true life planet

I’ve got so much to write about that I doubt I will be able to get it all onto the blog, but I’m going to attempt to at the very least write a few choice bits. Here goes…

My stomach is better. Or should I say, the extreme pain is gone when I eat anything. Unfortunately, my bowels are far behind my stomach. They just can’t seem to acclimate to this place. I may have to accept that this may be my state of health the entire time I am here.

The main advantage to being under the weather this week was that I actually went out and did stuff–looked around my neighborhood and the city a bit more and actually had the energy level to socialize a tiny bit.

As usual, I’m finding it hard to hang out with the backpackers and take part in the backpacker scene. I’ve found this to be the case all over the world, wherever I have been. Sometimes–on a rare occassion–backpackers surprise me, but for the most part I find them a little embarrassing.

I’m probably going to get nasty comments on the blog now. Oh well.

But back to why I find backpackers embarrassing. Look, it’s just that they are so completely inappropriate sometimes, walking around with navels showing and partying. They make Westerners look bad, and unfortunately they don’t make a lot of attempts to blend in.

It’s strange..it’s as if they value Indian culture and it’s more Eastern approach to life more than the Western ways of their own country, at least spiritually anyway. But then they show absolutely no respect for the societal expectations that come along with that. At that point, they seem to revel in being Western and all the exceptional priveleges they get because they are, well, white.

But not all of them. I’ve befriended a few lately who I think are lovely people, and they are respectful of this culture, too.

Mostly though, as usual I find myself preferring companions who are in one of three categories: older travelers, say over 60 years old; travelers who are not actually traveling, but have a specific purpose, such as long term volunteering; and locals.

Locals here are a bit tricky. There are many social codes to follow here, so being friends with Indian men is absolutely out of the question. (Although many Western women seem to break this code and think the men actually want to be friends with them, it almost always leads to sex. Western women are thought of in one way only here. I have heard some very sad stories of late on this subject.)

This leaves Indian women as possible friends, but then again as I am a Westerner, this too comes with expectations. As I am not hanging out with wealthy people, any poorer person befriended would, of course, have expectations which would be understandable under the circumstances. Favors would be required at some point, as that is the basis for how people get by in this place.

So, outside of the Indian women I work with at work, making friends with Indian women is out of the question. I just don’t want to get that involved. I already have that kind of reciprocal relationship set up with plenty of people in Panama amongst the Ngobe, and that’s about all I can handle.

I have managed to meet several people who are volunteering long term here and befriended them. Long term volunteers are always more interesting–they aren’t going back home to their desk job in two weeks, they are more interested in the culture, and they tend to be more spiritually inclined.

You simply have to have some kind of spiritual belief to survive here if you are going to be here for more than a few weeks.

You need it to get through not just your workday, but all of the moments that come up unexpectedly and would otherwise cause you to burst into tears at the state of humanity.

You need some kind of spiritual life here to survive, otherwise this place has no continuity, no shape…it’s just an endless parade of confusion and darkness.

This place continually brings me to my knees.

Literally.

I am not kidding.

I have prayed here more than any place or at any other time in my life.

I have prayed for myself, because I was so numbed out by all the visually disturbing things around me.

I have prayed for whatever the nature of Christianity is–that it grow, develop, change into however it was to start with originally instead of what corrupt people continually try to make it–another excuse, another road to get more power.

I have prayed for people I do not know but who I have seen in the street, just that they receive some comfort–anything–to make their suffering a little bit easier.

I have prayed for  the people back at home, that they would come to this place just once, even if for a week, because it is the kind of place that changes you so dramatically, so rapidly, that you can’t go back to who you once were. And so many people I know would benefit from the experience of being in a place like this–it would take them out of their small concerns and into what it means to be more of a citizen of the world.

So I’d have to say, out of all the places I have been, this place has basicaly made me rely on God.

God is my main companion here.

God is such a no-no. God is such a dirty word in our culture. Generally the people who use this word don’t mean the God I am talking about. They mean Power. It’s just another way of one person trying to be powerful over another. Even the state of disbelief is used to have power over another.

When we hear the word “God”, we immediately make it mean something. Usually that something has absolutely nothing to do with what God is, but more with who we are and what makes us feel powerless or powerful.

The God I’m talking about is totally different. This God is just as revolted and probably discouraged as we are about the state of humanity. This God is really, actually love.

It’s bad to discuss God on your blog, I’ve been told. Why?

Look, I’ll tell all of you that I am here in what very well may be one of the darkest places on Earth, and if I didn’t have God–or some spiritual belief–I do believe I wouldn’t make it out of this place alive.

I’d die of sadness–or at least, some part of me would.

God seems to be the only one I can have a conversation with who understands the darkness I am looking at and can somehow inspire me to keep moving along in a positive direction. Otherwise, I do believe I’d splinter into a million pieces and disappear.

I came here thinking that I would discover the wonderful Bengali culture as well as be of some help in what I knew was a desperate place. And yes, I have found the Bengali culture to be interesting, but it doesn’t actually distract me too much from the larger picture here of poverty.

The poverty here–it’s different, somehow. The darkness here–it’s different, too.

It’s all out in the open.

At home we have horrors, too–but we keep them locked away, out of sight.

Here, the kid gets beat on the street right in front of you.

Maybe because it’s so out in the open is why I find the heaviness of this place so oppressive and why no matter what I think about, all my thoughts run back to these dark places and scenes I have seen on the streets.

I suppose, too, that that’s why I find myself praying so much in this place.

A new friend recently told me, after hearing some of the things I had seen that day on one of my walks around this city, “That you have to look for the joy here, because it’s harder to find than all the evil.”

I do see alot of joyful moments–street children playing a game of impromtu cricket; a man laughing, holding a wiggling puppy; a group of beautifully dressed women in candy colored saris dancing…but I have to say that I think not only is the dark side of life here harder to not look at, it’s kind of what I came to look at.

A book I am reading at the moment started out with a fascinating question:

‘People always ask: why is there evil in the world?, when perhaps the more important question is: why is there good in the world?’

It then goes into this theme on a much deeper level and examines why some people strive to be good and do good, while others lie, cheat, steal, and manipulate. I, just like everyone else, have had plenty of people in my life who have lied, or manipulated, or just done things that were completely selfserving.

This book’s point of view is that when we do these kinds of things–lie, cheat, steal, manipulate–even if it’s to protect ourselves–that this contributes to the evil of the world. That it even, in a sense, helps it grow. That it sustains it.

It’s a fascinating book, and it’s kind of reversed some of my thinking. I remember just a few weeks ago I was lamenting on this blog why there was so much darkness here and in the world at large.

Now, I’m thinking in reverse: why are there people who have a desire to put themselves into the midst of this gloom and do something about it? What makes people want to do good things? What makes someone good, or have the desire to be good, while someone else lacks that desire? Why do some people feel attracted to “helping professions”, for example, while others feel attracted to “hurting professions”?

I’m reading another excellent book right now that has a great deal to say on this very subject–but in a more down-to-earth, tangible way– and I would suggest you all go out and read it.

It’s called “Banker To The Poor, The Story of the Grameen Bank” and it’s the story of Muhammad Yunnus, who set up the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh to lend small sums of money to the poorest of the poor. You’ve no doubt heard of him–he won the Nobel Peace prize in 2006.

His book has dispelled many myths I was carrying around that were taught to me in my Western culture about the poor, the poor’s capacity to take ownership in what happens to them, and how one can change the system by starting with the havenots.

It also talks about how desperate poverty makes people do terrible, dark, and even evil things.

It’s a brilliant book and a hopeful book, and I think the very sort of book that people should read.

On the first page is a wonderfully brilliant quote:

” All that is needed for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”

–Edmond Burke

Ah, this trip brings me to tears everyday when I think of who I was, just a year ago, living my small life, and who I am now, trying to live fully in a world that seems to challenge me to be 100 times the woman I once was.

gigi

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