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After weeks of struggling emotionally, of feeling exhausted and being unsure how to deal with the things I am seeing, hearing and doing, I came out the other side of the tunnel this week. Well, to be honest, I believe that I have come out into a break in the tunnel to be exact. I am human and the emotional problems of this job are going to persist and will draw my attention for a long time to come. But I am starting to feel more stable treading this path, a little less scared and a lot less often close to tears. A co-worker told me the other day that you get through the tough times by remembering to take care of myself. Unfortunately that has always been my worst skill.
It is hard to see how life can ever go on like normal, when all of the things you see are bad, and when all of the stories you hear are overwhelming. But I accepted that going on like normal was exactly what I was going to have to do. I was starting to feel like I had lost all of my personality, that it had leaked out with my tears. And honestly, I think human rights work does steal a bit of your personality. This week though I took a long, hard look at things and decided that the parts of my personality it stole were the undesirable parts anyway, the very selfish, very western parts. I was able to see that my the most important parts of my personality were still there, those parts that were going to help me feel normal even in the face of the work I do. And the gaps that exist now... well those give me license to pick up any of the great habits and traits I encounter in my travels. I am grateful actually, because this trip is allowing me to pick and chose in a way those parts of me I want to remain when I go home.
And as a good Canadian I have decided that one trait I definitely need to and want to keep is my ability to laugh at myself and the world around me. We have always said that Canadians as a nation are good at few things, but wonderful at comedy. I believe that this comes from our resounding ability to laugh at the situations we are faced. And it has aways been those ridiculous things in life that have made it so fun for me. Those times when something happens or you do something so ridiculous that you have to share it with everyone around you, just to share the joy of laughing at yourself. That is the stuff that I have realized can't be allowed to become irrelevant in my life. Because in the face of the horrifying realities of human rights work something has to be funny, sometime still has to make you laugh, in order to de-stress, in order to let it all go for a few minutes, in order to be human.
I only brought 6 pairs of underwear with me to the Philippines. I guess I thought I would have a lot of time to do laundry during my internship. Unfortunately this has presented a logistical problem since arriving, especially now that I am in the Cordillera and in and out of the mountains at a moments notice. I decided, like any rational person, to buy myself some new underwear. However, this was not really as simple as it sounds. Turns out that I am too big for Filipino panties. I went to the market, I went to the department stores, I went to the expensive department store, and all of the reactions were the same - a raised eyebrow and an uncomfortable look when I asked if they would have anything that would fit me. It is not that I have gotten horribly fat since arriving, or that some Filipinas are not pretty chubby themselves, but my proportions are just too big. I finally found a store that carried panties I thought would fit. The sales girl assured me that they were extra large and very stretchy. I spent a days allowance on three pair and went home feel triumphant. I tried a pair on immediately... I tugged and I tugged when they stopped at my thighs and I teared up in frustration when instead of pulling up the seam tore. Even the fattest Filipina doesn't have thighs as big a me.
I finally gave in and called Mom, laughing and embarrassed and asked her to mail me panties. She called Aunt Edie, on the West coast who sent me a bunch as soon as she heard. And they arrived only days after leaving Canada... only to be trotted across the conference room full of people by the women who picks the mail singing, "open it, open it, I think you got candy." Thank God no one else was interested in sharing my "candy" with me. And our mail lady had a good laugh when she found out she had in fact been delivering my giant underpants.
Last Friday I went out to an all night concert with some friends my own age. It is one of the only times I have gotten to hand out and party with people my own age since I got here, and we drank, and we danced and we had a wonderful time. I went home at 3am with a co-worker and stayed at her house for the night. We woke up around noon, ate lunch and then I taxied home. I was dirty, and I was missing the button off of my pants, which had popped off mid-concert due to me being too fat for the Filipino jeans I was wearing, and I had a big, black henna tattoo on my hand, but I was happy. When I got home I burst through the door triumphantly, declaring to my roommate how wonderful my night was at the concert... only to find her watching tv with her 80 year old mother. Her mother, who had my roommate very late and who speaks no English was visiting for the weekend. I sputtered and backtracked and tried to explain very clearly, gesturing for my roommate to translate, that I stayed with a girl the night before, because it was unsafe to travel home that late alone, and that the tattoo was a fake and would fade in a couple of weeks. But still I felt it was too late, I was sure her mother thought I was a wild, partying girl unfit to live with my roommate. I spent the rest of the day hiding in my room from the old women in my house. And yet, after all of that, it seems somehow, against all odds, that my roommates mother adored me. When I finally came out of my room she feed me bread and coke. And for the rest of the weekend she gave me gentle smiles. How I got off with a pass, I will never know.
On Sunday I was invited to the beach by our new interns host family. We went to a small resort about 2 hours from Baguio, on the South China Sea. I spent almost the whole day reading and lounging in the sun. I was very proud at myself for how often I was remembering to reapply sunscreen and felt pretty hot being the only tall white women strutting around in a bikini. When I got home and stripped down to wash off the grease and sand I was devastated to realize that I had been great about sunscreen every where except right along my bikini lines. So my bathing suite was brightly outlined in a painful red strip... bottoms of my bum and all... and had been for most of the day. I guess that's karma for strutting around in the first place.
I am participating in a play being put on by the CPA cultural group next Saturday. I am playing a UN representative. Since the role essentially requires me to play the political staffer I was last year the costume was really easy to come up with, cute dress and a nice pair of heels. Yesterday was our first practice with props, and so I donned the heels. I go teasing cat calls, was told I walked like angel and, most entertaining, am now about 3 inches taller then even the tall men in the cultural group. One of the girls, a pretty normal size Filipina, only comes up to about the bottom of my rib cage when I am in costume.
These are the things in life that keep me going, keeping me laughing and keep my feeling normal. The stories I accumulate to tell my mother when we talk once a week, because I know they will make her laugh out loud. They are the memories of a bumbling Canadian trying to find her way around a new culture that I think I will most cherish when I am old and done traveling. And they are hopefully the stories that will get me through human rights work.
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Jaker
non-member comment
Your tale of giant underpants forced me to stifle a loud laugh in a dead silent Ottawa office. Cheers, Jaker