It's odd to take a walk around a neighborhood and have everyone, children, adolescents, adults, and geriatrics, come to the door to watch you walk by them during the day. What is odder still is the fact that these people never look truly happy to see you, but if you were to wave to them they behave like I would if a Kennedy called my house.
The feeling of being completely visually different is always striking when working abroad. Then, on top of being physically different, to know that my lived experience is so far from the norm here. I have never had to wake up and worry about getting malaria, my aunt dying in childbirth, or being able to carry home enough water to drink and wash with in my entire life and that is really the difference that you can feel walking around these villages.
There are a lot of college courses that talk about "white privilege" or "first world problems", but until you are standing in a third world country its hard to viscerally understand these concepts. If you were to google a definition you could read it and understand the meaning of the phrases, but the true comprehension would be lost. Until you have been walking around and can feel someone's eyes not looking at you, but staring at what you represent the whole understanding of these issues feel very different.
It's not that I feel guilty for my life, although I do think that may be a piece of it. More to the point its that I am completely befuddled at how my life is so much different. In taking care of these patients day after day it is obvious that we are not different biologically. Yet there is something that happened that prompted me to be born to a place where I can come back to a bed with a mosquito net and type on my Ipad while the children born here collect plastic bags to make into a ball for a game of catch. Confusion is really the only way that I can think to describe the feelings I associate with the ideals that are illustrated by me walking around the streets of El Cercado. Total and utter confusion, but I guess that is normal in some way.
I think the important thing in continuing the work here in the DR is not that I need to understand the differences between my life and the people I am helping, but rather to understand that there are huge differences between our lives. The fine details are not important because knowing there is a difference I can elucidate a way to help by working with the patient to identify the difference and a culturally appropriate intervention. Basically, its cultural competence by admitting that I am totally culturally incompetent.
This will probably be my only heady blog for the whole trip, but I just wanted to get some of this stuff out in the open for others who may feel this way too!
The feeling of being completely visually different is always striking when working abroad. Then, on top of being physically different, to know that my lived experience is so far from the norm here. I have never had to wake up and worry about getting malaria, my aunt dying in childbirth, or being able to carry home enough water to drink and wash with in my entire life and that is really the difference that you can feel walking around these villages.
There are a lot of college courses that talk about "white privilege" or "first world problems", but until you are standing in a third world country its hard to viscerally understand these concepts. If you were to google a definition you could read it and understand the meaning of the phrases, but the true comprehension would be lost. Until you have been walking around and can feel someone's eyes not looking at you, but staring at what you represent the whole understanding of these issues feel very different.
It's not that I feel guilty for my life, although I do think that may be a piece of it. More to the point its that I am completely befuddled at how my life is so much different. In taking care of these patients day after day it is obvious that we are not different biologically. Yet there is something that happened that prompted me to be born to a place where I can come back to a bed with a mosquito net and type on my Ipad while the children born here collect plastic bags to make into a ball for a game of catch. Confusion is really the only way that I can think to describe the feelings I associate with the ideals that are illustrated by me walking around the streets of El Cercado. Total and utter confusion, but I guess that is normal in some way.
I think the important thing in continuing the work here in the DR is not that I need to understand the differences between my life and the people I am helping, but rather to understand that there are huge differences between our lives. The fine details are not important because knowing there is a difference I can elucidate a way to help by working with the patient to identify the difference and a culturally appropriate intervention. Basically, its cultural competence by admitting that I am totally culturally incompetent.
This will probably be my only heady blog for the whole trip, but I just wanted to get some of this stuff out in the open for others who may feel this way too!
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