daily worship...

it was 3 am and we were awake... again.

the truth is neither one of us has been sleeping well lately. 

we find each other at the most unbearable hours of the night, she typically rocking herself into reverie, rosary clutched in hand and soft murmurings of prayer to her god escaping her lips and me sitting on the white tiled patio beneath lemon trees branches listing towards the earth heavy with their mottled fruit trying to quiet my thoughts with steaming tea.

last night i softly tiptoed across the patio past the hammocks swaying themselves in dream under striated moonlight and found her in the kitchen bent over the stove. her fraying nightgown was pulled taut over thighs as robust as christmas hams as she distractedly shoved into the oven what appeared to be some sort of casserole run amok.

¿profe...? i questioned softly so as not to startle her.

gladys turned around and had tears streaming down her face.

profe, the night wouldn’t let you sleep again?

ay, mija, esta vida no me permite dormir... oh, my daughter, this life won’t let me sleep. 

i nodded silently. 

i would like you to meet a remarkable women, gladys garcía jimenez, the latina grandmother i never dreamed i would have. the two of us together with a menagerie of other women of varying ages, shapes, and histories that breeze through and land softly in this sanctuary of a home gladys has created, compose a sort of garanimal-esque family. we are, to say the least, unconventional, but all warmly received by gladys’s open doughy arms. 

my host mother stands about 5 feet even. what gladys’s negligible stature lacks in height she rectifies in accommodating width. her honey died hair sits in tight curls while white roots reveal her 72 years of age. she is a viuda, a widow, and not just in name, but in practice. while it often seems that in the states there is a set expiration date on the appropriate mourning period, in much of latin america this appears not to be so. after 14 years without her husband, gladys can still be found at varying hours of day or night in his office she converted into a space for prayer visiting her dearly departed love and confiding in jesus. 

gladys is what some may refer to as an old school catholic and bears in her all of the privileges and burdens this affords. sometimes i feel as though she is heavy with god; that life is something lived not for the here and now, but for that unpredicted moment when she leaves this world and enters the unknown. “kelly, i want to make sure that all of my bags are packed, because i will never know when my final moment arrives.” and so this is gladys. she spends much of the twilight hours packing her bags with endless streams of hail marys and our fathers that she must lug around in daylight just in case some unforeseen rogue misfortune ushers her into what lies beyond the here and now...

...

kathia arrived on gladys’s front doorstep appropriately on a sunday, god’s day. she was young at 19 years of age, but seemed even more youthful given her rosy pinched cheeks and thoughtfully chosen knee socks worn with smartly pleated school girl length skirts. she was studying to be an english teacher, but had wanted to be a scientist, which makes much more sense when you meet her. kathia’s most pedestrian actions seem to be done in a methodical and plodding manner. she runs her life with a keen eye and a fastidiousness to detail that would make martha stewart writhe with envy. 

kelly, ¿eres cristiana? ...are you a christian? kathia asked in such a chirpy tone it seemed as though she was asking if i liked puppies or rainbows. 

well, i thought about this one.

i often construct some sort of vague answer in my head when asked about my religion kind of tap dancing around the question. first, i considered lying. it would be easy to say “yes” and i could tell by the way she asked me she assumed, or at least hoped i was a christian like her. there is something to be said for being able to find common ground with someone who comes from a seemingly divergent life story and sometimes, that ground needs to be sought out to establish a shared frame of reference.

era... i replied hesitantly. i used to be.

in evenings while i immure myself in my room preparing for the dreaded GREs, kathia braves the seasonal rains to go to the catholic church that lights up the northern end of the avenida central like an overly eager christmas tree. despite seeming young in most other respects, kathia approaches her god with a heavy measure of reverence. 

i did not want to offend, or harm our blossoming friendship, so i did my best to choose my words deliberately. i considered the laundry list of reasons why in recent years i had become increasingly disillusioned by the catholic church and thought it may be prudent to chose a reason kathia could relate to: 

the position of women in the church. 

i explained to her about my experiences in guatemala and what i felt was implicit irresponsibility of the church in astronomical birth rates that contributed to a whole litany of devastating problems including infant and mother mortalities, and my foremost issue of concern, food insecurity. i offered to her my belief that women’s bodies simply were not meant to endure 8 births, the average for women in my former community. she spoke of the rhythm method, a commonly expressed alternative offered by catholic women when questioned about family planning, and i expressed my concerns of it being unreliable and difficult for an indigenous woman in a culture where they are not second class, but third class citizens having the double stigma of being Mayan and female. can this woman realistically say to her partner, “oh, honey, not tonight. i’m ovulating.”?

i also said i thought women should be able to be church leaders. that i felt a woman could just as well represent the teachings of jesus as any man and i did not understand why, supposedly based on primarily biological functions (apparently we may soil the pulpit with our monthly menses), the catholic church has forbidden women’s participation as church leaders... and why, as catholic women, we do not chain ourselves to the pulpit and scream, “misogyny!”....  well, okay, i may have not said all of these things. i thought it best to spare kathia most of my liberal bent tirade. i tried to soften my abhor and imagine myself in kathia’s lightly scuffed maryjane’s.

kathia explained that she felt that she was part of the church and that prayer was her contribution. hers is a quiet introspective relationship with her god and, as in much of the rest of her life, she seems to find comfort in the structure and, in a sense, the freedom this permits. both kathia and gladys seem to be at peace with life, and i envy their spirituality, as comfortable as well worn sneakers. 

i also have sought out the catholic church in the past seeking solace and finding comfort in its creaking orthodoxy even as i see it becoming wizened with passing generations and evolving mores. there is a certain level of serenity that is afforded by its tradition and regimen. still, i find it deeply unnerving to go to mass on christmas sitting in a pew surrounded by women praying to a god that has mandated that we are less: unworthy to make decisions about our own bodies, unworthy to interpret the bible, unworthy to make decisions about doctrine... and yet we sit just as gladys does, hands clasped worshipping and obeying “Our Father”. i have been reading, Half the Sky, a book that looks at the role of women in development and this quote hit me for its pithy words:

“...women themselves absorb and transmit misogynistic values just as men do. This is not a tidy world of tyrannical men and victimized women, but a messier realm of oppressive social customs adhered to by men and women alike.” (p. 69)

the quote was in reference to an afghani woman that had been brutally beaten by her mother-in-law and husband alike and yet, while acknowledging the impropriety of her own circumstance, expressed that the merciless practice itself was an acceptable treatment of wives who were not submissive: 

“I should not have been beaten, because I was always obedient and did what my husband said. But if the wife is truly disobedient, then of course her husband has to beat her.” (p.69)

as much as many may see it as a stretch to compare western women in the catholic church’s acceptance of prescribed gender roles to a nation well-known for its egregious treatment of women, the parallels are undeniable. we are often the one’s propagating, or at the least permitting, our own gender’s oppression.

...

we were sitting on the patio together, gladys diligently sewing new lemon colored, gingham curtains and me halfheartedly flipping through rodale’s guide to composting. she quietly informed me that a nurse would be moving in soon. her son’s wife was having a baby shortly, and because she was a doctor living in the city lacking time, she would be sending her newborn to be taken care of here, 4 hours outside of the capital.

marcía showed up late at night in puro aguacero, a deluge of a rain, her body thick with baby weight, at the side of bartolo. despite her evident beauty she did not have the radiance of a young pregnant woman about to bring a new child into the world. her skin was not glowing, but rather perspiring and jaundiced. she did not greet me, but instead only offered a tight lipped harrumph upon arrival. bartolo stood awkwardly at her side his hair white with age and a large panza that rivaled marcía’s baby bump in size looking more like her father than a husband. he grasped my hand like it was a lifeline and he was on the maiden voyage of the titanic clearly trying to compensate for his companions less than enthusiastic greeting.

bartolo left early the next morning and marcía stayed alone in gladys’s home for the next three weeks stationed on the sofa typically with a plate of food precariously teetering atop of her makeshift table of a belly. she stared vacantly at the screen always appearing to be on the verge of tears. i have never seen a more miserable human being in my entire life than marcía. any attempt at conversation was dismissed with a wave of the hand and eventually, regretfully i stopped trying. 

it turns out that marcía is in fact not bartolo’s wife, but his mistress. and it turns out that he is not leaving his wife to be with her like he had promised. that instead she will be a madre soltera, a single mother. not surprisingly, marcía did not want to have this baby, but had wanted to become a doctor like she had dreamed of and worked towards for the last several years. as bartolo goes and continues his life with his wife and children, marcía is left alone to fend for herself and the whole putrid situation smacks of injustice. 

...

these are just two stories of women living in gladys’s home of many. although it sounds like a house burdened by the often seemingly inherent anguish of life, it truly isn’t. gladys’s endless stream of visitors provides abundant laughter and always food enough for anyone that may show up unexpectedly for a cafecito. everyday it seems as though there is a new someone arriving on the front doorstep, hair neatly coiffed with belongings in tattered baggage of differing shapes and hues. gladys does her best to nurture us with equally large helpings of warm food and kind words, and in return, eschews the solitude she so fears. 

this is me. 

i am so american that i remember thinking upon arrival to panama that i did not want... no, that i did not need to live with a family. that i would require my “space” and would be fine without the often relentless commotion that comes with sharing living quarters that, admittedly at times, can feel stifling. and yet, here i find myself warmly nestled in this place accepting and embracing this hodgepodge of a family comprised of women that show up not only with packed belongings, but stowed away histories that slowly are unraveled day by day. despite our divergent pasts, we are joined together based on the common bond of womanhood that can never be trivialized, because those roots run deep and they run all over the place. 

la vida sin carne

i killed her.

pichiru bounded down the back stairs of the office leading to the farm, a wide toothless grin festooning his face. he looked like he just won the school spelling bee. there were few signs of recent events aside from a red stain that ran aside his protruding belly like war paint. 

fresh blood.

huh? i replied wondering if i had misheard... hoping i had misheard.

¡LA VACA! la mató.

oh, the cow. yes, of course the cow. i had forgot, today was thursday: cow slaughtering day. i walked to the back patio and found several men surrounded by an alphabet soup of body parts. i proceeded into the kitchen and there was ronald, the head chef, weapon in one hand, victim in the other

kelly, what the malditos are you doing here? you’re a vegetarian. 

he looked more amused than annoyed, and i watched as he made his best attempt to artfully wrestle half a ton animal of sheer dead weight. ronald liked me for whatever reason, and i liked him. my inner new england curmudgeon found solace in ronald’s perpetual choleric fumings that he executed with great panache. as ronald made not so delicate trimmings lifting up a massive leg and letting it land with a thwack down on the metal table, raul took photos.

kelly, move in close. i want to take a picture of you with the cow. 

well, this is kind of morbid, but for the sake of cultural assimilation, why not? i stood about face to the carcass with an elected look of inquiry as if i was examining fossils in a museum exhibit. at the last moment, however, i decided smiling would be more appropriate for the occasion. raul, gratified with his work shoved the camera into my hands. there i was looking like an awkward 9th grader at homecoming standing next to a date i wasn’t sure i liked. 

how’d he kill it? 

raul motioned with his lips toward an axe carelessly discarded on the ground as if by a hasty assailant. the smell didn’t bother me. the whole thing actually didn’t bother me and i began to question...


does this make me a bad vegetarian?

my motivations for being vegetarian come from a range of factors from environment to health, not just animal rights. this cow that now lay like a bloody jigsaw puzzle before me had actually had a pretty happy bovinial life hanging out with cow friends in open pasto munching on grass. i am hoping her final moment was one of more confusion than terror. something along the lines of, “hey pichiru, my dear friend. what’s that pretty shiny thing in your hand?... ouch.”

a few weeks ago i sat in jose’s kitchen and he prepared me chicken. in guatemala, getting offered carne wasn’t ever much of an issue, because it was such a rare occurrence, but panamanians, turns out, like their meat. he smiled bashfully and passed me a pink bowl decorated with illustrations of disney princesses... the bowl of honor.

Es un nuuget.

¿huh?

un nuuu-get, de macdonalds, he joked.

the meat was from a neighbor’s chicken that i had seen earlier in the day tied to a string like a duncan yo yo leering from side to side over an open fire: pollo asado. 

oh! a nugget. right. mmmm, i love chicken nuuugets, i replied doing my best to appear enthusiastic.

yes, that’s right. i lost my vegetarian virginity eating a chicken “nuuu-get” in panama. legend has it a peace corps volunteer who formerly lived in my host community in guatemala lost hers by eating one of those lukewarm hot dogs bathed in condiments they sell at a road side stands that comes with the complimentary dixie cup of “OR-ange”. i guess everyone has their story.

my next encounter with meat was dinner at a family’s house returning on horseback from visiting a school. turns out my impermeable was actually a permeable and i got doused to my innards by a pretty robust downpour on our way back. i sat down at the table convulsing from the cold wet and our host, rogelio, gleefully plopped in front of me a gamey smelling bowl of broth, a few bones sticking out at disjointed angles. the remaining rice and lentils from lunch rose in my throat and lodged itself somewhere behind my tongue threatening expulsion if i dared to venture a single bite of the generously offered meal. i picked up a piece and considered it. there was little meat to be found, more gristle obdurately clinging to the bone. i turned to bolivar, a work companion seated next to me as he avaricely dove into his meal with gusto. without hesitation i reached both hands into my fiery hot soup, picked up all the bones and plopped them into his bowl.  

he gave me a look as if to say... “kelly, this is too generous of an offer!”. no, no, i insisted. these bones are for you, my friend.

.....

being a vegetarian has really forced me to look at food in a different way and consider where it comes from. i first committed to vegetarianism when i was 22 and it was more for reasons of karma... and yes, i do realize how hippie dippie that sounds. i was really into the whole idea of energy and that what you put out into the universe comes back to you. i wanted my living life to be a manifestation of what my inner life aspired to be and i decided this should include the thrice daily ritual of mealtime. i couldn’t justify eating a yellow painted bird named purdue, stuffed with chemicals that came on a styrofoam tray for an embarrassing price of $2.55 a pound. 

the funny thing about becoming a vegetarian is that it becomes this sort of self defining proclamation and for whatever reason, we as humans love to divide ourselves up into these compartmentalized categories: i’m catholic! i’m jewish! i’m an atheist with buddhist tendencies! i’m a liberal! i’m a tea bagger! ... or whatever. in some ways, i think we find comfort in this. it’s like, woooh, oh, you’re part of group x. well, good then. now i can project onto you all the assumptions that i have constructed in my head about people who are part of group x. i feel much better now. 

i remember the first chicken i really got to know. her name was georgia. she was a plucky bird i spent a couple months living with while housesitting in rural vermont. i would like to say my attempt at homesteading transformed me into a daring woodland goddess as i established a life in communion with the elements in true ecofeminist fashion, but this is not what happened. after a few weeks living alone in vermont during the middle of winter i was exhausted from just trying to keep warm without truly having mastered the art form of the wood stove. i was cold, anemic, and miserable. i spent the greater part of my day under piles of quilts drinking exorbitant amounts of earl grey cursing the snow i had relished in years past. in turn, i found myself developing a cozy relationship with georgia; especially as the winter started to subside and i began to spend more time outside the confines of my princess and the pea incubator and in desperate need of vitamin d. 

georgia was a laying hen convinced she was a golden retriever. she spent the greater part of the spring traipsing around at the heels of two blonde dogs clearly annoyed by the indignant and confused bird. one thing was certain: georgia had personality and was not a mere “bird brain”. i knew that she would not be composing sonnets anytime soon or that she really understood me when i talked to her about “man troubles”, but she was not want for character. it began to dawn on me that i would never again be able to savor a meal of roasted georgia, or of one of her kin. no way. 

needless to say, my reasons of karma have slowly evolved and expanded over the years and i sit content as a vegetarian for a whole myriad of reasons i feel comfortable professing to. when i was younger i just assumed it was all about saving the whales and looking like one of those lithesome zenned out ladies on the cover of yoga journal. i remember studying ecofeminism as an undergraduate and first being introduced to the idea of vegetarianism not just for health/animal rights reasons, but for more philosophical ones. 

ecofeminism is sort of a multifaceted sociologically based philosophy that examines the connection between women and other populations relegated to the sidelines and how this is tied to the degradation of the natural world. it appealed to me for its examination of power relationships that i was recognizing more and more as influential in determining social structures. power: this idea that “mankind” has dominion over “motherearth” as decreed by the forces of christianity and capitalism in a male dominated society, and in turn uses this to justify his dominion over women/animals/minority populations as a collective “other” whole. the whole thing can begin to get a bit convoluted, because it branches into a mess of areas (including some fluffiness that asserts that, “we are women and this makes us spiritually superior, because, as spiritual mothers, the world passed through our loins”. as my grandfather would say, “bulllll-shit”. the world certainly didn’t pass through these loins and i am thankful that.) still, i holdfast to this central idea of determinant power dichotomies and, also, that environmental “bads” have more impact on women than men because of circumscribed traditional roles propagated by their beneficiaries.

as ecofeminism has evolved alongside other sociological areas like deep ecology, it has become increasingly focused on food/agriculture as has our culture. every time i go back to the states it is amazing to see this food consciousness arising alongside epidemic obesity, a dichotomy in and of itself with implications of social class, race/ethnicity, and education. being a vegetarian is tied to perceptions of whiteness, upper/upper-middle social class, and an overall “holier-than-though” worldview. it belies american exaltation of masculinity, rugged individualism and most importantly, hungryman meat and potato dinners. its perception as being fundamentally effeminate in nature, unamerican, and also kind of twaddle for hippies is beginning to change, however, and thank goodness for that. still, it is a slow evolution.

one funny thing i have noticed is that vegetarian food is seen by many as “gross”. i was at a barbecue this summer and an innocent bystander was almost subjected to soy when she (gasp) grabbed a tofu pup (i.e. read: vegetarian hot dog) in place of her ground up entrails on a bun. she recoiled in disgust. how did beans and vegetables become labeled as “gross” while a dead animal executed on an assembly lime and then shoved through a meat grinder remains sanctimonious? the notion persists, however: ew. tofu.

when i was 19 i took a trip to western europe and i remember being so struck by the differences in food culture and culture in general. i emerged from the subterranean confines of the subway in madrid after leaving the airport and was washed over by this distinct feeling of being enveloped in something completely, yet subtly “other”. the architecture, the dress, the everything had this feeling of existing in a continuum contributing to an indecipherable transient timelessness unlike in the states where everything feels so tethered to the stress of now, a now constantly hellbent on arriving at some point in the future. 

on quiet city side streets there were remnants of times past that paradoxically, but somehow logically seemed to propagate a sense of modernity. the roads were lined with small shops including butcher shops that unapologetically displayed meat. not sanitized little cuts, but heaving chunks of flesh that glistened red still pulsating in the summer heat. it had a sensuality as good food often does according to its most devout revelers. it was raw and exposed. i imagined this sort of display in the states and felt as though it would probably be proceeded by some sort of warning label as found on pornographic magazines at 7-11. 

WARNING: you are about to see an unbridled display of flesh. faint of heart/stomach, take notice.

there is this idea that in travel you are constantly in search of an encounter with the real, the authentic, an experience to call your own as a way of feeling alive and rediscovering the human pulse; this endless search for that “something” that often remains illusive in the states where our very lives often feel manufactured and purelle-d to death. there was no doubt as i looked at the generous cuts and body parts that most american superstores would not dare to display for fear of offending the temperamental american palate. this was no kentucky fried animal #57. this was a real dead animal expertly carved and meant to be relished by a lover of food. 

there was no pussyfooting around and i liked that, as i like the honesty that comes with people raising their own food in much of the developing world. it’s s an understanding of where our daily nourishment comes from that has been largely lost in the states. many in the world know how to kill a bird, dress it, and appreciate it for the inherent effort it took to get it to the dinner table. and this makes eating meat a momentous, and rare occasion as opposed to an expectation lost on people that have been lead from the real joys of food into the vapid drudgery of over consumption and overindulgence where little remains to be savored.