Yesterday we were summoned by our fellow volunteers condemned to city living to help them with their "Winter Camp" project building a garden in one of the schools in which they work. This cursed establishment sits between an indescribably filthy river and some sort of market based on stuffing dried fish into burlap sacks. Needless to say, its one of the most repulsive places I've ever been (including Delhi). In order to plant the garden we first needed to clear a plot and clean up the layer of trash that coats the schoolyard. As I held my breath and put my health in danger I had two main questions running through my head.
1) Why the hell am I cleaning up someone else's trash? and
2) What the hell am I going to do with it after I collect it? (as I've mentioned before, there is basically no waste management system in place beyond 'toss it in the river').
But there was something therapeutic about the process I went through, digging in the ground with my hands, pulling up all sorts of lost treasures, old shoes and plastic bags. By allowing someone else's problems to become my own and taking some measure of responsibility in finding a solution, I felt like I was slowly creating a place where things would hopefully one day grow in the future, and that this process is being paralleled in other less concrete aspects of my life right now.
Cleaning up the trash around me helped shed light on a challenging situation our group went through over the weekend, where we were forced to clean up the trash between us. Whereas most of our group seminars have been centered around or work and volunteering, because we are approaching the end (that's right folks), this seminar was just about having fun and enjoying our time with the other volunteers and the Nepali staff we have been working with, living with and learning from for the past few months. Our group was asked to present a short skit comparing Nepali and Israeli/western norms, and we were really excited about it. We pulled together a hilarious performance about an Israeli volunteer who fell in love with his Nepali staff member (played by Uri, of course) and brought her home to Israel to meet his family. Without reliving the traumatic experience of presenting the play itself, I'll simply say that our performance was met with dead, cold silence. While we thought our exaggerated reproduction of foreign customs would help us laugh at ourselves and bring us closer together, it turns out that after three months we simply do not understand enough about the culture to know where to draw the lines. We unintentionally sullied the sacred, deeply insulting Nepali cultural and national pride. The horrible moment of looking up and seeing the faces of our Nepali friends riddled with pain and embarrassment was followed by an agonizing conversation in which we emptied our cultural trash bags in a giant smelly mess in the middle of the circle and then slowly started to sort through it, everyone sheepishly looking toward the ground.
But it turn out that we were just revealing some of the trash - the misunderstandings, the gaps, the challenges, the barriers -that come along with these types of cultural encounters, and what started off as a funny joke and quickly spiraled into a mortifying mistake and then a painful conversation, ultimately ended in a fun drunken party. By putting the trash on the table, getting our hands dirty, making each others problems our own and allowing ourselves to be vulnerable, we were able to sort through our own garbage and make room for a fresh start and a deepening in our relationship.
And today I realized that the same goes for me as an individual dealing with my own trash. The challenges of volunteering and group living in a remote village in a foreign country have definitely brought up questions in all of us over here, but I find myself constantly projecting my own personal challenges onto the people around me, seeing my trash as theirs instead of the other way around. The less we (I) communicate our (my) challenges and the more we (I) blamed them on those around us (me), the less able we (I) are to see ourselves honestly and remember that the problems in our relationships often reflect our own insecurities. But I don't think that "the" answer is to suck it up and take the blame, but rather to open ourselves up to the people around us and invite them to do the same, letting our garbage mix into one big smelly mess, and then sort through it together, finding ourselves and each other in the process.
So sorry that there wasn't much comic relief in this post, but no one said being a garbage (wo)man was an easy job. With hopes that we may all find a way to clean up the trash around, between and within us with devotion, sensitivity and honesty, and maybe one day even some laughter, as we create a clean space for growth.
1) Why the hell am I cleaning up someone else's trash? and
2) What the hell am I going to do with it after I collect it? (as I've mentioned before, there is basically no waste management system in place beyond 'toss it in the river').
But there was something therapeutic about the process I went through, digging in the ground with my hands, pulling up all sorts of lost treasures, old shoes and plastic bags. By allowing someone else's problems to become my own and taking some measure of responsibility in finding a solution, I felt like I was slowly creating a place where things would hopefully one day grow in the future, and that this process is being paralleled in other less concrete aspects of my life right now.
Cleaning up the trash around me helped shed light on a challenging situation our group went through over the weekend, where we were forced to clean up the trash between us. Whereas most of our group seminars have been centered around or work and volunteering, because we are approaching the end (that's right folks), this seminar was just about having fun and enjoying our time with the other volunteers and the Nepali staff we have been working with, living with and learning from for the past few months. Our group was asked to present a short skit comparing Nepali and Israeli/western norms, and we were really excited about it. We pulled together a hilarious performance about an Israeli volunteer who fell in love with his Nepali staff member (played by Uri, of course) and brought her home to Israel to meet his family. Without reliving the traumatic experience of presenting the play itself, I'll simply say that our performance was met with dead, cold silence. While we thought our exaggerated reproduction of foreign customs would help us laugh at ourselves and bring us closer together, it turns out that after three months we simply do not understand enough about the culture to know where to draw the lines. We unintentionally sullied the sacred, deeply insulting Nepali cultural and national pride. The horrible moment of looking up and seeing the faces of our Nepali friends riddled with pain and embarrassment was followed by an agonizing conversation in which we emptied our cultural trash bags in a giant smelly mess in the middle of the circle and then slowly started to sort through it, everyone sheepishly looking toward the ground.
But it turn out that we were just revealing some of the trash - the misunderstandings, the gaps, the challenges, the barriers -that come along with these types of cultural encounters, and what started off as a funny joke and quickly spiraled into a mortifying mistake and then a painful conversation, ultimately ended in a fun drunken party. By putting the trash on the table, getting our hands dirty, making each others problems our own and allowing ourselves to be vulnerable, we were able to sort through our own garbage and make room for a fresh start and a deepening in our relationship.
And today I realized that the same goes for me as an individual dealing with my own trash. The challenges of volunteering and group living in a remote village in a foreign country have definitely brought up questions in all of us over here, but I find myself constantly projecting my own personal challenges onto the people around me, seeing my trash as theirs instead of the other way around. The less we (I) communicate our (my) challenges and the more we (I) blamed them on those around us (me), the less able we (I) are to see ourselves honestly and remember that the problems in our relationships often reflect our own insecurities. But I don't think that "the" answer is to suck it up and take the blame, but rather to open ourselves up to the people around us and invite them to do the same, letting our garbage mix into one big smelly mess, and then sort through it together, finding ourselves and each other in the process.
So sorry that there wasn't much comic relief in this post, but no one said being a garbage (wo)man was an easy job. With hopes that we may all find a way to clean up the trash around, between and within us with devotion, sensitivity and honesty, and maybe one day even some laughter, as we create a clean space for growth.
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