I need to go back. This I realized this morning, following the fact that I’ve been waking up every morning feeling a little empty and at a loss of what to do with my life each new day. Whatever fun dates with girlfriends and boyfriends or shopping treats or good food… they are all so meaningless in the grand scheme of things. What about questioning, Where did we get our money? How is it that we can spend so much in one day and not even give it a second thought? It really bothers me that our standard of living is this much better than those in African countries– I cannot make sense of it. And what’s worse is how perfectly acceptable it is.
The past few days have been amazing. I have met up with most of my close friends, and spent lots of good times in the rare Vancouver sunshine. But in the back of my mind, something nags me. My experiences won’t ever let me forget, even for a second, that there are communities of people on the other side of the world who are so excluded from the world as we know it. There are so many things to be done, both by and with the people there, but those who go over (like myself) almost always come back. One of the biggest questions of development is regarding continuity, or sustainability of projects. They/we come back to this world of technology and money and an everyday drive towards the ‘career’ goal we all aspire towards. And then what? What about the students in those communities? What do they aspire towards? They hope to finish grade twelve, so that they can attend university, and eventually earn some money for their families. But most of them drop out before grade twelve. Most of them don’t make it to university. And the few that do, their success makes them at par with the average student here in North America. These standards bother me, the discrepancy even more so. The fact that they are there and I am suddenly here really pushes me to recognize the systems of inequality in our world.
The fact that I have made a home there for the mere three months reminds me that I have friends there. They are still living the repetitive life that I struggled with when I was there. For what? Survival. They work so hard everyday, doing the same menial tasks to maintain their gardens and raise their children, so that they can thrive as a community. But what of development? How can they move forward? Here, my life is different every day. I do different things, meet different people, and learn new things. Every single day. What is it that propels my life forward, towards “success”, that is not there in their lives? I don’t know. It leaves me feeling guilty. It’s like I was born into a system that was designed to make my life automatically more healthy and wealthy than another life in a different, backlogged system. The guilt comes with the fact that my life and his/her life are exactly of the same essence. We are more similar than different, and yet it is our systems that define us. We live on the same globe, but we are worlds apart.
On another note, I cannot shake off the feeling that my everyday life there was more real, as if I was truly living a purpose, compared to the shallow simple pleasures of everyday life here. This technology world that we live in… it makes me uncomfortable now. It’s easy to lose myself, to end up being someone who reflects the smiles and styles of what media projects into my life. I was on my blackberry last night, browsing through Facebook and Twitter as I usually do, and I found myself disgusted at myself, thinking of how I (and I’m sure many of us) try so hard to keep up with the very latest trends. What’s the point? I felt more like myself during my placement than I do at home. I felt like I was doing something, even if something small, that made any sort of difference. Here at home, I am thrown back into the routine of completing pre- requisites, jumping through hoops preparing me for the unknown ‘career’ in my near future.
I have so many things I want to translate into words. Clearly it was a huge experience going away, and I know I have learned enough to digest for at least the next year. Coincidentally it will be the year that I graduate… I wonder if that will affect my career choice. I don’t know where to begin. I am dealing with the easy things first, to agree to catch-up days with friends and family. They ask me, ‘how was your trip’, and I am thinking of the million things I have learned but haven’t yet digested, then I answer, ‘ it was… good, tell me about your summer, I’d rather hear that’, because it’s easier.
This is all very overwhelming.
I haven’t even explained why I need to go back in this blog post. I will pinpoint it someday, after some weeks/months/years of thought. It’s just something I know and feel now. I’m sure there’s a good reason why.