It’s been nearly 10 months in the making, after hundreds of dollars and what seems like hundreds of trips to La Paz I’m finally a fully documented resident of Bolivia. At least the pic turned out right? I like it, a lot. I don’t care that my hair is unkempt or that my smile is a little crooked, during the picture the thing I was most concerned about was the cop next to me, the one holding my national ID#. I was really hoping he wouldn’t be cropped out. At least not entirely.
I could use the ID and the pic to generalize a ton of stuff about Bolivia. The time I waited to get the dumb thing says something, the fact that the pins on the number were broken and it had to be held could mean a lot, the glare on the numbers or the care that wasn’t taken to remove it might mean something too. RIGHT? Probably a lot of the generalizations would be accurate too.
I’ve made many assumptions and split second decisions in my time here. In most ways it’s just something you have to do in a culture that’s so different. The Bolivians I’ve met make them too. More than once someone has asked me if ALL the food we eat comes from a can. They mean it too, and when I say “no” they cite some friend of a friend who went to the US, or some movie. It’s okay to generalize and it’s normal, and it defines how we see and comprehend things. Getting a Bolivian to understand what’s a convenience store is a lot easier than you might think, sadly it doesn’t shatter the idea of how the people here see us.
My time away from home has made me think a lot about life in the US and how I see it from here. Going abroad to a poor country to volunteer makes it really easy to judge everything back home, and to be really harsh about it. Look I come here, my house is made out of MUD, I don’t have a microwave, my socks are so stretched and stained it looks like I’ve got burlap sacks jammed into my shoes, and I’m just fine. All this while you’re driving to work every day in your OWN PERSOSNAL CAR, eating Hot Pockets, and not even appreciating that the only parasites living off your sweat and blood are your own children.
I wouldn’t ever say anything so blunt outside of such an intimate context, so let’s keep the above to ourselves or someone might get upset.
Seriously though, it’s just not fair to take shots like that. That’s not what I want to do.
It’s not true anyhow - I mean my house is made out of adobe bricks covered with plaster and stones, so it’s only part mud.
I brought it up to say of course that I had a lot of misconceptions about life here when I first came, and I had a lot of unfair opinions about the US as well. I’m not promising to stop doing either one, I’m just saying that now I’m more conscious of it.
Let me reiterate some things. I live in a big, simple, partly mud house. I don’t have a microwave. I’m just fine, I’m happy. That’s the important part, that I’m happy. I don’t think it’s a surprise, and I don’t want it to be.
I could use the ID and the pic to generalize a ton of stuff about Bolivia. The time I waited to get the dumb thing says something, the fact that the pins on the number were broken and it had to be held could mean a lot, the glare on the numbers or the care that wasn’t taken to remove it might mean something too. RIGHT? Probably a lot of the generalizations would be accurate too.
I’ve made many assumptions and split second decisions in my time here. In most ways it’s just something you have to do in a culture that’s so different. The Bolivians I’ve met make them too. More than once someone has asked me if ALL the food we eat comes from a can. They mean it too, and when I say “no” they cite some friend of a friend who went to the US, or some movie. It’s okay to generalize and it’s normal, and it defines how we see and comprehend things. Getting a Bolivian to understand what’s a convenience store is a lot easier than you might think, sadly it doesn’t shatter the idea of how the people here see us.
My time away from home has made me think a lot about life in the US and how I see it from here. Going abroad to a poor country to volunteer makes it really easy to judge everything back home, and to be really harsh about it. Look I come here, my house is made out of MUD, I don’t have a microwave, my socks are so stretched and stained it looks like I’ve got burlap sacks jammed into my shoes, and I’m just fine. All this while you’re driving to work every day in your OWN PERSOSNAL CAR, eating Hot Pockets, and not even appreciating that the only parasites living off your sweat and blood are your own children.
I wouldn’t ever say anything so blunt outside of such an intimate context, so let’s keep the above to ourselves or someone might get upset.
Seriously though, it’s just not fair to take shots like that. That’s not what I want to do.
It’s not true anyhow - I mean my house is made out of adobe bricks covered with plaster and stones, so it’s only part mud.
I brought it up to say of course that I had a lot of misconceptions about life here when I first came, and I had a lot of unfair opinions about the US as well. I’m not promising to stop doing either one, I’m just saying that now I’m more conscious of it.
Let me reiterate some things. I live in a big, simple, partly mud house. I don’t have a microwave. I’m just fine, I’m happy. That’s the important part, that I’m happy. I don’t think it’s a surprise, and I don’t want it to be.
There is a surprise though, or for me anyway it was.
I’m not happy because I’ve left behind consumerism, because I haven’t. I not happy because I’ve changed so many lives, because I haven’t done that either - I hope I’ve touched a few though. I’m not happy because I’m a strong, incredible person doing something impossibly hard, because I’m really not that.
I’m happy even though most of the expectations I had about coming here turned out not to be true, and even though due to personal weakness I haven’t achieved the growth I hoped to. I’ve never been as peaceful as I am today and I can’t imagine I will be after I leave.
I don’t know why it is, I just AM happy.
Is that enough?
That’s the surprise…
The semester ends in two months. In two months I don’t know what I’m doing or where I’ll be. For the first time since I was in High School I’m okay with that.
LOVE
andy
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