The Cost

Part 1:
My friend Erika is one of the most amazing people I know. Her four kids are full of energy, enthusiasm, and snark. She manages them with so much calm, so much cariño. She works ungodly hours to be able to provide for them. She can scrape together the most delicious meals on a very tight budget--a little of this, a little of that. She speaks with me honestly about the violence in her neighborhood, and I feel trusted and respected and at home, but I have trouble believing in her fear; she seems fearless. She is a five-foot-two Amazon. She worries that I will have to spend important holidays alone, and tells me she's not sure what they'll be able to eat that day, but if I'm lonely I should come over and at the very least we'll dance until we collapse with exhaustion. She always remembers that I'm allergic to hot dogs, and that I don't like soda. She makes my favorite sweetened pumpkin dessert when she knows I'm coming for lunch.
When they first arrived in la estación, their house was made of cardboard and scrap tin and billboard plastic. She and her husband put up concrete blocks one wall at a time. He made all of their furniture by hand. They have just one room, one bed, for all six of them, and their four kids are growing like weeds.

Part 2:
I never understood floods--maybe because I've never seen it. I remember conversations my parents had about flood planes and homeowners insurance when we moved to South Carolina, and feeling baffled. I remember a vague terror over hearing about floods on the news, but it was a terror I reflected from my parents--it was not mine. "It was just water," I once said to my father. "What's the big deal?" The whole worry seemed silly and over-blown and far-away.

Part 3:
Erika's house sits at the bottom of the only hill in la estación. They tell me they've always had a little trouble when the rainy season hits, but that most of the water has been able to flow into the barranca, or ravine, without much drama. This year, people started throwing their trash behind their house because the other dump sites have gotten too full.
Last week, their house filled up with a meter of water, which churned around and around in their living room/kitchen/bedroom for a while before the rain died down and it was able to drain out. When the water left, it took with it almost a foot of the packed dirt that had formed their floor, the kids' school uniforms and good shoes, their school books. It ruined their simple but beautiful wood furniture, their stove, their mattress. It was just water.

This is the cost of being poor. Because land titles aren't being recognized in this community, the government refuses to help the community figure out appropriate solutions for waste management or drainage (despite all the promises during campaign season). My friends can't afford better land. They can't afford to build their house in such a way that it won't flood. They can't afford to protect their few belongings, and they can't afford, now, to replace them all. It was just water.

When I stopped by unannounced on Tuesday, Erika was at work. Her husband was mixing sandy concrete to try to put down a new floor. A few muddy books were hanging on the clothes line. Some of the kids' toys were sticking haphazardly out of a pile of dirt that had been shoveled off into the corner to clear the floor. The kids hugged me fiercely, brought me a chair, offered me the last dregs of a two-liter Coke. They dragged their puppies out from the corners in which they were hiding to show me how big they've grown. Their father mixed concrete. I had nothing to say. Nothing to offer. It was just water.

10 Suggestions for Helping your YAGM Return Home

10 Suggestions for Helping your Young Adult in Global Mission (YAGM) Return Home
by Andrea Roske-Metcalfe

1. Don’t ask the question, “So how was it?” Your YAGM cannot function in one-word answers right now, especially ones intended to sum up their entire year’s experience, and being asked to do so may cause them to start laughing or crying uncontrollably. Ask more specific questions, like “Who was your closest friend?” or “What did you do in your free time?” or “What was the food like?” or “Tell me about your typical day.”

2. If you wish to spend time with your YAGM, let them take the lead on where to go and what to do. Recognize that seemingly mundane rituals, like grocery shopping or going to the movies, may be extremely difficult for someone who has just spent a year living without a wide array of material goods. One former YAGM, for example, faced with the daunting task of choosing a tube of toothpaste from the 70-odd kinds available, simply threw up in the middle of the drugstore.

3. Expect some feelings of jealousy and resentment, especially if your YAGM lived with a host family. Relationships that form during periods of uncertainty and vulnerability (the first few months in a foreign country, for example) form quickly and deeply. The fact that your YAGM talks non-stop about their friends and family from their country of service doesn’t mean that they don’t love you, too. It simply means that they’re mourning the loss (at least in part) of the deep, meaningful, important relationships that helped them to survive and to thrive during this last year. In this regard, treat them as you would anyone else mourning a loss.

4. You may be horrified by the way your YAGM dresses; both because their clothes are old and raggedy and because they insist on wearing the same outfit three days in a row. Upon encountering their closet at home, returning YAGMs tend to experience two different emotions: (1) jubilation at the fact that they can stop rotating the same 2 pairs of jeans and 4 shirts, and (2) dismay at the amount of clothing they own, and yet clearly lived without for an entire year. Some YAGMs may deal with this by giving away entire car loads of clothing and other items to people in need. Do not “save them from themselves” by offering to drive the items to the donation center, only to hide them away in your garage. Let your YAGM do what they need to do. Once they realize, after the fact, that you do indeed need more than 2 pairs of jeans and 4 shirts to function in professional American society, offer to take them shopping. Start with the Goodwill and the Salvation Army; your YAGM may never be able to handle Macys again.

5. Asking to see photos of your YAGM’s year in service is highly recommended, providing you have an entire day off from work. Multiply the number of photos you take during a week’s vacation, multiply that by 52, and you understand the predicament. If you have an entire day, fine. If not, take a cue from number 1 above, and ask to see specific things, like photos of your YAGM’s host family, or photos from holiday celebrations. Better yet, set up a number of “photo dates,” and delve into a different section each time. Given the high percentage of people whose eyes glaze over after the first page of someone else’s photos, and the frustration that can cause for someone bursting with stories to tell, this would be an incredible gift.

6. At least half the things that come out of your YAGM’s mouth for the first few months will begin with, “In Mexico/Slovakia/South Africa/etc…” This will undoubtedly begin to annoy the crap out of you after the first few weeks. Actually saying so, however, will prove far less effective than listening and asking interested questions. Besides, you can bet that someone else will let slip exactly what you’re thinking, letting you off the hook.

7. That said, speak up when you need to! Returning YAGMs commonly assume that almost nothing has changed in your lives since they left. (This happens, in part, because you let them, figuring that their experiences are so much more exciting than yours, and therefore not sharing your own.) Be assertive enough to create the space to share what has happened in your life during the last year.

8. Recognize that living in a very simple environment with very few material belongings changes people. Don’t take it personally if your YAGM seems horrified by certain aspects of the way you live – that you shower every day, for example, or that you buy a new radio instead of duct-taping the broken one back together. Recognize that there probably are certain things you could or should change (you don’t really need to leave the water running while you brush your teeth, do you?), but also that adjusting to what may now feel incredibly extravagant will simply take awhile. Most YAGMs make permanent changes toward a simpler lifestyle. Recognize this as a good thing.

9. Perhaps you had hopes, dreams, and aspirations for your YAGM that were interrupted by their year of service. If so, you may as well throw them out the window. A large percentage of returning YAGMs make significant changes to their long-term goals and plans. Some of them have spent a year doing something they never thought they’d enjoy, only to find themselves drawn to it as a career. Others have spent a year doing exactly what they envisioned doing for the rest of their lives, only to find that they hate it. Regardless of the direction your YAGM takes when they return…rejoice! This year hasn’t changed who they are; it has simply made them better at discerning God’s call on their lives. (Note: Some YAGMs spend their year of service teaching English, some are involved in human rights advocacy, others work with the elderly or disabled, and at least one spent his year teaching British youth to shoot with bows and arrows. The results of this phenomenon, therefore, can vary widely.)

10. Go easy on yourself, and go easy on your YAGM. Understand that reverse culture shock is not an exact science, and manifests itself differently in each person. Expect good days and bad days. Don’t be afraid to ask for help if necessary. Pray. Laugh. Cry. This too shall pass, and in the end, you’ll both be the richer for it.

Identity

Maybe part of the problem is that I've sort of been forgetting that I'm not a poor Mexican. I joked at the start of this year that I've changed my name so many times because I'm still trying to figure out who I am, and trying on a new name helps me feel like I can start over. "I wonder who Carolina will be," I mused. That was back when I thought people might use my full name (chosen, in part, by a liguistic goof-up), before I was called Caro to my unending confusion, and before I started waging the still-undecided battle for Lina.
Whatever you call her, it's not an easy answer. In some ways, Carolina is a girl whose friends live in the "worst" parts of Cuernavaca, whose mamá makes her hot chocolate and tamales when she's sad, who walks to work to save the five pesos and fifty cents it costs to take the bus, who listens to Jarabe de Palo and Reik.
But she's also just one part of Miriam Kathleen, a young woman who has a college degree and reads for pleasure, who speaks three languages, who has had frequent opportunities for international travel, and who can get a couple thousand pesos out of the ATM whenever she feels like it. The same person who was once Katie and then Miriam and then Kat and sometimes Katja. I forget that although people frequently compliment how well I speak Spanish, I still have a foreign accent and limited vocabulary. I forget that although Licha calls me m'hija ("my daughter"), I'm still blond and a foot taller than the rest of my family.
It's easier yet to forget that all of those are me, that I don't get to suddenly become someone else because my name has changed and I operate in a new language. That I don't get to stop being privileged because I have chosen one year of simple living and accompaniment with the poor.

But I wonder, is this not true for all of us? Who is you're forgetting that you are?

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