Fidelity....Abstinence??!?!?!

Last night I had a very sad chat with my host Mom.  We were talking about how some people get excited about getting pregnant.  She told me that out of her 9 children there wasn't a single one she was ever excited about, she said each time she was just disappointed.  She had her first child when she was 15 with a man who she didn't love or even like, her mother had married her off in hopes that it would lessen the burden of her own children in the house.  The man badly abused her.  She said that at 15 she was just a kid and didn't know what to do and was so scared of the responsibility of a child, then even worse with her second and then worse with the third.  After the third, her first husband left her and she found herself living with her Mom again trying to support 3 children.  At this time she met my current host Dad and he was willing to marry her even though she already had 3 children, this is actually a foreign concept I have found.  Many men are very machisto and don't have any interest in a woman who have children already.  It's like they are dried up old ladies.  However, my host Dad liked her and they continued to have 6 more children together.  My host mom said even with her current husband having more children was never exciting it was more mouths to feed when they could barely feed the ones they had.  However, my host Dad believes that birth control is only for "sluts".  How nice ...right?

Funny thing though, is I feel that you find many more less female "sluts", then you find of male sluts while living in the campo.  For example, my host Dad has another kid about the same age of my youngest host sister he fathered with a woman in my town.  So does the husband of my host sister and many of the other men simply living on my street.  My site mate Brittany's host Dad is believed to have a whole other family that he splits his time with. 

I know cheating isn't that foreign of a concept, our own country has it's fair share of the same problems.  It just seems like it's incredibly more frequent here.  Some of the repercutions are dangerous as well.  For example, my boyfriend was working in a small town in the sierra when they got a call about a man that had been shot.  Turns out the story was that he was a single man who was sleeping with a married woman, and the married woman's husband and friends came to his house to kill him.  So when Edgar got there all that was left was the man outside of his house dead on the ground of gunshot wounds.  Moral of story...don't sleep with married people.  And it's not the first time that this sort of thing has happened, like in one of my previous blogs a girl was thought to be posioned because her father was sleeping around as well.

So what is my philosphy on the fidelity issues of the campo people?  I have many different theories.  First is that many of these couples get married young because they got pregnant young, and many times when a couple is found to be pregnant they are instantly considered married.  The families of the young couples strongly encourage it.  Therefore, a one night fling turns into a lifetime together and in many situations neither spouse ever wanted that life together.  So with time, one or both of the spouses strays from the other because they aren't happy or there isn't any type of relations happening in the home anyway.

There is also another concept, I realized from some of my sessions in the school that the teenagers are virtually unaware of birth control or any type of contraceptive and absolutely clueless to what abstinence is.  Unfortunately due to the extremely timid nature of the girls I think a lot of times they get pressured into having sex with their boyfriend without having enough self esteem or assertiveness to stand up for themselves.  Without knowing they can protect themselves they end up pregnant and again stuck with their partner for a lifetime.  Also, since they live in the campo and most of the men work to provide for the family, when things go sour in the relationship the woman has virtually zero options to leave her husband.    So more often then not, the woman turns a blind eye to her husband's infidelity for lack of options.  It's really sad. 

Even more sad, is in a community like mine the spouses know the person they are being cheated on with, and so does everyone else in the community.  It is a sad life to live.  It is also very sad that most people have zero trust in others.  For example, when I met my boyfriend, I am constantly asked whether or not he has another family, possibly kids in the city.  In fact I am still asked this question up to this day after many months together.  It is very hard for the people in my community to trust others, and it is very frustrating at time to defend or try and convince them that there are good, honest, and fair people in this world.  But based on the number of cases in my community, I understand the mistrust. 

My hope is that as this country develops women, children, families are given more legal rights.  And that a spouse does not just have to turn their heads and bare an unhappy marriage.  And that the people will be more acceptable of the "single mom".

Sometimes I think I live in a movie....

This pictures has nothing to do with the Witch I just love her!

No its true, sometimes I think I live in a movie, except I dont know from what time period or what type of movie.  I just know that the stuff that keeps happening in this little town of mine cant be real.  For example, about a week ago the WITCH struck again!  Yes, an 18 year old girl in my town died of unknown causes and of course the only way the town could explain how this happened was that it had to do with witchery.  Of course right, the most obvious logical explanation in the entire world. 

Bascially this girl had been losing a dramatic amount of weight in the weeks leading up to her death.  She was also complaining of sharp pains in her abdomen.  The family "says" they took her to the doctor in another town and none of the tests showed anything.  Then, as she was dying she would throw up and there would be sediment in her vomit.  This immediatly alerted everyone into believeing the witch was behind all of this.
There are two theories: the first of which involves the girls best friend, another girl of the same age, apparently she was jealous for whatever reason and bought something from the witch to poison her friend.  My host sister even showed me a picture of this girl in a school photo....thus the people of chipillico are probably destroying this little girls life for absolutely no reason.  The other theory is that the father of the girl who passed away was sleeping around with married women and their husbands got mad and bought something from the witch to posion his daughter as pay back. 

Do you think and autopsy or investigation or police report...or ANYTHING was done when this little girl died?  NOPE!!!!!!  The town mourned, barried the girl and blamed the witch.  Stories started coming up about the witch having gone to the cementary and was digging up bodies a few weeks before the little girl fell ill. 

O yeah...and the witch is a living breather woman and mother in Chipillico.  I know her personally, and am in fact here at the internet cafe today looking up information on how she could stimulate her child with downs syndrome to walk.  No, I am not a huge fan of this woman, I think she is rude and filthy, but it is my job to support the people of chipillico and try and keep from judging anyone.  The thing is this woman has many children with physical and mental problems, I do believe she drinks or does some kind of odd drugs when she is pregnant.  But I dont believe she is selling potions made of dead people to kill other people in the town.  And I am incredibly dissappointed that no one in my town take a greater stance when a young girl dies unexpectedly without cause.

I was also asked to go take pictures at the girls funeral as a memory to the family.  But you MUST BE KIDDING to think I would ever take pictures of some young dead girl and print them for the family.  NEVER!!!  So I did not go to any of the events to avoid these problems.

So on a different note, yesterday 3 cars and a bus were robbed leaving the valley.  Apparently "bandits" put rocks in the road so the cars could not pass and would come running down from the hills with guns to rob everyone.  Its just insanity.  I dont think anyone was hurt.  But I know lots of money was stolen.  And of course since the police have practically and unworking motorcycle it took a half an hour for them to reach the scene of the crime.  It happened 3 times before anything could be reported.  Its just amazing to me that anyone would think to rob people leaving Chipillico.  Many of you have seen the pictures I post from my town, these people do not have money!   I feel terrible that these things happen to them.  Plus it makes me a little nervous to travel.  Again....when was the last time you heard of a bus getting held up by "bandits" who put up a rock barricade and run down from the hills....something out of a movie right??????

Edgar and I in Chulucanas.

Lastly....I am a little embarrassed to say.  But I was in the city the other day and ended up being very sick. Not sure what caused it.  I was with Edgar...so he asked me for a black shirt and to lay down, which I did.  He then proceeded to use the black shirt to clean my energy.  So he cleaned the space directly above me body front and back.  This was after he put his finger in my belly button (like most host sister does) to feel if I had any shame.  He said he couldnt feel my shame because I was laughing so hard.  He promised I would feel better after he had cleaned my energy.  I did, but I believe it was the many pills I bought before this little session that my doctors had recommened that did the trick!!!!

As much as I love this place I am worried its turning me crazy!!!