Little cages.

I’m still getting along well with my host parents, and have more extended family than I can keep track of, who seem to kind of wander in and out of the house. Socorro’s mom, better known as “Abuelita,” lives here most of the time, and Socorro spends the duration of our meals telling her mother to eat more, which takes a little bit of the pressure off me (although there was one incident in which Abuelita herself actually took a piece of corn off my plate and replaced it with an ear twice the size). Then there’s Socorro’s daughter Gabriela, who lives nearby with her two boys, Nicholas (4) and Josef (6), who like to pretend they are lions whenever they are here and who claim they don’t understand a word I say in Spanish.
I’ve particularly hit it off with the live-in maid, Rosita, which makes it all the more strange and uncomfortable that she is basically my servant; it’s like having a friend that does all your chores for you. My host mother insists that Rosita do my laundry (the second time around I just did it myself while Socorro wasn’t around), she cooks all our food and cleans the dishes, and when the family eats lunch, she sits alone at a different table in the same room, and only every once in awhile becomes peripherally involved in the conversation. Socorro also has a 22-year-old godson named Mikhel who comes by pretty frequently because he is helping maintain some fish tanks that my family has in their basement. The first time I saw him was during dinner, and I was confused about why he wasn’t sitting down at the table with his coffee and why Socorro wasn’t making more of an effort to get us to talk, considering we’re very close in age. Eventually I realized that the fact that he is Socorro’s godson, even though it implies a kind of familial relationship, also necessarily implies that he is lower on the social ladder. I am treated as a member of the family (and a spoiled one at that), but he is not, and knows that it is not his place to ingratiate himself with me. This has been the most frustrating and uncomfortable aspect of living in this house so far.
But aside from the discomfort the situation, it’s nice to have Rosita around. Being a maid is only her side job; she also happens to be in her last year at a university in Cuzco, writing a thesis on ecotourism (nope, not your everyday household servant). She has been helping me with Quechua. The other day I had homework that involved translating a song about animals and where they live, with the help of a fluent speaker. I asked Rosita how I could say that rabbits live under the ground.
“But rabbits don’t live under the ground,” she said, genuinely puzzled.
“They don’t?”
“No.”
“Then where do they live?”
“In little cages.”
At first I found it hard to believe that she had never seen a rabbit outside of a cage, but for someone who rarely even travels outside of Cuzco, I guess it’s actually a perfectly reasonable supposition. Feeling like I had to somehow prove myself, I explained to her that there is a well-known story in English where a girl falls down a rabbit hole. I’m not sure whether or not this convinced her, but it at least set my mind at ease. I guess it’s pretty strange that the best proof I have for rabbits living in holes is a fantastic children’s story.