Heat and Suffering

Children trying to give you a step
by step visual of the sign.

It seemed like we had a pretty nice long “cold” season stretching since late December, but now the heat is upon us again. The high for most days this week is supposed to be 108, and that's supposed to pale in comparison to April usually. You can definitely notice the difference in the past three weeks as we've been gradually turning up the fan speed at night, and now when you go to lay down you can feel the heat radiating off your pillow before you head touches it. But we've managed to mostly keep the heat rash away this year since the humidity of the rainy season is still close to two months away.

Heat reminds me of suffering, which reminds me of a cultural habit I've found fascinating here. There is a very universal sign or motion associated with the word suffering in this culture. Almost every time someone says the word they will make something like a whip cracking sound with their wrist / hand. A fuller expression of this will include first wiping the forehead with primarily the pointer finger (like you're wiping sweat or concerns away), and then snapping your fingers and wrist in a whipping action. Sometimes the wiping the forehead can also stand alone as the symbolic action. But its fascinating to me that just about every time a person describes something that's hard or painful and brings suffering with it, they will do some form of this action. I can think of a few symbols for pain we have in US culture, like pounding a fist or making an “ooo” expression with your lips, but nothing so universal.

-- El Padre