Feeling myself change

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Since the beginning of the program, Bill told us that we would be changed. I've been anxiously awaiting this change to occur ever since orientation. I thought it would be the gradual kind, the kind that I'd notice only when I arrive back in the US and try to live life like I did before. I was wrong.

I now know what that change is. I understand what needs to change in myself. It's up to me to enact it, though. At the moment, the change is internal, a guilty nagging that is begging me to pay attention and do something.

Here's how it started...

On the busride home from hanging out with my friends on Monday night, I had a long talk with Andrei. He was denouncing SIT for the ridiculously small amount of money given to our host families for housing for a month and a half. His mom, like Katia, wants to go back to school so she can be paid more. But she needs money to pay for school. In order to get the money to pay for school, she needs to be paid more. But she can'tbe paid more until she gets her degree. This is the vicious cycle, the barrier that prevents bright, ambitious people from moving up. Andrei says it would cost about a thousand dollars to her her on her feet enough to pey the rest. A thousand dollars. I can make that in a summer at Papa Razzi. I pay twenty times that for one semester at WashU. What would it hurt for me to give her those thousand dollars? What for me is a summer of tips is for her a lifetime of a higher salary, a chance to send her kids to a better high school so they can go to college and make enough money to send their kids to a good high school. SO on and so forth.

How selfish am I to buy a bag of caramels and keep them hidden, so when I want something sweet, I'll have them for sure. Or to take a bed in this house, eat their food, put my clothes in with their wash, come home late at night, ask them for directions and advice and translations... what can I give back? What would mean something to them? There is so much...

Then on Tuesday...

I just got home from my day at Caritas. It's 3:50pm and I need to write. On our walk from the Cathedral to IBEU, Natalia and I talked about the topic started yesterday with Andrei. A beggar in front of the Cathedral asked us for 5 reais to get home to the interior to have her baby in the presence of her family. We didn't know what to do and ended up not giving her any money. As we walked, we though, but what is 5 reais to us? USD $2.50 is so little. FOr this woman, it means having her baby at home with her family... if she is telling the truth. But how could we ever know? For Andrei's mom, USD$ 1000 means a new chance to be more comfortable, to give something valuable like education to her children. Natalia tried to rationalize, but what does giving to one person really do? It improves one family in a neighborhood of poverty in a city of injustice in a country of coruption in a world of problems. What would actually help is an overhaul of the system. I reasoned back, realistically, we are not on the brink of a systemwide revolution. Helping one family, though not sustainable at all, is a start. Natalia countered, then where do we stop? How much do we give?

This is the conflict. Because we have money, others don't. My money for lunch could pay this beggar's ticket home. My tuition for one year could pay for twenty of Andrei's mom's university opportunities. I feel so guilty. So selfish. So privileged to have so much more than so much of the world. Where else could those R$2 have gone, other than into a chocolate croissant? How dare I walk into my air conditioned school and send home an email when so much of the world lives in a constant state of sweat or will never see a computer? What do I give up, where is the line, when do I start?

It is not healthy to feel guilty and depressed all the time. I often had to tell Moriah to think about something else because there is nothing she can do about world poverty from our dormroom at WashU. Then again, it's not ok to live in a bubble, blind to the suffering of others. It's also not ok to live as a hypocrite, like Bill does. He preaches social justice and equality but he owns a huge, 4-wheel drive, gas-guzzling truck. His daughter's mother, his ex-wife, struggles to make a living in a favela. He is an incessant chain smoker and won't give it up. How does he rationalize all of that? How would he suggest we live our lives so as to encompass humility and justice, coming from the middle-upper class as we do?

What is the solution?

There is none.

As Natalia and I talked about this on our walk back from the Cathedral, I felt close to tears the whole time. I don't know how to balance my desire to help others and my current lifestyle in the states. I don't know what to do. I am out of my comfort zone, unfamiliar with the options. What have others done? Who else will understand? I need this to remain a part of me. I don't want to lose it when I vacation with my parents, when I'm in Chile, when I go home to the states. I ned to change my lifestyle. Soon. Now.

But how?

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