Which continent, exactly?

This blog's title isn't in reference to actual continents (I've now been to four), but is rather drawn from "The Third and Final Continent," a stunning short story by Jhumpa Lahiri, from her collection, The Interpreter of Maladies. In particular, I'm inspired by the following quote that summarizes the attitude I try to carry with me through life and on my travels

I am not the only person to seek his fortune far from home, and certainly I am not the first. Still there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination.

I love this. It calls on us to consider the tiny details of our experiences, both one-by-one, and in the aggregate, and to maintain a sense of wonder even about the seemingly mundane things that are the building blocks of our lives, and often, the glue that binds us to our traveling companions.

This blog began as a chronicle of my study abroad experience in Cairo in Spring 2008, and continued last year while volunteering in Geneva, and South Sudan with a wonderful organization, VIDES.

Now in graduate school, I'm returning to the Continent this summer while interning in New Delhi, India.

Please enjoy, inquire, and learn.

Sunday, July 21, 2013

A thousand little missions

I'll admit that I don't like the word "missionary" at all. It's too loaded with all of the baggage of people doing not-Christian things to foreign civilizations in the name of faith.  Good has been done in the same category, but the bad examples I've accumulated from years of study and reading foreign literature weigh heavier on my mind. Every time I see the word "missionary work," on my South Sudanese Visa it makes me cringe a bit. Mission without the -ary is also tough, but has gotten a little better.

And especially lately, when I’m not sure I’ve accomplished much of anything, when the totality of everything we’re up against is overwhelming, when I need to do things that I’ve developed a mental block about. . . like entering some particularly challenging classes, or when getting up in the morning is a little harder after a really long day the day before I sometimes try to think of my work here as composed of a few thousand little missions . . . Yes, it’s a glorified to-do list, but it helps

  • Mission: Get through 6 periods of Sr. Betty’s classes (she’s away on retreat) and hope my lesson plans don’t collapse under the weight of my extremely mediocre classroom management skills
  • Mission: Finish collecting the data for the governmenton the ages and genders of the over 600 students in school for the governmentand not go insane as my busy busy busy self clashes with my OOOOH, DATA self
  • Mission: In between those 6 classes and data collection, find time to figure out with one of my students when we can meet in the afternoon and keep pushing her through the English Texbooks
  • Mission: Use up as much eggplant as possible in a somewhat edible way , as it won’t stop growing in our garden
  • Mission: Learn from my mistakes, take brief solace in the successes of the day, and get up tomorrow and do it again even better


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