*Quote by Salman Rushdie, The Jaguar Smile
Word of the Day:
una potencia- superpower
I went home to the States for my sister's graduation! It was amazing to see my family, eat salad, and take stock of things 6 months into my service.
The story of how I arrived home is pretty comical, and deserves a few lines. On Monday, the day before my flight, I took the "6 am" bus out of San Miguelito. While it is the earliest bus to arrive in Managua, the ride is never a fun experience, because it is a guaranteed 6 hours to the capital. This time was no exception, as we stopped every few hundred yards to pick up passengers, got stuck behind plenty of cow herds being moved, made a detour to a fish factory, and the police searched our bus with drug sniffing dogs.
In the middle of all this, I got a voicemail from the Peace Corps doctors saying that my follow- up appointment for my #kidneyinfection was cancelled because they had a meeting, and I began to squirm frustratedly in my seat, aggressively reading Brian Greene's The Hidden Reality for distraction. As luck would have it, I eventually got into the city, got my appointment back and confirmed that the infection was gone, which was all much simpler than I had expected.
The next day, after waking at 3 am fearing I would miss my taxi, I went to the airport at 4:30 am to catch my flight. I got to Atlanta extremely smoothly, where culture shock set in very rapidly, especially in my sleepless state. The first shocking thing was the scale: I'd venture a guess that the Atlanta airport is bigger than many small Nicaraguan cities. Secondly, I was thrown by the diversity. THERE WERE SO MANY DIFFERENT KINDS OF PEOPLE!!!!!!! I guess I've become sort of Nica in the fact that whenever I see people who do not phenotypically resemble the majority of Nicaraguans, I check them out extra, trying to figure out if they are other tourists or Americans or how I can place these "people from away." So I had to remember that I was in America, and that diversity was normal, and that I should probably stop checking everyone out quite so much. After paying $10 for a Chipotle burrito, which is basically 2 days of my Peace Corps salary, I was profoundly unable to deal with anything anymore and settled down between two hipster parents and their brood and a Hassidic Jew to wait for our flight. Wait we did. I got stuck on the plane for basically 6 hours due to a bunch of absurd thunderstorm related delays, but I eventually got to the airport a little before midnight.
It was so good to hug my parents! Physical contact with loved ones is one of the things that can be hardest about Peace Corps service; it's easy to go for months without having satisfying physical contact with other people.
So what did I do while I was home? An exhaustive list:
-Hung out with my awesome family
-Vacuumed! I had not seen a vacuum for 9 months, so this was much more exciting than it sounds.
-Attended Adeline Clayton's high school graduation. Watch out University of Vermont! Plenty of promise headed your way!
-Had a lovely family party for the graduate, and hung out with my cousins, which was fun because we almost never get to see each other anymore
-Visited my grandmother, great aunt, aunt and cousin in Connecticut
-Ate grilled cheese, bagels, homemade pizza (which I sort of made, although with a ton of help from family members), smoked salmon pasta salad, chips, salsa, cookies, brownies, cake, cheddar cheese, broccoli, artichoke dip, SALAD, ice cream, and tons of other delicious things. Hence, nobody in San Miguelito thinks I am "delgada" anymore.
-Walked my adorable dog Maisy, who (not unlike moi) has become rather portly of late, but who is still the sweetest basset hound we've ever had
-Watched Season 4 of Arrested Development on Netflix (which is not available in Latin America)
-Went on bike rides
-Caught up with a few childhood friends
I also went shopping with my mother and sister, which was terrifying because of the overwhelming amount of choice in all of the stores. And also you could touch the things and didn't have to know their names!! I came very close to having a panic attack in Target. I am extremely bemused by one of the products apparently now sold in grocery and big box stores: cat food in weird refrigerated Pillsbury crescent roll-esque packages. These seem highly unnecessary to me, but what do I know. Also, I'm convinced they changed the size and or weight of quarters.
At least at home in the Somerset Hills, things felt very surreal. It was definitely bizarre to be somewhere so...perfect. I felt as if I had wandered into a picture the background that Nicas frequently photoshop into the background of their photos or hang as wall art: a fantasy-land representing freedom from want, the best of what can be imagined materially. I've always had a really weird relationship with where I'm from, because I've never felt that I belonged there, even though it was all I really knew for 18 years, so being back definitely brought up mixed emotions.
Despite living the dream, after hearing people tell me over and over about how I am so blessed to live in "una potencia," it was painfully apparent how damaged, divided and hypocritical my nation is. A few salient examples: after driving through one of the most air polluted zones of the nation, I spent most of my last day in America in the airport, cursing at CNN's vapid coverage of George Zimmerman's trial, and grumbling at Marco Rubio's religious rhetoric pandering to the Tea Party on the immigration bill. (Having lived in a country with minimal separation of church and state, I've become a bit fanatical about this not respected very often principle of our governance.) And while it was amazing to be home as the Defense of Marriage Act was struck down, the ramifications from the Supreme Court's other decisions have plenty of potential to be negative for many minorities.
Talking with my sisters, my family, friends and simply reading again made me realize how disolocated I am from so many things I cared about before I left: politics, environmentalism, vegetarianism, struggles against racism,etc. Sometimes, I'm blatantly unsure whether doing Peace Corps has made me a better or worse person, a more or less "active citizen", a more or less concerned child, family member or friend. It's not a question that's easy (or maybe even a good idea) to ask oneself during service. It's so easy to lose focus on the bigger picture (sporadic internet certainly doesn't help) and not become incredibly self absorbed, especially when you are first settling in to life in a new country and are the center of everyone's attention, quite literally.
On top of that, I've been doing so many things to fit in and because it's easy (and so much of my life, compared to life in the States, is not smooth or easy): going to church, even as my time here has made me increasingly uncomfortable with organized religion, eating meat, not eating well and exercising out of laziness, loosing track of the issues back home, not questioning sexist or racist attitudes more than is absolutely necessary, constantly buying things encased in plastic, etc.
I hope I'll be able to use this trip home as a springboard to re-evaluate my Nicaraguan life, re-center, and re-invigorate my work here. It's not enough to be "saving the world." (What an awful expression!) I need to hold true to the principles that I've developed for a reason. And to be less ambivalent about everything and everyone. Hold me to that.
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