ups and downs

Wednesday

[PHONE RINGS]

Emily: Hey, you! How’s it going? Did you get your garden done?

Me: No, of course not. Right now I’m busy reading magazines and hating on my town.

Emily: Aw, don’t do that! What happened?

Me: Well, I couldn’t find Profe Hernàn (the director/principal) yesterday, and when I finally found him he was too busy to talk to me so he said come back tomorrow at 7 am, of all times, to talk about where to put the plants. So anyway, I got up early and went. We talked. But then I saw Laura, the president of the class that wants to do this garden, and she said that her whole class had a music test at 9 am that the professor had just announced (usually they don’t even have school in the morning). So I said, okay, come and get me when you’re done with the test and we’ll work. But she never came! Maybe because there was a big “hooray literacy” party in the school today that we had no idea about.

Emily: Yeah. That happens.

Me: Well, it gets worse. The girls invited me to play volleyball with them tonight and Laura was supposed to let me know when … so here I am waiting around in my gym shorts and a sports bra. I just went to her house and her brother said she was in the school playing volleyball! And my dog? Is chasing chickens. This is a new hobby and my host mom is rightly pissed about it. I yelled at her when she did it this morning, but just now I gave her a good whap over the nose and tied her up. She was so mad she ate more of her bed (most of which she tore apart the day I left for consolidation). So I swatted her again, took it away, and now I can’t help but think, geez, does everyone hate me today?

Emily: Of course not! We all have days like that, trust me.

Me: Ugh. I’m sorry you had to hear all about it. By the way, how do you say ‘go to hell’ in Spanish?

Emily: Umm … I don’t know. Probably better that we don’t know.

Me: Yeah. I’m going to bed with my magazines and a Dove bar. I’m done with this day.

Emily: Sounds good. Tomorrow? Are we going [to the campo]?

Me: If I don’t ET (early terminate my service) by then. Or like, kill myself.

Emily: Don’t talk like that! Nobody’s ET’ing and you’re not going to kill yourself.

Me: [sigh] I know. See you tomorrow.

Thursday

[dial up the office]

Me: Anna! (our 3rd year volunteer support staff)
It’s your new best friend in Gutiérrez.
(I told her she had to be my new best friend because I can call her at the office anytime for free)

Anna: Heya, what’s up?

Me: Here’s the scoop. We can’t go this weekend (to the rodeo, or to our secondary plan, a hike/party in Camiri). Blockades on both sides of the highway now; I’m totally stuck. Peace Corps is sending us a car with supplies. Tell me you’re coming.

Anna: Oooh, I don’t know. I haven’t heard anything about it yet.

Me: Yeah, I just got off the phone with Ivan (head of security). I told him I wanted cooking gas, milk, money and a phone card. But what I really want is WINE!!!!

Anna: [laughs] (no alcohol is allowed to be transported in Peace Corps vehicles)

Me: No really. I’m gonna go stark raving mad here! How about a bottle of Malbec? A nice Cabernet? Hook me up, girl.

Anna: Can’t you just buy a box of whatever in your site?

Me: Ugh. I’m not an alcoholic, I’m a connoisseur!

Anna: Okay, I’ll see what I can do.

Friday

Switching tracks in a major way: Stayed up half the night reading The Alchemist. I’m giving you an obnoxiously long passage because I think it might have changed my life. And I think you’ll see how it applies.

“Whenever we do something that fills us with enthusiasm, we are following our personal calling. However, we don’t all have the courage to confront our own dream. Why?

“There are four obstacles. First: we are told from childhood onward that everything we want to do is impossible. We grow up with this idea, and as the years accumulate, so too do the layers of prejudice, fear, and guilt. There comes a time when our personal calling is so deeply buried in our soul as to be invisible. But it’s still there.

“If we have the courage to disinter dream, we are then faced by the second obstacle: love. We know what we want to do, but are afraid of hurting those around us by abandoning everything in order to pursue our dream.

“We do not realize that love is just a further impetus, not something that will prevent us from going forward. We do not realize that those who genuinely wish us well want us to be happy and are prepared to accompany us on that journey.

“Once we have accepted that love is a stimulus, we come up against the third obstacle: fear of the defeats we will meet on the path. We who fight for our dream suffer far more when it doesn’t work out, because we cannot fall back on the old excuse, ‘oh,well, I didn’t really want it anyway.’ We do want it and we know that we have staked everything on it and that the path of the personal calling is no easier than any other path, except that our whole heart is in the journey. Then, we warriors of light must be prepared to have patience in difficult times and know that the Universe is conspiring in our favor, even though we may not understand how.

“I ask myself, are defeats necessary? Well, necessary or not, they happen. When we first begin fighting for our dream, we have no experience and make many mistakes. The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and get up eight times.

“So, why is it important to live our personal calling if we are only going to suffer more than other people? Because, once we overcome defeats – and we always do – we are filled by a greater sense of euphoria and confidence. In the silence of our hearts, we know that we are proving ourselves worthy of the miracle of life.

“Each day, each hour, is part of the good fight. We start to live with enthusiasm and pleasure. Intense, unexpected suffering passes more quickly than suffering that is apparently more bearable; the latter goes on for years and, without our noticing, eats away at our soul until one day we are no longer able to free ourselves from the bitterness and it stays with us for the rest of our lives.

“Having disinterred our dream, having used the power of love to nurture it and spent many years living with the scars, we suddenly notice that what we always wanted is there, waiting for us, perhaps the very next day. Then comes the fourth obstacle: the fear of realizing the dream for which we fought all of our lives.

“Oscar Wilde said: ‘Each man kills the thing he loves.’ And it’s true. The mere possibility of getting what we want fills the soul of the ordinary person with guilt. We look around at all those who have failed to get what they want and feel that we do not deserve to get what we want, either. We forget about all the obstacles we overcame, all the suffering we endured, and all the things we had to give up in order to get this far. I have known a lot of people who, when their personal calling was within their grasp, went on to commit a series of stupid mistakes and never reached their goal – when it was only a step away.

“This is the most dangerous of the obstacles because it has a kind of saintly aura about it: renouncing joy and conquest. But if you believe yourself worthy of the thing you fought so hard to get, then you become an instrument of God, you help the Soul of the World, and you understand why you are here.”

Paulo Coelho, 2002 (The Alchemist)

Saturday

Hermel from the office arrives with my goodies, sans wine, but later tells me if I just call his cell phone and keep quiet about it, he’ll pick me up some next time. I love Hermel. I also love Allison, Tom and Joan, Erin and my stepdad, Dan, whose packages made it through the Bolivian postal service AND several roadblocks (Hermel said he had to drive around on some crazy campo roads to get here). Yesterday I was too bummed to leave my room; today I am too excited to leave my room where I am currently stuffing myself with chocolate bars, listening to country music, slurping pink lemonade and nestled in with a mountain of magazines.

So, don’t worry about me. It is my choice to be here every single day, the privilege of my American passport. This life does have its ups and downs but I surrendered myself to them long ago. I will be here tomorrow and the day after tomorrow and the day after that (blockades or not); I will be stronger tomorrow and the day after tomorrow and the day after that, closer still to whatever it is that I’m here to accomplish. But feel free to send more chocolate. A little fortification now and then never hurts.