Sleepless Night

So, once again, it’s been far too long since my last blog post. And, I don’t really have anything prepared, so I’ve decided to pull one of my recent journal entries…a somehow censored journal entry, of course. Anyway, here it is:
Listening to my I-pod sends me into a sensory overloaded walk down memory lane. Music always does that to me. Even more so in Ghana. I get glimpses of what sometimes feels like a former life-- sitting in a coffee shop, watching a movie or football game, sitting at the dinner table with friends, sipping wine after a good meal. I want so badly for that life to feel like this life.-- simply a continuation in a different location. I don’t want to feel disjointed. I want the transition to be seamless. That seems like the appropriate way-- the politically correct way. People are people anywhere you are, right? So, why should the discrepancies in my lifestyle seem so jarring some days? Why can’t I imagine living in the U.S. anymore? Why does my home seem unfamiliar-- unknown? Why is that realization horrifying to me? What have I done in coming here? What have I done to myself and to those I live with?
Some days, when students or friends I’ve lived and worked with for a year now ask me for money, food, t-shirts, whatever I happen to be holding in my hand at any given moment, I wonder if I’ve done more harm in being here than good. I wonder if I’ve set people up for failure just by my very presence. As if I’ve led people to believe that all that is good comes from outside, and that they’ll never make it without aid from elsewhere. That I’m here to give something to them that they would be incapable of achieving on their own.
The thing that keeps me here is the prospect of reaching some different realization at the end of the two years-- that there must be some reason I signed on for that long. I don’t like to back out on my commitments. That and the realization that whether I stay or go really makes no difference in this regard. The damage and/or good has alredy been done. It began when Peace Corps began. The ramifications, whatever they may be, have already begun to unfold, and they’re permanent and far bigger than me and anything I may do or say. Of course, there’s always acting out of principle--but, well, I guess I’m still trying to figure out just what that principle is, and I fear making a snap judgment. Acting out of principle has become far more moot to me since moving here. I remember the exhilaration I used to get in college when I could feel myself really wrapping my mind around a theory or character-- like I was really grasping some fundamental principle of life that would change the way I lived and my small sphere of influence in the world. But, here, the world and all of it’s principles and theories span beyond even the peripheral vision of my mind. It’s so grandiose that I can spend long afternoons and sleepless nights just gawking at the prospects of it without ever making any headway on my own opinions or principles. The options and potential outcomes are infinite. I guess people always say that, but now I really know why, because that’s all the reason and principle I can concoct. At least at this moment. Maybe at the end of next year I’ll feel differently, but it seems unlikely.
More than daunting, it’s scary. I see some many errors and irreconcilable problems in development and international relations, and I don’t know if I’m suppoed to find a solution or simply admit the inevitability of it all and find a way to live and work within that. That sounds dismal, and I don’t mean it too. But, I guess, it is a bit sobering-- I think it has to be. Some things are just like that, and we’re kidding ourselves if we think there are any simple solutions for such a complicated global climate in which we find ourselves. And I think we also kid ourselves if we believe we should just try to save whoever we can save. Send to school whoever we can send. Buy a bicycle or a house or a library for whoever we can-- helping one is better than helping none. I don’t think I believe that anymore. It seems that helping one merely fosters co-dependence-- not only in regard to that one person, but to everyone else who sees that one “being helped” and decides to wait for their help to arrive. Maybe that one you send to school or feed will becomes Ghana’s next president. But do we just say that so we can sleep at night knowing we’ve “done something?” I’ve fed someone, I’ve clothed someone, and I’m not sleeping because it doesn’t feel right. It’s not enough. It’s not even an attempt, but simply a flippant gesture in false acknowledgement of a fundamental problem. A band-aid over an un-clotted flesh wound that’s turning into a staf infection, which so many Peace Corps volunteers have come to know and, of which, are now able to identify the initial symptoms. And for what? To write about it in our journals, and when we’re old we’ll tell our children and grandchildren about it, and we’ll sleep well knowing we’ve truly “lived” and “played our part.” It’s not that simple-- not that small.
But, you know, I can say all of this, and I still don’t know any more than the next person what to do about it. How exactly do you change an institution that has now engrained itself into a global demeanor and manner of living? Please, I would love even conjecture…I need more than my own…
Sometimes I wonder how I’ll incapsulate this entire experience in my mind at the end of next year-- A time when I ate more starch than I previously though consumable in one’s lifetime, and they called me Pigri. That’s all I’ve got so far…
I love living here, but I think maybe it’s selfish when the implications of my being here are far heavier that just having a good time or easing my conscience…