It's not like I don't have anything to share as my infrequent blogging might suggest, it's just that I live so much inside my head these days that I don't realize I'm not staying connected until I run into myself in the mirror; easy to avoid in the cozy cave I call my home with only one small mirror above the bathroom sink. But when it happens, I catch the reflection and am reminded that I'm still here.
Back to the couch, as I catch you up.
A friend from Seattle came to visit last week, someone I've known since I was 14, one of those "you can pick up right where you left off" kinds of friends, even if it’s been years since the last connect. She gets me and I get her and that feels comfortable and safe. We did all the island stuff; beaches, tourist shops, buses and ports and long walks into town. We caught up on kids and jobs and relationships - or the lack thereof, and how it feels to be living in a world where"60 is the new 50", not an unhappy thought, just curiously complex when we consider that retirement is no longer around the corner for either of us. I enjoyed the visit, a lot. It reminded me that I had lived a life long before this one; brought back the many vicissitudes of the lives I've lived actually, and remembering with someone I trusted helped smooth out the wrinkles for the next one that waits at the end of this adventure.
The Peace Corps experience is as much about connecting cultures as it is about promoting service; I know this to be true, and though I have integrated well into the culture here I must continue to work on sharing the experience of that integration with those back home.
In seven months my service here will come to an end. It’s hard to believe that 20 months have passed since I first arrived. During the months of pre-service training, I felt most often overwhelmed, unsure of the commitment I’d made. I looked at the two years that lay ahead as time dangling at the edge of a world, flat and endless. There were so many rules, so many expectations, so much to do with little direction and few resources. It didn’t take long during my home stay to see that the culture in which I would have to immerse myself was one that saw life as the tortoise without the steady focus part when I had always viewed life as the hare without the arrogance to nap.
I let the moral ambiguity of this notion rattle around in my head for a few months and finally decided it was a question of balance. It was up to me to adjust to this new environment and to find a way to make it work. I decided to look at my service as an opportunity to experience a fresh start, to see work and success and the world from a different vantage point, to experience a new way of being. The past was in the rear view mirror and I was about to try a different road.
And that kind of Pollyanna take on the world lasted for about a month or two, but its optimism was excessive and it lacked the balance I’d decided earlier would be essential to my success here.
And then some months in and after many pulling my hair out days of frustration, I decided to do what I do best and reach out to the kids. Get down among them, be part of their experience, find out what they most want, what they think they need. Create projects and opportunities recognizing their value, giving them a voice. It’s where I knew my optimism would find a home and where I would find the best fit.
I learned names and faces and bits about their lives. I asked questions – what made them happy, what made them proud, where they saw themselves in five years - ten years, what did they love, what did they fear, what would they do to change their world if they could; and I answered questions they had for me. We learned to trust one another and I dared to think that during my time here the welfare of the kids could become a practical objective of my work. And I decided that I would do everything I could possibly do to make it better for them; everything I could do, everyday, to make that happen; even if for only the few that stuck, to keep their trust, long after I'm gone.
“If I could change the world,
I would be the sunlight in your universe,
You would think my love was really something good,
If I could change the world.” Eric Clapton
Pollyanna returns.
And so it goes March 19, 2012 on the island of St. Kitts.
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