The Balance

August 26, 2006

I’ve been told that my letters may sound like I’m unhappy, and that my blogs I only write when I’m happy. (That’s a very Spanish-ized sentence! I’m losing my English grammar!!) So I’m worried I’m not presenting properly the delicate balance of Peace Corps (or that it’s presented in different places so not everyone gets it.) It's fun to write about little adventures and fun projects, easy to try to make this experience sound all rosy so no one worries about me or thinks badly of Peace Corps or Paraguay. But here’s the truth: this is hard, by far the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It’s hard in ways I thought it’d be, and some of the challenges I didn’t expect, and sometimes I don’t even understand what it is that’s so hard, it just IS.

Being away from friends and family is of course difficult. I saw pictures of my brother’s high school graduation, everyone seemed to look different. I’m missing important moments in important people’s lives, like Sarah H and Pam K’s weddings next year. When my sister got engaged it took days to find a way to talk with her, and I still don’t know what her ring looks like . :(

Technology is difficult. I have a cell phone and I can use it to call the US, but at 50c a minute there’s no way. It’s even relatively expensive to call other PCVs here, and tho text messaging is cheaper it’s hard to have a conversation that way. With my shortwave radio I can pick up BBC Worldservice, but only sometimes. Today I went to Horqueta to use the internet, but it was raining so the lights went out. I can send messages w/ my cell phone, but only by sticking my arm out the door at the exactly right angle, and even that sometimes doesn’t work. I miss consistency, being able to count on things.

I miss having friends nearby. I go hang out with a group of women here, the Torres sisters, who are always outside terereing and gossiping, and I like talking with them, but they talk to each other in Guarani, and while some days that’s fun to listen to, there are other times when I don’t want a language lesson, I want to talk to friends. My other friends, Jorge and Clara, run a store and I can go hang out there, but we’re always interrupted by customers. I’ve made “plans” with them to get together on Saturday nights and drink beer and play cards, but those were Paraguayan plans so they never actually occurred. I miss happy hours in Brooklyn and knowing there is a time every week when I’ll be with my friends. (And I won’t even think about how I miss those cold draught Brooklyn Lagers…)

As much as I miss my American friends here in Paraguay, I don’t like to travel to see them. The busride is long and annoying, and our weekends in Asuncion have been too full and busy – we drink too much at the bar and stay out too late and spend the next few days tired (bc we get up for the free breakfast) and hungover and trying to do everything and buy everything we need and see the latest movies (we got the new Pirates of the Caribbean last month!) and I try to spend quality time with everybody before we all have to leave again a few days later. That’s not fun or relaxing. The volunteers in Concepcion are closer, but even “close” is a two hour nasty bus ride away. And unlike other volunteers, I’m not feeling the need to escape from site every few weeks – almost the opposite, I hate leaving, hate feeling like I’m abandoning them here or that I can’t handle it. It’s not that I want to leave, I want things to be better here.

Oh, and I have a new friend, Andrea, the new Rural Econ volunteer who just came to Tacuati to replace Ali. She seems nice, we had a delicious curry dinner last night (thanks mom) and I think we’ll get along well. But then why do I resent her being here a little?? I can’t help but feel territorial, that I was here first, and that this town ain’t big enough for the two of us. Then I get mad at myself for feeling this way and try to feel grateful for having such support so close by. Like a block and a half away.

And the work – what work? Is having terere with people really working?? Is teaching a teacher to play bingo with her students really helping?? All that eats away at me sometimes too.

The language I knew would be tough – I’m comfortable in Spanish by now, and I want to learn more Guarani, but I also find myself not taking much time to study it. And indigenous languages are just plain hard. I felt better the other day when someone told me I’m more “guapa” (hardworking) than Ryan, the volunteer who I replaced, b/c I’m learning more Guarani. That was nice, but then I remembered all the other ways they compare me w/ Ryan, that she’s a better artist and had a PC boyfriend, and that sucked.

The way people talk here is hard too. I know when they call me “gordita” (literally, little fat person) that they do it lovingly, and it’s not the same as saying “fatty,” but sometimes it feels like it. I wish they’d stop talking about my grey hairs and whether I’ll ever get married and just be nice to me! Of course, these are some of the few things they say in Spanish, so I shouldn’t complain.

And the cultural differences - not getting things done, or getting them done SLOWLY, still gets to me. I still have no fence, no garden, no antennae for my cell phone, all things promised to me weeks ago by well-meaning people who just don’t rush to do anything.

Living in a developing country is hard. I don’t see it every single day, but the people here are poor and have health problems that wouldn’t be problems if they had better access to health care. Last week a 2 month old baby died here, and a few days later, the mother died too. It made me feel like all the bingo cards in the world don’t really matter much if people aren’t healthy.

It’s depressing to write it all out like this, which is why I usually don’t I guess. Other volunteers in my group and I share frustrations like these, and it’s so nice to feel like I’m not alone. Sometimes it hits me all at once, and I cry, like last week after the baby died. (And I read that book, The Five People You Meet in Heaven, which I thought would be uplifting but it turns out it wasn’t). But the days go on, and I run and do yoga, and bake my own granola, and try out a new sentence in Guarani, and I listen to my iPod, and prepare little cut-out teeth for next week’s lessons on dental health, and send silly text messages to my friends here, and I read the notes I’ve taken from books I’ve read about development theory and why I’m here, and I visit with people and drink terere, and I send and receive letters, and I watch Seinfeld on my laptop, and I take long walks, and I think about how I’ll someday break out the packet of mac and cheese I’ve been saving, and I watch a gorgeous sunset from my front porch, and I know that despite and maybe even because of the challenges this is exactly where I want to be right now. And I feel lucky to be able to be here at all.