... to be honest, I did too! I did not think there would be much to "blog" about after returning to the United States. But as Bob and Taylor (and others) probably predicted, my "journey" is just beginning. The "trip" to Congo was really just "one small step" in my larger Congolese journey. I now think of EVERYTHING through the lens of my time there and my experiences. I'm writing a lot right now-- creative non-fiction pieces that I will be submitting for publication in literary journals soon (which feels really good, by the way... it's been a really LONG time since I had the "drive" to write creatively, and even longer since I played the submission and publication game... but if you really want to know and ask nicely, I'll share some of my previously published work with you....), and writing for the newsletter, and speaking my mind about my trip and my experiences.
To wit, I wanted to share two things on here that really "touched" me lately, and will probably seem totally unrelated to Congo, but for me were quite salient. The first is an article about "Terror Management Theory" which I am really into... I think it says a lot about how people respond to horror in the world, and the ways and reasons we react as we do, and the value of treating lightly and using hope as a motivator instead of scare tactics. That article is here:
http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/doomsday-scenarios-climate-change2.htm
The second is last week's "This American Life" poscast, their own 10-year retrospective on 9-11. Though I really loathed all the media coverage of it, and in a lot of ways feel that it is insensitive to those we should actually be honoring, this podcast was AMAZING. you should listen to it for that reason alone. But, beyond that, the first "act" is about a young man who has been living in Afganistan since being a teenager, and how he viewed his "transformation" as a result of living in such a politically tumultuous climate. It may seem tangential, but it reminded me A LOT of the Congo. It is here:
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/445/ten-years-in?act=1
Signing off for now...
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Saturday, September 3, 2011
Re-Entry: Day 11
Well, I apologize profusely for my lack of entries for both the remaining week of my time in the Congo and since I've been back. For anyone who was actually still following this, it must feel like I sort of left you hanging... The long and short of it was that I was really overwhelmed between traveling and being back in the United States. I was so surprised (despite the fact that Bob and Taylor prepped me for this) how difficult it was to come back "home". Having now met several people who've traveled in Congo, I can say with certainty that everyone's "re-entry" process is different.
For me, when I got home, I had a really hard time with food. This appears to be a relatively frequent response after coming back to a country of excess after being in a country like the Congo with such lack. But I really could not eat for the first few days I returned, because I would open the pantry and feel so perplexed and overwhelmed by the vast amount of food in our house, that I simply could not make a decision about WHAT to eat. When you go to a country like the Congo, the "food and water politics" is in every bite you consume and it becomes a part of you. This made it intensely difficult for me to transition back to "American" food. Especially because food and water was so deeply and inextricably linked to women's issues while I was there, and I would often spend entire days working with the women just to prepare the food, which, as I previously alluded to, is just so much work. This is an issue that affects women all across the economic strata of the country, because even well-educated women spent so many hours every day working in the kitchen. So it was appropriate that I did it too, and even now, with everything that I did and saw, some of the most intimate, touching, and true moments happened when I was sitting in the "kitchen" over a charcoal burner. And when I came home, it was as if this labor of love had transformed my relationship to food, such that I no longer understood how to be in relation to food.
It transformed my relationship to American culture as a whole, and indeed, so many parts of "home" now feel very "foreign" to me. I have found it immensely hard to explain to others what it "was like" to be in the Congo, because it's so unlike any other place in the world you will ever visit. It is even quite different from many other parts of Africa, it seems. For me, in a way that I cannot yet (and maybe never will) articulate, it was like traveling to a different reality... An excellent metaphor given to me by a friend recently was that I did not merely walk through the doors of perception-- i took the doors completely off their hinges. My perception of the world is now forever altered, and I don't feel I have the option to "close" those doors again, because where there were once doors, there are now only doorways.
I imagine that the thoughts and perceptions will continue to shift and rearrange and reveal new images to me each day--and hopefully, i will be able to share those as they come up. But for now, I will "leave it", as they say, at that...
For me, when I got home, I had a really hard time with food. This appears to be a relatively frequent response after coming back to a country of excess after being in a country like the Congo with such lack. But I really could not eat for the first few days I returned, because I would open the pantry and feel so perplexed and overwhelmed by the vast amount of food in our house, that I simply could not make a decision about WHAT to eat. When you go to a country like the Congo, the "food and water politics" is in every bite you consume and it becomes a part of you. This made it intensely difficult for me to transition back to "American" food. Especially because food and water was so deeply and inextricably linked to women's issues while I was there, and I would often spend entire days working with the women just to prepare the food, which, as I previously alluded to, is just so much work. This is an issue that affects women all across the economic strata of the country, because even well-educated women spent so many hours every day working in the kitchen. So it was appropriate that I did it too, and even now, with everything that I did and saw, some of the most intimate, touching, and true moments happened when I was sitting in the "kitchen" over a charcoal burner. And when I came home, it was as if this labor of love had transformed my relationship to food, such that I no longer understood how to be in relation to food.
It transformed my relationship to American culture as a whole, and indeed, so many parts of "home" now feel very "foreign" to me. I have found it immensely hard to explain to others what it "was like" to be in the Congo, because it's so unlike any other place in the world you will ever visit. It is even quite different from many other parts of Africa, it seems. For me, in a way that I cannot yet (and maybe never will) articulate, it was like traveling to a different reality... An excellent metaphor given to me by a friend recently was that I did not merely walk through the doors of perception-- i took the doors completely off their hinges. My perception of the world is now forever altered, and I don't feel I have the option to "close" those doors again, because where there were once doors, there are now only doorways.
I imagine that the thoughts and perceptions will continue to shift and rearrange and reveal new images to me each day--and hopefully, i will be able to share those as they come up. But for now, I will "leave it", as they say, at that...
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