last week, i sustained another huge loss. however, the background story is important in understanding this loss, and not many people know it. but when i wake up in the morning and think of this person and the people who are mourning her, i am always taken back to a time eight and a half years ago when we first met. so if you're able, come along for the ride.
late february, 1999: i am in delhi, india, with sweat running down the back of my legs, and tears running down my cheeks in dusty rivulets. i am living with an old anglo-indian woman in a tiny asbestos-tiled room off of her living room, which has been arranged for me by a kind woman at the centre for kids with autism, where i
i know that this is where i want to be, where i have chosen to come and volunteer, where i must be for at least six months (or else i will lose face in front of my family and friends! and what about the expensive indian visa and plane ticket and immunizations?) but i feel so isolated, so singular, so different and alone. each day i awaken, plug in the heating coil to place in my bucket of water for my bath, nod and smile at the young servant girl (who makes me very nervous with her toothy grin and quick, erratic movement in the kitchen) while i guiltily eat my breakfast of sliced bananas topped with curd and the big-crystalled sugar that i've come to like so much. when i am dressed and armed with my extra stick of deodorant (which i will need later in the day, when the temperature soars to 48 degrees), i negotiate my way through
i am the only non-indian in the place i volunteer, which is what attracted me in the first place. i didn't want a 'sanitized' experience...i wanted the real thing. i wanted it to be hard and challenging and different than anything i could experience in canada. i wanted to know what it felt like to be the only one who is something - foreign, white, not brown, canadian, etc. now that i am here, i am desperate to see another white face, to hear canadian english spoken, to have something in common. to not be so white and so different. the shame i feel as a result is thick, hot, and oppressive, much like the incessant heat.
sometimes, in between supervising the kids' playtimes, lunches, and completing observation reports as they are being tutored by the centre's staff, i excuse myself and go to a hot, dusty, empty room and cry. i haven't had a hug in what feels like weeks, and although everyone is kind, and inquisitive, and caring...there is still a division. i am 'other.' even though there is no language barrier, there is definitely a communication barrier. it is not entirely safe for us to tease and make jokes with each other, because we haven't sussed out who we're dealing with. i feel inadequate, like i'm a huge disappointment, because i don't have the knowledge and experience they expected of me. i am the furthest i can possibly be from all the people who love
so i am laying under a mosquito net in my room, trying to cry as quietly as i can, with rivers of salt coursing down various parts of my body. it is not hard to feel those feelings again, today, as i write this...and i want to remember them, to honour them, to validate them. (i have a different perspective now on those first few weeks in india, both because i survived it, and because i think it was an instructive experience on what newcomers to our country must feel like. it was a lesson in compassion that i wanted, and needed, to learn, and i am grateful for that.)
* i will continue this post soon, starting from march of 1999. it's interesting how this is taking shape...i really didn't think i had so much to say. but i am going with it. so stay tuned!