Being a pest

In the all-about-efficiency United States, if someone tells you about a meeting or invites you to an event, it is the invitee's responsibility to mark the date in their calendars and remember to actually show up. In Peru, the opposite is true: it is understood that it is the inviter's responsibility to remind each invitee multiple times about the meeting to ensure they don't forget to attend.

To go from the former to the latter is quite a cultural shift that requires some significant mental reconfiguration. I initially felt very uncomfortable calling my socios multiple times about the same meeting - even though Peace Corps trainers and older volunteers had told me that's what I needed to do, knowing this in theory is different from it feeling normal in practice. I felt like a bothersome pest, and feared I would make people dislike me for bugging them so much. If someone in the States called me twice in one week to remind me of a meeting that Saturday, I would probably ask them if they thought I was a small child to need such micro-management. Here, if I don't call my socios at least twice the week before, I will have no one show up to my meeting.

What's interesting is that my squeamishness about over-reminding people has now vanished; my multiple follow-up calls feel like the norm. Almost three months into my time at site, this particular cultural transition is now complete. Today it occurred to me: when (many months down the road) I return to the U.S., it will probably feel weird to me to not call to remind people. A nagging feeling that no one will show up unless I call them again will likely persist in the pit of my stomach for a couple months, and I'll have to reverse-shift my cultural mental mode to adapt yet again. It's a strange thought, but I guess I've got a solid amount of time to chew on it before I'll have to deal with it :)