Jumping In

Drops of rain are spilling down the mesh net that keeps the bugs from flying in through the slats in my windows. I can hardly hear over the sound of the pellets hitting hard against the metal roof above my head. This is not the first rainstorm I have encountered in the short time I have been here, but it is the first early morning thunderstorm for me this year. My first thought is to go run around in the water, splash through the dark brown puddles along the dirt road that stretches from here to anywhere, but I remain inside. Rain here is not friendly in the eyes of the locals. It is not something to be played in, but instead it is a sign from God or the Gods, or whomever else you can believe in. Although I think they may secretly be dancing in their hearts for the rains have come late this year. Now is the only time in this dry region where crops can flourish and grow, producing enough food to get through a much of the dry season as possible.

The corn stalks have already grown fairly tall even without watering, but the peanuts, soy beans, and whatever else could sprout in the clay-like soil all remain small, withered slightly from the strength of the sun at midday. I feel like these plants most days. The sun is much stronger than the sun I have been living under for the past twenty-three years. Even the shortest walks outside turn my skin red on my face, arms, and neck, the only skin that I can acceptably show for the most part. Comparing the tan of my arm to my pale stomach would make you think there were somehow two different people standing in front of you. It’s only been a few months so far, so it’s hard to imagine what the difference might be when I finally stumble home.

Besides my coloring, my hair has grown longer, my face has returned to it’s middle-school texture, and somehow the smell of sweat and dirt has encrusted itself so firmly that even after a shower it still lingers. Not that any of these things really bother me anymore. I forgot how to care about my appearance on a certain level quickly after I arrived here. Today however I went through my whole make-up routine for the first time in months in order to distract myself from the eight new blisters that have sprung up on my feet from my adventure yesterday. I had set out to find food, gotten quite lost, asked a group of children for directions in a broken form of their language that they somehow understood, and promptly gotten lost again. Eventually I found both food and the way home, staggering into my tiny room just as the sun was beginning to set. It sets fast these days, about twenty minutes later and I would have been getting home in the near darkness.

Today I have not left my room except to squat over the hole that is to be my latrine for the next two years. It is cockroach infested, and has a window that I fear someone could far too easily look into, but for some reason I don’t hate it. I don’t know if I have lost the ability to feel strong emotions since being here, or if I have accepted that things could be worse. And they could be. I could still be back in America, stumbling through my days unclear of where I was heading or how I would get there. On some level I have run away from most of my problems, hoping that they wont be lying in wait for me when I return, or that at least I’ll be able to deal with them when I am the person I am at the end of this adventure.

So I guess that’s why I’m writing this today. I never set out to make a blog, commitment is something I’m not very good with, but I realized that a blog doesn’t have to be for all of you reading it. So this won’t be sturctured like you might expect, it won’t be a clear story of my time here. It will be my thoughts, my inner monologue, my vision of the world I have thrown myself into. Hopefully that will be enough for you, because it’s enough for me. So this is the beginning. I’ve skipped a lot, I’ve decided to jump into today, into now, into what is running through my head this moment. Maybe someday I’ll fill in the gaps the past few months have created, but for now I’m fine with listening to the sounds of the rain, of the goats, and of my neighbors fixing their motorbike outside, while only thinking about now.

Cheers.