Seven more hours in South America. What does that even mean?
In a certain sense, I feel as though it is already over. Everything that I have experienced since leaving la Región de Magallanes in Chile has given me perspective, but it also made the time there feel as distant as its physical location 2800 miles South.
Everything feels surreal. Instead of having to take an extremely uncomfortable bus full of puking Peruvians for forty-eight hours, followed by a collectivo on the fly and a stowaway passage on a cargo boat to get home, I will walk onto my flight to the States and be home within ten hours. It seems impossible.
I always find my self grasping at strings to sum up a journey adequately when I confront returning home. Words and phrases that I want to lean on because they are easy fall flat. "Overall, it was a ______ experience..." is not sufficient. "At the end, I see that ______ was _______ all along..." doesn't cut it. "When I began this journey, I thought _______, but now I've learned _______..." just can't work.
I can't tie the thousands of experiences and lessons into a nice little box and package them in shiny wrapping paper. I can't even get them all straight in my mind. Besides, I think somehow that there is no box big enough. Especially not this tiny one on Blogger.
Instead I will make a minor and inefficient attempt to draw the closing lines Al Camino que Hicieron Mis Zapatos quoting...myself. From the beginning.
"Now this experience is beginning, and it feels surreal still...So much craziness has already happened and I feel as though it can only get better from here (and here is pretty great already)..." -26 February
"Occasionally a shooting star that only I get to see shows up and streaks across my life. And I get to be satisfied that there are people like me out there in the world, and that we occasionally find one another." -2 March
"Holy shit. I'm about to see someone get stabbed." -3 March
"Complete And Utter Chaos would come today when my head teacher decided not to come back from his lunch break and the director asked me to substitute with no preparation or lesson plan or materials." -15 March
"And maybe all the things that seem to be contradictions are simply juxtapositions that I am not used to. Maybe my definition of contradiction needs to evolve. And maybe I'm over-reacting because this is actual culture shock instead of the "I'm at home!" feeling Italy immediately gave me." -23 March
"Am I just a cog in the English Cult Machine here in Chile? Maybe." -31 March
"I had no idea how hard I would be expected to work here, nor how hard I would have to push myself." -10 April
"They all think I am crazy. Also I am covered in cat pee." -20 April
"I'm not even concerned with breaking even anymore. I just want a little sprinkling of good surprises and minor victories to season the greater confusion, frustration, and lack of progress. It's enough." -3 May
"I can't change everything. Maybe, just maybe, I can't change ANYthing. I hope that the reality is somehwere in the middle, but it remains to be seen." -16 May
"So, what do you do when there is nothing more to do? When you have nothing more to give? When what you thought was the point of your life has been erroded by three months of floundering and you wonder what the point of trying is?
You tell the existential crisis bearing down on you to go fuck itself, and you spend some of the UN's money on some new boots and a coffee." -24 May
"The images of all the places I have been able to travel so far on this trip materialize out of the bluish gray light, seeming to shine in the snow and cloudy sky. Torres del Paine. Tierra del Fuego. Ushuaia. Natales. Puerto Bulnes. The Straight of Magellan. That big hill over there, that we spent the day climbing yesterday. All the toughness of the teaching and the daily stuggles, did it pay for those places?" -27 May
"Circumstantial changes mimic the coming and going of the weather here. If you don't like it, wait five minutes. The chaos will shift again and you will be humbled by your smallness in the face of Patagonia. But you will also find that you can change some of it, and occasionally outsmart the chaos for just long enough to move to the next challenge." -7 June
"I am not working here. This is not a job. This is something at I am choosing to do and that I can just as easily choose not to. I am a volunteer."- 8 June
"There was no assistant teaching. No orientation. No gradual transition from non-teacher to Miss Coleen. Hell, there wasn't even an observation period. I made the transition in a day, in front of a room full of seventh graders. But honestly, I think I've risen well to the challenge. After four months of the struggle in this school, I can say with some confidence that I have at least a tiny claim to that kick ass brotherhood of teachers making a difference." -22 June
"I have done the best job I could do to change and adapt and accept. A lot of what I have learned and changed is great, and I will use the new point of view Chile has offered me to judge my own life more carefully. But that doesn't mean I should lose myself completely either. My own culture and identity have a lot to offer, and the exchange should change Puerto Natales and the people I meet as well." -30 June
"You did it. You did what you came here to do. And you did it so well.
I didn't look back. Really, I couldn't...the more pressing needs to watch out for stray ankle-biting poodles, speeding POS cars on the avenue, and boot-swollowing mud puddles pressed me back to Chilean reality. The Goodbye Spell complete, I walked home." -8 July
"To any observer including me it appears that she has been trying to kill me...but she was actually trying to save me.
Chile woke me up and made me realize that I have a lot of work to do on myself before my life can have stability and I can truly be happy. She laid my own issues and those of the world bare, forcing me to deal with pain, sadness, lonliness, anger, and my own personal tormentors from the past. She forced me to give up a lot about my own way of viewing the world and to try to get by on fumes (and a ton of white bread) even when I was exhausted. She made me feel so tiny and powerless in the face of mountains and the problems of her society, but yet huge and powerful as the most noticeable gringa this side of Puerto Montt and able to do something to help those students." -18 July
"In one week, I've literally done Chile end to end. Punta Arenas to Arica." -9 August
"I don't want to give up on one of the things that I've always held dear to me... The idea that I could act and change something about the world for the better. It is easier to choose to be jaded. The narrow path is not convenient." -16 August
I suppose that my 24 hours in this overly white hotel room ought to have given me the time to emerge with some great Truth about my time here in South America, but to be honest I've been filling it with Law and Order re-runs and The Other Boleyn Girl.
All the tethers to this experience are breaking free, one by one, to flutter in the wind. This week I felt the surprise of already missing Patagonia and everyone who was witness to my adventure here. I especially miss and want to thank Dimitris. Without you, I wouldn't have made it.
Likely whatever change there is within me will only become clear in the stark contrast this last, short leg of the journey will inevitably bring. I have an inkling that there is a big enough physical change that people may be shocked. South America stripped pounds from my frame, changed my hair color, and put the first lines on my face. Also my clothes haven't had a real washing in almost six months.
A girl in my hostel (a random, faked-tanned and overly-bleached California blonde) listened to a few lines of concentrated six months in South America the other day over a mediocre vegetarian sandwich. She was shocked at how long I've been here, and clearly had no grasp on how far South Puerto Natales is. She couldn't stop complimenting my Spanish (that language I did not speak six months ago that I now take for granted).
"Would you do it all again?"
I hesitated. This was, without question, the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. A few weeks ago, I said that I wished I had never come to South America, through tears in the fancy SkyBar at the Punta Arenas casino.
"Yes. Yes, I would do it again."
My answer surprised even myself. Something must have shifted in the 3000 miles since then. I don't know what that shift is yet, but that tiny glimmer of light peeking out from the darkness seems to be a good omen.
"It is known that one who returns never left..." -Pablo Neruda
Showing posts with label Happy Endings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Happy Endings. Show all posts
18 August 2011
18 July 2011
Chile's Version of Cardiac Massage
"¿De que te cansas, Coleen? ¿Que puedes tener que te cansa?"
Why am I so tired, Chilean host mother? Oh, I don't know...maybe it is that I worked a forty-hour week trying to control thirty high schoolers who don't speak English (and protect and support a pregnant fifteen year old) while speaking in my fourth language, after teaching my ass off in a high-risk public school for the last five months? Oh yes, and the fact that I went to sleep at 6:30 this morning and only slept until you woke me up by beating on my door at 10, admonishing me for missing breakfast.
Luckily, I only have to put up with this for one more week. Otherwise I might just pour my very proper tea out onto this table and tell you where you can put your bowl of Manjar.
Chile and I have had a hell of a ride. Now that I am in the transition stage from Tía Coleen to Kick-Ass-Traveling-4000-Miles-Overland-Coleen and as my my final obligations to the EOD program are wrapping up, I find myself spending a great portion of my time thinking about what has changed about me since I moved to this continent.
It's strange, because in some ways I don't feel changed. In my most self-pitying moments, I tell myself that it was all for nought and that it changed neither me nor my students nor the world that I came here. Obviously, this is a product of the lethal combination of a little too much time spent on the uncomfortable plywood floor of my room alone and a chronic lack of sunlight. When I step back a bit and actually name the changes, it becomes clear that my self-pity has no relationship with reality.
I have an image in my head of Chile (who I somehow picture as a big-boned Salweskar woman) reaching into my chest up to her wrists and opening my ribcage, to massage and form and enliven my heart. Like cardiac massage that surgeons perform, but with blood everywhere in big arterial spurts. To any observer including me it appears that she has been trying to kill me, with stress and frustration and futility and ankle-biting poodles.
But she was actually trying to save me.
Chile woke me up and made me realize that I have a lot of work to do on myself before my life can have stability and I can truly be happy. She laid my own issues and those of the world bare, forcing me to deal with pain, sadness, lonliness, anger, and my own personal tormentors from the past. She forced me to give up a lot about my own way of viewing the world and to try to get by on fumes (and a ton of white bread) even when I was exhausted. She made me feel so tiny and powerless in thhe face of mountains and the problems of her society, but yet huge and powerful as the most noticeable gringa this side of Puerto Montt and able to do something to help those students.
I think the change snuck up on me, and that it happened so quickly that I didn't even realize it. Somewhere between the crazy 16-hour flight to Santiago and the trip to the post office this morning, a new Coleen took the place of the old one.
I even look different.
Why am I so tired, Chilean host mother? Oh, I don't know...maybe it is that I worked a forty-hour week trying to control thirty high schoolers who don't speak English (and protect and support a pregnant fifteen year old) while speaking in my fourth language, after teaching my ass off in a high-risk public school for the last five months? Oh yes, and the fact that I went to sleep at 6:30 this morning and only slept until you woke me up by beating on my door at 10, admonishing me for missing breakfast.
Luckily, I only have to put up with this for one more week. Otherwise I might just pour my very proper tea out onto this table and tell you where you can put your bowl of Manjar.
Chile and I have had a hell of a ride. Now that I am in the transition stage from Tía Coleen to Kick-Ass-Traveling-4000-Miles-Overland-Coleen and as my my final obligations to the EOD program are wrapping up, I find myself spending a great portion of my time thinking about what has changed about me since I moved to this continent.
It's strange, because in some ways I don't feel changed. In my most self-pitying moments, I tell myself that it was all for nought and that it changed neither me nor my students nor the world that I came here. Obviously, this is a product of the lethal combination of a little too much time spent on the uncomfortable plywood floor of my room alone and a chronic lack of sunlight. When I step back a bit and actually name the changes, it becomes clear that my self-pity has no relationship with reality.
I have an image in my head of Chile (who I somehow picture as a big-boned Salweskar woman) reaching into my chest up to her wrists and opening my ribcage, to massage and form and enliven my heart. Like cardiac massage that surgeons perform, but with blood everywhere in big arterial spurts. To any observer including me it appears that she has been trying to kill me, with stress and frustration and futility and ankle-biting poodles.
But she was actually trying to save me.
Chile woke me up and made me realize that I have a lot of work to do on myself before my life can have stability and I can truly be happy. She laid my own issues and those of the world bare, forcing me to deal with pain, sadness, lonliness, anger, and my own personal tormentors from the past. She forced me to give up a lot about my own way of viewing the world and to try to get by on fumes (and a ton of white bread) even when I was exhausted. She made me feel so tiny and powerless in thhe face of mountains and the problems of her society, but yet huge and powerful as the most noticeable gringa this side of Puerto Montt and able to do something to help those students.
I think the change snuck up on me, and that it happened so quickly that I didn't even realize it. Somewhere between the crazy 16-hour flight to Santiago and the trip to the post office this morning, a new Coleen took the place of the old one.
I even look different.
20 April 2011
What You Do For the Least Counts Most
It's dark out. Kids are arriving slowly to school in clumps, bundled against the cold to the point that they can't even see. We can't turn the lights on in the school because they are saving energy (and yet the heat is on so high that I am sweating inside my coat). People look like shadows.
I am holding a shaking, dirty, hungry, terrified gray kitten in my hands. He threw himself toward me in the road on the way to school, crying loudly chest-deep in a puddle and climbing up my leg to escape an oncoming dog. I carried him two blocks to school and couldn't explain in Spanish why I needed to bring a kitten inside. He is meowing insistently.
People care about cats here, but they have a different mentality. A lost kitten is an everyay occurance. Even one small enough to fit in my hand.
They all think I am crazy. Also I am covered in cat pee.
After fifteen minutes the kitten is finally sleepy, and purring in my hands. The Inspector of the school brings me a box and we leave him in a closet, alone...and I can hear him crying out during the day. At lunch I beg the women in the kitchen for a cup of lentils to feed the kitten with. He eats hungrily and then stumbles off into the recesses of the closet.
EXTREMELY HAPPY UPDATE
I went back to school and found the kitten in the closet, meowing in the window. We put him in a box, and I remembered that I had found the only veterinary clinic in town the other day on a walk. I walked the ten blocks with the little kitten, excited that he hadn't been stolen. I looked down at him and it came to me.
"Your name is Moses." I found him in the puddle, alone and scared, about to be eaten by a dog...and now he has another chance. I left him with the veternarian, who had a puppy and three kittens already. Moses ran around demanding food because he was starving after his ordeal. They gave me the number for the clinic and told me it was ok to leave him there.
"He was very lucky..." said the man at the clinic.
I am finding that despite all the changes I have gone through to become an adult and how much my world view has changed over the years, some core aspects of myself remain the same. I was always the kid who cried about her balloon that flew away or wept over a lost rock. Helping a kitten is not an option for me. I had to do it.
To be able to actually accomplish something that seemed impossible this morning feels absolutely amazing. So happy I was persistent and swam against the tide!!
I am holding a shaking, dirty, hungry, terrified gray kitten in my hands. He threw himself toward me in the road on the way to school, crying loudly chest-deep in a puddle and climbing up my leg to escape an oncoming dog. I carried him two blocks to school and couldn't explain in Spanish why I needed to bring a kitten inside. He is meowing insistently.
People care about cats here, but they have a different mentality. A lost kitten is an everyay occurance. Even one small enough to fit in my hand.
They all think I am crazy. Also I am covered in cat pee.
After fifteen minutes the kitten is finally sleepy, and purring in my hands. The Inspector of the school brings me a box and we leave him in a closet, alone...and I can hear him crying out during the day. At lunch I beg the women in the kitchen for a cup of lentils to feed the kitten with. He eats hungrily and then stumbles off into the recesses of the closet.
EXTREMELY HAPPY UPDATE
I went back to school and found the kitten in the closet, meowing in the window. We put him in a box, and I remembered that I had found the only veterinary clinic in town the other day on a walk. I walked the ten blocks with the little kitten, excited that he hadn't been stolen. I looked down at him and it came to me.
"Your name is Moses." I found him in the puddle, alone and scared, about to be eaten by a dog...and now he has another chance. I left him with the veternarian, who had a puppy and three kittens already. Moses ran around demanding food because he was starving after his ordeal. They gave me the number for the clinic and told me it was ok to leave him there.
"He was very lucky..." said the man at the clinic.
I am finding that despite all the changes I have gone through to become an adult and how much my world view has changed over the years, some core aspects of myself remain the same. I was always the kid who cried about her balloon that flew away or wept over a lost rock. Helping a kitten is not an option for me. I had to do it.
To be able to actually accomplish something that seemed impossible this morning feels absolutely amazing. So happy I was persistent and swam against the tide!!
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