So my sitemate and dear friend Michelle set off for the states Monday. I couldn't explain why but I cried. Another dear friend, Daneen, just wrote her last update from Uganda where she is working as a missionary. I cried after I read that update too. What's the deal? Why all the tears? I wasn't sure so I do like my mama does when she has problems she can't explain: I laid myself down on my therapists couch and got to work grilling myself and searching the deep recesses of my mind.I came to several conclusions. Although I have 10 months left, I'm already mentally preparing to leave. Applications to grad school and thoughts of finding an apartment and adjusting to life back in that States have been on my mind a lot lately. At the same time, however, I'm trying to remain here...in the present as a Peace Corps volunteer in Olintepeque Quetzaltenango who has neighbors and friends and a support network and a house and a dog.
I've always been a planner. I can't help it. Finishing up an outline and draft two weeks before a deadline is already too late for me. I've realized that this carries over to my experiences as well. I've already begun to prepare my wrap up--planning a goodbye party, thinking about what I'll take home, applying for grad school....and of course getting extra helpings of things I cant' get in the States like atol and handmade corn tortillas hot off the comal.
I can't really find a word to explain how I feel about going home...excited to start school again, that's for sure. But relieved or full of anticipation don't really capture the feeling. I'll miss Guatemala, there's NO doubt about that, but part of me is ready to go back to a place where my lust for order, structure and efficiency can be satiated and I can have a conversation where I don't have to grope for words or use hand gestures to express myself. It's, as they say, so very bittersweet, being a Peace Corps volunteer. Especially in the Health Schools Program, I can see how my work is impacting the community. In the long-run, however, I will return to a far more comfortable life in the US and leave all of this behind like a well-enjoyed meal or something. It's unsettling really. Even considering I hope to live and work abroad.
Like any volunteer, I hope to leave my legacy here with my neighbors and at my 21 schools. It doesn't really matter what they say about me. Honestly, it will probably be nice mixture of truth and fairytale. Whatever they say, I hope they say it fondly.
As I wrote to congratulate my friend about completing her time in Uganda, this quote By Maya Angelou popped into my mind:
“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
Sitting in a meeting this morning, the teachers started to go around and thank me for encouraging them and for helping to make their ideas, which had initially seemed so far off, a reality.
The principals call me “una chispa”, or a spark. I think this is so fitting. What I actually DO here in Guatemala will soon be forgotten. The words I use to try and encourage my schools to be the change they want to see will probably not remain with a single one of them. But what I hope does stick with them is the way I made them feel-like they have the power to change what they don’t like about their world. My mantra to them has become, “If not us, who? And if not now, when?
It’s a concept that is still very foreign to Guatemalans.
Maybe I’m feeling extra sentimental lately because I realize that time is running out and I’m not so sure that by the time I go, the footprint I hope to leave will be deep enough. In any case, at least I’ve crystallized for myself what my aspirations are before I leave and accepted the fact that in a few short months, I will be leaving. All I can do now is hope that my legacy remains in empowering people to believe that the power is in their hands to change what they don’t like.
