Perú Uncut

I didn’t think I was running away when I decided to join the Peace Corps. I didn’t think I had anything to run away from. But it turns out, I did. And it turns out, so do a lot of other volunteers. Maybe, in fact, so do you, and you just haven’t realized yet that you need to run away to save yourself.

Running gets a bad rap. Face your fears, we are told. Never quit a job until you’ve worked there for two years. Don’t be afraid of the dark. Work through your problems. Running is equated to quitting. And quitting is equated with failure. And failure, well, we all know that’s the same as saying you just don’t have what it takes to matter, to be valuable, to measure up. But all of that is just a giant bunch of bullshit. Sometimes, running is the very best thing you could possibly do.

The whimsical travel rumor is of the lone, single traveler, burdened with cares and concerns, uncertain of their own identity, who leaves home with a backpack to go globe trotting. As they see the wonders of the world, their mind is opened, all their cloudy thoughts become clear, and they return home a new person with their thoughts straightened out and their life prioritized and in order. I’ve met people who travel who swear that isn’t true. They say that traveling doesn’t help you find yourself after all, and that when you travel, you just take your problems with you. I’ve met others who swear that no one can be a whole, complete developed person without traveling. They have learned so much from other cultures, from stretching themselves in new contexts, that they can’t imagine seeing the world through a lens that didn’t include world adventures and perspectives. Staying in one place is equated to narrow-mindedness and an inability to be truly open to others in a genuine, honest way, experiencing differences and sharing your own. Learning to live at peace with people both so different and so similar at you that your mind isn’t quite sure how to categorize it all.

I suppose that both opinions are true, in their own way. There are people who travel, people who run, and for any number of reasons, return home only slightly changed. But there are many, many, many, for whom running is healing. It it salvation. And running away to Peace Corps is probably one of the most incredible places to run, whether your world is crashing to pieces and you're struggling for air, or you think you just want to help people and have no idea that you’re running at all. But make no mistake. You are running. No one leaves home, family, friends, jobs, and all that is familiar at a meandering pace. You can’t. It’s a running leap. And that’s okay. It’s probably good.

People come to Peace Corps for every possible reason. Because their big sister was a volunteer. Because their uncle talked about his experience for as long as they can remember. Because they need to break up with an abusive boyfriend. Because they want to escape the corporate grind that is wearing away at their soul. Because their parents kicked them out of the house for being gay and they need a new family. Because they have undiagnosed anxiety disorders and don’t even understand why they are so stressed all the time. We run when something isn’t right. Something isn’t enough. We know that life can offer more, that we can be more than we are, happier than we are, more complete than we feel.

Peace Corps doesn’t solve those problems, I’m not going to lie. In fact, in some ways it makes them worse. What it guarantees is to make the problems bigger and more overwhelming until you realize why you ran. And it will give you time to face yourself and think, think, think. It will offer you space to look both inside of yourself and at others and work on those things that tied you before. You have time, over two years, away from that corporate grind. Away from that boyfriend. Away from the long list of things that were swirling around your head and pushing you to run in the first place.

And for many, Peace Corps offers a new kind of family. You can’t make it through two years alone. And if you want to grow, you have to learn to be vulnerable. No one forces volunteers to share their lives and build relationships. No one tells you to open up and share your deepest darkest secrets, your childhood struggles, and your worries for the future. But many of the volunteers who do the best work on their own lives in pursuit of their own healthy happiness are the ones who share. They become vulnerable. And the most amazing thing begins to happen. Little by little, or sometimes rapid fire all in succession, we realize that we’re not alone. We are a group of runners. A team of survivors. Have you had an abusive boyfriend? So has another volunteer. Did you parents reject you because you were gay, transgender, or for any other reason? Someone else ran from that too. Are you taking medication for depression? So are many others. Are you afraid to move back to the United States? Most of us are.

I think childbirth is terrifying. Beautiful, incredible, even miraculous, but also terrifying and  ever so physically uncomfortable. I’ll be twenty seven in a couple of weeks, but I’m not counting down and wondering how long till my baby clock stops ticking. It’s just not me. So, I’m not entirely sure why I decided I wanted to see the whole process of a birth, much less the birth of nameless child from an unknown mother in a developing country while I’m serving as a PC volunteer. I suppose simply because I could. It would make a good story. And, if we’re honest, it’s an experience that, although I’m not sure I personally want to have, I wanted to see how it really plays out. You know, get a little perspective.

After a few false starts with host families, I moved in with my current family just under a year ago. When I learned that my older host sister was an obstetrician at a local health center, I asked if it would be possible see a childbirth or a “parto” as they call it here. She agreed, but the idea just never really formulated. Until last week. I don’t even remember why the topic came up again, but it did, and the next thing I knew, we had scheduled to go to a different health center where her friend worked a few days later.

Like most of us, I’ve seen enough movies with images of screaming, sweating women to have a decent sense of what I was getting myself into, or at least I thought so. But in most of those movies, children are born in hospitals, in sterile rooms, with masked doctors ready and medicine and machinery of all kinds available in case of a complication. It’s a little different here.

I met my host sister at 7:30pm just as she was getting off work. Together, we rode in a collectivo, a shared taxi, to the next town over where her friends were on the overnight shift, in charge of any childbirths that arrived after the main hours of the health clinic. The clinic is a large one and women come from smaller, nearby towns that don’t offer an overnight clinic for unscheduled births. We arrived not long after it had gotten dark, crossing our fingers that we would see a birth quickly, and could head home by ten or eleven o’clock and still get some sleep. If only.

We arrived and the place was as quiet as could be. It was also incredibly hot. In the recovery room, two women lay on simple hospital beds as they made it through their first night with babies that had been born earlier in the day. They were alone together in a large room, no family, and not speaking even to each other, from the little I observed. My host sister and I made the rounds as she introduced me to nearly all the night staff, and then we looked at each other, and settled down to wait. She told everyone I was there because I was about to get married and wanted to be prepared, then would look at me and smirk and I would laugh, since nothing could be farther from the truth. She had already worked a full day, and I quickly said that we needn’t stay long; I could always try and come back another day now that I had met everyone, and didn’t want to keep her up. But we had already made it there, and within an hour or two, someone brought us a tupperware of rooster soup. After eating the soup, we could hardly up and leave, or, my host sister said smiling, it would look like we just came for a free meal. So we stayed, waiting in the entrance room, sitting in plastic chairs and listening to music from a mini speaker she had packed in her purse.

There was, of course, no wifi. The windows had screens on them, with was a rarity that I noticed and we talked about as time dragged on. We were both sweating, because despite the fact that it was ten, and then eleven at night, the temperature and humidity were, as we say here “insuportable.” Eventually we turned the light off in the waiting room and leaned back in our plastic chairs. Most of the staff went to sit outside hoping to escape the heat with the small breeze outdoors. Sometime after eleven, the staff offered up two extra hospital beds in a back office for us to try and sleep while we waited. I asked my host sister if we should just go, but no, she figured we had stayed this long we might as well wait it out. Someone was bound to have a baby eventually that night, she said. So we made our way to the back and fell asleep immediately, despite the heat and the fact the the sole fan was at the other end of the room where the only electricity outlets were located.

The next thing I knew we were being summoned. Groggy, we sat up and went to greet a very pregnant women who had just arrived. It was 12:23 in the morning. I watched as my host sister handled the situation. The women laid on a flat, immobile hospital bed, although it was more like a bench the size of a bed than an actual bed. There was no clean hospital paper covering it, just a bit piece of red plastic. There were no tools do an ultrasound. She took a small, hand held device and held it against the woman’s abdomen, and it picked up the sound of the baby’s heartbeat, just enough to satisfy everyone there that the baby was fine. But this woman was no where near giving birth. We sent her off to rest and went back to bed. I lay there, awake for a little while. I wasn’t sure what to think.

When I had asked to see a birth, I had presumed that I could simply come to the health center where my host sister worked and see one during her actual work hours. But as it turned out, that center doesn’t do childbirths anymore, except in cases of emergency. As I lay in the hot darkness, still wearing the jeans and t-shirt and converse I had put on earlier, I was amazed that my host sister cared so much about my off-hand interest in seeing a childbirth that she was here, staying up all night with me, just to pull it off. She still had to work the following day. I had packed my iPod and headphones, and nearly put them in, but stopped, falling asleep again to the sounds of the nighttime out the open window and the whir of the fan across the room.

At 3:50am, the staff called for us again. Another woman had arrived. We got up, shook the sleep out of our eyes, and tried to look lively as we walked into the exam room. The woman was there, waiting for us, lying on the exam bed, looking ready to burst her belly was so large. I watched from the sidelines as my host sister took the handheld device and listened for the baby’s heart, which echoed from the tinny speakers through the quiet room. It pounded rapidly. She put on a single glove on her right hand for the quick exam and determined that the woman was nearly at ten centimeters, which, in the last few hours, I had come to learn was the magic number for giving birth. The woman was in her thirties and this was her fourth child. While she looked uncomfortable, she was as calm as could be, clearly having done this many times before. My host sister told her the baby would come soon, and she asked the walk around to hurry it along. We led her to a long hallway, and she began her slow,  waddling pace back and forth, back and forth, which lasted for the next several hours.

By about 6:30AM, she was getting pretty ready, and the staff took her into the delivery room. They wrote down a list of all the medicines and supplies she would need to give birth - paper towels, four pairs of hospital gloves, etc. I stood there in surprise as they asked me to give the list to the woman’s mother who was waiting outside, and send her to buy the required materials. The health center doesn’t provide even the most basic of materials, expecting the patients to come prepared. The delivery room was sparse. It had two flat, basic beds, a scale to weigh the baby, and a few other apparatus to keep the newborn warm and such. An IV was placed in the woman’s arm, and the bag of liquid hung on a rusty metal stand whose wheels stuck and didn’t spin properly when it was pushed across the floor.  There was no clean white piece of paper on this hospital bed either, instead, a plastic trash bag lay on top of one end, and nothing covered the rest of it all. At the foot of the bed, just past the trash bag the woman lay on, a trash can was placed, and I slowly realized that this was the extent of hygiene and sanitation process.

The delivery room was sweltering. I had to leave once or twice to get air, afraid I might pass out from the sheer heat of the place. There were no open windows, and no fan, and just standing there you could feel the sweat dripping on your face. The woman’s labor continued, and the staff were called away to help someone else, that, and they just couldn’t stand the heat while they waited for the woman to be truly ready to give birth. I sat in the room awkwardly with her. I didn’t know whether to talk and distract her, or be silent. I’ve never had a baby, so how was I supposed to know what she would want? I tried to remember that I was a social worker, and had gone to graduate school studying how to help people and be supportive, hoping that would magically inspire me to say and do the right things. Mostly, I just sat there, though. She was all alone, sweating heavily, and I couldn’t bear to leave her, so I didn’t. I used a handheld, flip-open fan to try and keep her as cool as possible, although the effort was almost in vain, the heat was so intense. Eventually, she asked me to call the doctors, and as I walked to leave the room, she stopped and said, “Don’t leave me, I’ll go with you,”which was clearly not a good idea, so I just called loudly out the hallway for someone to come, and in a few minutes, they did.

When the baby was ready, the room that had been empty was swarming. There were up to about seven women in the room, plus the patient. While they prepared, putting on protective clothing and gloves, they talked about other childbirths, and complications and I wondered if it made the patient nervous to hear them talking about these things. I can’t imagine talking about another woman’s potential miscarriage in front of a women about to give birth, but they simply chatted nonchalantly like it was normal. I suppose the contractions probably kept the patient distracted enough perhaps she didn’t even hear them. It struck me, as I watched all these women there, supporting each other and about to bring a new life into the world, that this was something of a sacred sisterhood. In the midst of a machista culture where men are in charge of everything and where women are often relegated to the back seat and to the passive role of observer, here, these women were in charge, empowered to welcome new life into the world, and they supported each other without reserve. In that delivery room, for a least a few minutes, no man could snatch that power away from them. It was a world all their own.

As the contractions got more intense, the obstetrician, a pretty, young woman who don’t look much older than myself, gestured me to come beside her. “You wanted to see a childbirth, right?” she said, and I nodded as she pointed to the space next to her, where I could best observe the whole process from up close. I moved over next to her, and waited. The woman was quiet. She didn’t scream or shout, but she was breathing hard. It hit me just how primal the whole process is. As a human with self-awareness, sometimes I forget that in 99% of how we function, we are nearly the same as every other animal out there. And this, this whole process of carrying and creating a next generation inside, this process of pain, of release, of separating a growing fetus now live baby from the umbilical chord that fed it, the way in which the body on it’s own begins to cause contractions and push the child out of the mother, the whole thing is such a basic process of nature. Miraculously complex, but seen in species after species, across the globe. As I stood there, the baby appeared slowly. It needed some help, as it got a little stuck. The obstetrician grabbed the protruding head and twisted and pulled, and I was afraid she would break the infant’s neck. But she didn’t, and a few minutes later there he was, laying on his mother’s belly as they wiped him down and cleaned things up, and his cry pierced the air for the very first time.

I turned towards his mother and smiled, and asked if I could take his picture. She said yes, so I took a snapshot. And then we had to leave. But as I went to say goodbye, she smiled at me tiredly, and told me how grateful she was that I stayed with her all morning. I smiled back. And we left. And the mysterious, terrifying idea of childbirth found it’s place 

February 15th, 2016. I can’t believe we’re already more than halfway through February, my last five months or so in Peru passing by so swiftly it sometimes feels like sand slipping through my fingers no matter how tightly I make a fist. And the truth is, it will be bittersweet. After more than two years of living abroad, I think I’ll be ready to go. But there are so many things I love about my life here in Peru, so many people I have come to consider family, and such a long list of things I will miss dearly. 

After visiting the States in December and early January, I finally made it back to my beach town home in Northern Peru the middle of January. And, after about a year of being sick routinely, I got my medical issues addressed and solved, and arrived feeling like a new person - or the old person I was before I got sick so much!  The moment I arrived, things got busy. But I can hardly complain because work here can be just so much fun. 

In December, my library grant application was approved, and January sent me on a trip to spend a lot of cash on a lot of books. For a week I ran around Lima trying to find about six hundred titles. It took going to eight different stores, picking and choosing, finding books where I liked the pictures, and the font, and the topic. Trying to find books appropriate for first graders, and others for sixth graders. Storybooks and comic books, trivia books, encyclopedias, dinosaur books and superhero stories. Books that rhyme, books of poetry, chapter books and picture books, books about soccer and books and science. I bought a little bit of everything. I made new friends at the hostal where I was staying, and they helped me load box after box into the taxi so I could ship the books from Lima all the way up north. 

I got back to my site on a Thursday, and immediately had a meeting and preparation for a youth camp I was supporting the following week. On Monday, I worked at camp. Another local volunteer and I did a charla (session) together about what diversity in America means. We talked about the idea of the melting, and how people used to give up parts of their heritage to blend in. To show them what we meant, we gave each kid a crayon, and then melted them with a lighter into a blob. Then we talked about the salad bowl, and how proud we are now to be different - to be different races, genders, sexual orientations, different ages, to wear different clothing, or eat different food, and still unite as being from the United States. 

Tuesday, I woke up bright and early to travel four hours north and visit a friend. Her site, much smaller than mine, celebrates the holiday Carnival, famous for a time when people throw baby powder, water, and paint all over each other, drink lots of beer, and dance all night long. So for two days, that’s what we did, and it was beautiful. We got covered in sweat, water, and paint, ran out of water so we couldn’t shower, and did the logical thing - just changed our clothes, put a dress on and went dancing!

I got back on Thursday afternoon, just in time to finish preparing for a large environmental awareness campaign that my sitemate Hannah and I were helping with. We had fourteen volunteers come from all over Peru to help out, and spend Saturday on the beach educating local beach goers about the importance of clean beaches, wearing sunscreen, and protecting marine life. It was a blast, but a long weekend. In the evening, the group of volunteers came to my house and we spent time on roof, playing guitar, singing, and enjoying the beautiful weather until well into the night.

By Sunday afternoon, I said goodbye to everyone, came home, and fell asleep in the middle of the afternoon. Today, Monday, I fell asleep again. It was a long week, but such a good one, and I wouldn’t change a minute of it! I’m so grateful for every moment I have in this crazy experience they call Peace Corps. 

Life in another country is always interesting, always different and never dull. The northern coast of Peru is no exception. What are a few of the sights and sounds that have surprised me? Well, there are the sounds of vehicles honking to a degree I’ve never heard the likes of before and the the moto-taxi horns that mimic the sound of a cat-call. There are the mice that scurry and the image of my host mother smacking them with a flip-flop as they limp off wounded but rarely dead. There is the resigned exasperation that washes over me in the morning when I wake up realize the turkey got out of his cage, got into the bathroom and spread used toilet paper all over the floor. The smell of urine on the sidewalks, and men and boys peeing the streets surrounded by people and passing cars. The noise of parties on the street that last until five or six in the morning. But there is also the sound of birds chirping as I wake up in the morning, and two bright yellow birds who constantly tap at the window hoping I’ll let them in. There’s standing on my roof, taking down my clean, sun dried clothes from the line as I watch the sun drop low over the ocean, casting a brilliant array of colors across the town. Then there are the giant pelicans and sea lions on the beach that pleasantly surprised me, and the seagulls soaring past my bedroom window. Children who call me “profe,” my cousin who calls me “flaca” (skinny), and my host family who call me “little sister.” Peru is full of new sights and sounds. But while most of them have finally blended into the background of life, it is the things that I find in my kitchen which never cease to amaze me, even after more than a year in a half in Peru. Just when I think I’ve seen it all, something else shows up on in the sink or on the counter. Some of my favorites:

Fish. Shrimp. Etc. of all shapes and sizes, whole, slit, bleeding, gutted. A few inches long, or a few feet. If you can imagine it, it’s been in my kitchen sink with glassy eyes staring at me as I walk by casually to grab a glass of orange juice, trying to make eye contact.

Giant piles of ahi peppers. My host cousin will sit at a little wooden table in the kitchen with a large, metal, hand cranking blender and crush ahi peppers through it for hours at a time. The peppers are so spicy, that the raw, liquid form of them in such a huge quantity turns the kitchen air into a gaseous fire that stings your nose and eyes and skin. I leave quickly, wondering how she survives it hours at a time.

Octopus. In the kitchen sink, making it impossible to wash my dishes, so I leave them on the counter for later.

Massive quantities of purple corn. If you like the taste of boiled purple corn, then those are your favorite days. If you don’t, you go out and buy yourself a coke to drink instead, and then just watch in quiet, reserved awe at the impressive process of boiling more purple corn that you ever imagined could exist for hours on end until it winds up in a two liter bottle on the kitchen table a few days later.

Sting Ray. So big it really doesn’t fit inside the sink, and just one glance brings up painful memories of an unfortunate experience I had on the beach in San Diego years ago…which resulted in a wheelchair and painkillers so strong they made me loopy. It doesn’t taste so bad though when it turns up in my omelette for breakfast.

Chicken feathers. In the sink, on the floor, wherever the wind blows (literally). Oh yea, and the plucked carcass just sorta chillin’ on the counter.

Quinoa. Did you realize that when you buy quinoa here, it comes with little black grains that aren’t cookable? So my host mother will sit at the table for close to twelve hours straight separating the grains of quinoa by hand, on after the other, the good from the chaff.

Live animals. They come in variations. Usually they’re limited to the cockroaches that live around the stove and in the cupboards and come running out when the oven turns on. Other times it’s a rooster in a grocery bag on the floor, still very much alive, which I learned when we both frightened each other and squawked simultaneously from surprise one day.

Turkey brain. You know when you see a plastic bucket on the counter loosely covered with a rag, and you lift it up wondering what’s for dinner? I lost my appetite when the brain of a turkey gaped at me. Thankfully, it was for the dogs and not for me…. but I still had a hard time settling my stomach that night.

Cow stomach. It turns up in my lunch every few months, and despite swallowing it so I could say I tried, the huge piece of raw, bumpy flesh hanging over the sides of a bucket on my kitchen counter usually signals me to try and eat lunch out with a friend that day.

5:15 AM - Roosters crowing. Sun is rising. My room is starting to get hot so I shove the blankets off of me and lay under the protection of a mosquito net. I open my eyes just long to enough to check my phone for the time, then close them and roll back over.

5:30 AM - Downstairs I hear my host family getting up and talking quietly. From my window I hear the traditional, mobile loudspeaker blaring it’s news about the benefits of milk with extra nutrients as it drives through town

6:00 AM - I open my eyes. It’s hot and sunny in my room. But I don’t care. I roll over and close them again.

6:20 AM - I give up and sit up in bed, reaching under the mosquito net to my nightstand for my journal, and feeling around for a pen I dropped on the floor the day before. I spend the next hour or so reading, journaling, and trying to order my mind for another day, eighteen months into service, with just about eight more months left to go. I put down down my pen. I’m not sure whether to be happy or sad that I only have eight months left. I decide I’m a little bit of both.

7:30 AM - I roll up my mosquito net, and grab my guitar. Might as well kill some time learning something something new. Besides, playing the guitar has been a dream of mine for years. 

8:30 AM - Still in my pajamas, I put down the guitar and migrate to the upstairs living room where I can get on wifi, but rarely run into anyone from my host family. I get online, check my emails, look up some new guitar songs, and chat with some friends.

9:30 AM - I put on some clothes and wander downstairs. My host family has already eaten breakfast, but they’ve left out hot water and bread for me. I make a cup of tea, since I don’t drink coffee, and sit down, saying hello to everyone who is around. They smile as I come downstairs, calling me a sleepyhead, and smiling back, I remind them I’ve been up for hours, I just wasn’t hungry yet.

10:00 AM - I change my clothes again, to something appropriate for going to school. Usually a casual dress is my go-to. I say goodbye to my host family and walk across town about fifteen minutes to get to the elementary school. I’m working on a library project here, at one of the low-income public elementary schools in my town. We just received grant money from USAID to build and stock a school library, and I have a lot of details to hash out with the staff and faculty to pull it all off before I leave the country in eight months.

11:30 AM - Leaving the school, I wander back through town, heading down towards the boardwalk and the beach on my way. I get to the beach and take off my shoes, wiggling my toes in the hot sand. I sit down for a while, just thinking and letting the reflection of the ocean reflect into my soul as I ponder the past eighteen months, and the months yet to come.

1:00 PM - Back home, my host family serves lunch. As usual, there’s rice, but they know not to serve it to me. When I first came to Peru, I got horribly constipated from so much rice, and as a general rule, don’t eat it anymore. But there’s ceviche, with fresh shrimp my host mother peeled and prepared all morning long, which is one of my favorites. Steamed fish in a sauce that’s hardly my favorite, but since it’s a staple, I got used to it. Canchita, or oversized corn pieces that have been grilled and made into a salty snack is there and another one of my favorites. Plus there is homemade maracuya juice, which is hard to beat, and something I will miss when I head back stateside. During lunch the TV is on, and we watch a show called Dr. TV, which attempts to give it’s audience a grasp of general health knowledge through a live reality TV show. I can never quite decide what I think of the show.

2:00 PM - Dr. TV finishes and the telenovela comes on, my cue that it’s time to leave the table. I head upstairs to work on listening and typing up interviews I’ve been doing with a juvenile justice agency. This takes me several hours, and I eat gummy bears to keep me motivated as I lay on my bed and work through the audios. I open the window to let the sea breeze sweep in and taking away the stifling heat. 

4:40 PM - I take a break, walk back to the living room, and check my emails and Facebook again. Of course, I get sidetracked and stay there longer than I need to.

5:30 PM - I give up on working and walk down the beach for the sunset. This time I don’t sit. I walk up and down the beach as I watch the sky light up in a million colors and reflect in the endless expanse of water in front of me. The flow of the water sifts my soul and I walk away calm and peaceful, leaving my cares behind for the current to wash away.

6:30 PM - Back in my room, I start watching the next episode of Jessica Jones on my laptop.

8:00 PM - It’s dinner time, so I wander downstairs. Dinner is a bit of an extreme word here in Peru, because the evening meal generally consists of tea and toast. But every once in a while I get lucky and we make grilled cheese instead.

8:30 PM - I say goodnight. They smile, used to my early to bed routine, and laugh once more about how I sleep all the time. I remind them, laughing, that I’m not always asleep when I’m in my room. I climb into bed and start reading a new book I just got from a friend. Eventually, I get tired of reading, watch one more episode of Jessica Jones, and by 9:45, I’m fast asleep.

11:30 PM - Wake up to the sound of drunk parties in the street with blaring music. Try to fall back to sleep despite the noise.

1:00 AM - Wake up to the neighbor’s domestic feud with shouting that wakes up the whole street. Try to fall back to sleep.

3:00 AM - The neighbor’s party finally stops and I wake up from the sudden silence. Try to fall back to sleep.

5:15 AM - Roosters crowing

The beach where I live

Canchita

(photo from: http://thehotpepper.com/topic/41778-peruvian-food-tomorrow/page-2) 

The school where we’re building a library

What’s home, they ask? Since you live abroad, and you travel far, are you at home here or only when off finding the northern star? Home, such a little word. But its loaded, full of longing, and my own understanding, once foggy and shallow, is just now becoming. It’s becoming a thought, more than just a word. It’s no longer four walls, some windows and doors. Home, the word rings and echoes. It reverberates inside my soul and the souls of those around me, unmasking the secret desperation for longing and belonging. Belonging. It’s a synonym for home. It’s the place where you go when you feel alone. Belonging is the feeling of being fully free, or being able to be yourself, or for myself to be just exactly me. So if home is belonging and belonging is acceptance, but more, it’s acceptance with love and rejoicing, then homes aren’t just houses, they’re people and relationships, they’re connections and bondings. I once read a quote that said "they asked me where home was, and I almost responded with your name” and maybe it sounds cliche but I didn’t write the quote so don’t give me the blame.But I think that they hit on something and the more that I travel the more that I realize while it might be a place, home could be name. Or it could be a be list, of names all over the world. The ones who answer your calls, who hold you when you hurt.

I live in Peru and sometimes home means lots of things to me, things it never meant before, before I’d left the States and realized that there were so many more sides of me, of who I was and who I wanted to be. Home is the feeling of the sand beneath my feet, the tide gently washing my toes as I walk down the beach. It’s the chicken soup my family brings me when I’m in bed, too sick to move, and it’s the phone calls from friends. It’s the arms of the people who hold me when I cry, as I shake silently, gasping for air, and clinging to what I believe is a beautiful life. It’s tequila shots, and french fries, and Chili’s specials and fiery, South American skies. It’s sharing a room with my sister on Christmas eve night, wrapped in a million blankets on an air mattress after a thousand hours on the flight. The flight to get back to visit the other side, the home where I came from, that gave me the wings to fly. Home, sure sometimes you find it inside of four walls, leaning back on a couch and observing it all, but it’s rarely four walls that make it a home. It’s the sense of belonging, of love, of acceptance that make it so. Home is just the place or the people who not only let me be me, but love the me they see.  To be home, is just another way of saying, to be free

Before I joined Peace Corps, I was busy. I was so very busy that I rarely had time to stop to stop and breathe, eat, and certainly almost never time to exist simply as myself and enjoy the world around me. And then I joined Peace Corps and rather suddenly found myself sitting on a beach in South America watching the sun set, and wondering exactly what I was supposed to do with so much time, with two years of days, hours and minutes stretching in front of me. It has taken me a long time to come to grips with the emptiness and space that I’ve found living here. Suddenly, without the distractions of constant movement, I found myself with nothing left to do except know myself, face myself, change myself, and accept myself. Of course, there are days that I’m busy. But there are more often days when I have looming space and time in front of me. A productive day becomes one in which I walk the beach and spend time with my host family talking about a relative’s recent illness, or the shortage of fish in the ocean due to changing tides. At first, the emptiness of it all felt lonely, and I tried to visit my friends often, and talk on the phone constantly. There were times that the space felt frightening, because I wasn’t sure if I would really like what I found if I looked into myself deeply. But as the days drag into weeks and months and years, I’ve realized that once I face myself, understand myself, accept myself, forgive myself, and allow myself to exist in my own raw humanity, imperfect and in process -once I embrace my own limitations as well as my strengths, the silence is no longer empty or frightening. It becomes peaceful. It ceases to be lonely, and instead becomes a powerful current that fills you up with energy and resolve. Once you have faced yourself, you realize that you have no need to run from the vast emptiness of the past, or the future. Silence becomes a friend. Space becomes a comfortable feeling and business grows exhausting. Being alone means being whole.

Recently, I have been reading the book The Tao of Pooh, and the author captures this feeling beautifully in his description of the “Great Nothing.” He writes, “While the Clear mind listens to the a bird singing, the Stuffed-Full-Of-Knowledge-and-Cleverness mind wonders what kind of bird is singing. The more Stuffed Up it is, the less it can hear through its own ears and see through its own eyes. Knowledge and Cleverness tend to confront themselves with the wrong sorts of things, and a mind confused by Knowledge, Cleverness, and Abstract Ideas to to go chasing things that don’t matter, or that don’t even exist, instead of seeing, appreciating, and making use of what is right in from of it….Many people are afraid of Emptiness, however, because it reminds them of loneliness. Everything has to be filled in, it seems- appointment books, hillsides, vacant lots - but when all the spaces are filled, the Loneliness really begins. Then the Groups are joined, the Classes are signed up for, the Gifts-to-Yourself items are bought. When the Loneliness starts creeping in the door, the Television Set is turned don to make it go away. But it doesn’t go away. So some of us do instead, and after discarding the emptiness of the Big Congested Mess, we discover the fullness of Nothing.”