Cultural Mishaps

Though I feel I’m fairly well integrated into my community by now and generally get what’s going on culturally, there are always moments when things come up and surprise me, as happened in the following story…

I was taking a walk through town when I noticed one of the kids I play soccer with crying outside her house. I stopped to ask her what was wrong and she informed me that her grandma had died. Not knowing what to say to her, especially since I’m unfamiliar with the customs surrounding deaths here, I just sat with her a while. After a while, she grabbed my hand and informed me that we were going to see the body. It actually wasn’t as strange as I thought it would be. The family was all there, and seemed glad that I would care enough to come in. So again, I just sat a while to show that I was concerned for them.

Later on in the afternoon I went to visit a friend for our weekly coffee and telenovella (if you don’t know that is, Wikipedia it, I cannot describe). We talked briefly about the death of my neighbor and my friend told me that she didn’t want to go view the body because her husband has the same infirmity and she’s afraid that he’ll die too if she goes there. I mentioned casually that I had been to visit the family, not thinking anything of it, and she immediately pushed me over to the pila (sink) and dunked my head in the water!!! She then instructed me to wash my face and hair while she watched! Whoa.

Apparently there is a lingering traditional belief that if you view a dead body you can carry death around with you. We had a good laugh about it later, probably when she saw the shocked look on my face and realized I had no idea what was going on.

Here’s to clean faces and learning new things!