There is something that happens at 10 months when a good friend
comes to visit a peace corps volunteer. Or maybe its just me and other people
are better at handling extreme nostalgia and extreme happiness at the same time.
There have been moments, with increasing frequency, that pass
where I am reminded of certain people, laughs, nieces and/or nephews, foods, and sounds
from what feels like a past that is slipping away. Before I hit this stage,
whatever we shall call it, I was actually feeling super integrated and content
with my new life, as a volunteer, ready to handle the next year and a half
doing my thing, right here. Then, like a switch (perhaps catalyzed by the
current teachers strike and suspension of most of my current projects/
activities), I started to disconnect.
It’s true, that with this strike I don’t see the kids at the
school on a regular basis any more, nor do I get to check in with all my
counterparts, especially in the high school. The high school has, for all intents and
purposes, become a ghost town staffed by a few teachers, custodial staff,
guards and cooks. I don’t see swaths of students milling about. The pulperias are
vacant of the young romances that giggle and swoon on the front steps and dark corners of the seating area. The burger place has even closed and all has been replaced with a “what do we do now” feeling. We are
only missing tumble weeds to really nail the sense of desertion around here. The teachers
on one side, have every right to protest and get paid. The government on the
other hand is a democratic one, with interlaced complex systems that
prevent any normal citizen from fully comprehending how anything does or doesn't
get done. “We shall see” and tired looks are shared as everyone, including the
teachers, wait. Some have gone off to San Jose for the marches, blocked streets
on busy Fridays and Mondays. They stand in solidarity with their peers who have
been denied payments for at least 4 months, not
necessarily because the issue effects everyone individually but rather, there is a point they are trying
to make together. Get your shit together, perhaps. Seems no matter where you
go, this is what the people ask of their governments.
Anyway, we are coming up on three weeks straight of la
lucha. Which means if and when classes resume, teachers will be so busy catching
up the month gone by, preparing for required tests and covering necessary
material that us (yd) volunteers, charged with auxiliary responsibilities, will still
have a hot minute to let things return to an equilibrium. Luckily I have a couple projects that hardly require student's direct participation. Well except my girls
soccer practices and although I've continued to host it during this time, few have
detached the idea of our soccer practices from regular school scheduling. So I have been
lucky that a few have shown up at all. And since I don’t have phone numbers, communicating
this to them becomes a challenge.
Getting back to my original crisis here, one having little
to do with soccer or bureaucratic red tape… I find myself missing things with a
depth I was unprepared for. I have had the pleasure of seeing two very good friends from the states over this last month. These two happen to have seen me at some extremes in my life. Kevin has been around since freshman year in university, a first of many periods of emotional roller-coasters. And Nicole lived in the same dorm at SIT and has jointly endured not just the Vermont 8 month long winter and race for a reason, but
the under-appreciated hardships of grad school, specifically at SIT. So what happened to my inkling of disconnected-ness? Well that snowflake became the abominable
snowman in like .5 seconds. They both know a past part of me that people here
just don’t and they've both been exposed to, whether they wanted to or not, some
of my more vulnerable moments (some of life's greatest teaching moments but still suck to go through while in them). I’d like to think that so far I have done a good
job, in general, of looking forward and adjusting to new things and lifestyles. But
this new ache for the familiar is new to me. I don’t miss a home, because its
not a place to me. I miss certain sensations and feelings, faces; the ability to
do things like drive my car to the beach to watch the sun set, or put things
like beer and cheese in my own fridge. The things I thought I’d get sick of I’m
actually okay with, like having to speak Spanish all the time and learning how to deal with kids ( learning something new everyday!). It's this other random flip book of images that engage my
disconnected mind. Seeing my friends has brought back, in the flesh if you
will, very real nostalgia for times and things I thought I've moved away from, some of these “things” I've started to miss ( not that I would trade their
visits for anything, I feel very loved :)). Quick example, I never thought I'd miss such a small town in the middle of nowhere Vermont or the smell wet trees in the PNW...apparently I've lied to myself.
I know what I need to
do is reconnect and reinsert myself in my life here. I know this not because
Peace Corps tells me so but because I've learned it. Things are not going to
get easier or better or less sad by sitting on my crappy couch-bed eating
brownie batter, refreshing my Netflix page a billion times until the movie
loads. And who knows?! Maybe in a weeks time, this will have passed and I will
have quit running again because I’m just toooo tired at the end of the day (
hopefully I also will not have bought more brownie mix). I miss my school
actually. I miss the kids. I want to work and I don’t want to be sad. I will
continue to keep looking ahead because that’s what we do, and it will be okay that my heart is a little heavy doing so, that is also what we do.
