"They call me Mr. Pig"

If you have ever seen The Lion King, you know that Pumba demands the respect he deserves by insisting that others call him Mister Pig - just his name simply will not suffice. Peruvians have a similar affinity for titles, and place high value on according each person the respect their educational and professional status deserves. If someone is a Doctor, they will always be addressed as Doctor, never just Señor. The same is true for Profesor (even if it is a profesor of first grade), Ingeniero (engineer), and several other categories.

As I am a gringa (a.k.a. instantly significant person in a town where there are exactly two of us) who works with town officials, profesores, ingenieros, and other such important folk, the titles of those around me are often (though wrongly) applied to me as well. Thus, for example, if I go out to the fields to talk with some farmers alongside my socio the ingeniero, my new friend the farmer will automatically address me as Ingeniera, instead of merely Señorita. When I'm in the schools, I am all of a sudden Profesora Meghan.

As it would be inappropriate to correct the Peruvians in these misnomers, I just let the titles slide and try to fill the shoes of whichever profession is accorded to me in that moment. I think I can manage profesora alright, but I am reminded daily of how much agricultural knowledge I lack before I could even come close to calling myself an ingeniera. But I'm making progress - today I learned lots of vocab around corn, corn leaves, and corn cobs, and googled the use of lime in improving soil quality. Poco a poco :)

Sitting in the front, ingeniera style, at a meeting of a local agricultural association last week