“Be guided by the stars which you place well on the canopy of your night sky”- Mary Anne Radmacher
I sit. In the middle of the dark, in the middle of the night, in the middle of my yard, in the middle of a sleeping bag. The sobbing as subsided, which is probably good, as I can’t remember if my family is here, there are as many abandoned looking cars in the yard as usual. I sit under the Afrikan skies, waiting for answers, for some divine intervention to descend from the heavens and tell me what to do. For hours I’ve been sitting under these Afrikan skies, howling at the stars, in the end coming to the usual conclusion that this particular act has remedied nothing other than to take some of the pounding pressure off of my chest. Meanwhile my soul remains heavy and my brain foggy. I have no idea what to do. As Nathan has so eloquently reminded me tonight, no one is going to tell me what to do; I have to figure it out for myself.
Having this latest rug, the one filled with designs of staying in Botswana, pulled out from under me has put me into a tiny emotional tailspin. As if there is such a thing as a minor breakdown.
In trying to describe these feelings to friends from America who so graciously returned my panicked calls, this emotional volley back and forth between staying on another year and going, I realized I wasn’t certain either how to continue living in Botswana, or how to go back and resume living in the States. I suddenly didn’t know how to stay-or how to go. The result of this little crisis left me with extremely soar sinuses, puffy eyes and a burning, painful wondering in all this struggle and all this… everything, what exactly was I fighting for? And with whom?
In the past few years I’ve battled several demons here, not all of them self induced. It’s hard to place blame or declare victories in this particular war within me. The recipient of the reparations remains a mystery. I can’t see which way is up.
Because nothing is clear except the Afrikan sky. I wish my heart was the same, but instead it’s a mash up of confusion. I want to stay in Africa, I think, I want to stay in Botswana, but it’s hard to tell if that’s what I’m actually feeling or if I just don’t want to leave the children I’ve worked with here with as few options as when I found them. I never came here with the intent of being a savior, and quite frankly, babies are born and they die, and sometimes I look at them and wonder what their mothers were thinking bringing them to life under these conditions, in such numbers. It’s a cruel thought, but then being here on a humanitarian mission I have in some ways lost my humanity. I don’t want to, and never really had visions of saving people. I had hoped to try to inspire them to save themselves.
HIV is still here, by some estimates the numbers increasing from the time I arrived. Many of the living conditions I found here have not changed tangibly for the better, and that’s a hard way to leave the people I’ve come to know and love. While I very much doubt my staying in this country another year would make a big difference, I had some ideas born from what I witnessed in this place that I naively thought might change a little something at least, here or there. It is as it has always been for me, hard to let go. It’s difficult to look around and see success, which is why I think I chose to try to put it up on walls, in the form of community art. I’m not an artist, and I don’t know how to paint hope, but I think I found children who do, and I’ve given them paint.
I should go to bed soon. Nothing productive is coming from this exhaustion. Another day of not quite saving the world must be put to rest. I try to comfort myself with the thought that tomorrow I will paint with the children. The children who were born here, and aren’t the ones who died, they lived. They have defied the laws of the nature of this place to reach an age where they are aware of the world and the idea that it might possibly offer them more than what they’ve seen in their village. These teens are, as government mandates say “by virtue of their position,” survivors in my eyes. They both thrill and haunt me. And they seem to have reached out to me as a lifeboat, as some sort of magical white alien angel who can give directions to some sort of life, some sort of salvation beyond this village. And yet in less than a month I will leave them here behind, with only some vague lines and dots on a map embedded in lessons I hope they’ve found in my rambling speeches and overly personal probing questions to guide them toward the dreams they’ve shared with me.
To be the doctor that cures HIV. To be an artist or a graphic designer. To be a pathologist. To do these things, to become these destinies that they’ve held in their hearts like secrets because to voice ambition and hopes for their own futures in their culture is not accepted, to brag or achieve or be “better than” is not acceptable. Obedience and respect are paramount, staying with the group, for to stick one’s neck out and excel is considered bad form, and is often punished by their peers. And to dream of a bigger life, one outside Seronga, where one might do something more than farm and produce children, well there’s just really not anyone around who can fathom much less encourage that. Except for maybe me.
I tell them the things I was told as a child, that you can do or be anything you want. To them these are novel and new concepts. I weave for them stories of success, and tell them that with hard work anything is possible. These kids see me, so far from me home, following a dream that began as a hazy notion on a cold dark night and whether I like it or not, I’m a role model. I feel unqualified for this responsibility. And maybe I really haven’t been given this responsibility, maybe it’s all in my head.
Me. Yes me. The one who now cries in her yard in the middle of the night as I have no idea what direction I want my life to go. I’ve got ideas, but in steering by starlight I’m left in darkness, at least for now. I again look to the stars for answers and find only more unknown lands and constellations that while beautiful, lack the clear navigational bounds of the maps that have become my obsession.
Brixton would say things will look better in the morning. I lay my head down and cry until sleep creeps in and takes over, hoping that this indeed will be true.
“The possibility of untethering happiness and sadness from circumstance felt frightening and wonderful, like a new brand of freedom” Pam Houston.
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