This blog is about acclimatization. Sometimes you get a reality jolt that makes you stop and reflect: "Hmmm...what occurrences in my daily life do I just shrug off as ho-hum used CD store got-it-alreadies?" Here are two anecdotes about getting used to things.
(1) What I should have named this water project was: "Control de flujo" with the key question, "how much do you want coming out of your faucet?" It has been a hassle to install the 1/2-inch PVC rings that calibrate gravity in just the right way to make equal flow around town. That fact doesn't surprise me. I am surprised by how much people's acclimatization to the norm has colored the result. Much to the complaint of my coa-wounded toe (a bit more down and to the left and I would have chopped it right off) I continuously monitor flow rates around town. One way is to ask the user about his or her perception of the flow. Another way is to go to the tap, stick my liter Nalgene bottle in and time the sucker. It is not guaranteed these investigative techniques yield the same answer and get this! Nobody is lying to me! When someone has bathed under 0.841 liters per second everyday for 8 years, 0.8 liters per second truthfully feels like you just can't get the soap off. So when this goofy, bearded foreigner comes around, messes with your system for four, dry days and sets you down at a measly 0.2 liters per second bribing you with popcorn to keep quiet, you start to feel your knickers twisting. People get accustomed to flow rates high or low. People down low receiving gravity's damnedest to blow their $2.95 red-handled, P.O.S. 60-meter rated PVC plumas get used to it. Buying new faucets becomes an incorporated expense and you just close your eyes tight when you get up in your shower so it doesn't blow your eyelids off. People up high struggling to get their hair wet as they hope the pipe doesn't start sucking negative pressure get used to it as well. They hit the magic wash trio: face-to-pits-to-crotch repeat-and-rinse changing their entire daily routines on how much water they get and when. And no one showers much at their friends' place. When I ask, "¿Cómo va el agua?" I've had some lead me to their showers turn on the faucet and leap clear of the exploding stream so as not to get their Sunday clothes soaked, then proceed to tell me: "Muy poquito." One man was celebrating that he managed to get his hair completely wet for the first time because the dribble he had has become a steady stream. I've examined my cultural lenses and realized no one is lying to me. A group of people have acclimatized to a pretty routine occurrence such as turning on the faucet and to them it has changed drastically. This clouds up the project goal to share water equally to a more personalized desired family flow, target practice game, which is considerably harder on my bum toe. Perspective is everything.
(2) I have had a perspective shift too. Sometimes when I get in one of those good-old moods, I am able to spot the change, but it's hard. Today, walking home the thought crossed my mind that maybe this had been the spot Lauren had seen the jaguarundi this time. Hold up! Examine that sentence. A bleeping jaguarundi!?!? What do you mean THIS time!?!? Where is this exotic jungle creature and WHY IN THE HECK am I walking alone in its natural habitat! SO FREAKIN' COOL!!! But alas, I have been acclimated to the craziness. Today I worked in the jungle with my campesino friends and counterparts Misael, Bolivar and Santos. We were putting the finishing touches on the steel reinforcing for their future 850-gallon concrete water storage tank. I am flying by the seat to my pants on the ENTIRE project btw. We talked about the corrupt government and being proud to see their kids off to sixth grade that day, a day that never happened for them. The four dogs we were with cornered a gato espino (porcupine) and got ejected upon to the point that we almost just killed one of them because if we couldn't get the spines out, it wouldn't be able to eat and would slowly starve to death. Hog-tying it and forcing its mouth open by cutting teeth holes in a dirty rag, we managed to slowly extract all the spines from its gums, tongue and the roof if its mouth. It bled a lot, but it seemed to recover quickly and flopped down worn out. Wait! This one gets better. I told Lauren this story on the phone and she was like, "yeah, it will get better." The thing is, she KNOWS that from FIRST HAND EXPERIENCE because one day it happened worse to a dog when she was out working and it survives to this day. Other versions of myself would have received these experiences with polar opposite reactions. My college self would say, "WHAT?!?! You are actually friends with Central American campesinos?!?! You talk to them about the corrupt kleptocrats that bumbled in charge of the country?!?! YOU are going to have NO trouble getting a girlfriend my MAN!" I would have been drooling all over myself then to do what I just take for granted doing now. My scientific process-oriented self would say, "you are just making up tank designs as you go?!?! You MORON! You have to make a demo model, stress test a full range of loads, model the result and extrapolate to a sound design!!!" Given my training and background I shouldn't be just calling out the cement mixes to my team based on what is closest by, but hey! I can be quoted on this, "Got how many of gravel up here? What's 4:2:1 again? Aw heck...throw it in!" In regard to the porcupine injured dog, pretty much any of my selves before Peace Corps would say, "OH MY GOSH!!! Don't move her! I am going to call the emergency vet RIGHT NOW!!!" And yet, there I was today holding the dog down, trying to yank out the blood-slick needles and reminding Misael to let the dog breath through its nose because the blood and saliva was clogging its throat. I've gotten used to all this! Even what I once thought the most fundamental beliefs have been sent for a double loop-the-loop. Just now my neighbor fed me at her house. It was cumpleaños food and I asked whose it was. "Mine," said her daughter Diana as she nursed her 2-month old daughter Miladis, "I'm seventeen." It was just now reflecting on my old and new perspectives that I thought, wow, isn't that a little young to have a 2-month old?" I acclimated to my surroundings. I will be back at it tomorrow, which is Tuesday. Wednesday I will be try to arrange to travel 3 hours by bus to get my flu shot, to return 3 hours, luxuriate in a crappy hotel, wake up at 4:00 am Thursday to get back to making up tank designs and yammin' it up with all my favorite campesinos again! I wonder if I will get reverse culture shock and write this blog in 2016 explaining how my massaging shower head feels, wondering reverently at frozen vegetables and being terrified of the giant dogs when they are really just fed. "What?!?!?" I will gasp in disbelief, "This RedBox spits out MOVIIIIEEEESSSS?!?!?"
What I always do hope is that I will have those special moments where I can step back and be like, "whoa, look at all this!" Acclimating is bizarre.
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