Since I was a little girl I’ve had this bubbling desire to do something—to help people and to make things right. I remember the first time I recognized class: I was a little girl and went home with one of my classmates after school. Being a kid, I didn’t really know the difference yet between new furniture and old; I didn’t know what to look for in a kitchen or a bathroom for signs of new-improvements. I didn’t even know the difference between a house and an apartment. I was focused on the Barbie dolls and the glue sticks and the make believe. I guess I didn’t really comprehend it, but it was something I felt—this place was different than my house. When I got home and started asking questions about the difference I quickly was told to be thankful and polite—furthering my suspicions that something other existed. I suddenly felt overwhelmed with this new knowledge and uncomfortable about how to deal with it.
Throughout my childhood, my father was the director of Social Services in my small, southern, mountain town. I would go to his office and see people I knew in the lobby. Years later I would understand what this meant—friends of mine that were in the lobby because their parents were applying for food stamps or welfare. I didn’t understand how lucky I was. As I become more conscious of this lucky place I had landed in life, I also learned how to feel guilty about it.
When I got to college, this only exacerbated itself. I discovered not only my guilt about class—but my guilt about race, as well. I suddenly become aware of what it meant to be white and privileged. I read book after book about how evil I was—an honorary white, female member of this budding bourgeoisie class coming from the small, private, liberal arts colleges of the world.
And in my sophomore year, I decided to go on a three-week study abroad program to Ghana. That first trip rocked my world. I experienced these things every day, all day for a month. I felt my white skin, for the first time, as a minority. I was questioned, out right, about my class and my guilt—didn’t I feel horrible for what had happened to the African man?
On this first trip, walking through the slave castles, a young Ghanaian stops me and asks: Don’t you feel terrible for what your people did to us? His question is so blunt and so forthright that I stumble on my words and can’t answer him. Here I am, walking around feeling heavy about this whole experience, and this total stranger pins the whole thing on me. I'd never thought to ask myself if I felt responsible for slavery. He walks away with a smirk on his face. He had won.
I searched my soul for a response to the young man's question. I sought some kind of a reaction that would illicit some large scale change in myself. I arrived home with a false sense of simplicity. I threw away clothing, I scaled down my possessions—seeking solace in a temporary reduction of the stuff I felt cluttered my life and my vision. I felt almost pious about these acts. As if these reductions had somehow made me a better person. In truth, the possessions crept back in to my life, over time. After all, it was never really the possessions that bothered me in the first place. It just seemed like the simplest place to start. The least messy place to begin. If I didn’t start with my stuff first, I’d have to actually look into myself for answers.
But the question, and the thousands of new questions that stem from that first one, have sat on me for eight years. Don’t I feel like I need to do something? Is there something I can do to help? To make amends? To change things?
On each of my trips, I watch children with distended bellies reaching out for my hand. Grown men and women beg for money. Young men run scams for the tourists, desperate for American dollars or something from our luggage. Women in markets offer you their children (mostly as a joke, but some not so much), begging you to take them to America. Posters in shack-like store fronts proudly display images of America—red sports cars in front of McMansions—referencing the American Dream.
And each time I struggle with myself. How can I have so much and be here with people who have so little? And most of all, how do I even begin to understand—to empathize—what this space is about? How do I cope with who I am? How could I sit comfortably with myself, knowing what I now know about how wrong the white man did Africa? And even worse, I'm always met with questions when I come home that I don't know how to answer. Why do you like it there so much? Why doesn't it scare you? Questions that make me angry and I don't always know why.
My work with urban youth in Baltimore has helped; these kids have taught me an awful lot about the realities of race and class in America. And I’ve learned a lot about my own skin. I’ve become sensitive to the way people talk about others, as if somehow ethnicity, class, and race affect a person’s humanity. I haven’t just read about poverty in textbooks—I’ve seen these things. I’ve felt it. It’s a different beast all together to feel these things.
So today while I'm packing a bag with my designer white jeans and my malaria pills and my expensive arch-supportive sandals, I’m struck by how far I’ve come since that first trip. How much more comfortable I’ve become with my status. I guess I’ve become more comfortable with myself, in general, and most importantly I think I’ve gotten over the self-righteousness that comes with being a “do-gooder”. I spent too many years of my early twenties feeling really, really proud. It wasn't doing me any good.
I feel a distinct difference in my heart from the first empty hand I turned away. I feel that my guilt has shifted to a new space. I still feel like shit, at times, but I have a different understanding of things like community and wealth and race. I’ve come to love these communities—these places I travel. I’ve learned a lot of hard lessons about history and a human’s capacity for forgiveness.
I also have a new understanding, and perhaps appreciation, for what my role is while I’m traveling through these communities. I’ve become more okay with who I am. I am a white woman of privilege. I am American. I remember on my first trip wanting so desperately to be somewhere where I didn’t stick out. Where I wasn’t the subject of everyone’s conversation. Where I wasn’t the white girl. It was another first encounter with other. I didn’t know what to do with the feelings I was having. I couldn’t find words to explain myself. I didn’t know how to get over myself.
When I was working in the Baltimore City Schools, I had hundreds of moments where I felt like this. Where I wanted to be liked. Where I wanted to blend in. To not be the white lady. To not carry the baggage of all the horrible things the “white people” seem to do around here. And I learned, as most of my friends who teach in schools where they are the minority, that this was, fundamentally, my issue. The kids didn’t really understand what it really meant—they barely recognized me as a white woman. It was me who recognized myself as a white woman. As a contrast. And I had to sit on it. I had to feel uncomfortable for a few months. And it eventually changed--but I think it was me who changed. Not the situation.
And the kids helped me cope with myself. One afternoon, a small child, we’ll call her Jada, was sitting next to me in the cafeteria. For some reason she’d been calling me “Godmama” all week.
She asks, “Godmama, can I have another cookie?
“No, Jada,” I reply, “only one for every one.
Another child walks by, sucking his teeth, “Man, she can’t be your godmama! SHE WHITE!"
Jada, without skipping a beat, replies to him without the slightest bit of hesitation, “SHE NOT WHITE! SHE LIGHT-SKINNED!"
She then quickly and innocently turns to me, places her hands on my face and says, “When people call you white, it hurts your feelings.”
Breakthrough. Not white, light-skinned. All about perspective.
And I’ve had to dig deep on what these things mean. And I’ve learned that I’m not afraid to feel hurt or scared or to get my hands dirty. I crave to understand. Yeah, those things suck when they’re happening but what comes out on the other end is something that I often can’t name (although I’ll probably try).
And yes, I still have moments when I feel terrible, but I am who I am. I must start from this point. I can’t be anyone but who I am and I cannot continue to make excuses for where I come from. We all have a role to play in this world—the question becomes: what do we do with the power we have?
I know now that I'll never really save the world, despite all the liberal idealism I once had for myself. I've learned too much. I've had to get over myself. These last few years of traveling back and forth, I know I’ve been taught a lot more than what I’ve brought with me. I’ve seen more in these small self-sufficient villages that will educate me about community, about living, about humanity, than I would ever get from a lesson in a classroom. But it doesn’t make turning away those hands any easier.
I recently flipped through a travel book preparing for my site visit. Stuck between a paragraph on volunteering in Africa and safety tips was a sub-chapter entitled “Africa is Hell”. At first I read the short paragraphs waiting for the punch line—for the intended joke. There wasn’t one. The author was being genuine. He wanted to remind his readers not to get caught up in the fantasy of Africa. He wanted to include a reality check—a remember the-AIDS-rate-and-the-fact-that-civil-wars-erupt-overnight message. As if anyone whose ever really gone and known what it feels like could forget that. I'm not sure the editor really read this book before it went to print. Or maybe he did because he fundamentally believes this.
I've spent weeks laughing about this "Africa is Hell" chapter. And just today, as I'm packing and thinking and anxiously blogging, have I really processed what it means. I guess I can't blame the guy for including the chapter. I've seen the hellish parts. I've walked past people in such unfortunate situations that will permanently sit on my heart; I've seen images that I'll never shake. The place has changed me. The Africa is Hell message ringing true. And there are so many Americans who buy into the fantasy. Who go to "Africa" (a place to many think is a country) to find their roots and to go on Safari and to dance with other just long enough to feel excited but not really digging deep or asking questions. Africa is Hell, he wants to tell these people. Don't go. Don't ruin it. Don't exploit it.
I can't ignore the facts. No amount of sugar coating can take away the simple truths of what poverty really looks like. Hunger does horrible things to someone’s eyes. But I can’t shake this feeling that there is something more important happening under the surface of this pain and devastation. If Africa is Hell, why do I feel changed? Different?
And I struggle with myself. Am I one of those Americans? I don't feel like I am, but can I possibly be anything but that American? I feel like I've got an exemption pass. That I've earned my place here. I've asked all the questions and I've cried and I've kept myself awake at night riddled with guilt. I feel like I've had breakthrough. Perhaps in this space, I'm light-skinned. Because I've also seen the opposite.
Crashing parties is West Africa has become one of my favorite activities. Between shots of local gin, and the hundreds of libations made to the gods (and to the elders), my liquor-soaked eyes observe smiling faces and joyful dances. Women proudly prepare mounds and mounds of food, asking you to help and teaching you generations-old lessons on pounding yams, and everyone happily shares. Small children hold onto your thumb and giggle when you repeat words in your terrible Twi and Yoruba. This couldn't possibly be Hell.
And of course all of this rationalization serves one purpose: to make me feel better about what I’m doing. To make me feel more comfortable in my expensive jeans and pearl earrings.
As I'm packing, I'm remaining positive. I'm looking forward to another few weeks in this place I've come to consider a second home. I'm packing the gifts I'll bring to the people I've come to consider family. The children I've watched grow-up. The women I've become sisters with. But the guilt never subsides for long. It creeps back in with a mighty fist, demanding answers. Questions that I’m not sure I know just yet how to answer.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Monday, July 12, 2010
Crazy
Sometimes I think that I’ve gone crazy.
There was a time in college when a dear friend of mine did just that. She was having some kind of mental break and living in a land that made no sense to the rest of us. Among her delusions was the idea that she had indeed discovered the center of the universe. On our college campus. In the woods. She would spend hours talking to us about the things she’d discovered, almost yelling at us that it was right in front of our eyes and we didn’t see it; we didn’t understand it. I remember feeling lots of feelings about the whole situation, but mostly having this frightening idea that we might all be wrong. That perhaps she had discovered something out there in those woods and we’re the crazy ones for not listening to her more thoughtfully. I mean, aren’t some of the greatest thinkers of our time totally ape-shit nuts? Maybe all the people out there having psychotic breaks were onto something—perhaps they’re the ones that are right and we’re the ones that are wrong.
When they get back to a “normal” place (where is that place, anyway?), I always wonder do they feel different? Is it like meeting your spirit animal while you’re high on hallucinogenics? Or like traveling to the after-life during a surgery and coming back to life? Are you changed? Do you have some deeper insight into the world? Or are you so stoned on anti-psychotics that you can’t be allowed to feel changed?
Sometimes when I meet someone really crazy, I realize that experience in college never left me; I never shook that feeling and I try (if possible) to listen with a slightly more careful ear. Who knows, they might be saying something very truthful in their babble. Although here in Baltimore, sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between real crazy and crack crazy.
And on those days (like today) where I, too, feel crazy, I wonder how close I am to being really crazy. Sometimes I wonder if I teeter a little too close to the edge. I know sometimes when words fly out of my mouth uncontrollably and I think to myself, “WHO SAID THAT? ME? NO!” Or when a string of irrational thoughts enter my head (usually involving men) and I think, “I don’t have thoughts like this! Out, out damned spot!” But they happen, regardless. Without warning or warrant.
I wish someone would have told me how schizophrenic my twenties would be. Each year I wind down closer to the end of this disastrous decade, wiser, stronger, and with better stories to tell, but feeling undoubtedly more crazy. I guess it wouldn’t have mattered if someone had told me—and they probably did and I just blew them off like everyone else—because that is part of the beauty of your twenties. YOU DON’T GIVE A FLYING FART. When someone tells you something at age 19, you think, “Yeah right, man! You don’t know anything! I’M SPECIAL! I’M DIFFERENT!” The truth, at age 27, and despite being quite “special” and “different”, I’m not that special at all. And I’m not that different. Sadly, I’m a bit like everyone else.
But the real crazy thing is this wacky numbers game that people like to play in their twenties. By age 25, I’d like to have…x, y, and z. And if z never comes around, I’ll go with a or b. And if a & b end in a bloody disaster, we’ll switch over to j, k, & l. By 23, I should accomplish: insert accomplishments here. And of course it seems natural that most of these “things” have to do with getting married and buying houses and graduating from college. Or if you’re from a small southern town like I am, having babies, too. Or if you started that in high school, having your third baby. Or maybe your fourth.
And the thing that leaves me curious (crazy) about it is that in 2010, women now have healthy babies in their 40s. More people are getting married in their mid-thirties than ever (and those marriages aren’t ending in divorce…). The average homeowner is 37.8 (I’m going to start measuring my age in decimals, too). Hell, most people are still financially supported by their parents until 26 these days. So why, pray tell, do I still feel this enormous pressure to accomplish such acts in the next three years? Why do I still feel like there is a looming psychotic break in my future as I get closer and closer to thirty, despite the fact that I can’t wait to turn 30 and be done with this miserable decade?
Perhaps it’s the woo of the wedding porn and the mommy blogs. Sometimes I get so involved in other people’s children and pregnancies that I dream of finding myself totally knocked up. Like straight-up single white female pregnant from a bad after-school special. Only to realize what an insane (crazy) idea that is and that really while my roommate is very supportive of my dog, I’m not sure she’d be thrilled with a screaming infant. Or, better yet, me as an emotional, psychotic wench for 9 months without a husband or boyfriend to berate with my endless request for pickles and krispy kreme donuts. Plus I can barely pay my bills as it is—a baby? Really? INTRAWEBS! You’ve betrayed me!
And the weddings are also great fun. I love weddings. I mean the industry makes me kind of nauseated but the good porn—the Etsy and all the great hipster wedding blogs and the DIY weddings. It’s enough to make a girl want to post an ad on Craigslist for a husband. And I’ve been to so many weddings at this point (and been in them, too), that I feel I’ve become a bit of an expert. I think, when I get married, I’ll have x, y, and z. Which is really like going to the mall when you’re on your last $45 the week before pay day and trying on Christian Louboutins. You can’t exactly buy the shoes without the money (hell, without the trust fund). Nor can you plan the wedding when you haven’t had a successful relationship in years. So maybe I’ll just go into the wedding planning business. Or maybe I will post that ad on craigslist.
And the race for careers and degrees is also b-a-n-a-n-a-s. I’ve been working on a master’s degree for years now, chipping away slowly, three credits at a time, so that I can what? Advance my career? I even switched programs because I was in a program where people read the book Who Moved My Cheese? and found it inspirational. I had to withdraw. Now I'm in a program that I like, sometimes, but I question pretty much every week how these people graduated from college. Sometimes high school.
But I get degree envy. I turn mad green and begin a self-depricating parade of all the things I could have done different. I look at the uber-focused friends of mine with law degrees and PhDs and think, if I hadn’t spent age 22-27 goofing off and “following my heart”, I, too, could have one of those shiny degrees to hang on a wall. And big fancy letters behind my name. Although the goofing off from 22-27 has been pretty rad, and I’m not sure my heart would have allowed anything but what happened to have happened. Even within my profession, I’ve got an awesome resume and great references and incredible experience—but sometimes it feels like I’ve accomplished nothing at all because I haven’t gotten that degree. I don’t have that shiny thing on the wall and the only thing that comes after my name is usually: Lindsay Johnson, Asshole.
These “things”, these numbers, these expectations are enough to make you crazy in your twenties. And even with great role models who consistently tell you, "Don't follow a path! Or check off boxes on a list! Live your life!", you still feel crazy. Like the center of the universe is in the woods kind of crazy.
Not to mention the fact that you’re a raving lunatic as you try to figure out who you really are in the world—without the crutch of high school, college, and family. You’re usually so broke you can barely afford to do anything but sit at home and think about how broke you are. But this time at home, eating ramen & saltines, gives you plenty of time to discover the real you. And to start thinking about all the things you want to accomplish before you’re 30. And to discover the show "wife swap" (which can really make you crazy).
And when you get past 27, unmarried, without kids and without letters behind your name, the list of things you thought you'd have accomplished by 30 can start to make you crazy. And despite your best logic, and the fact that most days you truly are content with your life and lack of "accomplishments", it can start to make you feel really crazy. Like cat-lady crazy. And even though you went to a liberated former-women's college and feel that it was pounded into your head that you, as a woman, would never be judged on your merit in society by your ability to cook a roast, iron a shirt, and birth a baby, there's this nagging hormonal thing that seems to happen regardless of all that bookishness and nerdery. Sometimes you just wanna make a roast and birth a baby, damnit. And maybe read a book while you wait?
So, tick-tock, goes the clock. But I refuse to let it make me crazy. Or maybe it's already made me crazy. And despite how badly I'd love for my womb to be filled with the spawn of someone wildly inappropriate (and probably twice my age), I'll continue to mother the one beast I'm proud to put in my list of "twenty-something accomplishments". And I'll try to keep my wedding plans at bay (because nothing's crazier than a single girl with a binder full of wedding ideas). And I'll keep going to class, taking another 3-6 credits every semester until the letters are at the end of my name. And I'll try to talk myself out of being crazy about getting older. But that does involve talking to myself...
And hell, maybe I am actually crazy, and you guys have just been sparing me from the truth all these years. But HEY! At least I'm self-aware, right? And I have this blog. And a dog that smiles when she sleeps (which is crazy).
And those are accomplishments, right? X, Y, and Z, I'd say.
There was a time in college when a dear friend of mine did just that. She was having some kind of mental break and living in a land that made no sense to the rest of us. Among her delusions was the idea that she had indeed discovered the center of the universe. On our college campus. In the woods. She would spend hours talking to us about the things she’d discovered, almost yelling at us that it was right in front of our eyes and we didn’t see it; we didn’t understand it. I remember feeling lots of feelings about the whole situation, but mostly having this frightening idea that we might all be wrong. That perhaps she had discovered something out there in those woods and we’re the crazy ones for not listening to her more thoughtfully. I mean, aren’t some of the greatest thinkers of our time totally ape-shit nuts? Maybe all the people out there having psychotic breaks were onto something—perhaps they’re the ones that are right and we’re the ones that are wrong.
When they get back to a “normal” place (where is that place, anyway?), I always wonder do they feel different? Is it like meeting your spirit animal while you’re high on hallucinogenics? Or like traveling to the after-life during a surgery and coming back to life? Are you changed? Do you have some deeper insight into the world? Or are you so stoned on anti-psychotics that you can’t be allowed to feel changed?
Sometimes when I meet someone really crazy, I realize that experience in college never left me; I never shook that feeling and I try (if possible) to listen with a slightly more careful ear. Who knows, they might be saying something very truthful in their babble. Although here in Baltimore, sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between real crazy and crack crazy.
And on those days (like today) where I, too, feel crazy, I wonder how close I am to being really crazy. Sometimes I wonder if I teeter a little too close to the edge. I know sometimes when words fly out of my mouth uncontrollably and I think to myself, “WHO SAID THAT? ME? NO!” Or when a string of irrational thoughts enter my head (usually involving men) and I think, “I don’t have thoughts like this! Out, out damned spot!” But they happen, regardless. Without warning or warrant.
I wish someone would have told me how schizophrenic my twenties would be. Each year I wind down closer to the end of this disastrous decade, wiser, stronger, and with better stories to tell, but feeling undoubtedly more crazy. I guess it wouldn’t have mattered if someone had told me—and they probably did and I just blew them off like everyone else—because that is part of the beauty of your twenties. YOU DON’T GIVE A FLYING FART. When someone tells you something at age 19, you think, “Yeah right, man! You don’t know anything! I’M SPECIAL! I’M DIFFERENT!” The truth, at age 27, and despite being quite “special” and “different”, I’m not that special at all. And I’m not that different. Sadly, I’m a bit like everyone else.
But the real crazy thing is this wacky numbers game that people like to play in their twenties. By age 25, I’d like to have…x, y, and z. And if z never comes around, I’ll go with a or b. And if a & b end in a bloody disaster, we’ll switch over to j, k, & l. By 23, I should accomplish: insert accomplishments here. And of course it seems natural that most of these “things” have to do with getting married and buying houses and graduating from college. Or if you’re from a small southern town like I am, having babies, too. Or if you started that in high school, having your third baby. Or maybe your fourth.
And the thing that leaves me curious (crazy) about it is that in 2010, women now have healthy babies in their 40s. More people are getting married in their mid-thirties than ever (and those marriages aren’t ending in divorce…). The average homeowner is 37.8 (I’m going to start measuring my age in decimals, too). Hell, most people are still financially supported by their parents until 26 these days. So why, pray tell, do I still feel this enormous pressure to accomplish such acts in the next three years? Why do I still feel like there is a looming psychotic break in my future as I get closer and closer to thirty, despite the fact that I can’t wait to turn 30 and be done with this miserable decade?
Perhaps it’s the woo of the wedding porn and the mommy blogs. Sometimes I get so involved in other people’s children and pregnancies that I dream of finding myself totally knocked up. Like straight-up single white female pregnant from a bad after-school special. Only to realize what an insane (crazy) idea that is and that really while my roommate is very supportive of my dog, I’m not sure she’d be thrilled with a screaming infant. Or, better yet, me as an emotional, psychotic wench for 9 months without a husband or boyfriend to berate with my endless request for pickles and krispy kreme donuts. Plus I can barely pay my bills as it is—a baby? Really? INTRAWEBS! You’ve betrayed me!
And the weddings are also great fun. I love weddings. I mean the industry makes me kind of nauseated but the good porn—the Etsy and all the great hipster wedding blogs and the DIY weddings. It’s enough to make a girl want to post an ad on Craigslist for a husband. And I’ve been to so many weddings at this point (and been in them, too), that I feel I’ve become a bit of an expert. I think, when I get married, I’ll have x, y, and z. Which is really like going to the mall when you’re on your last $45 the week before pay day and trying on Christian Louboutins. You can’t exactly buy the shoes without the money (hell, without the trust fund). Nor can you plan the wedding when you haven’t had a successful relationship in years. So maybe I’ll just go into the wedding planning business. Or maybe I will post that ad on craigslist.
And the race for careers and degrees is also b-a-n-a-n-a-s. I’ve been working on a master’s degree for years now, chipping away slowly, three credits at a time, so that I can what? Advance my career? I even switched programs because I was in a program where people read the book Who Moved My Cheese? and found it inspirational. I had to withdraw. Now I'm in a program that I like, sometimes, but I question pretty much every week how these people graduated from college. Sometimes high school.
But I get degree envy. I turn mad green and begin a self-depricating parade of all the things I could have done different. I look at the uber-focused friends of mine with law degrees and PhDs and think, if I hadn’t spent age 22-27 goofing off and “following my heart”, I, too, could have one of those shiny degrees to hang on a wall. And big fancy letters behind my name. Although the goofing off from 22-27 has been pretty rad, and I’m not sure my heart would have allowed anything but what happened to have happened. Even within my profession, I’ve got an awesome resume and great references and incredible experience—but sometimes it feels like I’ve accomplished nothing at all because I haven’t gotten that degree. I don’t have that shiny thing on the wall and the only thing that comes after my name is usually: Lindsay Johnson, Asshole.
These “things”, these numbers, these expectations are enough to make you crazy in your twenties. And even with great role models who consistently tell you, "Don't follow a path! Or check off boxes on a list! Live your life!", you still feel crazy. Like the center of the universe is in the woods kind of crazy.
Not to mention the fact that you’re a raving lunatic as you try to figure out who you really are in the world—without the crutch of high school, college, and family. You’re usually so broke you can barely afford to do anything but sit at home and think about how broke you are. But this time at home, eating ramen & saltines, gives you plenty of time to discover the real you. And to start thinking about all the things you want to accomplish before you’re 30. And to discover the show "wife swap" (which can really make you crazy).
And when you get past 27, unmarried, without kids and without letters behind your name, the list of things you thought you'd have accomplished by 30 can start to make you crazy. And despite your best logic, and the fact that most days you truly are content with your life and lack of "accomplishments", it can start to make you feel really crazy. Like cat-lady crazy. And even though you went to a liberated former-women's college and feel that it was pounded into your head that you, as a woman, would never be judged on your merit in society by your ability to cook a roast, iron a shirt, and birth a baby, there's this nagging hormonal thing that seems to happen regardless of all that bookishness and nerdery. Sometimes you just wanna make a roast and birth a baby, damnit. And maybe read a book while you wait?
So, tick-tock, goes the clock. But I refuse to let it make me crazy. Or maybe it's already made me crazy. And despite how badly I'd love for my womb to be filled with the spawn of someone wildly inappropriate (and probably twice my age), I'll continue to mother the one beast I'm proud to put in my list of "twenty-something accomplishments". And I'll try to keep my wedding plans at bay (because nothing's crazier than a single girl with a binder full of wedding ideas). And I'll keep going to class, taking another 3-6 credits every semester until the letters are at the end of my name. And I'll try to talk myself out of being crazy about getting older. But that does involve talking to myself...
And hell, maybe I am actually crazy, and you guys have just been sparing me from the truth all these years. But HEY! At least I'm self-aware, right? And I have this blog. And a dog that smiles when she sleeps (which is crazy).
And those are accomplishments, right? X, Y, and Z, I'd say.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Like nothing I'd known before, until I knew it better
People ask me now, 'What was Africa like?' I tell them that the place I came to know is laughing yet troubled, strong yet crippled, and dancing. Africa was like nothing I had known before, until I knew it better. But to really explain it, I have to start from the beginning. -Sarah Erdman
In flipping my calendar this morning to the bright and shiny month of July, several things happened.
One: I relished in the fact that June was over. Normally I don’t feel this way about June—such a sweet, warm, school-ending month. But this June was an exception; a terrible month of car accidents, driving rental cars, and bad feelings in the pit of my stomach over stupid things like money and material possessions.
Two: I sighed that my one week of vacation had come and gone so quickly and that although I am tan, and relaxed, it never seems to be enough time to do all the things I think about when I’m drafting those “things I’ll do on vacation” mental lists.
Three: I glanced down at the bright purple note on July 28th that I depart from Dulles Airport at 11 pm for Accra, Ghana. My fifth (FIFTH) trip to West Africa since 2002.
Four: I crapped my pants because I haven’t even started thinking about my 10 day site visit to the motherland. Or the malaria pills I’ll need. Or located my yellow fever vaccination card.
(Sidenote: However, I do use my annual trip to West Africa as a year-round excuse to buy cool, light-weight, earthy/artsy looking clothing, insisting, "…this will be just PERFECT for Benin!” and then promptly losing said clothing to the great abyss that is my closet and dirty laundry pile and going to Target three days before my trip and cursing why Target doesn’t sell short skirts and tank tops during December.)
For those of you who don’t know me, perhaps you’ll find this fascination of mine with West Africa charming. Or perhaps even kitsch. You’ll probably assume I’m way cooler than I really am and that I’m so well-traveled and probably really smart. You’d, for the most part, be pretty wrong on all fronts. You probably also think I’m the luckiest girl on the planet that I get to travel so much for work—and well, I can’t argue you on that one. Working in higher education has its perks. This is definitely one of them.
For those of you who do know me, however, you’ve probably already stopped reading because you just can’t stand to hear me talk about it anymore. And that’s okay. I understand. I’d hate me too. But I can’t help but talk about it. And think about it. And find ways to weave it into stories. I’m starting to understand how the fundamental religion-nuts feel.
I remember in middle school, so sick and tired of being asked had I been “saved” and did I go to church—saying, yes, I was baptized as a baby and, yes, I go to the Presbyterian church on Main Street, and being met with “well have you considered OUR church?”—I finally cracked and blew up. WHY THE HELL IS IT SO IMPORTANT THAT I BE SAVED IF I PRAY AND TALK TO GOD AND GO TO SUNDAY SCHOOL ALL ON MY OWN!? I was met with a response: “I just want to make sure you make it to heaven, that’s all. It’s like I know how to get free passes to DisneyWorld and I want to make sure you get ‘em too.” Jesus. I’m starting to perhaps make connections on why I hate DisneyWorld, too.
I’m like this with West Africa: “Have you been? Wanna hear a story? You should go…maybe your trip to Europe wasn’t enough…ever considered West Africa?”
And since blogs are entirely self-indulgent, this is my time to do just that. And even though they’re pretty much like diaries that are read by anyone with an intrawebs browser, something about my blog feels cozy. Like if you’re taking the time to read this stuff every few weeks, you might actually like me. Or enjoy my ranting and raving about the world. Or think I have something intelligent to say. Or you’re just someone who accidentally stumbled across it and is now obsessed (this is my secret hope that you’re all strangers out there building a cult following of me. In reality, I know it’s just you guys).
I decided to start blogging last fall because I was sad. My grandmother was dying and I was filled with sleepless angst. I’d sit in my living room at three in the morning wondering how I’d make it through my 8 hour work day (9, let’s be honest) and my grad class, and still manage to be the bubbly, happy Lindsay that my friends and colleagues know me to be. I started writing. Tons of it. Ever since I learned how to write sentences this has been my coping mechanism. When shit hits the fan, I start writing about the shit. And the fan. And the people who get hit with the shit from the fan.
When my parents divorced. I wrote.
When my siblings got married. I wrote.
When I graduated high school. I wrote.
When I had my heart broken. I wrote.
When I lost myself. I wrote.
When I found myself. I wrote.
When I lost myself, again. I wrote.
You get the picture. So I thought I’d give this “sharing it” thing a go, as I’m pretty sure my friends were tired of waking up to word documents in their inboxes with headlines like “couldn’t sleep…read this and tell me what you think.”
So when I studied abroad for the first time in Ghana, I wrote. I wrote things that were appallingly self-righteous and myopic; things that now, frankly, embarrass me to read (even in my head, where things are safe). But I was doing what we all do as humans—I was shifting from one place to another. From a smaller circle to a bigger one; one with bigger ideas, harder realities, and steeper consequences. We learn. We grow. We change. Amen, hallelujah.
Some part of me has always desired to become a famous writer. I have a fantasy that someone will discover me—think I’m brilliant—and offer me a lot of money to sit at small café tables and write what I think about the world. That I’ll be given travel allowances and take off for weeks at a time with a laptop in my leather satchel (you know, the one I'll buy when I can afford it?) and a big fat expense account. What a dream—to be someone who gets paid to be a person with things to say; someone who others look to for advice and support. Someone who can churn out words that carry meaning and weight and power in the most challenging of moments. Someone who can sense silent words, too.
But this fantasy also carries a fear—a fear about what this kind of writing can do to you. Does it lose its cathartic value when it’s being demanded by an editor or a greater public? Would I ever really want to ruin what I've got here for myself? I’m thinking about all the times I’ve used my insomnia to process the things I see and hear into short stories or pieces of poetry; all the times I’ve taken my deepest fears and insecurities into a leather-bound journal and written sentences that make no sense and follow no rules of grammar but translate everything I need to say into letters and words and spaces on paper so that I can feel better about tomorrow.
Unfortunately, I’m not sure the journals and journals of angst-ridden writing, processing my own adolescent and post-adolescent struggles with racism and classism and “finding myself” are quite worth the read. It’s mostly a lot of garbled words struggling to describe this feeling I’ve had for most of my life—this desire to do more, learn more, and understand. To embed myself in really hard places and think my way out of them. Crying and cursing all the way out.
And this thing with West Africa was in me from day one (I feel sure of it). It’s not that I just woke up one day, watched the Lion King, and decided to become obsessed with Africa. No. In typical Lindsay fashion, it was a much more long-winded, complicated story. With a lot more dips and bends and uncanny coincidences. I didn’t dream of going on safari as a child or hold onto some colonized vision of traveling to an uncultured, uneducated land and teaching the masses of my great knowledge and heritage. No. It was more a whisper. A thread that seems to have woven itself into parts of my life that I’m just now beginning to recognize. A rhythm in my day-to-day that I can’t ignore.
An opportunity to go for the first time and three weeks of walking around with my mouth hanging wide open. And seven years of processing and going back again and again and learning more and growing. And finding deeper roots.
And it isn’t really Africa itself, so much as how life is enacted there. The way people live. The culture. Which I suppose is inescapably connected to “being African”. But from my limited scope, it’s about music. And struggle. And community. And pain. And beauty. How communities celebrate together and mourn together. How people find ways to sustain despite access to critical resources like clean water and nutritious food. How people can learn about things like astronomy and mathematics and biology from working fields and harvesting crops and raising livestock. How family means everything and how much corruption can damage a person’s sense of themselves. How powerful wealth is and just how dangerous power can be. How little we know about the rest of the world. How intolerant we’ve all become to darkness and anything “other”. And what this all means to me. In my heart. In my life here in Baltimore. In my work with urban youth. In my work with college students who are just beginning to lose themselves and find themselves again.
Mostly I think it’s been about how me going to Africa doesn’t mean anything to the universe at all. This journey is mostly about me and me learning how to strike the balance between “this is what I can do” and “that’s bigger than I am”. Learning to bite my tongue as much I love using it. Learning how to just watch and observe before offering suggestions for change. Learning how to be uncomfortable. Learning how to be faithful, honest, and humble. Or perhaps just learning how to do those things better than I did before.
Feeling heat in places you didn’t think you could feel it. The sound of drums reverberating up your spine and around your heart, coupled with the exquisite preservation of tradition lingering in formal ceremonies. The hair on your arms standing up straight because you’ve never seen something so beautiful—something so simple and so pure. Witnessing poverty in a staggeringly real way but in a way that doesn’t leave you feeling empty like it does here in Baltimore. Feeling scared and unsure, stripped of all my usual defenses. The adventure of it all. The realness.
In flipping that calendar, I’m allowing my brain to go places I don’t normally allow it to go on a workday. And even though I’m working while I’m traveling, I can’t help but take it somewhere deeper, somewhere more powerful. Seven years ago I woke something up inside of me and I can’t get her to sit down and shut up. Something inside of me that make me feel anxious and excited and scared and thrilled all at the same time. Something that I can’t seem to quit.
I started this entry with a quote that I love because I was feeling reminiscent, but I realize now that maybe I only love it because I get what she means. I’ve felt it. I read this book by Sarah Erdman in between my first two visits to West Africa. She spent a year in Mali with the Peace Corps, came back and wrote a book about it. Her book, along with several others in the same genre, have been enormously useful in helping me frame what I think about what I’ve seen and felt and experienced. She’s no New York Times bestseller, but she wrote this book as she was going from a smaller circle to a larger one; as she was growing and processing and starting to understand better who she really was in the wake of feeling all these things you feel when you spend a lot of time in what the big fancy sociologists call a “collective society”.
She summarized all the things I’ve been trying to say for years about my time in West Africa in just a few succinct sentences.
People ask me now, 'What was Africa like?' I tell them that the place I came to know is laughing yet troubled, strong yet crippled, and dancing. Africa was like nothing I had known before, until I knew it better. But to really explain it, I have to start from the beginning.
I’d make one quick change to this statement. I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to explain it. And I'm not sure anyone else really cares as much as we do. And I’m pretty sure that’s okay.
In flipping my calendar this morning to the bright and shiny month of July, several things happened.
One: I relished in the fact that June was over. Normally I don’t feel this way about June—such a sweet, warm, school-ending month. But this June was an exception; a terrible month of car accidents, driving rental cars, and bad feelings in the pit of my stomach over stupid things like money and material possessions.
Two: I sighed that my one week of vacation had come and gone so quickly and that although I am tan, and relaxed, it never seems to be enough time to do all the things I think about when I’m drafting those “things I’ll do on vacation” mental lists.
Three: I glanced down at the bright purple note on July 28th that I depart from Dulles Airport at 11 pm for Accra, Ghana. My fifth (FIFTH) trip to West Africa since 2002.
Four: I crapped my pants because I haven’t even started thinking about my 10 day site visit to the motherland. Or the malaria pills I’ll need. Or located my yellow fever vaccination card.
(Sidenote: However, I do use my annual trip to West Africa as a year-round excuse to buy cool, light-weight, earthy/artsy looking clothing, insisting, "…this will be just PERFECT for Benin!” and then promptly losing said clothing to the great abyss that is my closet and dirty laundry pile and going to Target three days before my trip and cursing why Target doesn’t sell short skirts and tank tops during December.)
For those of you who don’t know me, perhaps you’ll find this fascination of mine with West Africa charming. Or perhaps even kitsch. You’ll probably assume I’m way cooler than I really am and that I’m so well-traveled and probably really smart. You’d, for the most part, be pretty wrong on all fronts. You probably also think I’m the luckiest girl on the planet that I get to travel so much for work—and well, I can’t argue you on that one. Working in higher education has its perks. This is definitely one of them.
For those of you who do know me, however, you’ve probably already stopped reading because you just can’t stand to hear me talk about it anymore. And that’s okay. I understand. I’d hate me too. But I can’t help but talk about it. And think about it. And find ways to weave it into stories. I’m starting to understand how the fundamental religion-nuts feel.
I remember in middle school, so sick and tired of being asked had I been “saved” and did I go to church—saying, yes, I was baptized as a baby and, yes, I go to the Presbyterian church on Main Street, and being met with “well have you considered OUR church?”—I finally cracked and blew up. WHY THE HELL IS IT SO IMPORTANT THAT I BE SAVED IF I PRAY AND TALK TO GOD AND GO TO SUNDAY SCHOOL ALL ON MY OWN!? I was met with a response: “I just want to make sure you make it to heaven, that’s all. It’s like I know how to get free passes to DisneyWorld and I want to make sure you get ‘em too.” Jesus. I’m starting to perhaps make connections on why I hate DisneyWorld, too.
I’m like this with West Africa: “Have you been? Wanna hear a story? You should go…maybe your trip to Europe wasn’t enough…ever considered West Africa?”
And since blogs are entirely self-indulgent, this is my time to do just that. And even though they’re pretty much like diaries that are read by anyone with an intrawebs browser, something about my blog feels cozy. Like if you’re taking the time to read this stuff every few weeks, you might actually like me. Or enjoy my ranting and raving about the world. Or think I have something intelligent to say. Or you’re just someone who accidentally stumbled across it and is now obsessed (this is my secret hope that you’re all strangers out there building a cult following of me. In reality, I know it’s just you guys).
I decided to start blogging last fall because I was sad. My grandmother was dying and I was filled with sleepless angst. I’d sit in my living room at three in the morning wondering how I’d make it through my 8 hour work day (9, let’s be honest) and my grad class, and still manage to be the bubbly, happy Lindsay that my friends and colleagues know me to be. I started writing. Tons of it. Ever since I learned how to write sentences this has been my coping mechanism. When shit hits the fan, I start writing about the shit. And the fan. And the people who get hit with the shit from the fan.
When my parents divorced. I wrote.
When my siblings got married. I wrote.
When I graduated high school. I wrote.
When I had my heart broken. I wrote.
When I lost myself. I wrote.
When I found myself. I wrote.
When I lost myself, again. I wrote.
You get the picture. So I thought I’d give this “sharing it” thing a go, as I’m pretty sure my friends were tired of waking up to word documents in their inboxes with headlines like “couldn’t sleep…read this and tell me what you think.”
So when I studied abroad for the first time in Ghana, I wrote. I wrote things that were appallingly self-righteous and myopic; things that now, frankly, embarrass me to read (even in my head, where things are safe). But I was doing what we all do as humans—I was shifting from one place to another. From a smaller circle to a bigger one; one with bigger ideas, harder realities, and steeper consequences. We learn. We grow. We change. Amen, hallelujah.
Some part of me has always desired to become a famous writer. I have a fantasy that someone will discover me—think I’m brilliant—and offer me a lot of money to sit at small café tables and write what I think about the world. That I’ll be given travel allowances and take off for weeks at a time with a laptop in my leather satchel (you know, the one I'll buy when I can afford it?) and a big fat expense account. What a dream—to be someone who gets paid to be a person with things to say; someone who others look to for advice and support. Someone who can churn out words that carry meaning and weight and power in the most challenging of moments. Someone who can sense silent words, too.
But this fantasy also carries a fear—a fear about what this kind of writing can do to you. Does it lose its cathartic value when it’s being demanded by an editor or a greater public? Would I ever really want to ruin what I've got here for myself? I’m thinking about all the times I’ve used my insomnia to process the things I see and hear into short stories or pieces of poetry; all the times I’ve taken my deepest fears and insecurities into a leather-bound journal and written sentences that make no sense and follow no rules of grammar but translate everything I need to say into letters and words and spaces on paper so that I can feel better about tomorrow.
Unfortunately, I’m not sure the journals and journals of angst-ridden writing, processing my own adolescent and post-adolescent struggles with racism and classism and “finding myself” are quite worth the read. It’s mostly a lot of garbled words struggling to describe this feeling I’ve had for most of my life—this desire to do more, learn more, and understand. To embed myself in really hard places and think my way out of them. Crying and cursing all the way out.
And this thing with West Africa was in me from day one (I feel sure of it). It’s not that I just woke up one day, watched the Lion King, and decided to become obsessed with Africa. No. In typical Lindsay fashion, it was a much more long-winded, complicated story. With a lot more dips and bends and uncanny coincidences. I didn’t dream of going on safari as a child or hold onto some colonized vision of traveling to an uncultured, uneducated land and teaching the masses of my great knowledge and heritage. No. It was more a whisper. A thread that seems to have woven itself into parts of my life that I’m just now beginning to recognize. A rhythm in my day-to-day that I can’t ignore.
An opportunity to go for the first time and three weeks of walking around with my mouth hanging wide open. And seven years of processing and going back again and again and learning more and growing. And finding deeper roots.
And it isn’t really Africa itself, so much as how life is enacted there. The way people live. The culture. Which I suppose is inescapably connected to “being African”. But from my limited scope, it’s about music. And struggle. And community. And pain. And beauty. How communities celebrate together and mourn together. How people find ways to sustain despite access to critical resources like clean water and nutritious food. How people can learn about things like astronomy and mathematics and biology from working fields and harvesting crops and raising livestock. How family means everything and how much corruption can damage a person’s sense of themselves. How powerful wealth is and just how dangerous power can be. How little we know about the rest of the world. How intolerant we’ve all become to darkness and anything “other”. And what this all means to me. In my heart. In my life here in Baltimore. In my work with urban youth. In my work with college students who are just beginning to lose themselves and find themselves again.
Mostly I think it’s been about how me going to Africa doesn’t mean anything to the universe at all. This journey is mostly about me and me learning how to strike the balance between “this is what I can do” and “that’s bigger than I am”. Learning to bite my tongue as much I love using it. Learning how to just watch and observe before offering suggestions for change. Learning how to be uncomfortable. Learning how to be faithful, honest, and humble. Or perhaps just learning how to do those things better than I did before.
Feeling heat in places you didn’t think you could feel it. The sound of drums reverberating up your spine and around your heart, coupled with the exquisite preservation of tradition lingering in formal ceremonies. The hair on your arms standing up straight because you’ve never seen something so beautiful—something so simple and so pure. Witnessing poverty in a staggeringly real way but in a way that doesn’t leave you feeling empty like it does here in Baltimore. Feeling scared and unsure, stripped of all my usual defenses. The adventure of it all. The realness.
In flipping that calendar, I’m allowing my brain to go places I don’t normally allow it to go on a workday. And even though I’m working while I’m traveling, I can’t help but take it somewhere deeper, somewhere more powerful. Seven years ago I woke something up inside of me and I can’t get her to sit down and shut up. Something inside of me that make me feel anxious and excited and scared and thrilled all at the same time. Something that I can’t seem to quit.
I started this entry with a quote that I love because I was feeling reminiscent, but I realize now that maybe I only love it because I get what she means. I’ve felt it. I read this book by Sarah Erdman in between my first two visits to West Africa. She spent a year in Mali with the Peace Corps, came back and wrote a book about it. Her book, along with several others in the same genre, have been enormously useful in helping me frame what I think about what I’ve seen and felt and experienced. She’s no New York Times bestseller, but she wrote this book as she was going from a smaller circle to a larger one; as she was growing and processing and starting to understand better who she really was in the wake of feeling all these things you feel when you spend a lot of time in what the big fancy sociologists call a “collective society”.
She summarized all the things I’ve been trying to say for years about my time in West Africa in just a few succinct sentences.
People ask me now, 'What was Africa like?' I tell them that the place I came to know is laughing yet troubled, strong yet crippled, and dancing. Africa was like nothing I had known before, until I knew it better. But to really explain it, I have to start from the beginning.
I’d make one quick change to this statement. I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to explain it. And I'm not sure anyone else really cares as much as we do. And I’m pretty sure that’s okay.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)