the hump

You know when something feels a little bit off? Where you feel like you're carrying around something extra? Last night after talking to my mom I just couldn't go to sleep, my stomach was knotted. Maybe I was wired because of all the brownie batter (and then brownies) I ate in the afternoon or maybe it was because my mind was reeling with all the things I felt like I HAD to get done in the next few days. Maybe it was a little bit of both. I'm leaving in a few days to head to Cape Town for the first time since I've been in the country, I have a few things I want to finish up before I leave, and things just seem a little more complicated than usual... or maybe I'm just a little more sensitive than usual. I haven't had knots in my stomach in months and sleep usually comes fairly easy here just cause I'm so tired a lot of the time and love the idea of lying peacefully in my bed. After tossing and turning for 45 minutes I turned to my old standby when it comes to sleep remedies... good ol Valerian. Popping a couple of those pills reminded me of nights in Austin before I started this whole process... this whole experience. There were nights where I would lie awake wondering where I was going to be posted or what my room would look like when I went to bed in a new place. And there were nights where I would wake up in a cold sweat... a little shaken... and once my eyes adjusted to my room.. my Austin room... I was reassured and could, at least, attempt to go back to sleep (although it took a little while)because I was still home, in a familiar place. I had been thinking about applying to Peace Corps for years before I actually did it. My trip to Belize, for a WEEK, in 2004 had me longing for a little hut on Hummingbird Highway... when I got to Belize City and caught a taxi I tried to conjure up ways, with the 5 local guys we picked up on the way to the airport (3 were drunk and had been picked up at the bar), I could stay in the country on the 50 bucks left to my name. When I was on the road during the Great Trip West in the fall of 2005 I was soothed by my freedom and all that my eyes were taking in... the canyons, the arches, the mountains, the caverns, the big trees, the great bodies of water, the moon, the train whistles, the sun, the wide open sky. In the Winter of 2006, right after the beginning of the New Year, I drove my Grandpa to town to pick up some cat food and a King Cake at Marceaux's Grocery and he asked me to swing by the new library. We didn't get out of the car, but we did sit in the parking lot for a few minutes before we headed towards home sweet home. He asked me if I was interested in being a librarian like my mom, I said I had thought about it, and he told me that whatever I did he would be proud of me. All of those moments... and about a bagillion other ones... pushed me a little closer to finishing the application I had been sitting on for a year... pushed me through that process... to get to this experience. I landed in South Africa one year ago today. I think, about now, on 21 July 2007 I was writing my first journal entry in country. How time flies. And oh how it just drips, drips, drips slowly.
So when I woke up this morning I was coming out of a Valerian haze (it calms some people... it knocks me out) at 6:45, a little later than usual. I heard Mabu, the shepherd, arrive for his work day, open the door to the room he keeps his bike in. and stared at the ceiling until 7. My stomach in knots, I counted all the places I could see the sky in my tin roof... all those places that show light, but don't leak when it rains. I got up, made tea, worked on a couple work emails that lightened my load a little, and then headed to work in time for our Monday morning, 9 am staff meeting. Stomach still knotted. I typed up a few things in the office. I talked to coworkers... on the outside no one could tell anything. I wanted to leave, but didn't want to miss the meeting so was waiting things out. Sat for a good while trying to figure out how I was going to get my leave request to Peace Corps, all the fax machines in the area are down because someone stole the cables. How I was going to finish up an application I've been sitting on for weeks now. And then a car drove up outside the door and a man and woman rushed in, rapidly speaking Sepedi, sitting in the chairs provided for visitors, going through all the greetings through clenched teeth. Stomach turns, knots go tighter. I know part of my job is to be there to support my office and learn all the ins and outs of here... well that's what I like to do anyway...but as soon as this man started speaking, yelling, rather, all I wanted to do was run. Stomach acid churning. I sat at the computer with my back to the whole office and tried to translate as much as I could. This man, in his fancy car, was from Pretoria and was representing his mother who was a carer for my organization until this morning. Last Thursday, there was a carers' meeting in the office... a meeting where they all showed up and sat in rows of plastic chairs facing Synett, Mogale, and Esther who sat behind the office furniture table. Synett handed out envelopes filled with their stipend for July, no back pay to cover the last 3 months they haven't gotten paid though. Then, Esther spoke softly to them, told them that The Department of Health was instructing all NGO's (this goes for all the NGO's I know of in the local area) receiving funding to reduce the number of carers working for them to 26. Our office had 32. 6 women would be let go and the carers would know if they still had a job when they answered their phone Monday morning and there was someone from the home based care office on the other end of the line. If they didn't get a call, they didn't have a job anymore. My office has no money. Some of them seem to think that I'm here to bring them money. My coworkers are using the ink in the printer to make copies of job applications, their certificates, and ID's so they can mail things off and hopefully find a job that pays. They show up at 8 am every morning and work until 4 and they haven't been paid in 3 months. There is no stability. Kids aren't showing up to our drop in centres anymore because there is no food, the meat went first, then the beans, and finally the last of the mealie meal. Kids who have no food were relying on the one meal a day the drop in provided and now they don't rely on that. My supervisor is out of the office until October for maternity leave or it was, at one time, maternity leave, but she's using the time to cope and heal because she went into premature labor on the 4th of July. Both her twin baby girls died that weekend. I was told if I am threatened by anyone connected to the carers losing their positions I am to direct the people who threaten me to the office. The board hasn't met in a few months. We're all trying in that box with the two windows and the computers and the desks and big metal cabinet that is the "kitchen" holding the tea and bread and tea fixin's, but man, it's a battle. I'm here for capacity building... to help with sustainability... and everywhere I turn in that office I see smiling faces, people I care about, who have taken care of me, who are worried about their future... and then my mind floods with ideas on where we should focus, what we should do to take care of some needs. Funding for food for kids, stipends for carers, salaries for the office workers, educational health talks, income generating projects so the office can be more independent, donations, contributions, pats on the back, support... and my mind spins and the knots get tighter. I know, realistically, that there needs to be some boundaries, I need to to step back and not get worked up, and usually I'm able to do that. My absorption time limit is at about 2 1/2 weeks now. I can see and hear things that hurt, absorb the images of homebound patients sick with TB/AIDS, kids that don't have food, whole families living in a room the size of mine, push aside my own longings for a good hug from home, and deal... for over 2 weeks. Then around that time I crack. Sometimes it drags me down for a good couple of days, sometimes all I need to do is go to bed, sometimes I just need to cry, sometimes I just need a vacation.. some time away to get some perspective. It depends. I never want to stop this kind of work though. I might want to walk away from my office, but I'm always back the next day.
Things are tougher than I imagined them being. I guess it's always like that... you have an idea of some place, some thing or some person and once you see it or meet them or are given time to just be with such things/people... you learn all the little details of the bigger picture, things just get fleshed out, and your original thoughts aren't as sharp as they once were... they're blurred with all those little details. It's tougher here than I imagined... but I'm tougher than I imagined. When you're faced with awful things, when you absorb a lot of negativity, a lot of dark... and you need to be recharged... you can also see the things that are shining light that much brighter. Kids' smiles radiate, conversations that involve cultural exchange can be hilarious, you respond to peoples' "I'm so proud of you"'s with "I'm so proud of YOU" instead of a shrug and a brush off, dancing is a release, MmaDiapo filling my water barrel, taking me with her to funerals, showing me so many things, and laughing with such humor all making me smile, coffees with good friends are like birthday parties because they're so special and not so everyday, Synett's laugh when we talk about things that make me realize she's a true friend, the mountains behind a blue sky full of fluffy white clouds make you stare with your mouth open, the moon, as full as it can be, rises and you take the time to stand in the yard and watch its slow ascent. Some things are sad and hard to take... but you fight. You fight because you can change some of those sad things so the moon will still look beautiful, you can be proud of yourself and other people, so proud, you can have all those cups of coffee, you can dance and not care what other people think, and so kids' smiles will still radiate.
I know all this. I believe it. I don't think it's too idealistic because it's all right in front of me. BUT I'm not sure if all that fighting can help change so many things that are so hard right now. So I'll just sigh, I'll still go to work, I'll still try, I'll take all the necessary breaks, I'll breathe through the stomach knots, I'll take Valerian, I'll eat Nutella, and I'll make changes where I can... cause that's what I can do and that's what I want to do.