Requiem to My Misperception

Epilogue

After closing the computer last time, I sat on my sofa and took a deep breath, trying to digest all that I’d realized.

Then, I looked to my right at the basket of books next to the couch. The one on top, with its bright orange and red cover, caught my eye and almost in search of an answer to the questions I’d just posed, I picked it up and read the back cover.

It “describes how our attachment to the ego creates…unhappiness.” The book is called A New Earth by Eckart Tolle, which Chad brought during his visit. I opened it and began to read.

Just like that, I moved on. How quickly after seeing the truth revealed, can I no longer recall the falsity I perceived minutes before. It seems as though I’d always known the world was this way and since then I’ve just carried on. I’m making it sound smaller than it felt at the time, but now, it really is that small. Right?

I’ve said so much about those bad days but I want to mention some of the equally good ones I was having…

I learned how to build with bamboo and for a tenth of the cost, I was able to purchase enough bamboo to make the two remaining doors for the bakery. I began cleaning out the library and reorganizing all of it and now people are beginning to hear about it. Last week, I got a nearby school involved and they are coming on Friday to help me! I was able to distribute more than 600 moringa seeds and I planted 135 trees and the word is getting out about how nutritious it is. I’ve met about 11 other female volunteers from France, Holland, Japan and Canada, all who feel exactly the same way I do about being here and about development work and I am again reminded that I’m not so unique. What a concept.

Today, I’m traveling to Wa to paint an HIV Mural with the students from the school for the deaf. I’m really looking forward to it.

One thing that sobriety has taught me is that no matter what I must suit up and show up, even if my ass falls off. So I’ve just continued getting up everyday and doing what there is to do and, of course, it all keeps changing.

Mural

Here is a picture of the mural, painted and designed by deaf students in Wa under our supervision. This was the first time that they’ve received any HIV education in the Upper West. Before now, the hearing impaired weren’t included in the lessons for prevention. A few months ago, we taught a few classes using sign language and now, they are able to teach the classes to younger students. Then we had a design competition and in the end, we combined a few designs to create the one we painted on the wall of the school.

The students had to go to lunch, so we snapped this picture at the last minute without them. Next week, we’ll present each student with a certificate of thanks and have a little party, I’ll post those pictures when I have them.

It was a completely beautiful experience.

The Big Ugly Truth

The past two weeks have been filled with ups and downs, to preface the following accounts, I’m ok, I’m not ready to leave Ghana nor am I depressed, I have however, had some really good and some really bad days. I decided not to edit my writings and just to leave it all here, a true account of the day to day emotions inherent in being in this place…

June 23… High speed

Everything I’ve been wanting to do has taken shape since returning from Lisbon: Planting moringa for the People Living with HIV, re-organizing the library, working on the teenage mother’s play about teen pregnancy, and even the bakery… somehow.

There are a few students from New York that are here working for a 7 weeks. Two are architecture students and I’ve been able to help them and learn from them and even work with them. Its been fun and my days have been so long and physically draining, but I really love the feeling. The picture above is from the moringa seedlings I planted.

June 26…So tired

I feel like a movie that’s running one frame off, so the audio is not quite matching up with the actor’s lips and everything is said a few seconds too late.

Yes, that’s definitely how I feel right now. It’s a painful realization, honestly.

While in college, when I was supposed to be glued to my desk, hovering over drawings and models and designing until my fingers fell off or I passed out from exhaustion, I worked part time jobs and wanted to be social, out and about with my friends. Just after graduation, I began riding a bike, and staying in more, reading good books and really learning. I discovered all of these practices that would have been so beneficial to me during college, that I never even considered until it was over. (Especially the bike riding, considering all of those parking tickets and countless wasted minutes driving around and waiting in line, looking for a place to park.)

Now, I’ve come here and in my spare time all I want to do is sit inside my house and draw, read, paint, write, create, but I’m supposed to be out, sitting with people, socializing, integrating. I have nothing holding me back, its just that I simply desire something else now. I’m frustrated. And tired. So tired.


July 3… (Written while waiting for the carpenter)

The Grass is Always Greener

The grass is always greener on the other side, of course it is, because from far away, you can’t see the flaws, the dead, yellowing patches. The brown spots. From far away, I could resemble a model, a petite-not-made-for-the-runway-probably-going-to-end-up-in-a-catalog model, but a model all the same and why is this? Because from the other side, you’re not seeing the grass at all, you’re seeing an impressionistic view of grass. A pixilated and multi-colored image appearing green only when you’re on the other side.

I find myself in a relationship that is less than perfect. I suppose every relationship is less than perfect, however, I’m only now just seeing its flaws. I’ve glimpsed a new prospect and now the grass I’m standing on seems so boring and miserable and the new grass seems so promising and full of life, glistening, fresh and healthy with eyes a glow. So, I lie awake, my mind dreaming of the new one while my body lies stuck in the old and of course, as it always goes in stories such as this, to change would, at least in my mind, bring about all the abundant happiness I could hope for. Filled with easy living and unending smiles. Picture a girl frolicking in a field of daisies, sunlight filtering through her hair, dress billowing around her legs as she runs, arms splayed out, embracing the wind, sweet music humming all around…

Suddenly, the record screeches to a stop. I wake to find myself in the same place I lied down in with all the real world problems, my body still here and my mind fixed on new sites.

The relationship is Peace Corps Ghana; the new prospec is going home and beginning a new adventure. I’ve done it before, during college, when I fantasized about the time when I’d no longer be tied to this ball and chain educational establishment and I could just work for a living, instead of doing both and of course, the money I’d have. I did it while in a sales job after college, when I imagined traveling to foreign lands and helping all the starving children I’d heard so much about (ha ha), with the Peace Corps. I’d practically abandoned my life in America months before arriving here.

Every time, the prospect I long for, or wish to experience, is a fantasy cooked up from somewhere in my imagination with only bits of truth sprinkled into the mixture. Because I decided that I want the new prospect more than the current, I make the current one look mean and ugly and full of flaws. I begin to see only the flaws and not the beauty. I conveniently tear the old one down and dress the new up so that any guilt that may surface about breaking commitments and selling out can quickly be rationalized by my mental list of pro and con, which of course, has been rigged by my sub-conscience for the new prospect to win. I say sub-conscience because it is there that the lie to ourselves must begin, if we are to believe it.

How often have I sat across form a girlfriend as she tells me how useless and horrible her current boyfriend is only seconds after mentioning the cute new intern at work. The entire time, the friend is clueless and I sit listening like the patron in the café window, about to witness a car wreck, all one can do is stair blankly at the scene because the disaster, while being so obvious, is way too huge to stop.

Realizing this obvious-to-some-but-not-to-others-like-me truth has been pretty deflating. My once full sails now hang lifeless and wrinkled. If this is the truth, and my experience shows it is, then my new prospect is no more wonderful than my current one and I have a commitment problem. So, I’ve committed to dropping the fantasies of any other adventure and focus on participating in this one just one tiny day at a time. That means, all of my escape mechanisms have to be thrown out. Where I usually sit for long periods staring into space, my mind playing out some other story that I’m the star of, I’m now trying to snap out of it, find something to get excited about here and now, within the week at least, and then go and do something in real time.


The Break

My friend, Gray, and I often discuss our experiences with what we’ve named “The Break”.

The Break occurs when someone has been living in conditions far more stressful than one person can endure. Sometimes, The Break can happen early in life, when a person only knows only hard knocks and thus is limbered up early on, seeming ever-so-resilient, even elastic. Other times, the break occurs much later, after a traumatic event such as a terminal diagnosis or loss of a spouse. Often, though, it is somewhere in the middle, when everyday life drones on so painfully, the pressure piling ever so slightly day after day until the person snaps, or Breaks.

More importantly than the varying ages people encounter this life changing experience are the similar thoughts and emotions often present. It comes at once, as though a cane snaps down over your brow, waking you from some sort of numb sedation and suddenly you realize this can’t be what life is about and if this is what life is about then you’d rather not participate any longer. Now, this statement may sound terrible when spoken to those close to the person experiencing the Break and first impressions often cause alarm, fear of suicide or even a trip to the local mental ward, all reactions by those still living pre-Break, which often cause confusion. Hospital or no hospital, either way, what lies on the other side of the Break is freedom. Because the person has decided that he no longer cares to participate in life in the same manner as before, all bets are off. Previous worry and anxiety is abandoned. Freedom takes on new meaning. Lightness of step and abandonment of constraint take over. All desires, which until now had gone unacknowledged, now become the only importance. Society’s once sought after opinion now seems trite, idiotic, and inferior to the real goal, true happiness and pleasing the heart.

An attitude of indifference appears in the shape of walking out on a miserable career or a failing marriage, buying a sports car or a boat, or maybe a drastic haircut, followed always by the image of a happy, healthy glow, full of contentment, a look worn only by those knowing true freedom.

What happens? A person goes on living in this new freedom for as long as it lasts, weeks, months, years and then one day, if you’re lucky, you get another break, you continue to grow, evolve, be human.

Later that day, after meeting the carpenter…

If I were an animal today, I’d be a snapping turtle. Hidden in my own little world, snapping at those disturbing my solitude.

July 4… Hmmm, those sneaky words, so that’s synchrodestiny

Somehow, the thoughts I wrote down yesterday while waiting for the carpenter have found their way into the book I’m reading today. I shouldn’t be as surprised as I am because I just read a book about synchrodestiny and this morning I did say a quick prayer asking that I remain aware of the small often unnoticed coincidences that occur in my life, but the truth is, I’m stunned and amazed and all the way over in Africa, sitting in this yellow cocoon with no way to share this other than by text message and so once again, I stare at the ceiling in awe and pick up my black notebook and write these exact words, to release my dis-belief and give it the acknowledgement it deserves.

To quote from the book I'm reading, The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, who’s paraphrasing from Tom Laughlin’s talk to cancer patients…

“What happens in that instant when we learn we may soon die, Tom Laughlin contends, is that the seat of our consciousness shifts.
It moves from the Ego to the Self.
The world is entirely new, viewed from the Self. At once we discern what’s really important. Superficial concerns fall away, replaced by a deeper, more profoundly grounded perspective.
This is how Tom Laughlin’s foundation battle cancer. He counsels his clients not just to make that shift mentally but to live it out in their lives. He supports the housewife in resuming her career in social work, urges the businessman to return to the violin, assists the Vietnam vet to write his novel.
Miraculously, cancers go into remission. People recover. Is it possible, Tom Laughlin asks, that the disease itself evolved as a consequence of actions taken (or not taken) in our lives? Could our unlived lives have exacted their vengeance upon us in the form of cancer? And if they did, can we cure ourselves, now, by living these lives out?"

July 7… Fuming at 9 am

Today I am so angry I don’t know what to do with myself. It’s the type of anger that makes you want to flail your arms around and stomp your feet and scream, allowing it all to flow out of you but instead, I just got on my bike and rode to the site where I need to work. Then my dress got caught in the tire of my bike exacerbating my anger and so I got off and walked. I’ve calmed down now.

All is can say is that I am completely powerless over people and how they treat each other and whether or not they choose to be honest or manipulative or kind and considerate. I guess when you live in a place where no one has what they consider to be “enough”, then everyman is out to gain only for himself. Wait, I shouldn’t say that, just yesterday, I watched Francis, at the tea stand, give food and coins to a hungry man who came over and sat down on the bench. I’ve watched him give small pieces of bread and coins away countless times. My friend, Sandra, brings me food when she can barely feed herself. So, I know that kindness exists here and I’m constantly witness to beauty in this world, I guess this week I’ve just been hit in the face with a big pie of manipulation and dishonesty and I want to punch something.
We’ve created a monster. By we, I mean development workers, religious organizations, and all other enablers that show up on their white horses to swoop into “poor” countries hoping to save the day. How could I have been so self-righteous, so egotistical to come here? Its almost impossible to make friends because even the ones who do care for you, are still hoping for a hand out, how can they not, they watch TV, they see what they don’t have and what they think you do have it all. So much of this country is dependant on the money we place here and we’re not helping anyone. We’re enabling them to sit around and drink all day long and not do anything for themselves except beg the white man for money. I do not speak for the entire community/ country, of course there are the heart warming stories of the guy who walked to school from the village everyday as an adult, being teased by his family, wearing a uniform and sitting in primary school as a full grown man because all he wanted to do was learn to read and write and in the end, completed University, and now does grassroots work for the Upper West, a true story that my co-worker Richard lived. But, these are few and far between and don’t always compare to the pain I see others inflict on their fellow man out of fear or greed or some other drive I can’t seem to pinpoint.
WHAT ARE WE DOING HERE? I’m so confused. I want to weep but I’m so angry, the tears won’t come right now. Man, this is a rude awakening. AAAuUUUDIAGFadsfnawofihweofanfoawfehi!!!!!!
Last week, I argued with a carpenter who over-charged the women in the bakery group three times. He gave us a price for the doors and windows and then he upped it once, then he upped it again, this time to accommodate for the hardware, then months later, when we still had no doors and windows, he told them they had to pay even more for installation. This no good bastard, pretended not to understand English each and every time I’ve ever spoken to him and I stupidly viewed him as a nice humble carpenter riding around on his old beat up bicycle. Well, last week, he showed up to put the doors in, after receiving the final collection of money, which these poor women took from their nearly empty pockets and put into the pot to pay him, and he spoke English to me!!! I lost it. I yelled at him, asking why it is that I care more about his community and these women than he does? Why is it that we’re busting our asses to build a bakery for this damn community that comes along and sees a white lady and ups the price? (Which just proves that our presence only brings about greed, and it wasn’t meant to be that way but we designed this monster and after 47 years, its begging instincts are honed and his survival ones have nearly all been forgotten.) And then, the carpenter just laughs, of course, because everyone yells here so much, it has no effect. I start to take deep breaths because I’m fuming and then I look up to see him getting on a brand new motorcycle! I wanted to strangle him, I asked him how he paid for it and gave him a death stare, but then I jumped slumped down on the ledge and sat, feeling weighted with sadness, I thought I was escaping that type of treatment but now I see that it happens everywhere, how was I so naïve?
Yesterday, while I was visiting the Sunday market, greeting the local women and enjoying the wonderful breeze that lasted all day after the storm that blew through the night before, this man walks up behind me and says, White lady, why don’t you give me 2000. I turned around and looked up at him and said in the loudest voice I could muster, I should just slap you! Then I walked away, but I really wanted to slap him, so bad I can only describe it as the way your mouth salivates at the smell of food when you haven’t eaten all day. So I turned and looked up at him again and raised my arm up and said, No really, I should slap you, why would you ask me that? He said, No, no, sorry, sorry. I put my arm down, felt deflated, turned and slowly walked away. I hate this feeling. I don’t want to hurt anyone, I understand, if I was in his shoes, I’d probably ask the same thing. I just don’t know how to proceed. I’m lost. And I’m lost in a place where I was already lost. Everything is not what you think it is, even my own body is not normal here, I get sick easier, gain weight easier, get tired easier, sweat profusely, and last week, I crapped in my pants, probably due to some bad water or a thousand other things that can cause this minor malfunction.
I can’t say I wasn’t warned, that’s just it, I was warned so many times, that I’ve been so guarded against everyone, that I’ve made a lonely little world for myself. Its so messed up and I’m so tired and pissed and I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to complain to peace corps admin because it’s a tactic similar to shooting yourself in the foot while your deep in the woods and still need to walk 12 miles to the main road. Admin likes to hear that things are going well. When they hear otherwise, you begin to be viewed as a lame horse, only slowing down progress and we all know what happens to a lame horse. So, preventing that, I am venting this onto paper. I am sitting and waiting until I can speak with a peer or someone I trust and get a clearer perspective on the situation. There is a kink in the chain today and its causing everything to run haywire. I feel it. Its making me tired. Its my own confusion and misunderstanding. Its my own illusions about things shattering to bits and my own little feet walking over the broken shards in order to leave the room.
I know why its called “development work” because it causes the people who sign up to develop whether they like it or not. My soul really does have stretch marks.

Later that same day, after the flood gates broke and I sat sobbing trying to type what I was feeling so that I could let some of it out, its pretty much just rambling but I was in a lot of pain…

I don’t understand how I got to this place. it seems as though I have turned bitter. I weep today for the innocent eyes I once saw people and the world through. Now, it seems as though I only see the negative parts. The angry, selfish, ego driven. Is this what I am run on? It makes me so sad to think that I am seeing a reflection of myself in all of these people and that what I am seeing is so ugly. I don’t understand how so much beauty could exist in the world and all I can see around me is the un-beautiful. Is this what lies inside of me? where did the love and care and true concern for others go? Where did I lose it along the way? How have I become so self-absorbed that I feel complete sadness through and through my entire being? I don’t feel as though an ounce of love or compassion could be squeezed from me. and I can blame no one except myself. It was my grand scheme of helping others that has placed me in this horrible place. my self righteous attempt to escape the misery that I watched others living day in and day out, thinking somehow that I had an answer that out witted the one they were using, but I seem to be the dumbest of them all, the idiot that didn’t know she was an idiot.
The hardest part of this part, the painful part, is that no one can take this away and crumple it up and throw it in the waste basket. No one can come along and hug me or wipe my tears and make it all better. This is the type of thing that you have to walk alone for some reason. No one can tell me which path I’m supposed to take and I’m so confused and alone in the dark, just sitting, waiting for the dawn that I know will come eventually. It doesn’t make the dark any less scary or its depth any more shallow. I’m here, sitting in my yellow cocoon typing this, hoping that the laptop doesn’t go off because I procrastinated on paying the electric bill and now they shut it off and I can’t get it back on for two days. Now I just sound like a pitiful piece of shit, but the truth is I’m just lost.

Oh Divine Soul that lives inside of me, please, I beg you to find me. be bigger than me. tell me what I am to do? Is this as good as it gets? Is this why I came here? just please help me today.

Where have I been selfish, self-seeking, dishonest and afraid?

I came to Ghana because I thought that I’d escape some sort of trap in America that everyone falls into. I thought this was my ticket out of that. I also wanted to push myself past what I thought I could handle, past all of the comforts I was used to. I even judged myself for wanting comfort and material possessions.

I thought it was better to choose this life over the one I was leading. I imagined I was following in the footsteps of the great people that had already given up everything and walked away to help others.

I also wanted to escape from the pressures of always having to look a certain way. Always having to be a certain person, I wanted to go away and find more of who I am.

My motives for wanting to do the cultural center were selfish because I thought people back home would really honor and value that, rather than if I just taught people how to wash their hands with soap.

I’m afraid of so many things here, especially what I think people are trying to get from me. I don’t even want Ghanaians coming into my house because I’m scared they will rob me. I never even locked my door in America, why and where did this come from? I want to have an open heart, but it seems so so closed off.

I’m even afraid of the peace corps and what they think of me. I’m always afraid of what people think. Why am I like this? I’m so miserable like this. I wish I didn’t care at all. I want to be free from it somehow. Just neutral, not for or against, just neutral. I saw how my friends are able to eat and drink and smoke in moderation when we were in Lisbon and I felt retarded somehow. Like I was born without the ability to stop. So I just have to deprive myself of these things. Then when I think about it sometimes, I feel lucky, because I’m forced to just go without, relying only on whatever is inside of me for strength and guidance and fulfillment because in the end, those things never really got me to the point I was looking for anyway.

I think that somewhere along the way, my ego took over and began calling the shots and I need it to go away. To be smashed. Into little pieces. For a long long time. I really miss AA and the 12 steps. These are the steps, right here, step 10. in real time.

I don’t want to leave here today. I don’t know why except that when I leave here, I don’t really know what I’d do next. So I want to stick it out longer I just don’t know exactly what I’m supposed to be doing.

Work in library
Plant moringa
Make doors
Relax
Work on the play
Relax
Breath
Sit
Be still
Know that I am God
I love you
Thank you
Amen

(so, I wrote this and then cried a little longer, then somehow, it all just got better. I was drained and empty and quiet and still. I talked with one of the student volunteers and she was so helpful and I just helped her all night to finish weaving her bamboo windows and everything just felt better… this too shall pass, I suppose)