my double life.

it seems to become increasingly more apparent, the two lives i lead here in madagascar. and being in the beginning stages of my peace corps experience, i am at times completely disatisfied and enamored with each, for very different reasons.

when i am in my "city life," and long to describe my "village life" in words here in this forum, i am suddenly struck with not only an inability to accurately capture either, but evenmoreso by the feeling that any attempt at description is futile, pointless.

likewise, when i return to my village, and settle into the daily routine with an increasingly-familiar cast of characters, i feel so far-removed from that other-self, those concerns of the world which came to me instantaneously through email, internet, facebook, news.

it has become almost comical: i flip through my journal for inspiration while at this computer, wanting to partake in the opportunity to share with the rest of the world but instead i read my scribbed words, usually written in my hut at nightfall, as unfamiliar to me as though written by a hand other than my own.

nonetheless, even this experience of leading two lives is neither foreign nor alarming to me. i have spent too many years working in wilderness jobs to be truly surprised by these feelings. i remember late-night drives back from 8-day wilderness shifts in utah; the vast, empty landscapes of grand canyon country, driving that long road toward my home in flagstaff arizona, suspended between the reality of my life in the wilderness and my life at home. there was always the adjustment period of a day or two on either end, coming & going between the two worlds, always missing one, always glad to be away from the other.

and so, it is a bit like that here. when i am in the city, there are many creature comforts which i've become more or less accustomed to living without over the last eight years of outdoor jobs: internet, refrigeration, television, toilets, chocolate croissants.

but then there are the things i miss at my site, which in many senses, has been and will increasingly become my "real life:" my little hut-home, the kindness of friends-in-the-making, the sea, the stars... namely, life in a rural fishing village in madagascar.

what is still shocking though is how difficult it can sometimes be to live here. and to commit to staying in a place for more than one year is not something i've done much in my adult life, and definitely not in a place that can be as indescribably challenging as it is beautiful. there are many internal struggles daily. this is a common peace corps experience: to question why you're here, what you're doing, how you will ever go about accomplishing anything- such an american perspective anyway- and i try to remind myself of this during the hard times.

and a note on "the american perspective." living here reminds me just how goal-oriented, task-driven and work-defined we are in america. when we first meet a stranger, we ask, "so what do you do for work?" malagasys describe themselves in the context of their family relations. i am the mother of... my father is... i have two sons and two daughters...

still, i obviously can't avoid approaching peace corps without being american, and as such, being task-oriented. and this is in and of itself my singlemost challenge currently at site these days: what can i DO? the fact that i don't really have a job or a clearly-defined role in my village can be tiresome and disheartening. nonetheless, the people there don't really seem to mind that i'm not really doing anything specifically (yet). they are just happy when i sit down and join them in a leisurely conversation, or eat a meal with them.

and thus, the ultimate curse of the american; we spend our lives wishing we could just "have more time." time to read books, plant a garden, cook, write, whatever indulgence we can't seem to afford ourselves, that can't seem to squeeze in between our precious work-lives. then, in the case of the peace corps volunteer, there is finally that time and the guilt of actually doing those things sets in! the indulgence of having a stack of books and knowing there will finally be the time to read them.

still, i came here to do something and i'm on the road to find out. lucky for me, madagascar is full of both beauty and opportunity, struggle and joy, city and village.