Eat Pray Love

I’ve arrived safely in Cusco and as usual I am really lagging because of the altitude and brutal red-eye. I’m happy to be here, though. It was a beautiful day, probably around 75 degrees with some rain. This is a picture from Jose's balcony.

I had a few interesting moments last night as I was flying. First of all, I watched “Eat, Pray, Love” on the plane – you know, the totally obnoxious book about Liz something, the most indulgent woman on the earth, that was made into a movie. Maybe it’s because I like Julia Roberts, but I found the movie much less annoying and enjoyed most of it a lot. It was cool to hear them speaking Portuguese in Bali and trying to understand the Italian in Italy. That food did look delicious. In a really corny summation at the end of the movie, Julia Roberts says something like, “Take a trip internal or to another place on the earth and accept everyone as a teacher.”

When I heard that, I remembered the woman I was sitting next to on my first flight last night. This woman, Zoila, was 70 years old, clearly part of the upper crust Ecuadorian culture – could not stop talking about her four kids who are very accomplished, an architect, lawyer, doctor and something else. She asked me why I was going to Peru and I told her about Jose. I told her he was a tour guide and spoke three languages and she said, “Wonderful! Doesn’t he want to move to Lima, there’s such a better lifestyle there.” Then she asked his last name. I said “Cusi,” to which she responded, “Oh, indégena. Um, ok.” I suddenly had the urge to launch into a whole spiel about the history of exploitation and how the indigenous culture is in Cusco – how it is one of the most extraordinary examples of people taking pride in being indigenous. I didn’t say anything, I bit my lip. She was 70 and I probably wouldn’t have changed her opinion. Anyway, I didn’t want to get into a fight with this woman when we had to sit next to each other for the next several hours.

That’s a long way of explaining that I’m thinking about whether Julia Roberts (or Liz what’s-her-face) was correct in the statement that we should accept everyone as teachers. The problem I have with the statement is an undertone of passivity. I can accept Zoila as a “teacher” but more as an example of what I think is wrong with Latin America.