I´m currently on medical leave from my site after contracting a particularly nasty stomach parasite called Giardia - acquired from sketchy drinking water - which means 2 things:
1) I´m physically miserable and doped up on Central American Manufactured Antibiotics
2) I have a lot of time on my hands to do nothing but mess around on the internet
Cue...BLOG ENTRY!!!!
Moving Right Along
Month two in Bahia Ballena has been an exercise in patience. After working daily to develop what ended up being a very good relationship with my initial host family I was moved to a new home with an entirely new cadre of Ngobes (as is stipulated by Peace Corps regulations - equal time spent with 3 different host families in your first 3 months at site). Interactions returned to the awkward silences and lack of eye contact that I had struggled to overcome with my family #1. The exception, as always, was the children.
Rather than general avoidance, which is what I experienced initially with the adults in family #2, I was always greeted with curious stares and sheepish smiles from Riquel, Bolo, and Norida - the three young kids in the house. Because Ngobe children do not traditionally receive much affection or positive attention from their parents and caretakers, any acknowledgement I give the kids of Ballena functions as an intoxicant. A few minutes spent kicking a makeshift soccer ball, wrestling, or drawing pictures and they´re completely enamored.
Just as with my first family, I was able to interact with the kids, and slowly break down the barriers of social pensivity held up by the rest of the family. At first I`m just a rather intimidating Gringo who is - for reasons they don`t quite understand - living in their home, but after seeing me unabashedly making a fool of myself while amusing the 3-10 year old demographic, they realize that my motives for being there are anything but malicious.
Day-in and day-out the most trying obstacle I face is gaining trust. This is often a draining activity, consistently requiring high energy levels, very thick skin, and unwavering patience. If I were to simply sit back and wait for my community to come to me with their needs, it is distinctly possible that I would never exchange a word with anyone. This is partially due to a Ngobe culture which seems to revolve around a self-conscious "don´t speak unless spoken to" philosophy of social conduct, and partially a natural human reaction to the newly presented "outsider". The good news is that, all it typically takes is one "moment" for the people of Ballena to accept you into their good graces. It could be a joke that successfully translates...offering to carry a bag of recently harvested plaintains too heavy for your 13-year old neighbor...or what has become my favorite way to break down walls - my pictures.
The best advice I got prior to the start of my service was to create an album of family photos to show everyone in my community. I took heed, and brought this album with me to Ballena, and after showing pictures of my mother, father, brothers, sisters, cousins, nieces, nephews, friends, and of my home city, I become a person to them. It´s amazing to me how much people´s attitudes in Ballena change towards me once they´ve seen my photo album. The veil of mystery is lifted and we can go about the business of working towards common goals together.
The Daily Pendulum
One of the primary reasons I came into Peace Corps was because I dreaded the droning monotony of daily routine in the states...and I think for better or worse I´ve gotten exactly what I wished for. Developing any semblance of daily consistency is a losing battle. Especially when living with host families. You may be presented with a lovely satiating bowl of white rice with a fried egg on top and grilled onions for dinner one evening (the equivalent of a high-end filet mignon around these here parts), and then you may see nothing more than dry bread and boiled bananas for the next three days. You may sleep like a baby one night (albeit in a hammock or on a wood floor), and then be awakened by a habitually barking dog, squawking chicken at a different time every night for a week (or worse by a curious and potentially dangerous insect or group of insects).
My role as a volunteer changes on an hourly basis. While I´m still determining the priority of needs in my community, I have to stay extremely flexible with what is asked of me on a daily basis. It may be an English lesson or six; it could be a request to give a training on raising chickens - when I am the furthest thing from Colonel Sanders; it could be a request to help carry 100-pound wooden logs over and through a 2-mile stretch of jungle covered hills. Because requests for my participation in community activities can be few and far between I have to jump at every opportunity I get, usually with very little advance warning.
The only way to learn from my community seems to be through active participation and observation. Any formal surveys or questioning lead to apprehensive and vague one-word answers. And as my Peace Corps predecessor advised me - if you want the correct answer to a question about the community you must ask at least 5 people and then you may be able to determine a ballpark consensus. A formal Q&A usually goes something like this:
Me: So how many community organizations are there in Ballena?
Community Member: A lot
Me: So like 5?
Community Member: Yeaaaahhhh...5 (*smiles and nods enthusiastically)!
Me: So there are 5 different organizations in the community?
Community: Yeah...well actually it´s like 10, I think...
Me: Ok? Are you a member of any of these organizations?
Community Member: Oh, of course!
Me: Really? That´s great! Which groups are you a part of?
Community Member: Oh, you know....(*trails off and stares into the distance*)
Pulling teeth to say the least! However, if you take a more natural approach and ask someone the right question, in just the right way, in just the right setting (i.e. asking about the history of peach palm production, while you´re drinking peach palm juice in the farm) you will have success!
Desperate Entitlement
Every day I´m faced with requests that range from frustrating to heartbreaking. Not a day goes by when I am not asked for a hand-out. Most all requests come from kids who see someone with slightly nicer things than they have and - not having a real grasp of value or ownership - simply can´t help themselves but to ask for gifts. This typically unfolds like so:
(I walk from one house to another with a beat up stainless steel water bottle in my hand)
Kid: Üli, what´s that you´re holding?
Me: It´s my water bottle.
Kid: What´s it do?
Me: It holds my water.
Kid: Ahhh. Well how much did it cost?
Me: I don´t remember.
Kid: So...I want a present...can you give it to me?
Me: I can´t.
Kid: Why? I want it.
Me: Because I only have one, and if I give you this one I won´t have one...not to mention I would have 20 more kids asking me for presents tomorrow after you showed your new water bottle to the entire town.
Kid: But...I want it?
If you´re not careful, you can get sucked into a vortex of circulur logic. In these situations it´s actually best to be a little bit mean. The question that will often blow their mind is "Why do you think you deserve it?" When you receive a baffled and blank stare in reply, you begin to realize that these requests for handouts aren´t a rude lack of manners, it´s simply that a deficit in material posessions causes a warped attitude of desperation and entitlement. It seems the perception of ownership becomes so jaded that these little ones often don´t know why they´re asking for a handout, just that they´ve developed an painful craving for what they don´t have. This craving becomes so overpowerful that the desperation is eventually completely transparent and manifests itself in a form of begging. The older the members of my community get, the less they seem to act on their desperation...although the ones who retain vanity passed the age when it´s considered natural still request handouts.
The most baffling thing to me is that any new possession is usually destroyed and completely useless within approximately 1-2 weeks. New soccer balls? Deflated with the patching ripped off after a few days. New coloring books? All pages ripped out and spine deliberately torn within a week. This seemed so counter-intuitive to me at first, but I´ve begun to attribute it to a simply lack of understanding for anything of value. The natural reaction for the children of Ballena, after something of value has been destroyed, is to simply run up to me and ask for a new one. No grieving of the old item...just a need to fill the void once again.
I avoid "gifting" anything because it is simply unsustainable. I may be able to provide the people of Ballena with the money to buy a new hammer or a new baseball glove, but one day I´m going to leave, and they´ll be right back where they started, without a sugar daddy, most likely having learned nothing. But then there are some handout requests - paternalism aside - that are literally impossible to fulfill. The most heartbreaking of these was when a 15-year old named Joelle asked if I would trade some of my skin with him (being that I´m white). He let out a slight smile afterward, but the request was only partially in jest. When I asked why he wanted to trade skin with me, he responded that if he were white he would be able to "leave Bahia Ballena and go to school." He later explained to me that his parents were not planning on paying the extra $50 or so to send him to high school next year. For a family that subsists on around $500 per year, this is simply too much to fork over for their son to have a basic education. Especially when he is one of 8 kids.
It´s time like this when I remember that as hard as it has been adjusting to living in abject poverty, this is still ultimately a temporary experience for me. This is a job for me...a tough one...but ultimately just a job. For the people of Ballena this is life. In a little less than 2 years, I´ll leave and go back to my relatively comfortable life in the states. That´s why when I´m forced to pick ants off my face at 3am, or eat nothing but bread and boiled bananas for three days straight, I have tried to use it as an opportunity to harvest empathy rather than apathy. Not exercising patience in every activity is nothing more than an affront to the 15-year old kid who has to spend the rest of his life clawing and scratching for an education because he lost the cosmic lottery.
With each obstacle I remember that inconveniences and uncomfortable circumstances will come and go for me during my time here, but in the end this isn´t a job for the people of Ballena...it´s life. It´s a test of patience that I´m faced with at this point in my service. Days turn to weeks with a velocity that is hard to define and challenges present themselves with wavering intensity, and in a form unique with each appearance. I can do nothing other than continually brush the dirt from my shoulders and try to help them as best I can.
