guilt

Sunday afternoon, 4:12pm. Sitting on my veranda and relaxing on the wicker furniture that I inherited from previous volunteers... Chavela plays in the background ...

" se me hizo facil... 

borrarte de mi memoria, 

a esa mujer a quien yo amaba tanto... 

se me hizo facil, 

borrar de mi este llanto.. 

ahora la olvido ... 

cada dia, mas y mas...."

Other sounds include the sounds from the welder's tools that works out front and the traffic passing down the national highway (EN6), which sits just a few feet in front of my house.

"Voy a buscar otro amor, 

que me comprenda..."

iTunes switches it up to the Black Eyed Pees, "the Way you make me feel."

"this aint no attempt to get up all up in yo jeans

even tho I wanna make you scream to extremes...

you got me feelin' like Im suppose to feel,

just you and i,

up close & personal

Ill be gentle while you lettin your emotions spill"

... I've been meaning to sit down and write a real blog post. Lately I've gotten both busier but also, pretty disinterested in keeping up with the blog. Today is a slow day so I will go ahead and approveitar and write down some thoughts. 

I've been thinking a lot about 'guilt'... 

A few days weeks ago a friend from home wrote me wondering if she could visit. I was psyched. "Of course you should come visit!" Hearing people show interest in potentially coming to see me on this side of the world makes me ecstatic. However, after the rush of emotion I take a moment to settle down and remind myself that a flight from Cali to Moz is no joke... so the chances of seeing a familiar face around here is pretty slight to non-existent. It's a quick reality check, "they won't come."

My friend wrote me asking a series of questions, "When is the best time to visit? Can you have a visitor? How much money do you think I need? .. Tell me about what life is like day to day.."

I responded, "My day to day is not the ordinary Peace Corps experience, per say. I live in a capital so I have access to restaurants, grocery stores, and a regional Peace Corps office with unlimited wi-fi." Basically, I made it clear to her that my experience is not at ALL what you typically think of when you imagine a 20-something-year old American volunteer out in the African bush as a Peace Corps Volunteer. In general, Peace Corps has evolved with the times and it is no longer the Peace Corps of 50 years ago. I think about this a lot... I think "ohh shit. Imagine being in PC back in the day. No electricity. No cell phones. Real survivor type shit." Don't get me wrong, some volunteers still do have placements like this but overall, most volunteers in Mozambique have electricity and more or less reliable network coverage.

I think that this experience has been difficult. But it is not always difficult for the reasons you think it would be. I think that PC volunteers 50 years ago, or even 10 years ago, had to adapt to a completely different set of circumstances. It must have been REALLY hard to do PC in that time. It's hard not to compare your experience with others. I sometimes think that I got off easy because I'm in a pretty posh site- I can buy chocolate, cheese and wine (if I can afford it) at Shoprite, and I have a lot of volunteers relatively close. Not to mention, a network of friendly ex-pats that make the social scene in Chimoio much more enjoyable. I am constantly comparing my experience with others- 

"I'm in a capital, this is not a typical PC experience. I am not integrated, I spend most of my time with americans/ex-pats. My placement is a joke, I've never felt so mediocre, I'm a terrible volunteer. This has been a tough learning lesson. I feel... unfulfilled. If I could go back... would I still join PC? Absolutely. Would I do this again? Probably not. How much longer do I have?? 9 months,.. less than a year. You can do this.

That is just a peek into what goes on inside my head. I feel guilty. I feel guilty for not being that fucking Peace Corps poster child. I feel guilty because instead of sitting under mango trees with the locals, I drink beers with ex-pats. I fee guilty that I've become so desensitized to sights that use to utterly appall me. I've become cold and I don't like it. 

Back in 2007 or 2008, I took a trip back to Mexico with my Mom and my brother to visit our family, whom we hadn't seen since my grandmother's passing in '95 (or was it '96?). One day, mi tio Federico took us out for lunch to this market. After we had finished lunch, we walked back to my uncle's van and we ran across 3 small toddlers that were begging on the side of the street. The two boys could not have been older than 6 years old probably and their little sister must have been around 3. The sight of these children BROKE my heart. I asked my Mom to go with me to the McDonald's that was right behind us and I asked her to buy the children a meal (I bought a poor, indigenous family a meal from McDonald's and gave it to them as charity. How fucking IRONIC.). We came out of the McDonald's and tracked down the kids, "esto es para compartir con su hermana" (here, share this with your sister). I remember this encounter so vividly in my head. It was the first time that I had seen such poverty. It struck a nerve in me. For years after, retelling this story made me cry. Despite my brazen, L.A. attitude... I've also been known to be pretty sensitive.

Now when I see a poor woman with a child strapped to her back, barefoot, dirty, and hungry... I barely look at her. It doesn't even phase me. On one side, I feel as if I am becoming so cold and jaded... while on the other side, I know that I cannot possibly feed every beggar and I cannot fall apart every time a child approaches me with sad eyes,"Senhora.... senhora... "

I am becoming numb. Numb to this reality, to this experience. I don't want to. But it makes it so much easier.