feyjiashyr

it's been a while since i last updated this journal. i think it is about time though.

the last two weeks were very draining. granted, it was 90 degrees and beautiful, i can't help but think how much i did NOT want to come back here to the states. i wanted to just stay in nicaragua forever, and i always say that, but then i remembered (the skinny kids on the sidewalks selling gum always does remind me) why i had to come back to school, and why i do anthropology in the first place (sounds weird, why i "do" anthropology...)

but it's such a hard transition to make. there i was making friends with my nica's, you know, those who perhaps didn't even own shoes and were wondering why "the trees in the US go to sleep during this time of year." the first person i see back at school, here in the states i overheard in the mail room say "i'm going to go home this weekend to get my winter car." that kinda pushed me over the edge...(ever hear of snow tires??)

generally speaking, i'm not a fan of development work. that is, i'm not when it falls into the category of "modernization." because you know what? that's bullshit. what is modern? well, we are. and everyone else can measure themselves in increasing degrees of being like us. right? no way. mi amigo at duke, Charles Piot says "what is modern should be understood as less a historical condition than a political process to center the West and marginalize the rest." i always liked that phrasing. probably because it rhymes.

so why was i there, working in a free health clinic in the poorest community in Ciudad Sandino, the poorest municipality of Nicaragua, which is the second poorest nation in the western hemisphere (as if wealth were a measurement of anything worthwhile)? well, i wasn't there as an American who felt guilt that his government, which, as Geertz says, was so nostaligic for the Somoza days, urging radical Reaganomics *on the Nicaraguans*, has completely and utterly fucked the country (OK Geertz didn't say that last part, but he should have)--and continues to do so in the name of some vague notion of "free" trade. i was there, in a way, as a nicaraguan, even though i'm not--because i feel so much more at home in ciudad sandino, and after all who wouldn't work as hard as they could so that their family could eat, or afford simple medicines? ah, it's as if identity were rooted in "place." =)

so anyways, here i am back here, reading levi-strauss and struc-func theory--amazing how well we can lend credence to abstractions in the academic community. and the only thing that is keeping me going is the idea that i'll be back down there soon enough, eating platanos and gallo pinto and fearing the water...until then, however, i'm kinda going to be somewhat anti-social, for some reason it makes sense to do so.