Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Outkast is everlaaastin'...

I have to take a short break from work to write about my elatedness at this moment, the moment when a Peace Corps Volunteer truly feels her role being done as it “should” look. I have been trying to elicit help from the youth volunteers at the CEJ to come help out at the girls’ Center, seeking to create interest in Cape Verdeans to volunteer in areas of most need, and making connections between all these different pockets of youth in all these different institutions. So two weeks ago I announced at the CEJ that I was organizing a group of whoever was interested to come and help, primarily with studies, at the ICCA Center. I immediately got a list of people with their contacts who wanted to help. Awesome. I tried to follow up and call people, and after weeding out all the bad phone numbers, we got about 4-5 available youth and the participation of the Red Cross youth (which has a core of 64 volunteers), which is just the small start we need. I have since been contacting the local President of the Red Cross to start establishing connections, planning exchanges, seeing how we can get people involved in helping the girls, reducing the stigma in the community, etc. etc. Today, finally, we sat down with Andreia and talked concretely about options for volunteering, for planning joint workshops/life skills sessions, and for doing cultural afternoons (with dance, theater, music, etc.) together. Three excellent girls involved in the CEJ showed up, and I sat back and watched as a wonderful connection was made between the people present, talking about the needs in the Center and how each one could contribute. In actuality I participated very little in the meeting and instead threw my input and support in where needed, which is as it should have been. It just felt good seeing people’s willingness to help come together with specific needs and me having such a little part in it. All it took was me asking and making a few phone calls, and people stepped up. Just when I start to lose faith in Cape Verdeans, I get proved wrong, thank goodness. And it turns out to be very good that we only have a few individuals to start off with because there are so many structural issues to be worked out within the Center and so many problems with the staff that we don’t want them to be turned away from volunteering and turn everyone else away as well. This way we can experiment with the addition of a few new youth volunteers from the community, see how they integrate, how the staff responds, how the girls react, etc. before we start to elicit more help. Because now I know the help is out there. There are willing people, which is good to know. So today, this morning, was a good experience, a good feeling to see your role as the nearly-invisible facilitator, just bringing people together and doing little else. So yay.


I guess all the screaming I was talking about before finally paid off and someone heard.


As another note, I have officially begun giving English classes at the CEJ, even though I didn’t really want to originally. I figure it will help give me experience for the future, knowing what it is like to teach language and being able to do it elsewhere. So even though it takes up time I could be using to do other things, I have about 9-12 people each session (I do two a week, so about 20 youth) who come to hear what Teacher has to offer so they can learn to talk to tourists and go study outside of the country. The first lesson when we talked about why people wanted to learn English, I ended up imploring them to come back to Cape Verde instead of just getting educated and staying abroad, which is what a large part of the population ends up doing. Teacher has very definite objectives for her English class, and has a hard time keeping her opinions out of discussions. Teacher needs to work on that. P.S. Teacher is my new name since they can’t say my real name. Teacher also has two classes each full of males, one girl per class. Teacher wonders if the participation includes a small factor of male interest in the new white foreign girl. Hmm…


One last thing. We took the first group of girls to Tarrafal last Sunday, and had a wonderful time. Even though the mães forgot to bring balls and toys to play with, we buried each other in sand, played in the water, hunted for sea creatures, and ate lunch and snack, a truly complete day at the beach. Here are some pictures from the experience:

This girl, Patrícia is soooo adorable. She was cleaning the sand off my feet for me:)

Haha, we filled her suit with sand so she'd look pregnant. When you don't have things to make sandcastles, you get creative...
We borrowed a ball from local boys for a bit.

We will be taking the second group this coming Sunday, I’ll post pictures of that later. Aaaaand, I get to stay in Tarrafal because IST is finally arriving! Woohoo, finally we get to spend a week with all the Volunteers, sharing stories, having fun, bitching about Peace Corps, etc. etc. We are staying in these cute little bungalows right on the beach and much fun will be had, I am sure. I am also sure there will be plenty of pictures to show from that as well. But for now, I should get back to work…no more slacking off…

Friday, March 16, 2007

I give

I'm tired. Tired of banging my head against the wall. Tired of screaming at the top of my lungs for no one to hear. Tired of fighting the battle alone. Plunging, ripping through shreds of familiarity, of sanity just to find the bottom. Just to crash into what must be the ever-approaching canyon floor. No parachute, you stop expecting it. No big hand to pull you out, just pitying faces that say they appreciate you and your "work". And say they want to help, that you're doing important things. I'm tired of trying to convince people, of being the ultimate advocate, of speaking for millions, of trying so hard just to get one understanding soul. And you realize why everyone quits, why they throw in the hat. You see why everyone avoids, why only the bravest survive. And you want to be one of those, but you doubt, you wonder how you'll make it. Because it's so exhausting, and YOU don't even know. You who are out there. I know this because I don't even know. Don't even know what to ask for. Support? Love? Encouragement? Extra hands, bodies, available people? Things become so hard to articulate when you have been screaming for so long. When the anxiety and stress has tried every form until your body is beaten and it looks for other ways, thirsts for conquest, and you are left its unwilling slave. So I'll choke down the tears one more time and rest my voice for tomorrow's screaming. Because eventually someone will hear and prove their true interest. Eventually someone will stay, someone will be here with me, alongside me. Because I'm lonely.

Monday, March 12, 2007

I won't be silent like you...

3/10/07

Today is a day when life doesn’t fit into a blog. Some days it’s hard to track from minute to minute what you are feeling, sometimes it changes that often. And sometimes it’s just that difficult to define. For a list of occurrences over the past week: a new PCV came from Guinea and has been shadowing me and Mel at work, we had a Rocky party where there was lots of greasy food and a viewing of the first 4 Rocky films, Andreia got so stressed out at work that she left and has stayed home the last few days (don’t know when she’ll come back), Zelda has officially gone to live with her family in Praia so we all said goodbye yesterday, my expensive useful surge protector busted in a literal cloud of smoke (scary), I broke down in a fit of tears over job stress in front of Mel (about 6 months worth all built up), I decided to stop going to Picos to the boys’ Center once a week to cut down on said job stress, the president of ICCA asked me to translate a 38-page UN document to be sent to New York with only 1.5 days warning, I was put on steroids for my ever-developing asthma, I signed up almost 30 people for my English classes at the CEJ (yikes!), I got a decent-sized group of youth interested in coming to help volunteer at the girls’ Center, and two of the CEJ girls said they’d pay for my gym membership if it meant I would start working out and stop gaining weight. Apparently when it comes to appearances, it really doesn’t matter who has come into whose country to provide assistance—I will soon be receiving charity for the purposes of superficiality. Thank goodness for it too, my life has become annoyingly sedentary, I write as I sit in front of my computer. Hmph.

I’m really not in the mood to go into too many more details about the week, other than to say it was exhausting, exhilarating, and productive all at the same time. From one of my lowest moments to some of my highest, this week has somehow managed to get a decent amount of things accomplished. It has also been nice having Alex (the new PCV Transfer) around with me at work, because even though she doesn’t speak the language and I have to make sure I’m explaining everything to her, it’s nice to finally have someone there who is seeing what it’s really like every day, what kinds of things are dealt with. I enjoyed having someone to talk to about the situations I’m dealing with and what the frustrations are, and with someone who speaks my language and has a certain amount of interest in the topic. It’s like a small piece of validation, someone finally noticing that my job is TOUGH. I’m not trying to say I’m a saint or a miracle-worker, or that I am somehow better than other PCVs who may do more tangible projects than me, but God the stress there from minute to minute is enough to make you wonder how anything gets done and how you maintain your sanity some days. Anyhow, the whole point was supposed to be for me to convince Alex how wonderful youth development is and how really she should work in an ICCA Center like she’s secretly always wanted to, but ultimately it seems she will be working out amongst the trees in environmental education in São Nicolau. I guess 38 screaming needy girls may have scared her away. She’s very sweet and fun though, so we in Assomada are glad to welcome her into the Peace Corps Cape Verde family.

As I said, the steps needed to reintegrate Zelda with her family were completed this week, as we took her to Trindade on Thursday and got the psychiatrist’s final okay, got her family prepared, and she was driven home yesterday. It was quite a surreal feeling, and though we’ve been working towards it for so long, it seemed to all happen so fast. Zelda was very happy to be going home, and many of the girls were also pretty pleased, and so I wondered what the goodbye would look like. It turns out some of the mães and girls cried, harder to send her off than they thought. It was the first time since I’ve been here that I’ve seen Aracy cry. She spent the majority of her time alongside Zelda, the two “special” girls locked up in the Center all day with no school, no activities, no nothing. And so Aracy lost a good friend—and not only that, but she longs so badly to go back home to Fogo and instead of getting to go she watched someone else get to be with their family. So it was sad to watch her suffer, even though she’s been calmer the last few days. We were supposed to take a trip to Tarrafal (the beach) with the girls this weekend, but they cancelled it because this last week has been so exhausting for everyone. I hate letting the girls down. So that was the week at the Center.

I don’t feel much for analysis or deep thought at the moment, so I’ll leave it short this time. I’m exhausted. And I’m still working on the translation, which still has 20-ish pages to go. So ciao for now.

3/12/07

Finally the massive translation is done and I can go home to rest. Yesterday Alex and I had a "translation party" which was more fun that it sounds. We set up shop in the kitchen and got to work, taking frequent breaks to make egg salad sandwiches, talk about life, and then make homemade granola, which turned out soooo yummy! We made it with honey, oats, raisins, peanuts, cinnamon, vanilla, and other wonderful things. Trust me, it was like heaven straight from the oven, you should be jealous.

And so that is pretty much all I have to say about the last two days. Hope it was worth the added 30 seconds of blog-reading. Til next time.

Thursday, March 01, 2007

You

This is something I wrote a few weeks ago. Enjoy.
***

I remember the day You came to me and said You would walk alongside me. I couldn’t tell if the feeling was fact or fiction, fabricated, hallucinated, or the truest thing I’d felt in my life. Whatever its authenticity it swept me up without a backward glance. So many others had felt the same thing, I knew I must have embraced the fortune to stumble upon what we privileged few called the unfounded and undeniable omniscient presence. I floated my life along this serene and unruffled current, the reassurance of surety, of stability, acting as my buoy and teaching me to trust. Such simplicity, such blessed ignorance that proved to fortify the walls of protection the world, perhaps You, had built around me. Never allowing myself to doubt, I reveled in the splendor of a somehow superior recognition of spirit, a spirit I of course manufactured. Or maybe the world before me can be blamed, but I let it take its hollow form in my life. Thinking that this thing I called Your presence, Your accompaniment was all I ever needed. Never mind the nagging suspicion that it was somehow counterfeit, that I was merely a pawn in this giant game of chess You commandeered with Your grandiose hands.

Well somehow I then told myself I succeeded in knocking over this board on which You had previously controlled my life. I remember this day as well. Of course I am probably fooling myself to think I exerted such strength, really a fool to think anything definitively. But from that moment until now I have proudly borne the scepter and crown of unhindered and exceptional tolerance, which must somehow be better because of its inclusivity. Because it is welcoming rather than condemning and because it allows me to choose from the barrel of ideas what I like and what suits me best. And so I have clothed myself in everything, Joseph’s Technicolor dream coat, or something of the like. And it feels good, better even, though perhaps You may hate me for thinking so. Its utopia bubbles within me largely because I myself have defined its existence, molded its shape with my own weathered hands, which makes it mine and allows me to secretly claim a pinch of Your omnipotence, all-powerful supremacy in my very grasp.

The problem then has become that all-powerful supremacy is quite lonely it seems. Back when You walked with me, carried me even, the simplistic paper-thin appearance of comfort was better than the weight of carrying the world on my shoulders and walking alone. Each step heavier than the last and reminding me why it was simpler to grant You sovereignty. At least with You wearing the crown I could fondly caress the memory of running through meadows with the grace and freedom of a childhood never aging, never gaining the days that come with what we seem to think is wisdom. Without the responsibility of perpetual guilt one needn’t worry about how hard the soles of one’s feet will land upon the once-trodden earth. One need only worry about the language of glorious entrapment, of celebrated slavery to something professed to be greater than oneself. The language that becomes natural to us, the motor that propels us forward in existence, not a second thought given.

Only I’m not ready to speak the language once again. The words exit as sharp as a dagger heading towards my barely-healed heart once scarred by the memories of each word’s separate jab. So if You don’t mind, I’ll continue to look for that feeling of completion, of accompaniment elsewhere, until all the aids at my disposal show themselves barren and I am left wandering in the desert. In Your mind I am sure that is the inevitable end, though I’m not yet convinced. I’ll have to trudge through on my own, unguided and stubborn. And if indeed the board remains intact and Your hands braced for their next move, I’ll have no say in the matter and things will end up perhaps as they should. But grant me only the eternity of believing that I made it so, that I made the pond ripple with presumptuous excellence that I’ll claim we all secretly long for. And if this cannot be granted, leave me with the humble understanding that while the trust I was taught in the beginning isn’t as simple as it seemed, it is not always fruitful to trust merely in oneself. At some point we must admit how little we know and how truly out of reach the answers really lie. Though my fingertips will continue to stretch and stretch up into the sky…