A couple of years ago I returned home to my host family limping on a severely twisted ankle, and in fear of my life. The ankle injury had been sustained in a game of basketball in Los Olivos. The fear of my life was due to the fact that I knew my host family would want to “take care” of me.

It was easily the worst sprain I'd ever had. When I fell down on it, there was an audible “pop!” The trainer had run over and worked on it painfully for a few minutes. He jammed hard on the bottom of my heel and something snapped back into place.

To make matters worse, I was too proud to leave the court, and spent the next hour or so hobbling around in the key and taking full advantage of the fact that, in light of my gruesome injury, nobody wanted to call fouls on me.

The pain didn't really come until after I had been sitting for an our or so on the bus ride home. My ankle started to swell and I began to feel nauseous. My plan had been to buy a quarter chicken at Wong's, some ibuprofen at the pharmacy, and then slip into my bed hopefully unnoticed. Halfway home I realized that I was swooning too much to even contemplate making detours from the direct line of the bus stop to my waiting mattress. Still, my stomach was protesting. Reluctantly, I picked up my phone.

“Hi,” I said calling up the daughter of the woman I rented from, “could you do me a favor? Could you pick me up some ibuprofen and a quarter chicken? I'll pay you back when I get home. Oh, and don't tell your mom.”

You couldn't expect a request like that to be accepted without question.

“I sprained my ankle,” I explained, “I just want to eat and go to bed.”

The daughter expressed an unwarranted amount of worry that I tried to quell. One of the most touching and admirable characteristics of the Peruvian people is how genuinely concerned they become for those who are sick or injured. Their desire to smother you with love and attention truly is a beautiful quality, but it sometimes clashes with the American philosophy of just wanting to be left alone so that you can quietly go out into the woods to die.

The bus stopped and I struggled to my feet. Every step was a searing agony. The journey seemed like it stretched on for miles. The only thoughts that sustained me were those of the softness of my bed, the quiet of my room, and the taste of the quarter chicken that would (hopefully) be awaiting me.

I reached the door to the house, I turned my key, and suddenly, chaos ensued.

“Oh my god! What have you done to yourself? I can't believe this has happened! Are you OK?”

My host mother had found out the truth! I turned an icy glare to her daughter, who held up a plastic bag containing a quarter chicken apologetically. Well, at least there was that.

“Did you get the ibuprofen?” I asked.

“Ibuprofen!” exclaimed my host mother in disgust. She had gathered around a couple of her friends from the neighborhood to support her, “who ever heard of treating a sprained ankle with ibuprofen? Crazy American. I suppose you were going to put ice on it too?”

The conglomeration of women started to laugh.

“Actually, I was,” I responded.

There was a collective gasp of horror as they hustled me into the living room and sat me down. There, waiting for me like some primitive torture device, was a cauldron of steaming water with some strange herbs floating in it.

“Sit down!” they commanded.

I sat.

“Put your foot in there!”

“But it's boiling hot!”

“No it's not,” my host mother said. She splashed her hand in the water to show me how harmless it was, “see, it won't hurt you.”

“There's a big difference between splashing your hand in boiling water and submerging it...”

I didn't have time to finish as they whipped off my shoe and plunged my foot into the concoction.

“GHHAAAHHH!”

“Oh quit being such a baby,” my host mother said. She splashed her hand a few more times to demonstrate how silly I was being. "See, it's not hot at all!"

I clenched my teeth.

I endured it for a few minutes.

My foot turned as red as a lobster.

Suddenly as if triggered by the pain, I remembered a stash of ibuprofen that I had hidden in my room from my last Sunday morning headache. I stumbled to my feet.

“Where are you going?”

“Bathroom,” I lied. I grabbed my quarter chicken on the way.

I crawled into my room and locked the door. I stood there panting, dangling somewhere between fear and hilarity. It was touching how willing my host mother was to dedicate her time and effort to “put me right.” But I wish she would have let me have just a slight say in the matter.

I found the plastic packet with the little orange pills and took several of them eagerly. Within ten minutes, the swelling was down and the pain had almost gone away. I stepped out of my room a little while later.

“You see,” my host mother said, “the treatment worked!”

I decided not to argue with her, I just thanked her graciously and went to bed. The whole escapade was just another reminder in how much different my cultural background was from hers. They treated sprained ankles with boiling water and herbs, I treated them with medication and ice. The world was beautiful and diverse. Secretly, we both thought the other was crazy.

However, a strange thing happened the next weekend at basketball. I had arrived and taken off my socks and shoes to show the massive bruise that extended from above my ankle all the way down to near my toes.

“Wow,” said the trainer, “that's worse than I thought it was.”

I nodded as he continued to look at it.

“So,” he said looking at me with a grin, “how did you treat it? Ice and ibuprofen?”

I couldn't tell if he was teasing me, so I just shrugged and got ready to play.