Natural Disasters

Natural Disasters

A tickle on my chin and I instinctively slap myself in the face. This self-abuse is shortly followed by a slew of four forceful and panicky nostril-only exhalations and the thrashing of my head violently from left to right. Unfortunately, my obsessive-compulsive-disorder-like-fanatic-cleaning-syndrome, combined with a mosquito net and random Raid fumigating sessions, does little to ward off, as one would say here, “animal-itos”, aka bed bugs or any assortment of crawling, hopping or flying nighttime critters. Furthermore, while (much to his newfound delight at having crossed over into “manhood” ((se cayeron los huevitos)) in a country where the canines run wild and the fish in the sea are plentiful) Vaquito does not sleep inside, but from time to time he does pass on through. I shamefully should bring it to your attention that his cleanliness is comparable to a guanaco bolo who has been on a chicha drinking binge for 9 days straight without not even one huacal worth of a bucket bath and a bed that puede ser the ditch next to the dirt-road-side or the pile of firewood in his neighbor’s yard. Mind you I do bathe him once a week in anti-flea-and-tick product, but even before I am finished he is legs up in the dirt and weeds behind the house. Either that or he’s imitating a Mike Tyson match on the neighbor’s…well, I’ll call it a dog…but there’s plenty of room for argument. Anyway, Vaquito's occasional entrances into the Jaime-cleaning-zone have the possibility and likely threat of leaving behind, (I’ll put it in Spanish for those sheltered-gringitos), pulgas y garapatas. O sea, bugs. (Okay, only a few more run-on sentences to go…)

Well, preventative-health has quickly become a priority of mine due to some recent medical issues and so intermittent nightly face-slaps have now become a pleasant wake-me-upper. I like to know that I can count on myself to be OCD even while I am sleeping.

So, after I finished my morning convulsions and realized there was no scorpion tail jammed into my cheek, nor could I feel any swelling around my eyes to indicate a 10-year delay in organ malfunction, I reached around for my phone. I pressed some buttons and the emitted light burned my dilated eyes: 4:47am. I hadn’t been up this early in awhile. Nor had I gone to bed as late as 11:10pm in the campo since my prior lifetime. Unfortunately, before I even had the chance to consider falling back asleep, my mind was flooded with dreams and visions from the other dimensions…Realizations that often taunt me…

Being a Peace Corps Volunteer is hardest, for me at least, in the moments that you realize that maybe…even though you are a white-(although Salvo-heart-breaking-ly not blonde)-college-graduate-CPR-certified-bank-account-holding-world-travelling-teeth-bearing-North-American….maybe, just maybe, you don’t have all the answers. Maybe you cannot always help.

When one of your good friends, a 64 year old 4’8” lady shows up at your house with a black eye and tells you that she regrettably has to move next month to help out a family with housework to whom she owes money. My dear friend is not complaining, just merely advising me that she will no longer be able to help support me in ways she has in the past: offering me her last cup of coffee, her tattered hammock to put my feet up in, her pansa-shaking funny stories…like the time she visited the mayor’s office forgetting to put on a bra. This same lady has recently lost her second husband and single-handedly raises her grandson, as his mother works in a nearby town making less than $10 a day. My friend has never asked me for a dime, while she often offers to help me hand-wash my clothes for free. She has not 5 years of formal education, while her wisdom astounds me everyday with sayings such as “if you are not excited about tortear-ing you are not going to make pretty tortillas”. She has been a Peace Corps counterpart for 5 years, while her friends continue asking her how we have helped her?

There are 4 brothers in town ranging from 5 years old to 10… and maybe it is because I, too, am a one-gender-only sister of 4, or perhaps it is their ever-smiling caritas, but they have grown very dear to my heart. They often roam the streets dirty, but they skip instead of walk. I can’t think of one time while they have passed my house without a vigorous wave or a song-like “Salu!” and my day is complete with just half-a-hug from either one of them. But their house-of-sticks is in shambles and as the rainy-season starts, the impracticality of the roof is ever-so more apparent.

My neighbors own a store; two parents with a boy and girl, the perfect family with what qualifies here as a steady-income. The music is often playing (some religious tune or another), Dad swaying in the hammock, boy kicking a plastic ball around the front yard. The Mom is watering the banana trees and the daughter is sweeping the store, while tending to infrequent shoppers. But a week has gone-by and the girl has not been seen. As my egg supply is running low, I stop by for a purchase. “Fijese que she has moved in with her boyfriend in such and such town” the mother tells me. “Really? So young?” I think out loud. “She’s 14” the mother replies stoically. Immediately my mind flashes to my baby sister (yes, you’re still a baby) and I want to swallow, although my mouth is dry.

If I could, I would give my friend $1,000. She wouldn’t have to move, she wouldn’t have to worry about her grandchild. I would buy the 4 boys a new house, or at least a durable roof. I would bring my neighbor’s girl back home and tell her, you are too young to have a baby.

But I wouldn’t be fixing anything. The money would soon run out, the roof would eventually falter and another baby would be born into the hands of a child.

I could give talks about saving and investing money. I could start a project to improve houses. I could bring people in to talk about protected sex and planned parenthood.

But my community is over 400 households and I am one person. It’s pulling teeth to get people to come to “talks” and “if you give a mouse a cookie, he’s going to ask for a glass of milk”. (And so the favorite childhood story of Danielle and I, comes back to haunt me as a reminder of an important Peace Corps warning).

I am not trying to be pessimistic. And I have FAR from given up on my work and my community. In fact, the point of all this is that I am trying TOO hard. I want desperately to make people happy. I want to give my community, my new friends, my prestar-ed kids, my Latin family, the world. But some things you cannot change. I can’t sponsor the world with money and I can’t teach a friend a business she doesn’t have the time or patience to learn. I can build someone a house, but there’s always going to be someone else who needs a new house, too. I can suggest planned parenthood, but who am I to tell someone who has been doing housework since she was 4 and is forbidden continued education that she shouldn’t begin to start her own family at 14?

Sometimes, you just have to take things for what they are. I am working hard and I will continue to do the best that I can for my community, but for those of you out there who expect to hear that my village went from mud-huts to stone mansions and that Rosa convinced her “husband” to stay home and watch the kids, so she could return to school, I am sorry to let you down.

I am hard on myself. And I am sorry I cannot help everyone. Sometimes I do look at my community and say “What have I done here? It looks the same as when I started?” It is then that I curl up in a ball in my hammock, hoping if I close my eyes tight enough I will transform into a bear that is about to embark upon a 10month hibernation… That when I next slowly release the hinges of my promising right eye lid, I will see the familiar living room of my New York home. Or, in a tad-bit more practical effort, I call one of my friends.

He may tell me to calm down. That I am helping. That the kids in the Artesania group are learning to make jewelry. That they have an opportunity that didn’t have before. That the girls on the soccer team have a break from washing dishes. That the families who received wheelchairs feel touched. That the kids won’t forget how we ran the field, laughing and tripping, as we tossed water balloons. That one school has new computers and another a fresh vegetable garden. That 2 boys will go from working the fields to studying in the States. That a group of young women have learned self-defense. That a handful of people think, with new-found confidence, (just as I do) that they can speak another language.

Maybe you expect more. To tell you the truth, I do too. I will always expect more of myself. But sometimes, to keep myself from having just a small-little panic attack that leaves me dry-heaving in desperation on my dusty floor, I need to remind myself of these small accomplishments I have made. So, this isn’t for you. I am not here to prove myself or my work. I am just taking a deep breath to think out loud that I AM TRYING. That it is easy to get down as a PCV and we all need to pat ourselves on the back once in awhile.

Every community is different. Every volunteer is different. All we can ask of ourselves is that we try. There is no superstar volunteer and there is no failure. If you are here and if you are trying, you are making a difference.

Because in the end, my community probably won’t remember the projects I helped create. In the end, I might forget Ovidio used to be inside all day before he got his movable chair. But I will never forget the soups Lena offered me or the giggles of little Frankie and Damian. And I hope, and like to believe, that they won’t forget me either. At least the time I ran around foolishly (with pride) on the boys soccer team or had a birthday party with not one person over the age of 8 at my house (my most memorable party yet). The walks to the waterfalls or the chats about chuchos. The most important part of our work here is that. The intercultural exchange and the genuine bonds we are forming between different peoples of the world. And this, for me at least, is done without trying. One by one, sharing in friendship, we are spreading the peace, changing the world one person at a time.

So, I slap myself in the face, one more time, to bring myself back to reality. Peace Corps may do this to you. Once in awhile, 3 hours will pass like a flash of lightning before your eyes, as you come to realize you have been lying in a daze… John Lennon “Imagine All the People…” on repeat in your head… Man, how did I get from the story of my buggy bed to my pensive pondering, I wonder blushing?

Just then, the hammock starts to tremble, but as it dangles freely, I have no way to brace myself. I listen for a truck that may be about to pass, but I hear nothing. Nor is it grumbling from my stomach since it has been 2 months since I finished my Amoeba-fighting-meds and over 11 since I have craved eggs, beans and rice. I live alone and my doors are still locked from the night before, so, it could not be a vagabond child that shakes my hanging abode. And so, I smirk, feeling the vibrations of the earthquake, realizing that there are certain things in life that you just have to accept you cannot control…that you just have to roll with.