Maybe It's Not Okay
It is 1:33 am. Luckily my fellow intern and I cleared off our plates for tomorrow morning - that is, we canceled our Burmese class for the morning - so the France-Spain match will not be a problem. It will be watched! However, that leaves me with 25 minutes (2 minutes for those last few words) to meditate on a question that has been hanging out in my head with all the consistency of a Western at Bai Fern Restaurant - read: ALL THE TIME.
Is it okay for me to return to Columbia in the fall?
Turn your alarms off - I have no plans to hunker down here in Mae Sot and forget the ol' college try. Ain't gonna happen. However, my good friend Anubha aka "Nubhs" (choose your own spelling) asked in a previous comment (http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=19641725&postID=114985288651166578) how I feel about working for an incredibly under-served population, only to return to air conditioning, hot showers, and $15 meals on campus in the fall.
To Nubhs I say: good question.
I don't know.
There are people here who make me feel like a tourist. One guy I met asked me, "How long are you staying?" I said, "About 2 months. And you?" He said, "I have been here for 10 years." He was from one of the malaria research units; he started the research unit. Tonight I spoke with someone else I've been hanging out with here. We were talking about how people who are new to the town often don't understand the precautions people talk about political secrecy here. Usually people will say to someone they've never met before that they are "just a tourist." This becomes awkward when you continue seeing this person for the next few weeks. Usually after two meetings or so you reveal your position.
The funny thing about this conversation was that she and I had never had an official introduction, but I knew she was working with someone who I speak with quite often. She asked me, "So what are you doing here anyway?" I said, "I'm just a tourist." (
I am a tourist, and I am not a tourist. Is it okay for me to hang out for a summer and then return to NYC? Who will benefit? Is there any way for me to do any permanent good while I'm here? Probably not. Two months is too short. Am I growing as a person while I'm here? Am I gaining from my experience? Definitely. Is my stay here, then, selfish in some way? Probably.
I don't know if this is acceptable to me or not. When I check in at Brooklynvegan or Gorilla Vs. Bear, I find that I do miss something about the United States. But what kind of life is there in that kind of thing? What life is there in stumbling from bar to bar in Brooklyn, feeding one's ears with "the latest" and wearing black jeans? (I would add growing a beard, but this kind of thing is impossible for me.)
There are two minutes until game time. Basically, I am not sure whether or not I can justify returning to NYC after this summer. Will I return? Yes. Is that okay? Maybe not. The machinery of self-reinforcement works in mysterious ways. Kind of like God.
posted by Soe Lin Aung at 11:36 AM
1 Comments:
Hello friend.
I'm keeping you e-company, as you suggested. Good thing I can comment without setting up a blog now, because, quite frankly, my summer adventures warrant nothing of the kind I don't think.
I'm sort of thinking about the same question, although I'm sure it will assault me much more forcefully when I'm actually walking the streets of Dakar: what it means to be an incredibly priveledged American trying to "understand" or "emerse myself in" one of the poorest areas of the world. Of course I'll also be a student then and not an NGO worker, but I'm not sure if that makes that guilty feeling better or worse… (i.e. I am not specifically there to help, which means I'm not failing in my goal, or maybe that I just have the wrong goal altogether…)
I'm not sure if this helps you, but the theory that I've kind of worked out is sort of like that line from the Motorcycle Diaries: "let the world change you, and you can change the world." I'm sure you are doing some good this summer for your individual students, but the point of internships in general, whether its at a company or an NGO, is not so much the *work* that you do. It's about learning about a place or an industry/cause or a set of skills which ideally will help you decide what you want to do with your life and do it better.
So yes, in a way it is selfish. But maybe just being out in the world, letting it change you, is the best way to change it in turn. Don't underestimate the importance of self-discovery, even if your goal is improving the lives of others. And to be quite honest, I think it is clear that you are doing both, even if only for a summer. I don't think I would suggest a lifetime of black jeans and Brooklyn bars either, but there's also a lot to be discovered in New York about yourself and the world and people who live without our advantages. There's also something to be said for just enjoying the luxury of being in college for a few years, which doesn't mean you have to or should spend the rest of your life in the world of libraries and coffee houses and bars in Brooklyn. ; )
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