that while it is all right to make fancy PowerPoint presentations on Hanukkah as a class project, diversity just don’t cut it on the playground. She is both desperate to fit in and subconsciously indignant at the need to do so. In her quest for acceptance she is vigorously suppressing all that makes her unique. In the hope of achieving straight hair she has managed to shave off a patch at the front and, when she was singled out as having a beautiful voice and selected to sing a solo in the Christmas show, she was at first delighted and then flatly refused to do it.

“I don’t want them to like me for my voice Mum.”

She falls over herself to be obliging and suffers agonies of anxiety in her desire to please. When the girls in her class liked the chocolate spread sandwich she brought for a snack, she swiped the entire bottle to take to school for them. One girl enjoyed the mango she had for dessert so now I have to send several each day. When she was selected to represent her House in basketball and running on sports day she threw up from the sheer terror of failing because she saw it as a last chance to gain glory and acceptance.

This desire to please combined with the daily frustration of being the outsider is explosive and inevitable leads to trouble. The other day I got a call from the school. They were very sorry to tell me that my daughter had been involved in an ‘incident’. A boy had been teasing her relentlessly in the playground so she aimed a kick at him, missed and kicked another boy. She was very sorry indeed, apologised profusely and, in order to make it up to him, offered to take revenge on his behalf on anyone he cared to identify. He accepted this offer and pointed out a third boy, an innocent bystander, whom Jade then obligingly kneed in the nuts.

When hauled up before authority she admitted that she knew what she had done was wrong and that violence is unacceptable but kept asking in a hopeful voice, “are you going to expel me?” She now has a permanent black mark on her school record and I’ve been called in for a meeting with the school psychologist.

She has since made up with Florencia the Red but still hides behind walls in the playground. Why? “I know the other girls want to play with me Mum but they swore an oath to God” so she doesn’t want to be responsible for consigning their souls to eternal damnation if they break it. I told her if she got me God’s cell phone number I’d call and have a chat with him about it but she was indignant at my frivolity.

“Cell phones weren’t invented back then Mum!”

So now I’m contemplating writing a letter to the Pope asking for special dispensation to let the other girls play with my daughter at school.

Ever wonder how religious wars get started?

This Season’s Must-Have Accessory

While mothers-in-law can be intensely irritating and are a legitimate target for blogging abuse, grandmothers are absolutely indispensable and must be celebrated.

Like certain exotic breeds of marsupial, they are at their best at night when they are especially good at tapping on the door of the pumpkin at 2.00 a.m. and asking to “borrow” the baby – as if they just happened to be passing by and were seized by a sudden urge to hang out with their screaming grandson.

And despite their often out-dated theories on infant development (don’t let them keep their knees bent or else they’ll turn out bow-legged) they have street cred. One certainly cannot navigate the labyrinthine childcare bureaucracy of this country without an abuela.

In Peru, while most vaccinations are available in private clinics and can be easily obtained at a price, the very first one – which has to be given before the child is 20 days old – is only administered in the public hospitals. It is probably the State’s way of keeping tabs on births. In order to obtain this vaccination, which is only dispensed at 8.15 a.m., three days a week, one has to travel to the centre of Lima at the crack of dawn to “hacer la cola”.

Queuing is a way of life in Lima and there are individuals that make their living at it. They get up early and stand in whatever line they think will be most profitable and then sell their place to desperate latecomers. Others arrive early, convince the person in line in front of them to hold their place and then go and have a leisurely breakfast. Thus, you can arrive at a reasonable hour and join a reasonable length line only to have 5 or 10 people suddenly appear in front of you just as the doors are opening. This is seen as perfectly legitimate and draws not a murmur of protest from either the people in the queue or the police keeping order.

It is advisable to arrive in el centro well before 8.15 a.m. because vaccinations are dispensed until they run out and those remaining in the queue have to start all over again on the next available day. Of course no one but an abuela knows these things. I arrived with mine just after 7.00 a.m. and joined a line of what appeared to be three mamas but which we discovered upon canny inquires by my mother-in-law, was actually a line of seven.

All the mamas were equipped with the essentials: 1) a large bundle of blankets; and 2) an abuela carrying a bottomless Mary Poppins-like handbag out of which they produce at intervals thermos flasks of hot water, tins of formula, baby wipes, diapers, hats and more blankets. Those few mamas not fortunate enough to be in possession of an abeula bring along nervous husbands who busy themselves fiddling with their cell phones or pretending to look for parking spaces for their non-existent cars.

Having established your place on the pavement the baby-comparison ritual begins. As the morning chill gives way to the standard light fog of dust that settles over Lima daily, layers of blankets are cautiously peeled back, a smorgasbord of baby heads emerge and the chorus begins. “¡Ay que preciosa!” “¡Pero que bonito!” “¡Cuanto tiempo tiene?” “¡Que muñequito!” The mamas try to look modest while the abuelas proudly compare statistics.

My mother-in-law is delighted that Smuggitos is the smallest baby in the queue.

“He was born even tinier” she says with perverse pride, “2.750 kilos and only 47 cm!”

His nearest rival – also newborn – is swathed in a dense cloud of pink blankets, the first layer of which when removed reveals a large round face the colour of brick topped by an impossibly thick thatch of black hair which starts at the bridge of the perspiring nose. This kid is several weight divisions above Smuggitos.

Once the doors are opened the tyranny of the enfermeras begins. The vaccination department is run by a team of diminutive nurses who swiftly separate the mamas and the abuelas. The mamas are packed in an orderly manner onto a row of benches while the abuelas are banished back to the pavement. The mamas are given a brief lecture: “wait your turn, it will take about 10 minutes each, be sure to have your vaccination cards with you. Can’t tell you if there are vaccines available, you’ll only find out once you get into the inside room.”

The abuelas stand outside on the pavement and fret.

“But I have to give the leche.”

“The baby needs another blanket, ¡mucho aire!”

“I have to carry the baby. My daughter had a C-section. They cut her from hip to hip and look at the size of the child. She weighs a ton!” says the grandmother of the pink cumulus nimbus, with some justification.

Inside, the mamas, bereft of their shepherds, are being bullied by the enfermeras.

“Señora, how old is that child? Six months? And you are only now bringing him for his shot?”

“Where is his vaccination card? What do you mean you have to ask your mother? You don’t know? It’s your baby!”

“What do you mean the clinic told you to bring him for la vacuna now? Forget what the clinic says, you must take the child to the centro de servicios medical in your district.”

The enfermeras reserve a special degree of contempt for mamas who turn up with prescriptions or ordenes from a private clinic.

“What is your baby suffering from? Nothing? She must have something wrong with her if the clinic gave you this piece of paper just to get a vacuna. Typhoid? Polio? Does she have a fever? I don’t care if your doctor says she’s healthy. There must be something wrong if you have a prescription for a vaccination. No, your mother can’t come inside and explain to me. Wait over there.”

Occasionally, when the security guard at the door is distracted, an abuela will dart in and attempt to assist their bewildered offspring. They are quickly shooed away and return to the pavement where they compare notes. This is where all the essential information is obtained: which public hospital has the surest supply of vaccinations and what time you need to turn up there. Which clinics charge the most and what the new reglas are with regard to a variety of state services. “Did you know that the ID card office has moved to Av Javier Prado opposite el Banco Nacional? Sí, about 6 months ago, and now you have to go between 8.00 a.m. and noon to apply and it takes a week but you can give the official 10 soles and he’ll do it for you de una vez. Go on a Wednesday, the line is shorter.”

There is no number to call or webpage to visit to find out this stuff. It is only available on the abuelanet and if you don’t have one you are, as the Peruvians say, jodido. So the next time my suegra gives me one of her backhanded compliments (“How nice you look today, but hija, don’t ever wear that jumper again.” “Your hair looks great, now that’s how I like to see you!”) I will smile serenely and silently thank whichever deity sent her.

"It Takes a Village..." or The Open Source Approach to Childrearing

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a mother in possession of a newborn baby must be in want of advice.

It matters not at all that my daughter is living proof that I have raised at least one child with no visible signs of trauma or abnormality. Completely irrelevant. I am a new mother and therefore by definition completely incompetent. The minute I even try to lift the baby the cry goes up “the spine! The spine! Be careful with his head!” as if I’m going to wring the child out like a piece of laundry. From clinic to home to the doctor’s waiting room, I am constantly observed and instructed. I took Smuggitos to get his passport and was thoroughly and intimately interrogated by an elderly woman in the immigration office waiting room.

“¡Ah que preciosura!” (they always start off like that). “Are you breastfeeding? And what else? Forget formula, you need to feed him lots of water! That will make him nice and fat. Eight glasses of water a day, that’s what he needs, believe me. And his skin? Odourless vaseline all over, its miraculous. You’re travelling? Remember to stuff lots of cotton wool in his ears when the plane takes off. Have you circumcised him? No?!! But you must! If you don’t, you’ll regret it later, his sex life will be terrible.”

I commented that I had consulted with the male members of my family, all of whom were intact and had no complaints about their sex lives. She peered at me incredulously, “¿y de donde eres señora?” obviously making a mental note to report the entire Caribbean region to the UN Human Rights Council.

And since when is breastfeeding a spectator sport? People peer over my shoulder and make observations: “Try the other one” “Sit up straighter” “Lean forward” “Are you sure you have any milk?” “The spine! The spine! Be careful with his head!” I had nurses – each with her own infallible technique to demonstrate – actually climb onto the bed to try and poke my nipple into the baby’s mouth from different angles.

Even my husband has ventured a “but my mother says...” He’s damned lucky marital relations have not yet been resumed because if they had, he wouldn’t be getting any.

I mentioned before that my mother-in-law is remarkable at burping the baby, but gas comes in many forms, and in return for this invaluable service I am subjected to endless and repetitive philosophical ay hija discourses and minute instructions as to how to hold, feed, bathe and generally care for my son. My interpretation of the Baby Inca’s cries, squeaks and grunts are all discarded in favour of her own – apparently he speaks the Chiclayan dialect of her region.

My stress levels are not assisted by the fact that, having spent 9 months growing a magnificent pair of boobs, the little ingrate now refuses to utilize them because he's been surreptitiously introduced to the joys of bottled formula. Despite insisting that I wanted to breastfeed exclusively the nurses in the clinic, instead of bringing him to me in the night when he cried for food (“you were sleeping so well señora”), kept “topping him up” like a damned phonecard. He is now wedded to fast flowing bottles and refuses to put in the graft required to source his meals from my chest so I’m struggling with breast pumps and “nipple confusion” and trying to limit his intake of formula and other fluids. Meanwhile, my mother-in-law keeps trying to feed him aniseed-flavoured water and manzanilla tea to help his digestion. Why is everyone trying to irrigate my child? What is this obsession with water?

In the face of this constant onslaught of goodwill I have developed Coping Strategies.

Have you ever wondered what the purpose of baby talk is? Why adults tend to start babbling like village idiots the moment a baby approaches? I used to think that it was one of those useless Darwinian leftovers like the appendix. However, I have discovered that it is nothing of the sort. In fact, it is an evolutionary necessity, as important a survival mechanism as opposable thumbs or the fight-or-flight response triggered by adrenalin.

For example, when my suegra announced that she was inviting herself to the first doctor visit, I instinctively picked up Smuggitos and cooed to him: “Of course your abuela is coming to the doctor with us! Yes she is! Yes she is! She wants to make sure that silly mummy is taking good care of her ickle wickle grandson doesn’t she? Yes she does! Yes she does! But don’t worry, your mummy is a grown woman who is perfectly capable of taking care of her Smuggitos. Yes she is! Yes she is!”

This automatic ‘talk to the baby’ response by the mother of the newborn in the face of territorial challenges sends a subtle message while avoiding direct confrontation with the challenger. It also eases tension along the jaw line and keeps me out of prison, where I hear the wifi connections are not great.

Secondly, I am invoking my constitutional right to Make Stuff Up and Have My Passionate Beliefs Respected No Matter How Illogical. I have noticed that quoting doctors’ orders has absolutely no effect in deflecting unwanted home remedies but anything ‘traditional’ or ‘customary’ is greeted with respectful nods and total compliance.

Before checking me out of the clinic the paediatrician gave me a brochure with childcare instructions, including the stricture that I not use any kind of girdle or umbligero (which I can only translate as a “bellybuttoner”) on the child. Turns out that it is customary to strap down babies’ midsections so their bellybuttons will be innies and not outies.

My suegra says that with each of her children she taped a coin to their navels to avoid this social disgrace. “I did it to you, and yours doesn’t stick out” she sniffed at my husband with impeccable logic. I pointed out that neither does mine and I was not subjected to such measures. “You were obviously too young to remember” she replied. (“But with Smuggies I never...” I began, but gave it up. I am saving my energy for the interception of enriched liquids.)

I was instructed to blow on the top of the baby’s head three times to stop the hiccups. My husband was sceptical at first but reported excitedly that he tried it and it worked like a charm. “You have to wait about 15 minutes before they stop of course, but it works!”

My suegro told Smuggies that we have to wrap red string around the baby’s hand to ward of the evil eye from bad adults. This is similar to the Trinidad and Tobago practice of giving babies bracelets of black beads to wear to ward off ‘maljo’ (mal yeux or ‘bad eye’).

As far as I am concerned they can adorn the Baby Inca like a Christmas tree as long as they let me decide what to feed him. I therefore plan to trot out traditions at every available opportunity. As a test, I announced that we have to bury his 'navelstring' (what we Trinis call the remnant of the umbilical cord which falls off after a week or so) under a plant in the backyard. Shovels are being sourced as we speak.

From now on, I shall invent traditions at my convenience. The next time anyone suggests I feed Smuggitos agua I will inform them that in the Caribbean it is considered very bad luck to give a baby water before 6 months of age because then the water jumbies will become restless and floods will inundate the neighbourhood. If the threat of tsunamis doesn't work, nothing will.

As I was saying to my son just the other day “we’re going to fill them up with a pack of lies aren’t we Smuggitos? Yes we are! Yes we are!”


Coming Soon...This Season’s Must-Have Accessory

The Return of Inca Rule

To paraphrase the French, Le Baby Inca est arrivé!

Now hands up everyone who wants to hear all the gory details...

No, I though not. Neither do I wish to re-live them. However, should you ever have the opportunity of being interned in a maternity clinic in Peru you may find the following medical terminology useful:

“Un dolorcito” (a little hurt) is how they describe shoving a big epidural needle into your spine (no doubt also known in NHS circles as an “Optional Extra”).

“Un momentito” is what the anaesthesiologist says when he answers his cell phone in mid-operation.

“Un bañito” is when the nurses give you a perfunctory wash in your bed and then hose you down with your £40 Yves St Laurent Rive Gauche Eau de Toilette like its Limacol.

“fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck” is what you are allowed to mutter pleasantly under your breath while hobbling to the bathroom for the first time with a six-inch incision in your abdomen, because no one will understand what you are saying.

The most traumatic moment however, was being described as “housewife” on the birth certificate. Husband made all the right patronising noises about it being the “hardest and most important job in the world” blah blah blah. I resisted asking him whether he’d have accepted having his macho latino self described as “stay-at-home father”. Though at that point he might actually have said yes and meant it, such was his euphoria.

It won’t last of course. He’s still at the “ohmigod he’s so wonderful but why does he sleep all the time?” phase. I warned him in advance that he would be hovering over the crib poking the child awake to make sure he’s still alive and he scoffed at me. He did exactly that on day one and yesterday remarked in a disgusted kind of way that it is a good thing that breathing is required as a sign of life since, if it was optional, Smuggitos wouldn’t do that either. He will soon eat those words – no doubt raw with onions and a splash of lime juice.

Smuggies is also euphoric – though more cautiously so. In the run-up to the birth she was waxing philosophical about “the end of 100% of love” and “I’ll quite understand if you guys like him more that you like me. After all, babies are cuter than people”. I assured her that for most people babies are indeed cute but are, at best, fleetingly diverting, quickly becoming boring because they lack conversational skills so she and her brother would certainly not be appealing to the same audience.

I then had to get creative about the mathematics of love, explaining that it is not a finite resource and therefore not apportioned on a percentage basis. She was unconvinced. I tried to float the theory that there were different “love resources” and that there was therefore “Smuggie Love” which is specific to her and cannot be subtracted from in favour of “Smuggito Love”. She did not openly jeer at the suggestion but I suspect she only pretended to accept it to get me to shut up.

Having now returned to the pumpkin after the artificially regulated environment of the clinic, everybody is struggling to adjust to the Atahualpa in our midst.

Husband is caught between parental enthusiasm and extreme irritation at the minutiae of childcare. Having sweated over assembling the crib; accepted (with poor grace) that reading the instructions BEFORE installing the car seat might yield a more successful result than his first few efforts; and supported me in and out of bed to go to the bathroom; when then asked to find a specific white muslin cloth, carefully washed and sterilised for the purpose of wiping excess milk off the royal face, he snarled “why can’t you just use this?” and tossed me a sweaty T-shirt that had been draped for some days over the shoe rack.

Smuggies on the other hand has been vigorously playing both sides of the coin. She imperiously cites her previous childcare experience (a year-old cousin in the Dominican Republic) and insists on holding him, burping him, singing to him, walking him and generally hovering possessively over him. She then reports to everyone in an exhausted and long-suffering voice "I got no sleep whatsoever! I've been up since 4.00 am with the baby".

My father-in-law, having cleaned the house to within an inch of its life, seems to be at a bit of a loose end now. He comes in every morning before leaving for work and every evening on coming home to see whether the baby is awake. Asleep or awake, he peers proudly at him and then scuttles away.

My suegra is keeping me fed and watered (or rather chicken soupy wouped) and trying her best to resist teaching me how to breastfeed. She has also taken in good part our repeated rejection of her nutritional suggestions for Smuggitos. Breast milk only for 6 months is not a concept that she is familiar or comfortable with. She is however, a world champion burper and is now the official Gas Czar.

As for me, I’m suffering all the indignities of the barely ambulant. In addition, given the newly realigned family priorities and the sheer weight of responsibility he is now shouldering, I have been too terrified to ask my husband to retrieve my toothbrush from the bottom of whichever bag he shoved it into when we were leaving the clinic. However, I figure if I breathe ardently on him for a few days he may take the hint.

Peruvian Conversations Parts I & II

Part I

I have been reading on the internet about the Nesting Instinct, “the name given to the distinctive urge to clean, tidy, and organize that occurs at the end of the pregnancy and is a sign that your baby is about to make its appearance”.

All true. My father-in-law’s got it. He’s been cleaning the house from top to bottom for the last two days. I get up at 5.00 am to use the toilet and he’s scrubbing the sink. I try to make breakfast and he says “don’t use the stove, I just sprayed oven cleaner all over it.” He’s been bustling around like a maniac with his trousers tucked into the top of his socks, crawling behind furniture with dust cloths and carrying buckets and mops up and down the stairs to clean up whenever anyone walks past.

This is a good thing because it looks like we’ll be living in the pumpkin until after Smuggitos is born. We’ve found an apartment and our shipment has arrived from London but a few problems have cropped up.

First, it is not easy to cram a three-story-townhouse-with-back-garden’s worth of stuff into a three bedroom second floor apartment (no elevator, no balcony). Six sturdy Peruvians stoically dragged boxes up and down the stairs, calling out the contents at the door so they could be stowed in the right room. (As an interesting aside, it is fascinating how many different inflections of dismay and disbelief can be infused into the phrase “more books”.)

Secondly, the container arrived with a large dent in the side and corresponding damage to a number of bits of furniture. Not, unfortunately, the ones I would have liked.

If memory serves, it was V.S. Naipaul in A House for Mr Biswas who introduced the concept of ‘insuranburn’. In my case it was a matter of insuranhope. With any luck my ancient TV and the more hideous of my accumulated 'artworks' would be ruined and I could buy myself a nice flatscreen with the insurance money. Unfortunately, the TV survived but my California King-sized mattress arrived with all the springs sticking out. If you have ever seen the size of my husband you will understand what a problem this is. And until the insurance claim is approved by the company in London I cannot throw out any of the damaged stuff. This means that at the moment there is no space to organise anything, let alone install such basic necessities as fridge, stove and washing machine. So for the moment, the future is orange.

Last week I took advantage of the nesting instinct and had my very first solo taxi ride. It was cunningly done. I had an appointment for my weekly check-up with the obstetrician and I omitted to remind anyone until I was fully bathed and dressed, then I waddled nonchalantly down the stairs and out the front door saying breezily, “voy a la clinica” before anyone could stop me. Of course, my mother-in-law was not home at the time. She had left my father-in-law in charge of my welfare and he would no doubt catch hell if anything happened to me, but he was safely ensconced under the refrigerator at the time.

Getting to the clinic was no problem, it's well known and on a large avenida. I was a bit nervous about getting back in case I had to give complicated instructions in Spanish, given that my sense of direction sucks. I once tried to drive to a shopping mall 15 minutes from my cousin’s home in North Miami Beach and ended up in Boca Raton. In London, even with a Tom Tom navigation device I got consistently lost. (That was not my fault however – the Tom Tom had one of those supercilious female voices which you just know belongs to a woman better looking than you and who is obviously giving herself a manicure rather than paying attention to where you’re supposed to be going.)

Anyway, on leaving the clinic I followed all my suegra’s taxi-taking advice to the letter: “Don’t take the smaller taxis, don’t pay more than 7 soles, and you must look at their faces first.” She always walks along a line of waiting taxis, craning her neck into each window to scrutinize the driver minutely before deciding on the 3rd or 4th in line and opening negotiations. I did all this but realised that she had never got around to explaining what I should be looking for in the faces, so I chose the best looking one and jumped in.

And had a most Peruvian conversation.

I asked to be taken to the junction of avenidas Canada y Rosa Toro. “Ah” he said in instant recognition, “the street with all the cevicherias”. I had noticed there were a lot of restaurants devoted to this favourite Peruvian dish near to the house so I confirmed the location.

“So,” he said, letting in the clutch and inserting himself into the traffic, “you’re going to eat ceviche”.

“No, I’m going to my house.”

“Oh, you don’t like ceviche? There are lots of chifas on Rosa Toro as well” (chifa is Peruvian for a Chinese restaurant).

“I know, but I’m just going home.”

“So you like ceviche?”

He was obviously irretrievably ceviche-focused so I confessed that raw fish in lime juice is fine but that I’m not a big fan of onions. Clearly I was a foreigner.

“Where are you from? The Caribbean? Don’t they have fish there?” (yes, and onions) “What else do they have? Fruit? They must have fruit. Fruit is good, I like fruit, we have good fruit in Peru.”

I admitted to fruit and to fish but gave Peru the edge when it came to other seafood and shellfish. He was fascinated to meet someone from the Caribbean and wanted to know all about it.

“So what other food do you have?”

I attempted to broaden the scope of the conversation by telling him about Trinidad’s proximity to Venezuela, the hispanic influence on Christmas music, etc. He listened politely and nodded in a fascinated kind of way.

“So do you have sugar? And coffee? No coffee? What do you export?”

Petroleum and natural gas left him completely cold.

“What about rum? En el Caribe you must have rum!”

By this time, if I had had any rum I would have drained the bottle and hit him over the head with the empty.

Until I acquire a Peruvian accent and a non-foreign look, that is the last time I attempt to leave the house alone. Next time I will drag my father-in-law out from under the fridge and haul him to the clinic with me.

Part II

While my suegro behaves like Mr Clean on steroids, my husband, on the other hand, spends a great deal of time poking my protruding belly button in a fascinated sort of way and asking questions like “how do you hold them again?” and “I don’t really have to learn how to change diapers do I?” (He was shocked to discover that a self-cleaning diaper had not yet been invented and I had to explain that it isn’t the diaper per se that needs to be cleaned.)

A few weeks ago his colleague's wife gave birth early and that catapulted him into a whirlwind of activity – rushing around to finish paying the clinic and exhorting Smuggies to help me pack the overnight bag. So he thinks his work is done.

But, as I have mentioned before, you get a lot of looking after here if you are pregnant (not necessarily from one’s husband, obviously).

Having also sampled the medical ambiance in the US and UK, I have reached the conclusion that one of the main differences is that outside of those two countries, medical professionals are more willing to communicate directly with their patients rather than strictly between each other. In the States, if you have good insurance you can – and do – get referred for every test known to man, each performed by yet another specialist. But at no stage will said specialist actually tell you what they find. They hook you up to complicated machines, squirt you with gel, attach electrodes and squish you into claustrophobic tubes, gazing portentously at monitors and shaking their heads dubiously all the while. Then they retreat to a back room, consult with various technicians and write lengthy reports in code. Ask them anything and they say “the report will be sent to your doctor” (Or rather, in the case of the US your ‘Primary Care Physician’ or in the UK, ‘your GP’s surgery’.) Depending on the facial expression or the state of his/her digestion, you then spend the next week thinking you have an inoperable brain tumour or some new and fascinating disease. The Primary Care Physician is no better, so cautious is the diagnosis that you will either end up being sent for more tests or being asked to sign several disclaimer forms before you are told that it’s merely the common cold. It must be the fear of being sued.

Here in Lima, I get sent for loads of tests with specialists who are more than happy to give me their opinion and to explain the process as they go along. I can now tell you exactly what a foetus’s kidney looks like and the possible causes and effects of a misplaced placenta.

Of course, there is such a thing as too much information.

Because the level of my amniotic fluid seemed to be lower than normal, I was sent to have a Foetal Non-Stress Test, which involves monitoring the baby’s movements and heart rate via electrodes attached to my tummy by two elastic belts for about ½ hour. It is to ensure that the baby is moving strongly and can resist the rigours of childbirth.

The test was performed by an elderly doctor who bore a striking resemblance to the mad scientist in Back to the Future. Like one of those specialist players they have in American football who sits on the bench the entire game and only gets called on to punt the ball, he is not in regular circulation, and had to be summoned from the lower floors of the clinic trundling his monitor, to which he attached me, giving us an enthusiastic history of late-stage foetal testing all the while.

According to him, years ago they used to test foetal blood by inserting a needle through the cervix and drawing a vial of blood from the baby’s head. But they found that since the head was being squeezed in the pelvis, the blood wasn’t useful in indicating stress. Then they invented a test where they would insert a syringe directly through the mother’s womb and into the baby to draw blood. 1 in 6 babies died that way. “They never forgive you when that happens you know. I used to do those but then I started telling patients that my arm was hurting so I couldn’t do it. Who wants those kinds of odds?”

“Nowadays” he continued, “all the monitoring is indirect. You can’t take the baby out, check it, then put it back in, so this test is the most important. I’ve done about 100,000 of these. Forget all the stuff you see on the ultrasound screens” he continued, attaching the electrode to where the ultrasound of 10 minutes before had indicated Smuggitos’ bottom was located. “Here’s the heart” he said.

When the monitor indicated no cardiac activity he adroitly slid the electrode to the correct location and continued unabashed. “Yes indeed, this test is crucial. I once had a lady in here – same age as you actually – almost no foetal movement, we had to operate so fast! The baby was born 900 grams. The placenta was the size of a dinner roll and as white a chalk. Another few hours and that would have been it.”

By this time both myself and the baby were wiggling furiously. He continued to regale us with tales of near misses and unintended disasters the whole 30 minutes of the test. “You don’t mean to kill patients you know. Doctors usually don’t but sometimes you try to cure them and it has the opposite effect. You have to be so careful, people don’t pardon that kind of thing.” He unstrapped me, pronounced that we had passed the test with flying colours and accompanied us back to the upper floors. “Look at that” he said as we waited for the elevator, sliding open the window and pointing upward. “About 6 months ago a man jumped from the top floor. He bounced off that air conditioning unit right there and landed in the courtyard below. You could see his feet sticking up.”

“Did he die?” I asked.

“Very much so! He was a depressive and had been diagnosed with severe arthritis. He asked the doctor what the prognosis was and the doctor told him it was incurable so he jumped. Obviously there’s no cure but arthritis isn’t fatal. He thought it was like cancer and he was going to die. That’s the problem with some of these doctors. They have no tact.”

Mothers-in-Law and Other Saints

Disclaimer: On either side of the nine months of a planned pregnancy is a period known as the TWW – the Two Week Wait. The first is the nail-biting anxiety between fertilisation of the egg and the earliest possible official confirmation of pregnancy. The second is the last two weeks of waiting for the due date. This is generally characterised by a striking resemblance to a beached whale and extreme irritation and grumpiness. Given that I have now entered the second of the TWWs, whatever I write in the following posts may, with impunity, be vigorously denied at a later date.


Now I may be a lot of things but I am NOT cute! Why then does my mother-in-law insist on treating me like a puppy in a pet shop window?

Whenever I am in her presence she marvels continuously and vocally at my achievements, drawing the attention of anyone within earshot to my many talents:

“Oooh look, look! She’s making pancakes! ¡Que bonita! And you know what? She went to the market all by herself today!”

She gazes wonderingly at me, shaking her head in silent pleasure when she has run out of “ay hijas” for five minutes or so.

It is completely unnerving. I do not cope well with being cooed at. Treacly sentiment makes me itch. And I have discovered that I am completely allergic to being addressed in the diminutive.

This is a peculiarly Spanish language affectation, where speakers use the diminutive form (like sticking –ito or –cita onto the end of a noun) in order to express not only the smallness of something but affection. It is usually used when speaking to small children but also by adults trying to show intimacy or fondness. In moderation it can be endearing. In excess...not so much.

Being coaxed every lunchtime to eat “una sopita con un pollocito y un arrozcito” is the Spanish conversational equivalent of being invited to have some “soupy-woupy with some chicky-wicken and some ricey-wicey”. I’d rather gnaw on the sharpened blade of a knifey-wifey, thanks all the same.

When I do persuade her to let me do something for myself, I get trained.

“Oh my goodness! My daughter-in-law is washing her daughter’s school shirt – I must see how she does it! No, no, my dear, not like that, like this...”

In Latin America it is considered impolite to tell your suegra to fuck off so I try to smile and point out mildly that in the Caribbean we also have soap and water and, though our washing methods may differ, the results are generally the same.

The thing is, it is not that she has trouble believing that I am a well educated professional woman who has worked and supported herself all her life. That she accepts and is pleased with. But she is absolutely amazed that I can also use a stove and have conquered the mysteries of Peruvian washing machines (same brands as everywhere else!) with ease. She herself is an educated professional who has been taking time out from her job to ensure that I am not run over in the street on a daily basis.

This is a woman who has listened in person to one of Castro’s three-hour speeches in the Palacio de Convenciones in Havana and is an official auditor of World Bank funded government projects in Peru. She has decided political views and prides herself on organising her household while maintaining her career but seems to feel that I would be incapable of the same. Either she has some very erroneous ideas about my pre-Lima lifestyle (references to the nanny may have contributed to this – though household help in Lima is common for anyone making above a living wage) or she considers herself unique in executing this dual role and is somewhat put out to discover that others also do it as a matter of course. Or maybe I am over-intellectualising the whole thing and it is just the visceral pleasure of having a daughter-in-law to mould.

In vain do I tell her that I have been all over the world in all kinds of conditions; that I have travelled on the back of tractors and forded piranha-infested rivers in Guyana; that I have fended off hostile takeovers of observer missions in remote Pacific provinces. Her reply is invariably “yes, but it’s different here”. The difference “here” apparently is that one must never walk too close to the edge of the pavement, cross the road against a green light, or leave one’s shopping bags unattended. Every time we leave the house she grasps me firmly by the elbow with both hands and shepherds me through the streets of Lima as though I’m a blind paraplegic with agoraphobia.

It is of course, nice to be so looked after and I have to give her credit for making a herculean effort not to interfere. She has maintained an admirable silence in particular on the question of Names. She was told by her son even before I arrived in Lima “¡no te metas!” and she hasn’t, though the temptation must be great, particularly for a good Catholic like her.

I may have mentioned in passing that Peru is a somewhat Catholic country. This means that saints abound and securing their various patronage is key when it comes to naming babies. Saints all have their days (don’t we all!) so the date of birth is influential, but one assumes that one can also pick and choose one’s area of interest. For example, if you want your kid to grow up to be Dr Doolittle, you name him after St Francis of Assisi or, in Peru, after St Martin de Porres, a mulatto Dominican monk who once urged his Order to sell him so they could pay off their debts and who is renowned for reasoning with mice to get them to stop chewing on the ecclesiastic robes.

You ignore the saints at your peril because, if you aren’t careful, you could unwittingly end up with a not-particularly-edifying saint (my father, I was delighted to discover, shares his name with the patron saint of syphilitics). If you don’t go for saints then there’s no excuse for not naming your child after a family member. Imagine generations of Julios and Juans with only their middle names to distinguish them. With all due respect to the many John Jrs and George IIIs of my acquaintance, it’s a boring practice and I’ll have none of it.

My own preference was to name the Baby Inca ‘Hugo’, after my hero Chavez but my husband, an apolitical but instinctive conservative with Fujimoristic tendencies, refused. We also considered Quechua names but while the girls names sound quite pretty the boys names are harsh. I cannot in good conscience name my son Wayna or Wanka – two of the more popular names we came across. And Tupac, unfortunately, is now firmly associated with gold teeth and gangsta rap.

So we are In Discussions and, until such time as the issue is resolved, we have applied both the masculine and diminutive forms and he is being known as Smuggitos.

The Power of the Belly in Peru

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.

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!”

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.”

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...

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.

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.