• weigh in, please

    So here’s the sitchy aiy shun. Remember all that stuff I told you about Jovita asking for money? Without doing anything beyond what I reported, she stopped asking. For weeks now, there have been zero requests. It’s been lovely.

    But then on Wednesday when we were saying goodbye, she informed me she wouldn’t be coming on Friday (because it’s Chamelco Official Birthday holiday) and would I please pay her for her day off. Sure, take the day off, I said, but I’ll have to talk to my husband about the pay. Her request caught me off guard, and playing the subservient (snort) wife was the fastest way out.

    After she left, I stomped around the house, grumbling and mumbling. I’m your classic, uptight North American so I fall to pieces when people pull last minute plan changes on me. (You ought to see what happens when taxis stand us up, ha. It sends my non-scheduled husband into a freakout tailspin, so you can only imagine what it does to me.) Plus, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being had.

    I asked another gringo if Friday is a paid holiday, and he said it is, but only for salaried workers. Then I asked our landlord. She confirmed what the gringo friend told us, and then said that some of their workers showed up and others didn’t. Only the ones that came to work got paid, but choosing to take the day off was acceptable, too. Such is the life of the hourly worker. (Whether or not those hourly workers ought to get salary benefits is a whole other issue.)

    I want to be generous with our house help. I try to treat Jovita respectfully and to give her some extra benefits that she might not get at another house. But at the same time, I want to follow local customs.

    Part of me says, “Good grief, what’s the big deal? It’s only forty quetzales! She has seven children, her husband got laid off, she does a fabulous job, she’s reliable, and she never (at least for the last month) asks for anything. Cut the woman some slack, will you?”

    But another part of me says, “But this isn’t about me. It’s about how Guatemalans perceive North Americans as money-throw-abouts. Sticking by my guns and following local customs will be one for the Humanity Home Team. Because this is about dignity. By upholding the guidelines and being generous within them, I’m demonstrating that I am not to be taken advantage of. And by expecting her to hold up her end of the deal, I am showing that I respect her.”

    But maybe that’s cold?

    Maybe it’s better to give her the money so that we have The Good Feeling Thing that is so important in this culture?

    But maybe that Good Feeling comes at the expense of True Good Feelings that come from treating each other with dignity? Maybe I’m the one who has to play the toughie in order to bring our relationship to a deeper level, one in which we both respect each other as people?

    Maybe I’m full of crap and it doesn’t matter what I do?

    And what about all those bothersome Jesus teachings about Giving It All Away and Helping Anyone Who Asks?

    Please, what do you make of this? My husband is exhausted by my on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand hashing out and is no help whatsoever. Maybe your Sunday school class could give this a go-over and arrive at some brilliant solution?

    Jovita comes at eight o’clock Monday morning. I need to have a response by then.

  • three things

    Thing One
    It’s the rainy season and my husband, a situational asthmatic, has taken to using his rescue inhaler multiple times each day. He says his chest hurts, and he’s forever collapsing on the bed and moaning. He walks around like an old man. And at night he dreads going to sleep because laying down makes him feel like he’s drowning.

    The whole things was starting to feel out of hand, so we made tentative plans to find someone with a stethoscope within the next few days, but then last night he spent four hours hacking up his lungs. Not cool.

    This morning over breakfast, I said, “Um, maybe you should see a doctor today?”

    “Yeah, probably.”

    “I know!” I shouted, spying a bright opportunity. “Let’s go to the local clinic! All you need is someone to listen to your lungs—it doesn’t have to be anyone fancy. It’ll be a cultural studies outing! You’ll be the perfect specimen. It’ll be fun!”

    I wasn’t joking when I said I was desperate for something to do.

    In the end, we didn’t stop at the little clinic in Chamelco. We had errands to run in Cobán anyway, so it made sense to go to the same place where they treated our daughter’s dog bite.

    Turns out, my husband’s lungs are full of mucus (which is just a fancy word for SNOT). The doctor gave him scripts for a couple different meds, including an antibiotic and a number to call if his calves start to hurt (apparently a rare but dangerous side effect of one of the drugs). Maybe their motto should be: We’ll heal you if we don’t kill you.

    (Kidding. The clinic is really very nice.)

    Clarifying Note: the series of Exhausted Husband pictures are culled from the archives and not just from this last week. 

    Thing Two
    It’s fair week.

    Think I should let the kids ride the Ferris wheel?

    (It blew over last year.)

    (And yes, there are seats. Fair goers aren’t expected to dangle by their hands, though that would give the ride a unique element of adventure…)

    Thing Three
    My daughter loves bugs and animals, so when our neighbor kid showed her his collection of insects, she was thrilled. When her teacher tasked the class with a bug identification project, she was excited. And when the neighbor boy said she could borrow his collection, she was over the moon.

    She spent hours making a display board, identifying the insects, carefully penciling in their names.

    Her passionate absorption is beautiful to watch.

    It’s fun to ponder where this interest might lead…

  • walking through water

    Last week when we arrived in Cobán for language study, my younger son stumbled off the bus, grabbed my hand and groaned, “I almost fell asleep. I feel like I’m walking through water.”

    Which made me laugh because 1) that’s exactly what feeling tired at on a sunny afternoon feels like, and 2) he arrived at the common analogy—tiredness and walking through water—himself, thus verifying its authenticity.

    Lately, I’ve been feeling like I’m walking through water all day long, but not because I’m tired from working so hard. To the contrary, I’m bored to the point of exhaustion.

    I get bored easily and quickly. This is a well-known fact, and I’ve learned to accept it, more or less. (Lie! I hate it! I fight it! I wish it weren’t so!) That’s why it came as such a delightful surprise to not be bored for even one single minute for the first three months after we arrived here. Seriously. I was keeping track. I was fully aware that I was the opposite of bored and I relished my newfound non-bored-ness.

    But then Mr. Boredom raised his stodgy head. At first it was just for an hour here, a few minutes there, but then he started sticking around longer. And longer and longer and longer. Now, five months in, I’m on the verge of suffocation by boredom.

    Regular tasks like shopping and cooking supper have become elevated to Sanity Savors. I’ve invited myself to other people’s houses (and now am now trying [unsuccessfully] to not hope too much for the text message that’s my golden ticket to a Morning of Cooking with Amada’s Abuela). I’ve willingly attended K’ekchi’-only meetings because at least then I’m not sitting at home by myself. I circle the web hopelessly, randomly, frantically, searching for connection and inspiration. In fact, it’s so bad that I’m seriously toying with the idea of baking something, carrying it to town on my head, and selling it at market. (When I explained to my husband that I’m going to fall off the deep end if I don’t have something to do NOW, that was the idea he came up with to get me off his back.)

    The women’s retreat.

    Like I said, I battle boredom in the states, too. And there I have great swaths of family and friends and Netflix and a whole huge house and garden and all sorts of things to help me cope. Here, I’m kind of on my own.

    It’s way better than it was in Nicaragua, though. In Nicaragua we lived in a one room house in a community of 35 families and there was no internet, no phone, no taxis, no market, no nothing. I didn’t fare so well, either. Depression crept in and set up camp. It was dark.

    I am not depressed here. Not yet, and hopefully not ever. I’m diligent about getting my exercise, my sleep, my vegetables. I get out, even if it’s just to cruise the market or to sit in the teachers’ room and write sentences using the subjunctive.

    The entrance to Chamelco, as viewed from the plaza. 

    Also, it helps that here we are living close to real, lots-of-people-live-in-them towns. There are schools and churches and internet cafes and bakeries. There are opportunities for connections galore. One would think I should be hopping with wall-to-wall busyness! But I’m not. Because the same rule that dictated our lives in Nicaragua exists here: if I’m going to be busy, I have to create my busy. However, I keep bumping up against this one little fact: I can push myself to put out only so much before I start to feel depleted.

    Watching a volleyball game: Bezaleel students.

    But how am I to create my Busy, my work, when I’m the odd-one out? Not only am I the giant white lady standing in a corner with no one to talk to, slow on the uptake and hard to understand, but everyone was managing just fine before I came. Which begs the question: how much do I even have a right to carve out a space for myself here? What does the ever elusive Accompaniment and Support look like in our situation?

    I want to place blame somewhere—on the school, MCC, the K’ekchi’ people, my husband, myself. I wonder if this boredom is because we are here for a short time and can’t invest ourselves as deeply. If we were here for three to five years, we’d be spending a lot more energy claiming this space, making the house ours, putting in a garden, etc. We can only skim the surface in nine months. Also, we’re not the only ones holding back—why should the locals want to invest in us when we’ll soon be gone?

    But even if we were here longer, I still think I’d be struggling with these same issues because the fact is this: gaining trust and building relationships takes time and lots of waiting and standing around in corners, watching, listening, and twiddling our thumbs. That’s just how this business is. There are no short cuts.

    White hair: an unusual sight.

    So why are we only here for nine months? Good question! The reasons are as follows:

    1. MCC/Bezaleel didn’t want anyone for longer.
    2. We wouldn’t have taken a longer term (though we did say we were available for one year) because long-term overseas commitment scares the living daylights out of us.
    3. After a history of heavy MCC involvement at the school followed by a few years of hardly any involvement, we are kind of testing the waters, looking around, feeling the situation out. It wouldn’t make sense to send someone into a “feeling out” position for three years.
    4. Our previous three years with MCC count for something; we’re not coming in cold. Chilly yes, but not cold.

    So I slog through my days. Sometimes the pace picks up. If I’m lucky, I get twinges of purposefulness. Some days are even productive! I set goals—little ones, like go to church, kiss every woman you meet on the cheek, smile, ask a question. And minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, time moves forward.

    Despite the dull, daily drudge, valuable (I hope!) Big Picture work is happening. It’s Stuff I Can’t Talk About (sorry) and it doesn’t meet my needy-needy-neediness for daily connections, but there is Behind The Scenes Purpose. However, knowing the whole picture doesn’t do much to alleviate the nagging “should we do more” and “how should we do more” questions. I’m still crawling out of my skin with boredom.

    I’m also still glad we’re here.