A few weeks ago, I told my friend who works in the Internet café that I was going to make guacamole. They were excited about it but had never tried it before.
I told them that it is a very popular Mexican dip that is served with tortilla chips or lathered on the inside of a burrito. They didn’t know what a burrito was, either.
So there was only one thing that I could do - expand their cultural awareness.
Two days later, everything was ready for the burritos. I bought some avocados, beans, tomatoes, onions, cilantro, and limes and heated up some rice.
I went over to the internet café to let them know that the food would be ready soon. I walked the three minutes back to my house and started constructing the burritos. I realized that I forgot the cheese and opened the fridge to put the cheese on the first burrito.
As I open the door to the fridge, one of the shelves on the door broke off. The wine and liquor bottles stored on that shelf crashed to the floor and shattered.
The burrito enjoyment would be delayed a little bit. I had to clean up the mess. So I got the mop and cleaned up my mess. As soon as I was about done cleaning up my mess, the power went out.
Oh, well. Nothing was going to stop me from sharing the possibilities of avocado with my community. The rice cooker was still warm, so I put the tortillas on top of the rice cooker to heat them and up and used the flashlight on my cell phone to guide me as I filled and wrapped the burritos.
Everything was ready. I have four rolls ready to go, and I carried them over to the Internet café.
Throughout this whole process, I was motivated by the fact that my friend was going to enjoy burritos for the first time. No electricity, no shelf in the fridge. No problem. I am going to share a bit of my culture (my culture being popular campus food).
I finally arrive to the internet café, and my friend takes a bite of the first burrito. After the first bit, my friend pauses for a second and asks, “Is there avocado in this?”
I say, “Yes, that this the base for the guacamole.”
“I’m allergic to avocado.”
Yes, I did tell my friend that I was going to buy avocado but I don’t think the connection was made between my purchase of avocado and the preparation of guacamole.
So, I go back home and make a couple guacamole-less burritos for the people at the Internet café to enjoy.
I return home. The power comes back. And I finish cleaning up the kitchen floor (When I was done, it has the same scent as the floor at 829 Packard). Then I ate my four burritos and put the leftover guacamole in the fridge (to serve with breakfast, I realize that it doesn’t have a shelf life of longer than 12 hours).
As I fit the guacamole back in the puzzle that is our refrigerator, the bowl falls on the floor and I have another mess to clean up.
In ther aftermath of this story, I shared this experience with some of my local friends here, and they had trouble appreciating the humor in this experience. When I relayed this sequence of events to some of my Peace Corps friends, they thought it was one of the funniest things they had ever heard.
Lost in translation, I guess.
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