Poverty

One of the unique aspects of being a Peace Corp Volunteer in South Africa is the demographic of the country. There is a huge divide in wealth: the city provides a First World experience: movies, coffee shops, malls, arcades, restaurants etc while the village is a stereotypical setting of how Americans picture Africa: malnourished children, lack of infrastructure, mud huts, etc. Perhaps this is what makes being a volunteer here so incredibly difficult. In countries such as Togo or Malawi there are not the temptations experienced here. You can't dissapear into Western culture because you aren't presented with Western culture. Yet, here there is the constant tugging in two directions. On one hand, I can stay in my village and be perfectly content because everyone is living just like me: we all don't have running water, we all have nowhere to go and nothing to do most of the time. I don't get a nagging feeling of missing out on anything because I'm doing the same things as all of the people I live with.

I met a volunteer this week from Togo who is down here for medical reasons, and he was saying that it's nice to be here but it would be hard because in Togo they don't have the options that are available here. Everyone is poor so you don't feel like you're missing out.

Yet, now I'm in Pretoria and it's hard. I detest being stressed about money and it's practically all I think about. Everyone's going to see Brokeback Mountain. Can I afford to see Brokeback Mountain? I would love to have a cup of coffee, but do I really need that cup of coffee or should I save the money? Should we go out to dinner or eat peanut butter and jelly?

I see people my age going out and being young, and I'm incredibly jealous. I miss being able to do that: to go out with friends and have dinner together or to go book shopping. I keep seeing cute household stuff and it makes me desperately want to have my own apartment and freedom to live the life I was before: to come and go when I please, to transport myself, to do things without asking permission. I know I am being shallow, and I struggle with that too. I look at girls my age wearing cute clothes and I want to be them: laughing, without the stress, without the worries but then I think: all Khutso gets to eat half the time is bread or there are children living in crumbling shacks in my village, and I feel so bad about myself and my desire to conform to a Western materialistic lifestyle.

I'm used to living on the Peace Corp Budget but suddenly expenses are cropping up. Winter is setting in and I had to buy new jeans and a sweatshirt, which I wouldn't have thought twice about in the U.S., but when I'm living on 200 dollars a month for all my needs: food, toiletries, electricity, transportation, internet, mail, etc it leaves me very tight and in a constant state of angst regarding money.

Next week I'm going to Durban for the first real vacation I've had since being here, and I keep questioning whether it is something I can really afford to do and that drives me crazy that I'm reacting this way. I really need to take a vacation for sanity reasons and after 8 months of being in a village it shouldn't be so unobtainable, but still I feel guilty because I know I don't have enough money and there's no way for me to earn any.

So I sit here in a state of confusion: Am I a bad person for wanting things? for going places while I know the poverty the people I work with are living in? for desperately missing the life I once lead? Am I forgetting why I came here? What kind of person am I becoming: jealous and stressed or accepting and helping?

I still have a lot of soul searching to do.