Today I started my day helping out with morning chores – washing dishes, cleaning up after breakfast, filling the water filter, nothing big. I rested and read through the rest of the morning, thankful for the miracle of consistent electricity that we’ve had for the last 5 days, because it means I can lay on my bed with my fan pointed right at my face. But just before lunch the power cut out. Drat.
Now, at home I love when the power goes out. I think it’s exciting and fun to find my way around the house in the dark, searching for a flashlight or candles and matches. There’s something so great about the TV being turned off and having nothing better to do than sitting around the candlelit table with family playing a game of cards. But here I don’t feel that same thrill. The power goes out and instead feeling excited I feel drained, like the electric company took my energy along with the electricity. I felt guilty for my disappointment; after all, we did just have a really long stretch of constant power. Still, it was how I felt, and I carried it with my to lunch, which turned out to be good old boule and fish. I managed to stomach my portion, then went to my room.
At this point, I called Dad for a pep talk because he’s pretty good at those. I warned him there might be tears and I was right, which is actually a rarity for me these days. And he just let me vent. He let me share how frustrated I am with the heat and with the food and with speaking a foreign language. He let me complain about feeling like a novelty every time I leave the house and how I wish I could just blend in again and not have to barter every time I want to buy something at the market. He let me share how tired I am of dirt and dust and how I just feel ready to be home.
To be clear, it’s not that I want to go home. Which may seem contradictory. I know I still have work to do here, and I have things coming up that I’m really looking forward to. But that doesn’t change that today I just want some of my luxuries from home. I dream of not sweating all day, I dream of electricity that I’ll take for granted, I dream of cheese that doesn’t cost $3 a slice. I think about not having to filter my water to drink it and I think about washing my clothes in a machine instead of by hand. I put together outfits in my mind that don’t include long skirts and Chaco sandals and think of the air-conditioned places that I could wear them. I love being here and it’s not that I want it to be over, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t a lot of pieces of home that I miss. And that’s okay because it’s just the way I feel and feelings just are.
I feel guilty about it though. Here I am, living among people who have never known the privilege of living where there is always power, who are happy to have a well pump in their yard, and I’m daydreaming about how I might treat myself to some good shower gel from Bath & Body Works when I get home. And it occurs to me that for the cost of just one container of deliciously scented soap I could pay for a child’s education for an entire year. For the price of a new blouse I could buy a week’s worth of meals for a family. I can’t even imagine what a Tchadian could do with the amount of money I waste on hair ties and headbands and other accessories that I inevitably lose within a year.
It’s so much to think about that I usually just give up altogether because it hurts my brain and my heart. Why should I have so much when there are so many people who have so little? The answer is that I shouldn’t. There is no reason for me to have as much as I do. Just because of where and when I was born I have luxuries that much of the world will never know. I have a really hard time reconciling this and it’s something I’ve wrestled with a lot. I am more than certain that I am really going to struggle readjusting to the spend-spend-spend mentality of home, and I hope that this experience will help me change my own materialistic tendencies.
I apologized for the lack of structure in this post, but that’s about how this all goes in my head. I never really reach any conclusion and just end up with more feelings. But it’s something I think about a lot and the things I think about are part of my adventure too, so there you have it. Any clarity or wisdom on the subject is more than welcome.