The opinions expressed are mine and do not reflect the positions of the Peace Corps or the US government.

Thursday, January 9, 2014

Time

January 9 2014

My father, had he lived, would have been 98 today. Dad, my illegitimate father (his description, not mine, though I love it) will be 100 on February 2. Time. A cultural concept, I think - the way we view it, not the fact that it is.

I am trying to - not sure of what the words are. I've been told Swazis don't pay attention to time - that they are often late, and that's just how it is. Seems to be true a lot of the time (pun intended). For me it means changing how I perceive. A long, long time ago I learned that "It doesn't matter." That is, it doesn't matter if I'm here or elsewhere, wherever I am is a good place to be, and things will happen here. I seem to be relearning this lesson when it takes 5 - 6 hours to go the 40 miles round trip to town and back. Or to have work mostly stop for the 6 weeks of holidays. I focus on building relationships, on preparing for when work does start again. But it often feels as though I can't get there from here because before I start I have so many things that must be done.

We're human beings, not humans doing, so goes the now-trite saying. Living it is a different story. A woman who returned to the states before the end of her 2 years wrote that she wished she had learned to embrace rather than to cope. Oh. Yes. Whatever we focus on, whatever we feed, grows. So what am I feeding? The beauty around me, the warmth of the children's laughter, the sweet birdsong from my roof? The steps forward that seem to be baby steps, but are still going forward? Or some fanciful idea that if I were just elsewhere it would be so much easier? Another volunteer, early on, said we all have things that are easy and that are hard - and it's different things for each of us. All these lessons are so true at home as well as here. Maybe it's just that here there's time to notice, examine, process them.

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