Most days I thank my lucky stars for ending up in a country that has not been too difficultly hard to culturally adapt to. For the most part the people that I have encountered are very similar to me: the kids here view Shakira as the belly dancing pop star that she is, people in general can, and do, spend days on end talking about food, and for the most part people really take interest in “the different” in order to expand their knowledge. Although I have definitely noted the differences, the similarities have been more of an eye opener than the differences- up until this past Wednesday.

As I was sitting in my house with grandma and some of the other women in the community talking about the price of god knows what and how many chickens we need to buy for Mother’s Day, a commotion came from the house next door. Let me preface this story by communicating that houses where I live lack privacy: everything that happens usually takes place in the outdoor “porch” area of the house. Most houses consist of only the outdoor “porch” area and one enclosed room that acts as the sleeping area for the family. Continuing. The fourteen year old girl who lives in the house with her four siblings, mother and father came running out in complete disarray, ran down the street in the other direction from us, and disappeared. Turns out that her father had come home at 3:00pm completely “embolado” or drunk to hit his wife in front of his daughter. Jena, the fourteen year-old, ran out of the house and down the street out of fear but also to call the police, which I now realize took a lot of courage and strength to do. Chico, the stupid drunk, has been in jail now for five days and has another five to go.

Not so different from how we in the U.S. would handle this reprehensible action, huh…don’t jump to any conclusions. Turns out that Chico who has a fairly subdued demeanor when sober likes to come home and hit his wife after a good long morning of liquor tasting and that his actions in the past have been completely overlooked by everyone in the community including his wife and kids. His actions have become almost expected: “oh yeh, when he drinks that’s what he does,” the people in the community tell me. Now, for the past five days his wife, the woman that he took his fist to, travels thirty minutes in each direction to bring him breakfast, lunch and dinner so that he doesn’t go hungry. That’s when I say to myself: “you’re no longer in Kansas Dorothy.” “Let him go hungry,” I say, “teach him that those actions sober or drunk cannot be condoned.” When I tell this to the people in my community the men look at me with disgust and the women laugh nervously and say, “no really what would you do in this situation.” Sometimes I forget that I now live in a world where men and women maintain very different roles, roles that inherently and tacitly tell women that having a man who hits them is better than not having a man at all.