Parallel Universe

Is it quantum physics?  I don’t know, but I live in an alternate universe.  It’s parallel…though what does that mean?  Why don’t we say it’s perpendicular?  I guess because there are parallels…ah well whatever.  It’s good to be home, absurd isn’t it?  I live in a hut in the jungle.  It’s hot and dusty, the power comes on only intermittently, there’s no water, I poop in a hole, and most of all no one actually calls me by my name.  At yet somehow it is home and I got a smile on my face as soon as I got to Atjoni to get on a boat to come here.

I was sort of dreading coming back.  I’ve been so busy in the city and I don’t really have anything to do here, right now.  I have ongoing stuff (youth group requires thought, English doesn’t) and stuff that I have submitted that needs follow up (lampesi’s, solar lanterns, ginger juice, Entrepreneurship training), and some work to do to prep for Camp BILT (that’s what I have dubbed the Boy’s Camp – Boys Improving Lives Together.  It’s not as good as GLOW (Girls Leading Our World) but it’s better than BLOW or nothing). 

So with not a lot to do back here, I wasn’t that excited to get back to grubbing in the dirt after all my fancy living in the city.  You know, playing in Excel, going to meeting, standing in front of people and speaking about things with certainty.  Oh and showers, water, internet, AC.  You know, fancy people stuff.  It was kind of a letdown after all that and so the exhale kinda caught me hard, but as soon as I hit Atjoni I felt better.

It was fun wandering around other parts of Suriname (I’m finally really starting to think in Saramaccan – that sentence had to be translated out of it as I wrote it) and reminding myself that I do actually like wandering around within minimal structure.  I’m not as conservative or risk averse as McM started to make me.  I had a lot of fun negotiating our way through French Guyana and what not.  But it’s cool how nice it felt to return to the Saramaccan River where you face all those challenges…but on your home turf.  It’s far from easy, but at least we speak the same language.

Oak Hill and my parents, Ithaca and Blair Street, Ariel – these are…centers…that make home.  It’s weird how my little hut has made that list.  It helped a lot that my parents and Ariel have been here.  Even so, though, it’s so much more of a home than my house in the suburbs with a yard and a two car (2.5) garage.

It’s all in what you make of it and how alive you are while you are there, I guess.  

In other news, I know how to thatch a roof.  Isn’t that odd?  I’ve helped do it two or three times now and I could probably do it by myself (you need several pairs of hands, but you know what I mean) – passably at least.  I mean it’s just ridiculous.  People missed me here.  They really did!  And they took me back in after being gone for almost a month near instantly.

This is the first community I’ve really felt a part of, I think.  I mean, TKD for sure – Cornell and Chun Ma.  Even Violin to a lesser extent when I was young, but those are both centered on something so I count them slightly differently.

It’s a weird path I’ve walked to end up here.  The only thing that ties it together is that I’ve always tried to make a positive difference in other people’s lives and, when I’ve known how, to leave things better than I found them.  It’s taken me to sweaty practices, steamy dance floors, over-cooled offices, giant warehouses, and now the jungle.  Who knows where I’ll end up next.

I would not be content helping people thatch roofs all my days, but it’s a good reminder of what is important and valuable.  What I value myself for, in terms of being a Peace Corps Volunteer, and what my community values me for have a lot of overlap, I would bet.  But I’m learning that there are things I didn’t think to value that they already knew.  Like being a good neighbor.  Or a present, positive, community member.

I’m not at all upset I was gone for a month – I did good stuff, for me and for the community – in part because of how easily I fit back into the village.  I’m not upset by anywhere my path has taken me so far.  But I’m definitely trying to learn from these things about what’s important.  And therefore at what I need to aim in the future.