Juggling

Living in a different culture, working with people who speak a different language and trying to maintain a somewhat normal life is a lot like juggling you start with one and then you can add another and then finally once you´ve got that down you add the third. Due to the instant immersion in Paraguay over a year and a half ago I was tossed the first ball right away and quickly adapted to living within the Paraguayan culture. One ball is easy so right away a second was added, the language. Now this took more practice, but I am constantly getting better and always learning more. I also added that third ball awhile back when I moved into my own casita and felt the relief of freedom. I no longer hide in my room watching movies trying to escape Spanish and Guarani speakers and the entire juggling art itself. Instead I made friends and have a boyfriend and often speak only in Spanish the majority of the time. I also get to do fun things like rock climbing and training for marathons. Now although I feel like I have gotten the hang of three balls and sometimes think they could label me an expert at juggling, there are times when I have a bad day and I can´t handle all three and I keep dropping one or another. Some days my Spanish goes down the drain or I feel like screaming at every Paraguayan who hoots and grunts at me and some days I just feel like crying. I am pretty sure this one happens when I drop the third ball. When I feel like it’s too much to have a life and work and speak a foreign language. But these things don’t go away. They just continue and although I just want to hide under the covers and spend the day crying, the students and their excitement when I walk into a classroom keep me going. The kids are the ones that force me to get my overemotional self out of the bed and into the classroom.

Just last week I had a real reason to cry. Not because I couldn´t go out and get a veggie burger or because I hate the men with their stupid cat calls. One of my students committed suicide. Wow, suicide. This was the third funeral I had to attend in Paraguay but it the only one that affected me in a huge way. Dani was a 14 year old boy who lived with his grandmother, a younger sister and countless other relatives. His mother left to work in Argentina about 6 years ago and hasn´t returned to visit her 5 kids in over 4 years. But Dani seemed to be getting along okay. He was not overly outgoing, but he participated regularly in youth group activities and often played soccer with the neighborhood boys. Just the day before his death we planted trees as a reforestation project and he helped. I have spent the last week wondering how such a young person could make this drastic decision. I know a lot of people think about it, they might even attempt it in a call for attention, but to actually go through with it is incredible. No one will ever know for sure why this young man took his own life, but I am sure that he had lots of friends and family that cared for him and he will be missed. This past Saturday with my youth group we conducted a memorial type service for Dani during which we wrote messages to both him and his family. We then took the messages over to his family. I know that they appreciated this act because when I ran by that afternoon it was displayed out in front of their house. Just knowing this makes me proud of my group and the effort they put into it, even though it may have been awkward.

After talking with the group about suicide I hope that if there are others who feel the same desperation they will come to me or tell someone. Sometimes we don´t see the warning signs, sometimes there aren´t any. Suicide is much more prevalent in Paraguay than I had presumed. It seems to happen more often among the rich than the poor and may be due to American and European influence in which one is pressured to succeed. I hope that this one was the only one I will experience in Paraguay and the rest of my life.