Peace Corps worker in an Ecuadorian village.... I've had days and weeks where this kind of feeling like this in West Africa. Can't explain it. Just have to live through it. Time seems to be about the only thing to get through. No cheap tricks, mind games, or reasoning take the feelings away.
"During one six-week period when I was playing big role of Big Daddy, the Peace Corps Volunteer with the answers, the whole experience turned into a rout. Toward the end, instead of running all over comforting and advising people I was moping around the house finding deep and personal meanings in Hamlet’s famous soliloquy. I was hoping that someone would pick me up and gently rock me back and forth for a few hours.
What happened? It all began quietly- a time of vague depression, dissatisfaction, sadness, a neurotic apprehension. For one thing, I guess: I was beginning to get inside the town, becoming very emotionally involved with everything. For another, and mainly, I wasn’t eating very well. I was eating better than anyone in town, with imported tomatoes and bread from Esmeraldas; I had the money to buy a can of tuna fish every evening—that party food which was reserved for days of fiesta —and I was buying eggs, too. I was probably the only person in town who was eating eggs, ... I knew what the trouble was, but I was unable to rationalize my way out of the situation, and life darkened day by day."
(Living Poor: A Peace Corps Chronicle. Moritz Thomsen)
No comments:
Post a Comment