There has been a shift lately. Perhaps it has to do with the change in weather---the layering against the cold, the longer nights, going to bed at 7pm, and sleeping twelve hours. I´ve been getting frustrated more easily, and I find myself generally hiding from people in my community, which is not easy to do.
I´ve been feeling purposeless lately,and the only reason people want me around is to take pictures and bring them things from the city. I´ve been very welcomed here, but I´ve also been used. Last week I finally broke down. I went to the high school to plan the photo exhibition with the ninth graders, to whom I taught a photography class, and as usual, it was a struggle to get anything decided or organized. My patience spent, I left and walked my bike (the pedal fell off...again) to my favorite host mom´s house. Ña Marina greeted me with outstretched arms, into which I prompty walked into and burst into tears. She brought me into the kitchen (mi oficina, she calls it), and I told her all my frustrations, which seemed miniscule in my ears when telling a Paraguayan, for some reason. At one point, her husband called her away to ask what the problem was, and that he would take care of it whatever or whomever it was. Marina proceeded to pick fresh mint to make a nerve-soothing tea, and commanded me to sit and not go anywhere. So I sat and drank my tea, while she cooked lunch and we chatted about Paraguayans.
She told me for the first time how she raised her first three children as a single mother, still working in the fields and selling her crops, on top of her household and motherhood duties. She has raised five intelligen children, is an active grandmother, and an integral part of the church commission, farmers´committee, and PTA, all with a sixth-grade education. And she still finds time to mollify frazzled Americans. I have never heard a harsh word escape her mouth. The other week, I heard her yell across the field to her granddaughter, who was trying to pick high-up fruit with a bamboo pole, not to spank the orange tree. That tree feeds us, she said. Why would you hit it? This surprized me, living in a place yet untouched by the environmental movement.
I don´t know how she manages to maintain such high spirits in the presense of so much ugliness, esecially when the victims of this ugliness make it so difficult to help them. Donations of bread and eggs, and even matresses bought for children with literally dozens of brothers and sisters are sold for pennies by alcoholic parents. One more strike against donations. As I struggle to find my own productivity here, I am constantly caught between feelig inspired by the possibility of positive change and utter resentment towards the people whose lives I want to improve.
First, do no harm. That´s the Hippocratic Oath, but it has been routinely applied to development work, as well as for medicine. The idea is that outsiders who enter a community wanting to help, may actually hinder. It is intimidating to think that by wanting to be of service, I could actually be making things worse. Indeed, good intentions do not necessarily egual positive outcomes. What´s the point of teaching people to grow and cook vegetables if they won´t eat them? Why hoe all day in the field if they´re just going to burn the crop residuals anyway, leaving the soil scorched and naked to the elements? I am here for the people, yes, but I´m also here for the environment. I distinguish these two cases here because ecocentrism has yet to reach Paraguay--the idea that protecting the environment directly benefits us, as humans, is a concept that seems to be only superficially understood (ie. no trees=no firewood=no lunch).
P.S. The title of this post refers to a common phrase used when saying goodbye: Jajotopata lata`ipe. What?
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