The Water Boy

“The Water Boy”

I am the kind of girl that won’t walk through a parking lot alone after eight at night because it is not safe. And yet, there I was, in my dirty pants and white tee shirt now stained brown and soaked through with sweat, chasing after Joseph Patty who was chasing after three Yora Indians.
There were 268 airports in Peru and only 54 were paved. Arriving by plane and sweating like we never had before, we unloaded and immediately reloaded our luggage and equipment into old Peruvian military vehicles that we were told to “hide” in the back of. When the driver saw me, he began laughing as he pulled a yellowed handkerchief from his front pocket. As he wiped beads of sweat from his dark forehead, he bragged about how he refused to take our team any further until I was sent home. The Amazon was “no place for the more gentle kind”, is what one of the boys, Joseph, translated to me. Ten minutes later, and 200 Nuevo Sol later (the equivalent of the dollar) there was a bumpy ride for several hours and we were dumped at the Amazon River. Loading small tipsy boats there with our supplies, and putting off for a tributary called the Panagua River was the distinct point that I thought we had dropped off the edge of the earth.
It is one year earlier. I am in West Philadelphia, an area that would have anyone look over his or her shoulders constantly. The Sproul Street traffic is humming to the rhythm of the fast paced Northern Life. Staring out the third floor window, judging the people that walk by below me, I thank God that I am not like them. A woman cries out for help from her husband who is clearly drunk as he walks out the front door of the government housing across the street. Sitting on a bench, another woman waits, rubbing her hands over the large swell of her pregnant belly. Judging again, I notice no wedding ring winking at me in the July sun. Watching this woman, I began wondering what she could be today had it not been for the man in her life three trimesters ago. It was in the summer of my junior year in high school that I decided no man would ever hold me back from being the woman I knew I could be.
It had been a good day because it did not rain as the weatherman had promised, breaking in and out with a fuzzy static voice on our small out dated paint splattered radio. Indeed, black clouds had covered the rising South American sun and an angry wind from the Andes coolly fussed with our tents as we tied our equipment down at the camp. We threw tarps over all the electronics and pulled our trashcans in as we dragged our potted plants out. The potted plants made our rudimentary camp seem a little more like home; it only seemed fair to share the coolness of the wet rain with them for all the comfort they brought. But, it did not rain as the weatherman had promised. So we pulled them back inside. Food was rice, always, or MRE’s that we had managed to finagle the military into donating to us. These “meals ready to eat” were not nearly as bad as the movies made them sound. If we were lucky, we were brought fruit from a local tribe, the Yora. They only brought us fruit on the days they felt we hadn’t brought a curse on them. We, Americans, were not taken kindly into their close circle. It was on the days that we hadn’t “cursed” them that we were allowed into the village to administer medical treatment; our soul purpose for living in Southeast Peru, sleeping on the ground and bathing under a waterfall for nine weeks. At times, days would go by without us being invited. But when we were invited, we could load our jeeps and be on our way, tearing through the lush greenery and steamy jungle floor in minutes.
I was frightened because I was the only female in the group of 9. Snakes were everywhere. You learn not to fear the common bumblebee in the playground once you watch a boy pull a long glistening snake out of your sleeping bag with a stick. I still contemplate whether I was more afraid of the boy or the snake. Pressure was on to always keep up with the boys. I had my ideas about how they thought of me. Then I decided to carry on conversations like the men did, careful not to go into detail about anything so my mind would not be considered feminine. I dressed like them most days, so as not to be looked at as a sexual object with shorter shorts and fitted shirts. Even then, I was still treated differently. A mysterious pail of water was brought to my tent to wash with every morning without my asking. I don’t expect the anonymous water boy will ever know how he and his pail impacted my life and my worldview. It was in that summer I realized no matter how loud or long I protested being treated like a “more gentle kind”, men would always bend to meet a woman’s needs. They had a natural desire to provide and protect, and I had a natural need to hide behind them when frightened. That summer, I realized men really were stronger and cut out for certain tasks that women are not. There I was; dressing, talking like a man, and silently demanding equality, when really my feminist ideals had gone down the toilet on the first day in the wild.
And there I was, chasing after Joseph Patty in my dirty pants and dirty white tee shirt soaked through with sweat. We ran with our heavy packs thumping against our backs. Had it not been for the male running in front of me, the male whose footprints I traced carefully through the damp forest soil, I would not have even made it past the airport. Recognizing that, wiping sweat from my brow, I was thankful. And that is how the summer of my senior year was spent. Following boys and learning that sometimes, a single pail of water is all a woman really needs or searches for in life.