A season of goodbyes

We are leaving Moro Moro soon.  We know a lot of people here—hundreds, perhaps—and all of them are exerting a lot of energy to send us off right.  They beg us to make time in our schedules so that they can make a lunch for us.  They load us up with bags and bags of corn, potatoes, eggs—whatever gift they can give to express that they appreciate us or will miss us.  They pull us aside to say things like, “We’ve gotten used to having you around,” “Surely you can stay another year,” and “Who will visit us after you leave?”

So we know that we need to say goodbye, and we need to do it right.  Many of these people have done an extraordinary thing in accepting us—strange people—into their lives.  Granted, they had to do so in order to receive the services of our organization, but they didn’t have to do it so graciously and with, as in many cases, so much genuine feeling.  So we need to do this right—to say all the right words with the right emotion, to eat more food than we feel like eating, to drink more than we enjoy, to accept gifts that we can’t take with us (“surely they’d let you take just these 25 kilos of potatoes on the plane, right?).  It’s hard, though.  Sometimes we’re ashamed to realize that our hearts are just not in it.  We feel deep appreciation for our friendships here, but that doesn’t change the fact that we would gladly skip all the goodbyes if we could.  I suppose maybe that’s just the nature of goodbye.  It’s no good.

Since our attitudes are somewhat in the dumps, we’re thankful for those rare moments when we find ourselves actually living in the moment rather than in the future.  Sometimes the powerful mountain scenery we’ve enjoyed for several years can still break through and amaze us, reminding us to soak it in while we can.  Sometimes, in conversation with families who built water systems with us, someone will say something like, “If it weren’t for you, I would be lugging that bucket up that hill right now,” and we realize that this is not just something people say, but rather a fact that demonstrates the importance of our work.  And sometimes we are reminded that Moro Moro culture is so distinct from our own, and we have to admit that we’ll actually miss finding ourselves in hilarious situations on almost a daily basis.  This was the case today.

Last year we helped build a water system for 16 families in a community called Las Lagunas.  Most of the on-the-ground work was done by a local mason and plumber, so we spent a lot less time in the community than we had for other projects.  For this reason, we assumed a simple visit to say goodbye would be sufficient.  That was a silly thing to think.  Through a series of convoluted channels, we received word that we would be expected at a lunch in Las Lagunas today.  We agreed, and we headed out this morning.  As we expected, there was lots of delicious food, a bit of chicha, plenty of time to sit around and enjoy a beautiful sunny day, lots of words of appreciation that made us feel a bit awkward.What we didn’t expect was to arrive to the home where the lunch was held—a patio in the middle of three small mud rooms with no electricity—and find a tower of speakers taller than the tallest house in the area.

But no one else seemed to think much of the enormous speakers, which belonged to the host’s son, who makes money as a DJ in his spare time.  We managed to ignore them all through lunch, and we assumed there would be no music since there was no power source.  But after lunch, just as we were trying to start our goodbyes, the host’s son dragged a generator out of a back room and started fiddling with it.  An hour or two later (after Andy finally got involved and fixed it) the generator fired up, and the music started.  It was extremely loud.  So loud that the sheep tied up on the other side of the valley began running in circles on their ropes, trying to get away from the noise.  And yet, the hosts seemed delighted to sit eight feet in front of the speakers.   

We’ve come to understand that on these occasions there are certain tasks required of us—cultural hoops to jump through, you could say.  If we don’t complete these tasks, the party just goes on and on and everyone refuses to let us leave.  We knew that, as soon as the music started, one thing that was required was that Andy sit with the men for a while and shoot the breeze.  So that’s exactly what he did.  He sat himself down beside our host, a few feet in front of the speakers, and they shouted to each other over the din, telling jokes and discussing music preferences.

Andy enjoying a nice peaceful conversation.  Just to be clear, this photo pretty much captures the entire party.  There is not a crowd of 200 people standing off screen somewhere.  It’s just a few people, and a few hundred decibels of sound.

Then we said our final words of thanks (amplified through the speakers, of course), and our host said a few nice words as well.

Then we tried to say goodbye again, and instead, Andy got invited to dance!

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.