Reporting vs. Reflecting

Recently, my friend Joe and I were discussing our respective blogs when he posed an interesting question. He asked me if my blog entries were more ‘reports’ or ‘reflections.’ Without much need for deliberation, I promptly responded that my blog entries were definitely ‘reports.’ Basically, I report each week about our travels, the people we’ve met, the adventures we’ve encountered, the funny or random events which have occurred, etc. Occasionally, I insert a reflective statement or two into my entries, but in general I am definitely the ‘reporting’ type. So, for the sake of variety, I am going to dedicate this blog entry to ‘reflections.’

Reflection #1: Our life in Swaziland is very different from our life in Los Angeles. Based on my (current) values, I would say that our lifestyle in Swaziland is better…or at least that it is just what we need, right now. We don’t have a television, so we read and play games with greater frequency. We get more sleep and a lot more exercise. I make dinner most nights. I’ve stopped grinding my teeth. We get together socially with friends 3-4 nights a week. Doug has lost 10 pounds. We take Siswati lessons two nights a week and play Ultimate Frisbee two nights a week (I honestly can’t remember the last time I had time to commit to doing anything, every week). And don’t get me wrong, I’ve been happy at every stage of my life to date and thoroughly enjoyed whatever I was doing at the time, but I think that this ‘break’ is perfectly timed. We are in between Doug’s residency and his upcoming fellowship (for those of you who don’t know, Doug has accepted a fellowship in neonatology at the University of California San Diego beginning in July of 2011). I am coming down from the best job I’ve ever had (at Teach For America) and the hardest job I’ve ever had (at Teach For America). We are getting some of the time back that was lost to commuting over the past three years. We are spending 80 hours a week together instead of working 80 hours a week. We are taking advantage of the fact that Doug is never ‘on call’ and that he gets all of his weekends! Doug is doing a pediatric HIV research project that he’ll put forth for publication. I bake, for crying out loud. Basically, life here (for us) is slow and simple and we are lapping it up.

Reflection #2: I cannot recall a time in my life when I’ve truly felt like the ‘odd (wo)man out’ or discriminated against (unless you count in elementary school when I had a mustache (thank God for electrolysis) and my gender was debatable). Even when I lived in T’iis Nazbas on the Navajo Reservation and clearly was the odd one out, I was immersed (so, so, so immersed) in the community and therefore more readily accepted. So, last week, when we were crossing the South African/Swaziland border very early in the morning (see ‘Drakensberg’ blog entry for details), I was taken aback (a bit) by my first real dose of ‘one of these things, is not like the other.’ We were crossing the border with three friends, but since Doug and I were driving, we waited in the ‘immigration’ line in order to get a pass for our vehicle, while the others went aehad to wait in the ‘customs’ line. And, let me be clear, I’m using the term, ‘line’ loosely. It is one of the most frustrating parts about getting out of Swaziland – so frustrating, that I’ll take my number and a wasted afternoon at the DMV in the States over the craziness of ‘the line’ at the border, any day. So, Doug and I were waiting behind a group of people who also appeared to be waiting behind ‘Window 1.’ There were lots of people and the hallway was cramped. We were being jostled about, but I was holding my place firmly as the border had only just opened when a man came from outside of the building (so, not even in our little ‘line’ for Window 1) and looked me in the eye and then squeezed himself directly in front of me. Now, in my normal life, I would have said ‘excuse me’ and explained that there was a line and that he was cutting and blah, blah, blah, but there was something inside of me that prevented me from doing so. I felt angry to be the obvious and ideal place for him to enter ‘the line.’ I felt inadequate because my Siswati is only emerging and I definitely couldn’t have articulated my desire for him to go to the back of the line. And I felt like a foreigner; almost like I didn’t have the right to say anything anyways because I clearly did not belong. Now, obviously, getting cut in line is not the end of the world, but like I said before, what I felt his cutting in front of me represented was bothersome and also a first for me. Two more men cut in front of us in exactly the same fashion which provided a little reprieve from the ‘I’ll show you’ conversation that I was having in my head. My attention was quickly diverted to convincing Doug that our place in ‘line’ wasn’t worth getting into a fight over! In the end, as soon as Window 1 opened, we ended up cutting every last person because the man behind us heaved us forward, but regardless, it was the principle that got me fired-up.