No Country for Whose Men

As a 5'8" blue-eyed blonde, I am used to the person next to me on the bus asking me where I'm from.  With old school buses serving as public transportation on what can be treacherous mountain terrain, I am also used to fighting with two other adults and gravity to keep from falling from a seat built for three small children.  However, after squeezing in next to a woman and wiggling back into the seat after a few hard turns, I was shocked to overhear her comment to her daughter in Spanish that my type should go back to our own country.  I was hurt, shocked, angry, indignant, and embarrassed.  I was embarrassed because I realized quite quickly that someone somewhere (likely in the United States) had probably said that same thing to her.

In the words of Gary Jules, "It's a very, very mad world."  Many of us are trying to make homes for ourselves and our families.  Making a life in a foreign country is never an easy decision and sometimes, due to war or persecution, it isn't a decision at all.  Leaving the good behind with the bad and creating something from scratch somewhere else means making sacrifices and learning new customs and expectations.  But, eventually, you begin to identify with that strange place and the people in it.  You begin to make a real home despite the odds.

The most ironic thing about that woman saying that thing at that moment is that I AM leaving.  After three years of working and living along side Guatemalans, after three years of occasionally deeply wishing I were back home with my family in "my country," I am actually going.  And, when all is said and done, I have learned and adopted so many things in Guatemala that I don't know if my country is the one I'm returning to or the one I am leaving.

In three years in Guatemala I have learned patience, humility, the importance of manners and details, simplicity, optimism, and community.  In essence, I have learned many of the things that most people would summarize as happiness or contentment.  I can't think of a better definition of home than the place where you learned what happiness is.  I have also seen poverty in Guatemala, and I will never idealize it.  There is much to be said for being able to fulfill your basic needs. But, for those of us who are neither poor nor rich, it is all about discovering the ways in which we are wealthy.  Guatemala has made me very wealthy indeed.

I realized, for these many reasons, that my pursuit of the goals laid out by Kennedy for the Peace Corps will not end with my service.  My understanding of serving men and women of other cultures will only deepen upon my return to the States, where men and women from around the world will teach me about their experience in a new country of their own.