Someplace Real

My host mom jokes that everyone in the plaza can hear her kettle whistle. More often than not, a crowd appears at the doorstep just in time as she pours the first püro full of maté for the day. The people I meet always ask me, sabe tomar püro? Or occasionally remark with surprise, sabe tomar püro?!

Literally: you know -- to drink -- püro. Could be, you know how to drink püro? But I doubt they’re surprised by my uncanny ability to suck tea through a straw and pass it along. More likely, you know about drinking püro? In which case, everything sacred about the daily ritual and the people involved. It is how to welcome friends into your home, how to relax. It is a much healthier conversation lubricant than a bottle of whiskey (although no me falta the occasional foray of that nature) and thus the well of local chisme (gossip).

In any case, I reply with a sí, me gusta. Yes, I like it. Their acceptance becomes evident with a slow nod, a smile and the passing of the püro my way. They watch me the first time around to make sure I do it right, so I’m careful not to wince when I inevitably burn my tongue on the hot liquid and not to notice if I spill a little on my shirt.

Dona Vicky drinks it first thing in the morning, last thing in the evening and several times in between. As I venture into the kitchen half-asleep to slurp down my Nescafe she perches next to me, sips from the silver bombilla and winks. “Mi desayuno,” she says every day without fail. My breakfast.

Another token catchphrase, when one of her friends cracks a joke, is “vaya, che!” In Spanish, vaya means more or less get out of here, and che, in Guarani, friend. Then again, she tipped over the ketchup and mayonnaise at the table one time and I heard her say it to them, too. That’s my host mom, friend to all, and always telling them to get out. They’ll be back when they hear the kettle.

Over püro we discuss everything and anything. The other day she told me she got married at age 15 and had her first baby that same year. She became a grandmother at 31. This is not uncommon here, and from her tone she may as well have been discussing the weather, just stating facts. She has been widowed and remarried, almost lost her son to a car accident, and now she has three kids away in Spain – she cries when they call -- and two little boys to raise. Still she tells me from time to time, especially when she’s complaining about some pain or other, that I am “so young.”

When there’s something she doesn’t know, usually trivial (adding minutes to her cell phone, for instance), she blows it off by saying she’s just a campesina, a country girl. She teaches me which herbs and flowers make tea for fevers and sore throats, which leaves make good compresses for pain or congestion. She knows where the chickens lay their eggs; she says she can hear them do it. We made cheese together last week and humintas, tamales of cheese and corn, yesterday. My clumsy hands ripped the husks in all the wrong places, too thick to tie, too narrow to hold. But her fingers know the humintas; they know püro; they know how to knit entire sweaters while her mind is free to be mother, friend, neighbor and wife.

Some days I think because I’ve traveled so much, read a ton and earned two college degrees that I’ve lived a couple of lifetimes already. And then there are days when I feel just as she says, so young. My life in Bolivia feels kind of like summer camp, like those field trips to fake Amish villages where the grown-ups dressed in costumes and taught us to churn butter, milk cows and grow seeds. At the end of the day we all came home to our microwave ovens, our waterbeds and cable TV, to the real world. A part of me still believes that the poor people in my village, who live in huts made of sticks and mud, eventually go home to someplace utterly different. Someplace surreal.