You know, living in someone else’s house does not mean you understand their way of living.
I went to Central America with a carry-on suit case and a back-pack and I never looked back. I lived all through Mexico and Costa Rica and I ended up in Panama where I rented a little house in a very poor neighborhood. Why? Why live in a poor neighborhood? Why on earth would someone want to struggle with getting running water and know that hot water was simply never going to be available? Why would someone who had a comfortable home in the US choose to hang their laundry out in a country where it never stops raining and things mold before they ever get dry? Why would someone choose to live where the neighbor’s house is built in such a fashion that the wood slats are not lined up close enough to each other to keep you from looking right outside? The mud is red. The neighbors do their wash in a bucket and cook over an open fire. There is no road, only a narrow sidewalk.
The place is poor.
The other day, I met a local in town and told him I lived in Almirante. He looked at me surprised and with barely veiled distain remarked that I must live in the nice part of town. When I told him I lived in Colondrina, he smiled wide and embraced me in a bear hug and exclaimed, “My people!”
That is why.
I live here because I want to feel what they feel. I want to be immersed in their culture on a day to day basis. I want to know their names and the names of their children. I want to stop by and chat and bring my star apples over and have them give me their limes. I want to congratulate them on the birth of their babies and mourn the loss of their loved ones. I want to understand them from the inside.
But it is impossible to do that.
I am from a different culture. My memories are full of different things. My education and travel and life experience has filled my head with what makes me, me. And their life experience is very different than mine.
I will never know what it feels like to know nothing different than this small town and its people. And in all honesty, I am not sure I will ever be as simply happy as they are. It is still a mystery to me. King Solomon who was famous for being so wise said, “With much knowledge comes much sorrow.” I believe he was correct. I see what looks like the pain these people deal with every day. But on their faces, I see smiles. They are genuinely happy. Yes, they mourn and they mourn deeply, but they understand that it is part of life and they allow it to come and then they move past it. They love deeply. They are surrounded by family and that, to them is everything. They wake up in the morning to the chickens and the sun and when it rains, instead of complaining that the weather is bad, they are thankful for the water it provides so they can do their laundry.
Oh, my heart is wrecked.
I came to embrace the challenge of a poor community in a third-world country and it kicked my butt. Not because I couldn’t handle the hardships, but because I was unprepared for the beauty.