Contrasts

Did you ever used to lay upside down on a couch, or the floor or whatever and imagine if the room’s roof were the floor and the floor, the roof? I did.

As kids we know every crack in the sidewalk, every branch of a tree; we are intimate with the outdoors – indoors, too for that matter, every nook and cranny. We look at things with different perspectives.

At what point of growing up to we stop looking at the world around us in this special way? Stop seeing each item for its innate potential?

During my first visit home in two years, I went for a walk in my KC neighborhood and started to compare and contrast some aspects of my life – childhood and adulthood, for one, but also US life and Guyana life (or more specifically, Kansas City life and the Rupununi Life)… Contrasts…..

I remembered some of the first impressions of the States as the airplane from Guyana to New York landed; I immediately began noticing differences between the two countries/cultures:
-Baseball fields!
-Wow, McGarry was right; Americans are TALL.
-The order, procedure and attention given to customers. We Americans queue like nobody’s business and if we don’t know where to go or don’t choose to go that way, we have personnel to put us back in place.
-Consumerism rules! There are places to spend money at every corner. We PCV’s spend two years developing a country’s capacity, and apparently the US spends two years developing an iPod vending machine.
-Squeaky wheel sounds – I initially thought it was men sipping – I immediately ‘heard’ it then started to ignore it, until I realized no one sips here.
-Dimmed lights made me think ‘blackout!’ for a moment; Edith, too!
-Hesitation before using water – is it ok to drink straight? Oh yeah, wait, of course it is.
-Lingering tendencies to swat mosquitoes, itch, etc., but nothing there.
-Realization that I am not “Miss” here.
-It’s 8 p.m. and still light outside???

My neighborhood here in the suburbs of Kansas City, Missouri: We moved to this neighborhood my senior year of high school and I appreciated the neighborhood-like aspect to the area; our old house was on a street with no other turns on it. There are sidewalks on many of the streets, the yards are well-maintained, you encounter different dogs and cats, some different neighbors, the routes for walking are fairly substantial, a lot of turns and weaving in and out. "Well-maintained" in KC means most yards have lush, thick grass in front and back that's kept mowed and even.

My neighborhood in Yups, the Rupununi, Region 9 of Guyana: there are different paths, likewise (though smaller and more transparent), as well as well-maintained yards - most are void of green, as all grass and weeds are painstakingly hoed and the yard is left clean with brownish red pebbles that will get raked clean of any leaves that happen to fall. Many different dogs, cats, cows, sheep, chickens; different neighbors out and about.

Many similarities; many fundamental differences, too, though. I hadn’t realized how enclosed my KC neighborhood seems – houses every couple of yards, fences, driveways, cars. There is a lot of shade, which is good, but also a lack of a breeze. I love the freedom of my Rupununi neighborhood, the open areas, the secluded paths, the paths leading OUT of civilization.

Yups has a greater variety of animal life out and about; these animals run free, more or less. And I have to remind myself, as I walk through KC, that these dogs and cats are usually fenced off and defensive of their territories; more likely there, the dogs cower at you and you have to coax them to come for a pat on the head and you can call your canine buddies to you – they’ll come running.

When walking the paths of Yups, or most anywhere in Guyana, most of the people you cross paths with will look at you and call “Good morning,” “Good afternoon,” or some other variation of greeting. It’s something I’ve come to really enjoy. Sometimes people will say “All right, all right,” as in me and you are ok with each other and the world.

The streets in my suburb aren’t so heavily populated, and acknowledgements are more low-key. You wouldn’t find someone who lives in your vicinity but you don’t know their name inviting you to share in their activity. On the flip side, as I passed two men working on a car in a driveway this morning, I initially braced myself for catcalls and sipping, as is customary in Guyana from most strange males. I had to remind myself that most men here wouldn’t act in such a way.

Contrasts.

As a volunteer, we become intimate with another, foreign environment, we are forced to look at things known and unknown with new perspectives, every day. We draw from our past experiences to relate to our current experiences. Some moments, it seems as if the two worlds couldn’t be further apart; others, it’s as if they were super-imposed on each other, too similar to be too foreign. There’s nothing like a step back, or a step back into, to gain a new outlook, or to regain a lost one.

**I’m sure more differences will come to me in the remaining weeks here in KC, a thought that has inspired me to make an accompanying post to my “KC Chronicles.” I want to make one of Guyana, and more specifically, the Rupununi and my village, Yupukari. I’ll be calling on my Guyanese friends to help fill in on little blurbs, just like my KC friends did. Coming soon… <3