Don’t Just Let It Be

So it’s really starting to wrap up. Like two weeks to go. Funny how the closer I get to the end, the more I want to stay. It’s not like I’ve suddenly developed a cohort of friends, or mastered Kriolu during my last few weeks here. The drama – what little of it I understand here – gets old after a while, even the drama that I get involved in.

Talking with the Jamaican, who’s been back in Mosteiros for a few weeks as he takes another crack at his doctorate, has been extremely insightful and has done a lot to advance my thinking about this place. So many things about Mosteiros, I think they only affect me in a certain way, and it was a real surprise for me to discover that a lot hit him the same way.

(An example of this is how every time I leave this island it’s like a shroud lifted from over my eyes, and everything that I think and feel and am worried about while in Mosteiros, suddenly falls away. None of it really matters anymore, but it’s all just crazy. I get perspective, I get distance, and I take a mental break from Mosteiros. But the minute that the hiace drops me back off in front of my house, every crushing burden that I thought I had escaped while off island, comes crashing back, and the next minute, I am back in “Mosteiros-mode,” ready to be super paranoid about what people are saying about me, and about each other.)

I’m ready to go, but I’m not really. I keep thinking how different things would have been here, had I mastered the language better, had I met some people at a different time in my service, if I knew then what I know now. Can I live here? Can I make a life for myself here?

One thing Mosteiros has made me question is the idea of “throwing your life away.” Not like I’ve had ample opportunity in my life to say this to friends, but that concept is always there. It’s when you do something that seems to be totally out there and everyone else just questions your sanity. Why is he doing this? Has she really thought it through? I was just thinking this the other day when hearing about the future plans of a COSing PCV. I know it’s a valid emotion, and you can’t really help it from popping up, but what does it really mean? I have met people here who have made some stupid fucking choices and dumbest mistakes ever, but here they still are. Life, with all of its highs and lows, seems to hit a happy (or at least not malcontented) medium in the end.

I know that this doesn’t justify the negation of the idea of “throwing your life away,” but I am just starting to wonder how bad it’ll really be to do something that most of society would call a bit nuts. Of course, I say all of this from an exalted position of seeing other people survive crazy hardships, and even if they aren’t exactly prospering, they are still making it. Just seeing people here, makes me realize that really, you really can make it, despite whatever happens. To have a screwed up life in America because of a bad decision is still about three million times better than the lives of some of the people here.

I know for sure what we think of when we say “life sucks” in the U.S., is nothing compared to what I see happening in CV on a regular basis (and though a friend of mine told me that it’s never a good idea to compare suffering, I’d still have to say a lot of what goes on in CV still pales in comparison to what is going on in Africa). This is a lesson I’ve learned, and I am sure there is a chance I will be snobbish about it when I initially get back to America, but it is something that I’m really going to carry with me over the long term? Ten years from now, will I still belittle the anguish of someone who’s crazy little gizmo has broken down, by thinking of the suffering that is probably still going to be going on in CV?

One thing I’ve noticed (and this probably applies to all small towns) is that though tempers really can flare, and people will scream and shout and throw rocks and occasionally fight, people always end up letting it go. It’s not necessarily forgiving, and hardly does anyone forget anything here. But they just let it go, they let it be. They have to. They don’t have a choice. This place is so small, and your neighbors are probably going to be your neighbors for a long time comin’. And on this island (like most of this country), there is no lawn and nice little fence to shield you from your neighbors. You are up in their business every hour of the day, and there is nothing you can do to avoid it.

So you fight, and you let it be. You are wronged, and you let it go. You do bad, and they let it go. It makes sense here, but it still irks me. I don’t want people to let it be. I don’t want them to brush aside the wrongs they have faced, the injustice they have suffered. I want them to lay it out there, like the open wound that it is. People wrong each other one day, and the next they’re sharing drinks. A man can rape his wife and the next week, everything is fine between them. It’s not like she’s forgotten it, but it’s something that just is.

So I can tell that not all of the stupid idealism has been knocked out of me yet. I still have that hope that when I wrong someone, they will have the decency to spite me, to scorn me. To me know that I have wronged them, that they have not forgotten. They have not forgiven. And they will not let it be.