Wow. I´ve been out of civilization for a while and coming back into the world of electronics, lights, internet can be a little overwhelming sometimes. To be honest, I´ve been putting off checking the email and posting random blogs. Overwhelming because it reminds me a different life I had in a country about a million miles and a century of technology away.
My life is different. Not bad different, not good different (Though at times it can be both), but just different, different.
I´m struggling to learn two languages at once and feeling like I´m failing miserably. Yeah I can get by in my site on my Spanish. But, once I hop off my lancha, the people speak faster and I end up feeling that the language will never come and that I will always walk around with a puzzled look on my face. Always listening, trying to catch that one phrase or word I know, and yet somehow not comprehending.
I´m trying to live up to being a Ngobe mari (woman). But my skills fall obviously short. Like coconut peeling machete skills, fish scaling with a machete skills, splitting wood with a machete skills....okay, really it´s my machete skills. As in I don´t have any at all. Yeah, it might help if I actually had a machete and practiced with it, but I don´t. Maybe that´s something I should start with first.
First machetes, then a culture.
Poco a poco
I´ll get there eventually
Some days I just want
to stay inside
Hide in my haven
Of yellow net security.
Listening to familiar
but yet vaguely distant music.
And escaping through
another book of tales
that for a little time
trick me into beliving
that
I am somewhere else.
But on the days
that I do emerge
I am constantly surprised
by the questions
by the food
by the culture
and slowly, slowly
by the hints of friendship
that are being created.
One day I will
be that super Peace Corps Volunteer
not this day,
not the day after
but some day
Two years are waiting.
Waiting to discover all this
and more.
Hasta,
Jamie
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3 comments:
Hey Friend, hang in there. I know that's kinda lame but it really is true. You are entering a tough stage of the transition process but it will get better. You understanding and speaking will increase and relationships will develop.
But also don't feel gulity about taking a "back home break" either. You are not home, you can enjoy and respect where you are at but you are full entitled to "home" time.
Stuff I'm sure you already know but some times it good to hear it from someone else.
Thanks for sharing with us.
Hey friend! Man, adjustments just take forever sometimes, eh? We're there....and then we're not even close, sort of hanging on until we feel like we're there again. I love to hear what's going on in your heart nd mind. What are you reading these days?
Do you have a snail mail address? Or should I just write "Jamie Konecny, boonies, central america"... And you could reply to "Katie Lerch, tin can, U.S.A." Sweeeet.
It will come to you, I promise. It really will. What worked for me was studying for an hour a day, whatever grammatical concept, then trying to apply it. As for the comprehension part, it does come, even if it takes time. But you'll come back like a native speaker.
Thank you for sharing the time of your life. You'll look back at this and realize that you'll never have anything quite so special again. That was my experience with my time in Campeche. I've never quite equaled that experience, and I'm not sure if I ever will.
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