Today I had an experience that made me think for a while about what it is about my Peace Corps life that is so different from the rest of my life. There are plenty of obvious reasons, but today a few less obvious ones occurred to me. Maybe for those of you who have studied abroad or spent time living in other countries this will be a normal thought process, but for me it was new.
I have one close Guatemalan friend who I have known since the first week I was in site. He is married and I have spent a decent amount of time with him and his wife. His wife is the sister of my old host mom, so I have ties with them. Today their younger brother died of cancer, I believe he was around 26. I only found out about it because I called a friend of my friend about something else and he told me that he couldn't come because he was going to the wake. This is a part of the oddity that I felt/feel sometimes here. I am here alone. Sure I have volunteer friends in town, and some Guatemalan friends, but in Guatemalan terms (family, established community, life-long friends, etc) I am alone. If I was part of a family here I'm pretty sure that someone would have told me what had happened without me having to call someone. The news would have spread to me naturally instead of by happenstance. This is not a big deal, but it is a part of life here.
Another part of the situation that I thought about was my role in their lives. I am here for two years, and then I will be leaving. My life in the states is on pause and I have to alter slightly who I am to fit into certain cultural norms here. By default I am in unbalanced relationships with Guatemalans. I have a best friend here, but I am not (and should not be) his best friend. I have people who I have called my host family, but they wouldn't refer to me as part of the family. This is not universally true, but generally speaking I have left my life and entered into the lives of people who are still in their normal day-to-day and that makes for unbalanced relationships. I needed to build relationships rapidly to feel a little more at home, but they were already at home. This is not such a terrible thing, but it is interesting to put into perspective from time to time. Also the other side of this is that since I know that I'm leaving at the end of two years, making really close friendships seems a little strange. It's just so different.
I spent 4 hours at the wake, sitting sometimes with people that I don't really know, and sometimes with people that I sort of know, but mostly contemplating. Something about the situation made me really really miss my family, and that was an unexpected addition to the day.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I often feel like that here in Oregon, just set totally adrift in a sea of unknowns and friends. No family to anchor me to the world... It's sobering to think about, and sort of sad.
ReplyDeletevisita http://estorcito.blogspot.com/
ReplyDeleteHi ,
ReplyDeleteWe are working on a social media project called Social Summer for Regent Street, London W1 http://247.regentstreetonline.com.
Integrating Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Flickr, YouTube, Vimeo and SoundCloud, we aim to capture the essence of summer worldwide and are asking key people in different countries to trigger the campaign.
If you are able to do this, we’d be delighted to place a link of your website next to the National flag you represent on the main microsite “Bloggers of the World Unite” which we hope in return may introduce your blog to a wider audience as the project grows. http://247.regentstreetonline.com/blogs
We would like you to add the link to the social summer website to your blog (http://247.regentstreetonline.com) with a little title or explanation about what social summer is. If possible could you add this close to the top of the page or a side panel so it doesn’t disappear. We would also like you to add a social summer logo next to his which I can send to you if you would be kind enough to help us.
We are also using the following four key hashtags throughout Social Summer and really hope you will engage with us by using them when you can.
#socialsummer
#socialfashion
#socialfood
#sociallifestyle
We will introduce some more social summer hashtags over the next few weeks and would be delighted for you to engage with us on the following Regent Street social networking pages when you have time.
1. Regent Street Facebook http://www.facebook.com/RegentStreetOfficial
2. Regent Street Twitter https://twitter.com/#!/search/regent%20street%20online
3. Regent Street Pinterest (In Progress)
4. Regent Street Instagram Searchable as socialsummer12
5. Regent Street Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/regentstreetonline/
6. Regent Street YouTube http://www.youtube.com/user/regentstreettv
7. Regent Street Vimeo https://vimeo.com/user12677770
8. Regent Street SoundCloud http://soundcloud.com/regentstreetonline
Should you have time to engage with me personally, these are my accounts.
1. Joseph Hutchings Facebook http://www.facebook.com/joe.hutchings.184
2. Joseph Hutchings Twitter https://twitter.com/JoeHutchingsFFC
3. Joseph Hutchings Pinterest http://pinterest.com/joehutchings/
4. Joseph Hutchings Flickr http://www.flickr.com/people/83636692@N06/
5. Joseph Hutchings YouTube https://plus.google.com/101306756403336512412/posts
6. Joseph Hutchings Vimeo https://vimeo.com/user12571283
7. Joseph Hutchings SoundCloud http://soundcloud.com/joe-john-hutchings
Hope to hear from you
Joseph Hutchings
So I stumbled across your blog while surfing the interwebs for "peace corps guatemala blogs" to get an idea of what the real experience will be like (OK, so I may be procrastinating on studying for the MCAT which is approaching rather quickly... Yikes). I depart for Guatemala in a month to begin my PC journey, and found your reflection to be quite helpful.
ReplyDelete