Señor Gringo

Ayacucho, PERU

As I left my house the other day, a woman dressed in the traditional (and in Ayacucho still typical) clothing of woolen tights, layered skirt, cardigan, hat and with long hair in two plaits came rushing up to me and said "Señor Gringo, ¿quieres comprar mi cuy?". As I said "no, gracias" I thought that that woman and her question, which can be translated as "Mr. Foreigner, do you want to buy my guinea pig?", sums up a lot about life in Ayacucho.

Firstly, there is a huge amount of casual street trading here - the streets are full with people just standing in a spot holding a few random things for sale, like socks, toothpaste or a few pillows. While others have a wheelbarrow or some other type of stand where they display their goods,which can include things like "Bin Laden" insecticide (I'm not sure what the existence of this product says about Peru's attitude towards the US or Al Qaeda).For the record, while the other cities that I've visited in Peru (Lima, Ica, Arequipa) all have large, modern shopping centres that wouldn't look out of place in Dublin, the best Ayacucho (which has a similar population to Cork) has is a poorly laid out shop smaller than Bishopstown's Centra.

The second thing that the woman's question brought to mind was all the different names that I am called here:

• Shop assistants or the women working in the markets call me either joven (young man) or papá (dad). Bizarrely, it is usually people around my age or younger who call me joven and old women who call me papá.
• The boys in the shelter call me profesor (or more usually profe), although since I shaved my head they've started calling me pelado (baldy) and when the Dutch footballers Robben and Sneijder appear on TV they say "look, profe Kieran is on TV!" (speaking of the World Cup, as Los Cachorros is a Dutch charity I decided to support Holland, which has turned out very well!).
• But the name/title/insult by which I am referred to most often is "gringo". When I started my trip (on the so-called "Gringo Trail") in Mexico I was told that gringo is an insult which technically only refers to people from the US. But here in Ayacucho I think it just means foreigner. While I have heard people here call me gringo with a tone indicating their dislike of foreigners, most people here simply say the word as a statement. For instance, as I walk through the markets (Ayacucho may not have modern supermarkets, but it does have loads of fruit, vegetable, fish and clothes markets) many people running the stalls say "gringo" as I walk past - half to themselves and half as a greeting or just as an acknowledgement of my presence. And in my neighbourhood many people reply to my "hola" simply with "gringo".

Maybe its just me that finds this quite odd, given that in Ireland we wouldn't address someone as "foreigner". Then again, I sort of like the sound of Señor Gringo, and besides "what's in a name?".