No Cacho Ni’una Huev’a

If you’re not Chilean or never visited Chile for an extended period of time, actually interacting with Chileans, then you have probably never heard this expression, which translates roughly to: “I don’t understand a damn thing.” But if you have traveled and or lived in Chile, not only would you understand it, you would probably find yourself thinking the concept in your own language well before you even grasped the Chilean version. For anyone who has dared to live outside their own culture for a time, the concept of culture shock is more than a theory with set phases (euphoria, denial, anger, resentment, frustration, acceptance…), it’s a way of life, a bewildering experience of breaking down those cultural barriers that our ancestors and society worked so hard to form in order to protect and shelter us from the unknown.

To prepare myself for the big move from Washington, DC to rural, southern Chile at the end of 2004, I laughed with the rest of them reading David Sedaris’ Me Talk Pretty One Day and jogged my memory for all that analysis long-ago read in Anthropology classes. I comforted myself with the thought that at least I would be with Christine, who was already fluent in Spanish and Chilean culture, having lived in Valdivia for a year in 1997 and having visited nearly every year since then. In 2002 we had visited for a couple of weeks with Marcelo and Queno, extremely close friends of Christine then living in Santiago, whom we were now planning to move-in with on the southern coast outside of Valdivia in a tiny fishing village. It would be the first time that Christine and I would be living with other people as a couple, especially gay Chilean men, and it would be the first time that Marcelo and Queno would be living with women, especially lesbian gringas. Not to mention that I would be leaving the income and, what status there is, of working in an office while Christine would be role-reversing to the status of graduate student at the Universidad Austral de Chile, pursing a master degree in Latin-American Contemporary Literature. All of these changes complicated all the more by EVERYTHING being in Spanish and within a completely different cultural context.

There were many days of headaches, struggling to communicate basic needs, unable to describe my innermost feelings or to express my thoughts, and quite a few Sedaris “me cry alone at night” moments. My emotions fluctuated like a pendulum on a roller coaster: becoming enraged one minute by the incomprehensible differences in opinion on the definition of hygienic dish washing, weepy that I was such a wreck the next, then euphorically in bliss by the beauty of where we were and the kindness of our new Chilean friends… back to weepy for not being able to fully contribute to the love everyone was pouring over me. I needed support to know that I was still an intelligent human, only unintelligible for the moment. Christine needed support in her quest to comfort me, and as she struggled with the stresses of pursuing a graduate degree in another language and a new academic culture where deadlines aren’t consistently critical and errands can take seconds or weeks, depending on who you talk to.

I didn’t answer the phone for the first 3-4 months. It would ring and I would cringe and pretend it wasn’t there because I knew there wasn’t any way that I would understand what someone on the other line might want or need or care to say. In the beginning it was fine because we arrived in Summer, New Year’s Eve December 31, 2004, and there was always someone else around, strings of guests arriving announced or not, staying for hours or weeks, to deal with the phone, but in March when Christine started teaching English at a language institute and getting ready for classes, it started to become a problem. I finally had to just start using that blasted device. After a short while of heartache and anxiety, it wasn’t so bad, but it took a lot of time and a lot of learning to even get to that point. I had to accept, not just theorize, but really accept the fact that there are no absolutes in the world, nothing is inherent, and everything is relative.

Additionally, one has to understand, that is to say we have had to learn with reminders every day, that not only are Christine and I foreigners, but we are highly educated, independent women without boyfriends who had not lived at home with our parents for years, and we come from a culture only understood in the area where we live as that Hollywood stereotyping which is broadcasted over global cable television. In the highly machista society of rural Chile, the very fact that our landlords even let us live here (obvious to the entire fishing village that we are two gay couples, though no one will ever say it out loud) is a miracle, but I think we have our emissary Marcelo to thank for that, having moved here a few months before us and quickly falling into their hearts as a near adopted son.

Although by now, nearly two years later, Sra. Pati and Don Raúl are basically our Chilean parents as well, we continue to misunderstand them and to be misunderstood by them on a regular basis. We are from different planets. Even the stars that shine at night are different overhead. But even though we may never truly understand one another or be able to see each other without our own, stubbornly-ingrained cultural mirrors, we do love one another and that’s a lesson even better than understanding. That’s finding family and the rainbow that comes after the rain.