"Forgive me Father, but have I sinned?"

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A confession for your reading pleasure:


I love Iquitos.
I love the people I work with.
But sometimes (like today) it’s just really friggin’ hard.

Before I came I really thought I anticipated every possible challenge I would face for the next five months, and, thus, be able to better approach these challenges ….but looking back, that was a pretty arrogant thing to assume.

I knew communication would be hard. So, I made plans of speaking through my personality and with physical language, and, of course, accompanied by daily studying.
I’m doing all of this, but sometimes it’s still hard as hell - sometimes it just really sucks being the one in a room that everyone is laughing at, or being the one everyone avoids talking too because they’re slightly nervous to talk to me in my broken Spanish.
(And, yeah, that’s right, this IS an ego thing, but everyone has one, and I’m learning the limits of mine right now.)

And I also thought I could instantly adjust to the higher level of poverty in my new city - looking back, (I think) I assumed I could think along the lines of an objective-old-school-anthropological attitude: “working children are a normal part of their culture”; “women, with their small children, begging in the streets are obviously a result of systemic economic interactions and cultural gendered attitudes”.
But sometimes (like today) that shit makes me cry.

I have no shame in crying, but a part of me thinks, “If I cry, am I seeing these people as victims?”, another part: “are they victims?”, another part: “are these just typical thoughts of a whitie working in international development?”
(A teaspoon of self-doubt, anyone?)
Shit.

And in coming here too, I was SO looking forward to a workplace challenge - “Time to put that arts degree and volunteering experience to WORK!”. But right now I’m a big ball of piss and vinegar about that too.
I’m trying to design a survey and research project on the group to measure and evaluate the work KALLPA has done in El Povenir - but I don’t know if I’m doing it right, not really sure where to really look for answers, revisiting the frustration of reading academic journals about research (ACCESSIBLE language, please!), and thinking maybe I could be doing something more for this project I have come to really care about…


I guess it didn’t help either that I was woken up at 6:30 this morning by blasting music on my street (which turned out to be protest songs).
(Cool, yes, but an obtrusive rise nonetheless).


So this is hard.
I love it.
I appreciate it everyday.
But sometimes very hard.

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Photos

reflecting
a thoughtful afternoon, wandering the city, and taking pictures of 18th century rubber-baron homes reflecting in house tiles