It was about June of last year, and a strange time for me as a PCV. I had been at my site for a year, and the question of ?Am I actually accomplishing anything by being here??---nagged me.
REMEMBERING THE REASON
by Dila Perera.
It was about June of last year, and a strange time for me as a PCV. I had been at my site for a year, and the question of ?Am I actually accomplishing anything by being here??---nagged me. I found myself more and more preoccupied by the idea of wondering it I could possibly be getting as much as I was given by this experience. And with that came guilt, and uncertainty, the joy of discovering that you have become a part of a place, and the frustration of wondering of you could return half that joy to other people. It was around this time that I was invited by some Malagasy friends to go celebrate Pentecost with them in this tiny church way out in another village outside my own village.
I actually remember jumping at the chance, as I always do, to hear Malagasy people sing. And so I went to this very small, whitewashed clay church, with the winter wind whipping through, rattling the shutters, and making people wrap their lambas tighter around their shoulders, while readjusting the straw hats on their heads. I guess you could say that I didn?t go to that church that day to pray, but rather to remind my self the meaning of it all, to find the answer to the question I posed to my self: hod do I give some of this, any of this, back?
My friends had warned me that the service would be long. But, hey, I thought, I was an involuntary Catholic schoolgirl till age sixteen; a veteran of long-winded priests spouting things I vehemently disagreed with. But after the fourth of the six hours that I sat in that little church, my blood sugar level was falling, and I started muttering ?Andriamanitra,? ?Mon Dieu,? or ?Oh God? quite frequently, and definitely with a different connotation that the church goers around me. I was given a place of honor near the front of the congregation, partly out of respect, partly because it was prime angle for vazaha viewing, so I had to be careful about the expressions that passed over my face. Finally, I started to put my hands deep into my pockets. I tucked my chin into my neck and zipped my fleece over it and over my nose. My hair covered my face on either side, and everything essentially gave me the effect of looking either lost in prayer or lost in sleep. But I think all my ?Andriamanitras? made people think I was a devoted disciple.
As I sat there, my eyes wandered and came to rest on one mother sitting on the floor near me, with two daughters. She looked like she was in her forties, though you know how impossible it is to tell here. She had two little girls about two years each in age, fraternal twins. The girls wore similar dresses made from different cloth, and she had taken some care to male sure they were not dressed exactly alike. The woman was thin, with beautiful round cheekbones. Her salt and pepper hair was braided with two buns near the nape of her neck, and her skin was chocolate brown, and tight, and she had beautiful wrinkles at the corner of her eyes. How many years of squinting, smiling, of laughing, of very private crying, caused those lines, I thought.
She was extraordinary because she somehow managed to shower love and attention on the two girls equally. While one sat at her knees, completely fascinated by the folds of her mother?s dress, she lifted the other up into the air of her head, brought her down, until the little girl?s nose touched her own, and her daughter held her mother?s face in her tiny brown hands. She is holding her whole universe in her tiny hands, I thought. Everything that mattered to her was in this warm woman, who let her nose be pulled, who let little fingers run across each line at the corner of each eye. How lucky she was to be a two-year-old, and yet be able to understand the meaning of what was really important in life, and to be able to hold it in her [tiny] hands.
After a few moments, the mother took her own baby?s face into her own palms, and looked closely into her own baby?s eyes. I saw her touch her fuzzy baby hair, and wonder at her cheeks and nose, a blend of her own features and the father, who I never saw. And as I watched her look into her baby?s eyes, I saw the sparks of wishes and hope, that this baby could grow up and have at least as much as she herself had, and more, so much more, like happiness, health, and rice three times a day. And I saw something more than simple love. It was a fierceness, and a determination that she would do whatever she could to give the best chances to these little girls, at her own personal sacrifice. All she wanted, at the minimum, is that they would be happy and contented as they were at that moment, and ad healthy. What she wanted was not necessarily the best for them, but more than the least. The least that someone as a human being should be entitled to.
Finally she caught me watching. She looked up and smiled. I returned her smile, and then looked away, somewhat embarrassed but, more than anything, moved. I wanted to cry. I am not a mother, and who knows if I ever will be, so I felt like I had glimpsed something that not everyone gets to see. I realized how I would feel if I was a mother, and the impulse to do anything for the person you helped bring into this world if it meant giving them a better chance. And I thought, if these two years, if I somehow do something that leaves a child healthier, that is one person who will grow up to live long and dream of growing rice, to have their own babies, and fill a place in another church someday; a person who would be an extension of their mother, who would carry a piece of their soul on for a few more decades. If I do that for one person it is more that just something. It is the beginning of everything.
And at that moment, I tucked my chin again into my chest, and zipped my fleece over my nose. I am not a religious person, but I prayed. I prayed?to God, He, She, It, that ultimately indefinable Something. And I said thank you. Because if this is the greatest realization I had in two years about my worth as Peace Corps Volunteer, it would be enough.
And you know sometimes it still is.
This is for Mad VI: Because we leapt into the air and landed on red clay together. And because you understand better than anyone else. D.
