Cultural Musings

OK, this is just more like worth a chuckle and not necessarily that hilarious. This culture constantly perplexes me and stuff happens almost every day that I could come home from and write a brief 'missionary experience' blog entry about. Too many happen to document, but yesterday something nice happened to me while I was out buying groceries from the big 'Wong' supermarket I live about 4 blocks away from here in Miraflores, Peru.

Normally I am just buying a basket's worth of items, and the regularity with which I shop allows me to not need very many items per trip. So of course, that means I get into the shortest lines, or the express lanes. In Peru signs with instructions mean nothing--people will go into these lines with shopping carts oblivious to how annoyed everybody behind them is. In fact, that is one cultural observation I've had here--you know how when you're in a shopping isle or checkout counter and someone might be holding everybody and everything up, but when they realize it they kind of sheepishly say "oops, sorry didn't know you were behind me"? Not in this culture. They notice, and don't care. Whatever they're doing takes top priority. I'm not saying this about the culture in a judgmental way, because I'm sure Peruvians could find some stuff to knock North Americans about from their perspective. But I'm just saying, from seeing the 'every person for themselves" style of traffic and "lining up" that people could be taught a thing or two about order and flow, but that's just my perspective.

Normally I seem to keep winding up in lines where some woman, however young or old, will hold up the whole line to dispute with the cashier over something stupid like 1.30 soles (under 50 cents USD) It doesn't matter how restless the other people in the line are getting (I've watched people make gestures and resort to name calling to imply their impatience and frustration). But it doesn't matter, these people are thrifty and have thick skin. "I'm going to save 50 cents doggone it no matter the fact I'm shopping in a high end supermarket and could already have saved dollars upon dollars if I went somewhere else in the first place! No matter how many people are waiting on me!"

So anyway, you can imagine my surprise today when I was buying my items, I got behind this relatively elderly lady who kept paying attention to my items and looking at me. It doesn't take asking me to find out I'm not from around here, I'm constantly stared at in public and just have gotten used to it. The lady asks me, in Spanish of course, if I have a Wong's bonus card, to which I reply that I don't. The cashier always asks me this, so maybe I should go ahead and get one and save some money when I shop. The lady proceeds to tell me rather slowly enough so I can understand, that using such a card when I shop helps me get bonus points for which using them takes off the price of some of my purchases. At least that's what I think she said, because remember, my Spanish is only at an intermediate level with vocabulario limitado.

The cashier rings through all this lady's items and uses her bonus points card and gives her her receipt and so forth. The lady then tells the cashier she wants to let me use her bonus points card. At least that's what I think, so I keep paying attention to see what's going on before thanking her for it until I know for certain what she's doing. Yep, she seemed different than all the other 'thritfy' ladies I get stuck behind in the check out isle. I was impressed, and shocked because this is a bit unusual of an experience, when normally they're suspicious of gringos and want something from me, never doing a favor for me like giving me a discount.

When I'm done paying for my items, the older lady comes back from wherever she wandered from and asks the cashier a question which resulted in me being asked to procure my receipt again. I do so and the cashier scribbles something on it and then opens her drawer and pulls out a roll of stickers and then takes maybe 5 or 6 from it and gives them to the lady, and then it was obvious what was going on as she thanked me profusely as she was waving the stickers in the air and hurried off:

"How nice of that gringo to use my bonus card to help me get more stickers"
And here I thought she was doing me a favor of some kind for nothing in return, but most likely was thinking of the stickers she would obtain.

How Peruvian. How funny.