An excerpt from my journal this morning:
12/23/10
Wow I'm blown away when I write that date. I can't believe it's almost Christmas and I'm ... here. This is just such a weird decision I made to stay here. It's so unlike me. I love holidays; I love Christmas, buying presents, being with my family and friends. And it's not like I couldn't have gone home. It would have made perfect sense to go. Good timing, an opportunity to see everyone, a special time of the year. 2 weeks ago I woke up looking at plane tickets, my heart set on a last-minute trip.
But I just... didn't. For the past year, I was debating whether or not I would go for Christmas, and I think part of me wanted to just put it off to the point where I end up not making a decision and am forced to break the mold, forced to take a risk and make a decision I probably would never actively make. To stay. Here.
But now I am going to get to experience Christmas in a different culture with different people. I'll get to share my traditions. I already bought presents for my family and friends here and I wasn't even stingy because I wanted to share with them to the extent that I would share with my people at home. Now I'm reading this thinking - so what you get to spend Christmas in another culture. You already know what they do, how they celebrate it because everyone has already told you. (It sounds like it's not thaaat different from any other day. To be honest, it sounds like it sucks.) Plus you already spend everyday in another culture so can the cultural hoop-la.
So what is it really? And now I just realized... I want to share Christmas in this country with these people to prove to them and to myself that I love them just as much as my own people. To show that this love affair I have with Paraguay is real. To show that they ARE members of my ring of family and friends. I already know I'm going to be sad the next couple of days. I'm going to cry and miss my family and feel homesick. But those feelings of sadness don't replace the joy I feel for being here; they just live beside it. They reside together as I celebrate my beautiful, tragic, bittersweet, memorable Paraguayan Christmas. Feliz Navidad.
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Thursday, December 2, 2010
the many faces of time.
10 months have passed since I arrived in Paraguay. A lot can be done in 10 months. You can have a baby, finish a school year, some people sign a 10-month lease. 10 months is a sufficient amount of time to spend in something, somewhere, with someone, enough to be able to say one is accomplishing a lot with that something, familiar with that somewhere, involved with that someone.
When you're counting 27 on your fingers and toes and limbs and teeth, each month is a milestone and inevitably brings about a bit of reflection. Am I accomplishing anything? Do I feel like I know my community? Can I name people with whom I can say I have true, genuine relationships? Here at my 10 month checkpoint, I feel I am swinging on a pendulum between the extremes. One day, everything is a hopeless disaster; the next, I couldn't feel more happy and fulfilled in my life. There is never one factor that consistently makes or breaks my day; it is usually just a big dust cloud of ins and outs and ups and downs, eventually ending in a steady tone for everything I do in that day. I lay down at night feeling exhausted either because I poured my entire self into Paraguay or because Paraguay sucked me dry that day. Just as temperamental as my attitude is, so is my relationship with time. Some days feel like an eternity, and my thoughts flutter between memories from the past, comforts from home, and daydreams of the "picture-perfect, care-free" life that awaits me in the United States once my time here is finished. As always, we never remember pain; everything I remember and everything I imagine at home is clear, clean, easy.
Then there are days where I wake up and feel like time is flying by me, like the train is running and I'm trying to jump on. I realize how quickly my 2 years here is passing, and I feel short of breath thinking that I won't have enough time to complete my work or share my ideas or appreciate everything about this experience. That there's not enough time to show my profound love for this country, this culture, these people. I find myself in a twilight zone; I see myself in the future missing this time in my life, and I feel a nostalgia for the present moment. The phases of time are intertwined.
Which is funny considering that I'm living in a culture that overwhelmingly lives in the present. Can you tell who's the American here? Paraguayans function on a timeline of a few days no mas. For my presentation ceremony at the school, we planned everything and invited people only two days before. I cross paths with someone I haven't seen for a couple days, and they emotionally hug my neck, calling out, "Tanto tiempo! Long time, no see!" I run into a woman from my exercise group on Thursday who hasn't come since Monday, and she says to me, "No me voy mas... I don't go anymore." In Guarani, they hardly use anything but the present tense. Rarely do conversations turn to analysis of the past or worry of the future but consist in the small cycle of Now. Ahora. Koaga. Everything is reduced to short, simple.
As a development worker, I sometimes hate this concept. It's not conducive to improvement or sustainability. There is no looking back to recognize factors and cause and effect; no analysis, discussion, change. There is no preparation for the future, sometimes not even a regard, a concern for it. When the whole country is sitting in the shade with a cool breeze, drinking terere, chatting with friends, I can look through my Westerner's lens and pinpoint why this country is stricken with sickness and poverty, living left behind.
But at the same time, as a person, I appreciate, I envy, the ability to enjoy with every ounce of themselves that terere, that while they spent under a tree in their backyard. We talk about the blur of the moment, but for them the past and the future is a blur. This moment is clear and is the only thing they have, the only thing they are guaranteed in this unjust, complicated, difficult world. So why not make the most of it?
My 10 months here have been a mixture of contradicting time, emotions, and thoughts. I doubt I will ever come to a point where I see or feel just one thing, but I think that's what happens when we truly begin to live. Begin to explore. We open ourselves and fill up with a hundred different ideas from a million different angles leaving us confused and tired. But in these weak and hard times, we grow and change. I know I am a different person now than I was 10 months ago and than I will be 17 months from now. The only thing I can hope for in all of this, is that when I do leave in that distant/near date, that I take a bit of Paraguay with me and leave a bit of myself behind.
Whatever that means...
When you're counting 27 on your fingers and toes and limbs and teeth, each month is a milestone and inevitably brings about a bit of reflection. Am I accomplishing anything? Do I feel like I know my community? Can I name people with whom I can say I have true, genuine relationships? Here at my 10 month checkpoint, I feel I am swinging on a pendulum between the extremes. One day, everything is a hopeless disaster; the next, I couldn't feel more happy and fulfilled in my life. There is never one factor that consistently makes or breaks my day; it is usually just a big dust cloud of ins and outs and ups and downs, eventually ending in a steady tone for everything I do in that day. I lay down at night feeling exhausted either because I poured my entire self into Paraguay or because Paraguay sucked me dry that day. Just as temperamental as my attitude is, so is my relationship with time. Some days feel like an eternity, and my thoughts flutter between memories from the past, comforts from home, and daydreams of the "picture-perfect, care-free" life that awaits me in the United States once my time here is finished. As always, we never remember pain; everything I remember and everything I imagine at home is clear, clean, easy.
Then there are days where I wake up and feel like time is flying by me, like the train is running and I'm trying to jump on. I realize how quickly my 2 years here is passing, and I feel short of breath thinking that I won't have enough time to complete my work or share my ideas or appreciate everything about this experience. That there's not enough time to show my profound love for this country, this culture, these people. I find myself in a twilight zone; I see myself in the future missing this time in my life, and I feel a nostalgia for the present moment. The phases of time are intertwined.
Which is funny considering that I'm living in a culture that overwhelmingly lives in the present. Can you tell who's the American here? Paraguayans function on a timeline of a few days no mas. For my presentation ceremony at the school, we planned everything and invited people only two days before. I cross paths with someone I haven't seen for a couple days, and they emotionally hug my neck, calling out, "Tanto tiempo! Long time, no see!" I run into a woman from my exercise group on Thursday who hasn't come since Monday, and she says to me, "No me voy mas... I don't go anymore." In Guarani, they hardly use anything but the present tense. Rarely do conversations turn to analysis of the past or worry of the future but consist in the small cycle of Now. Ahora. Koaga. Everything is reduced to short, simple.
As a development worker, I sometimes hate this concept. It's not conducive to improvement or sustainability. There is no looking back to recognize factors and cause and effect; no analysis, discussion, change. There is no preparation for the future, sometimes not even a regard, a concern for it. When the whole country is sitting in the shade with a cool breeze, drinking terere, chatting with friends, I can look through my Westerner's lens and pinpoint why this country is stricken with sickness and poverty, living left behind.
But at the same time, as a person, I appreciate, I envy, the ability to enjoy with every ounce of themselves that terere, that while they spent under a tree in their backyard. We talk about the blur of the moment, but for them the past and the future is a blur. This moment is clear and is the only thing they have, the only thing they are guaranteed in this unjust, complicated, difficult world. So why not make the most of it?
My 10 months here have been a mixture of contradicting time, emotions, and thoughts. I doubt I will ever come to a point where I see or feel just one thing, but I think that's what happens when we truly begin to live. Begin to explore. We open ourselves and fill up with a hundred different ideas from a million different angles leaving us confused and tired. But in these weak and hard times, we grow and change. I know I am a different person now than I was 10 months ago and than I will be 17 months from now. The only thing I can hope for in all of this, is that when I do leave in that distant/near date, that I take a bit of Paraguay with me and leave a bit of myself behind.
Whatever that means...
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