Rainy day reflection

We woke up this morning to a cold and unseasonably rainy day.   While the bran muffins bake for warmth and breakfast, I am reflecting on past rainy days—how naïve we were at the start to think a rainy day was as eligible for advancing my to-do list as any other.  In our three years here, I’ve come to see rainy days as a blessing.  So I’m going to enjoy today as un-anticipated calm in a sometimes over-committed schedule.  The other option is to attempt overachievement(not too hard when you have access to a 4x4 truck)and head out to a rural community where you had a date set to move materials and finish up a project.  If we pushed our agenda and tried to get things done, we would create more frustration than goodwill.  Unless it’s sunny, temperatures are 45-55, and without a heated space to return to, who wants to get even a little bit wet?

With less than three weeks left on assignment, and a flight out of Bolivia scheduled for July 31, our work these days consists mostly of saying goodbye.   We are travelling around to all of the communities where we have worked to pass out photos of ourselves and invite the people to a going-away reception in a couple weeks.  It has been decided that the vacancy created by our departure will not be filled, so our goodbyes are made a bit more taxing as people make their last minute requests for water systems, latrines, and remind us of any deficiency in what they’ve received, or any little promise that has been made to them over the last several years so that we can help them before we go.

Saying goodbye to people has had me thinking about all aspects of our lives here that I’m likely to miss when we return to the states.  Some of these are certainly possible in our next chapter, but the form they’ve taken here is unique:

• Community atmosphere.   We don’t step out of our door without being recognized, greeted.  Every morning in our 700-person town there’s a bustle of people preparing to head for their fields or getting luggage and packages on the daily bus.  If we’re sick for a couple days or home alone, the neighbor across the ravine notices and comes to visit. 
•  No worries about food, healthcare or other common costs.  Thanks to MCC, we’ve been well covered in these things.  Even if that weren’t the case, our 5$/month electric bill, 3$/month water bill, and the fact that we could almost live just on the food gifted to us by neighbors, would keep our lives pretty free of economic stress.  We just have to worry how to spend our $100/month stipend! 
•  Daily interacting with people who see the world in fundamentally different ways.   While this can be tiresome at times, it never fails to be interesting.  Simple things like being near a TV when Walker Texas Ranger comes on leads to interesting discussions about how the world works. 
•  Fresh, seasonal food.   Not just in our house, but everywhere!  Every bite of food you eat here is just a short step, literally or figuratively, from the ground that produced it.  The fresh wheat ground atour neighbor’s mill, peaches, apples, and avocados from our neighbors in season, year-round fresh bananas and papaya from 150 miles away. 
•  Public transportation available to get you anywhere you need to go.  From across town to the next city to the other side of the country, there’s always a bus, minivan, or Toyota Corolla wagon that can get you there.   The circumstances of a country too poor for everyone to have a car leads to a benefit in that, even if you have access to a personal car, you don’t have to be dependent on it. 
•  Closeness with the natural world.  Whether it’s having every room of the house open only to the outside, or having to go outside to the bathroom, you become much more aware of the rain, wind, and phases of the moon.  With almost every other family we know involved in agriculture, you can’t go a day without talking about what’s in bloom, bugs, moisture.  Observing the cycles that make life possible is humbling as I remember how little control I have over them. 
•  Climate.  7,500ft, cool temperatures, and low humidity – this is the climate where my people must have evolved.  There’s about 6 weeks a year where you add a couple extra blankets to the bed and wear closed-toed shoes more often, but living in a mud-brick house tempers the rest of the year to make it comfortable all the time. 
•  Physical lifestyle and relaxed schedule.  Since it’s just the way things are done here, it’s natural that much of our non-work time is taken up with activities that, while they were sometimes tiresome and annoying at first, are great in that they keep us in shape, give our minds time to wander and process after a hectic day, and keep our hands occupied at useful and peaceful tasks.  Doing some of our own grain and meat processing, walking around town in search for a store with a specific missing ingredient, washing clothes by hand, shaking the ever-present dust out of heavy wool rugs and bedding—these are just some of the activities that seemed inconvenient at first, but that we now rely on to keep us sane and healthy.

 We’ve felt ready to go home for a while now, but making this list reminded me that we have been changed, and that even though so much of our lives here has been difficult for us, in other ways we have fallen easily into a rhythm of life that is drastically different than what we are returning to.  I hope we can figure out how to incorporate the best of both worlds.