Well, if you remember from last year’s blog at about this time, we were happily sucking the mango juice off of our chins several times a day. Yes, mango season has come full circle. Along with avocadoes, chirimoya, and peanuts (peanuts have two harvests a year). Only there isn’t anything – insert sympathetic sigh here – growing on the trees!! There are no harvests, just the peanuts. Who knows why? True to par, we hear lots of reasons: global warming, too much (non-existent) ice, messed up rains. But basically everyone thinks it’s the weather. I tend to think it’s a combination of land-use practice and weather. Either way, the campesinos are hurting. With food prices rising and crops failing, the lack of basic nutrition is more and more acute. Sometimes we have a plate of rice for dinner. And a noodle-only soup the next day for dinner. If there’s no rice, we eat boiled green bananas and some potatoes. People just can’t afford to buy beans, legumes, or other ¨luxury¨ items. And almost nobody has a garden. Fortunately, some families raise animals. But in our home, for example, although we have cows that are being milked, our family sells every last bit of cheese made from the milk to make money – so they can buy rice. The one free source of protein and vitamins we have is sold off. Fortunately, Brian and I bring up food items from the city and are able to supplement what we eat to some extent.
We go back and forth a lot about how bad the situation really is. People have the money to buy alcohol and have parties, but they don’t have enough money to buy lentils?!?! They can’t afford the 30 cents it takes to buy a pack of seeds for veggies? One pack of seeds costs the same as a bottle of cañaso, the bootleg sugar cane liquor. And I am not exaggerating when I say that there are pobladores who drink one bottle daily. They effectively drink a garden’s worth of fresh produce in three days. There are lots of cheap food options. Eggs are very inexpensive. Other types of food can be bought instead of rice. But the thing is, rice is cheaper and it is used as filler. The custom is quantity over quality, every time.
I think the problem is a combination of custom, habit, inertia, and a lack of pro-active problem solving. And in a way, I can understand it. Collective history has a way of sticking around. One can find a lot of similarities among cultures that have been conquered and exploited. There is a mind set that things are always done to an individual. A justifiable sense of learned helplessness that has very profound roots. But buried under politics, bureaucracy, under history and the ebb and flow of human-ness, lies the power of the mind. There isn’t anyone here who doesn’t have the resources and power to improve their situation. They don’t have to suffer so much! They can dictate in a more proactive way the path their life takes. If only they believed in themselves. A more just and sane world would make this easier to manifest, but an unjust and crazy world does not make it impossible!
Friday, January 9, 2009
Magical Realism Continued
1) At approximately 10:45am on December 22nd, I became the proud Godmother of a brand new dental chair at the Health Center. My first Godchild ever, I was so proud! It looked so cute sitting there next to all of the drills and tooth-picker things the dentists use!! After sprinkling holy water on the chair with a rose, I posed for pictures with my new Godchild.
2) The same day, around 4pm I attended the first party ever that I actually got locked into. Yes, locked in. It was the primary school´s graduation party, and the principal wanted everyone to stay and keep drinking and dancing. By this point all of the kids (who the party was supposedly for) got bored watching drunk adults slur and dance, and had left. So, to keep us party people captive the principal locked the doors. No leaving. Well, I finally managed to convince Juan (my host brother and incidentally the school handy-man) to open the door for me. Upon opening the door a crack to let me out, a flock of mothers also pining to leave were seen running up behind me to escape, like iron filaments to a magnet. Juan pushed me though and quickly slammed the door shut. Commotion could be heard on the other side of the door, as none of the other mothers managed to escape with me!
2) The same day, around 4pm I attended the first party ever that I actually got locked into. Yes, locked in. It was the primary school´s graduation party, and the principal wanted everyone to stay and keep drinking and dancing. By this point all of the kids (who the party was supposedly for) got bored watching drunk adults slur and dance, and had left. So, to keep us party people captive the principal locked the doors. No leaving. Well, I finally managed to convince Juan (my host brother and incidentally the school handy-man) to open the door for me. Upon opening the door a crack to let me out, a flock of mothers also pining to leave were seen running up behind me to escape, like iron filaments to a magnet. Juan pushed me though and quickly slammed the door shut. Commotion could be heard on the other side of the door, as none of the other mothers managed to escape with me!
Service is Subtle
On a recent trip to Lima, Brian and I paid a visit to our old host family (the ones that we stayed with during the first three months of training). They are such good people! Curious, talkative, funny, and caring. One evening while conversing with Martha, the mom of our host family, we started talking about all the Peace Corps volunteers that they have met up until now. Martha and Ivan, her husband, have hosted four rounds of volunteers. And the most surprising thing was that, after two years of getting to know us volunteers, she still doesn’t understand why we do it. Why in the world would we leave family, friends, jobs – our life – to work in a far away place for free?
Aside from cultural factors, her comment has a hidden socio-economic subtext. Martha sees us as privileged; that being volunteers and not earning money for two years is something we can do with ease in economic terms. Martha and her family live just above the poverty line. Truthfully, she’s not entirely wrong in her perception. But the idea of volunteering should go far beyond economic class. So I tried to put the ball into her court. I asked her if she could serve as a volunteer for another community if her government gave her the opportunity. And you know what she said? No. ¨How can I help others if I myself am someone who needs help??¨ She even said that she didn’t think she was capable of helping others, because she herself had nothing. But how sad to think that in order to help people, one needs ¨things¨, be it money or some other kind of extrinsic resource. In this sense, Martha feels trapped by her social economic standing, unable to help herself – let alone others.
So then what is service? Who should/can help who and why? Generally, it is the Haves who help the Have Nots. That’s what the Peace Corps is. It’s true even within my own country. Back in the States, as a teacher in a high-poverty neighborhood, all of the staff at the schools was people of higher social-economic standing than that of the neighborhood in which they worked. But, why? Why weren’t there people from the same neighborhood in positions of service? It can be said that those in difficult economic or social situations don’t have the luxury, time, and means to think about much more than survival and everyday life. However, I always tried to teach my students that being of service to others enriches us, that we all can have a positive effect on humanity. That it doesn’t matter where you’re from, how much money you have, or who you are. You can always do something good.
Never in this life will we understand what it is to be something we’re not. I will never know what it is really like to be poor, although I will have lived in a village for two years that is officially considered under ¨extreme poverty¨ by the government. But is it even really necessary that I understand? Why do we have to be the same as those we help? Do we really need to understand each others´ immediate situations in order to interact with each other in a positive way? Do the ideas of ¨service¨ and ¨economic class¨ really have to be so dependant?
A person doesn’t serve because they feel guilty. Or because they want to be someone else, or even because they (unadmittingly) have a superiority complex. A person offers their service to others in order to share, exchange, learn, and amplify reality. A person serves to make connections and develop relationships. To cultivate love among us. Those who serve do so to discover hidden potentials and share with others the journey of reaching those potentials. Aren’t we all capable of that? And maybe the discrepancy between those who offer service and those who receive it is due to the fact that the more different the two sides are, the more there is to be learned; and thus, gained from the experience. This is not a one-way world!
As a Have, let someone change you. Listen to those with no voice. Let someone plant a foreign and maybe uncomfortable idea in your head. And pursue it even when it can be painful. For what I have found, after coming all this way for what seems like such a long, long time, is that – really – it’s the people of Sícchez who are serving me. Who are making me better, pushing me, making me reconsider. Who are improving my life. That’s just it…you can’t help without being helped yourself. And that is the most beautiful thing about it.
Aside from cultural factors, her comment has a hidden socio-economic subtext. Martha sees us as privileged; that being volunteers and not earning money for two years is something we can do with ease in economic terms. Martha and her family live just above the poverty line. Truthfully, she’s not entirely wrong in her perception. But the idea of volunteering should go far beyond economic class. So I tried to put the ball into her court. I asked her if she could serve as a volunteer for another community if her government gave her the opportunity. And you know what she said? No. ¨How can I help others if I myself am someone who needs help??¨ She even said that she didn’t think she was capable of helping others, because she herself had nothing. But how sad to think that in order to help people, one needs ¨things¨, be it money or some other kind of extrinsic resource. In this sense, Martha feels trapped by her social economic standing, unable to help herself – let alone others.
So then what is service? Who should/can help who and why? Generally, it is the Haves who help the Have Nots. That’s what the Peace Corps is. It’s true even within my own country. Back in the States, as a teacher in a high-poverty neighborhood, all of the staff at the schools was people of higher social-economic standing than that of the neighborhood in which they worked. But, why? Why weren’t there people from the same neighborhood in positions of service? It can be said that those in difficult economic or social situations don’t have the luxury, time, and means to think about much more than survival and everyday life. However, I always tried to teach my students that being of service to others enriches us, that we all can have a positive effect on humanity. That it doesn’t matter where you’re from, how much money you have, or who you are. You can always do something good.
Never in this life will we understand what it is to be something we’re not. I will never know what it is really like to be poor, although I will have lived in a village for two years that is officially considered under ¨extreme poverty¨ by the government. But is it even really necessary that I understand? Why do we have to be the same as those we help? Do we really need to understand each others´ immediate situations in order to interact with each other in a positive way? Do the ideas of ¨service¨ and ¨economic class¨ really have to be so dependant?
A person doesn’t serve because they feel guilty. Or because they want to be someone else, or even because they (unadmittingly) have a superiority complex. A person offers their service to others in order to share, exchange, learn, and amplify reality. A person serves to make connections and develop relationships. To cultivate love among us. Those who serve do so to discover hidden potentials and share with others the journey of reaching those potentials. Aren’t we all capable of that? And maybe the discrepancy between those who offer service and those who receive it is due to the fact that the more different the two sides are, the more there is to be learned; and thus, gained from the experience. This is not a one-way world!
As a Have, let someone change you. Listen to those with no voice. Let someone plant a foreign and maybe uncomfortable idea in your head. And pursue it even when it can be painful. For what I have found, after coming all this way for what seems like such a long, long time, is that – really – it’s the people of Sícchez who are serving me. Who are making me better, pushing me, making me reconsider. Who are improving my life. That’s just it…you can’t help without being helped yourself. And that is the most beautiful thing about it.
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