Talk of the Town

Life in my village is life in the spotlight. It's hard not to stand out when you're about a foot taller than everyone, you're one out of four white people in the town (me and the three other trainees), you're practically the only woman not wearing the traditional traje, and you speak English with your friends. When me and the other girls are walking around, small children have taken to running around us in circles and playing near us, just trying to catch our eyes. It's like a game for them to get as close as they dare to the gringas. We've grown accustomed to hearing "¡Mira! Gringas" wherever we go. As well as the trucks full of men that slow down to snails' pace, honking, commenting. Most charming of all is when they make this sort of whistling sound between their teeth ("psst") that makes them sound like a very large insect. Very attractive.

This became clear to me when I went to a store to put more minutes on my phone. The store clerk was convinced that I had given him the wrong number and paid for someone else's minutes. I had to leave in a hurry before I could convince him that it had in fact worked. The next day my friend told me that it had been the topic of conversation at dinner that night (I still have no idea how her host mom came to hear about it). It makes me wonderful how many other families were sitting around discussing me at the dinner table.