Sometimes I forget that I am here, here in Guyana. My routine and my life has mutated so far from what it was 9 months ago, but despite this, my life here now seems normal to me. I wake up and go about my morning: rolling out of my mosquito net, greeting my cat with a morning hug, pouring water out of my filter into a pot to boil for coffee. I timidly step into my cold shower, sometimes brown murky water pouring out of the PVC pipe, but I step under anyways. My feet trample through the cane dust that gathered onto my floor, the pads of my feet eternally black. I cover my body in bug spray and baby powder, ready to face the heat, sweat and mosquitos. Most days after work, I swing in my hammock just staring into the sky, watching the palms of a coconut tree blowing. I see yellow kiskadees in the breadfruit tree and goats hopping my fence to eat my grass and drink out of my dogs water bowl, and this has become my normal. Lizards and beetles crawling on my walls, frogs coming out of my water tank, and trash burning on the side of the road, it does not phase me as exceptional or unbelievable anymore, it just is what it is. I literally have to remind myself that I am living in Guyana in a developing country, and that this wasn't my normal for 30 years.
But in the grand scheme of life, my perceived normal in Guyana will never be my Guyanese friends normal, just as American culture, acceptances or prejudices, ethics, laws, morals & norms are not the normal of the rest of the world. It is so easy to forget this. After nine months I got comfortable and complacent and settled into a new normal. Talking to my neighbor tonight, about how her employer didn't give out BACK pay as they usually do at the end of the year, because there simply isn't any money to go round, she said to me... "What can you do... You just go to work and hope for the best". I almost said to her, "well in America, this would never happen... There are laws protecting workers... " But my brain put on the brakes and shut off thankfully. Guyana is not America. What good would it do to compare the two and tell her about these laws? She won't get her money or change the laws overnight, and it won't make anything better. I can't get her a plane to America to get her a new American normal. Her normal is living day to day and all I can do is listen and be there for her.
One quirck in the universe that really brings this idea home is that I have a "luxury" that most of my new friends and neighbors do not have. If I suddenly grow to hate the blackouts and loathe the cold showers, or if I catch Malaria or have some injury or other illness, there is always a plane, advanced medical care and endless hot showers just a phone call away just for me. I have an out. I can go back to my café mocha from Starbucks, driving on the right hand side of the road, enjoying a craft beer on trivia Thursday, and waking up to 800 channels on the television. But when I go home, my new Guyanese friends will still be here, with the blackouts, cold showers and lizards. When I go home, my friend will still be working 8 hour days for $2000 Guyanese per day... Translation, TEN US dollars a day, or let me break it down some more...$1.25 per hour. Remind me the minimum wage in the US? This is her normal, this is her reality... There is no plane that will take her to the land of chain restaurants, Amendments and hot water at the drop of a hat.
This conversation reminded me that my little Peace Corps Volunteer bubble is far from reality. No matter how comfortable or integrated I feel or become here, in 18 months, or tomorrow if I crack, there is a plane waiting for me. I hope that when I go back to America at the end of this journey that I take with me the reminder that the majority of the world doesn't sip lattes in a quaint little coffee shop. Taking it a step further, it would be negligent to not point out that many in America don't live this way either. I will surely come home and over time will think that my normal is unexceptional and mundane , but for some in the world, my normal, or your normal, could be their dream. Normal is all relative.
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