Play: It’s All about the Fellow Travelers

This is an article that I sent into the Peace Corps newsletter for health volunteers. Apologies to any readers who may see this in both places!

They just stopped. Are they just busy? Did I do something? Why is my women’s group suddenly not showing up for meetings? I miss my ex-boyfriend in the States. I mean I know I broke up with him when I left but, still. We’re supposed to be friends. He should call more. There are chickens in my kitchen! Awwww man, not my granola!

These are not the really good days. The really good days are delightful paving stones marking my way through service. There was the time Professora Dalinda took up the Salud Ambiental banner because her pigs love fruit peels and got the elementary school to separate organics from inorganics, in spite of the pessimistic principal whose nickname is Mr. Speed bump. Or the time I sat open-mouthed realizing that the diagnostic did get it right when the community voted to prioritize the Solid Waste Management Project in the participatory budget. I was greeted with another happy turn when the previously non-existent DEMUNA office got a rock star lawyer about my age who loves to hang out and talk about politics.

Still, some days I wrestle with the lingering quandary, “How do I get though this day and where did all these chickens come from?” The days I just cannot sit down to dinner with my host family and review my latest humiliating snafu for the 5th time, or no one comes to my meeting, or someone kindly observes, “Wow you really are gorda. Aren’t you?” Those are the days that I play. Play keeps me pointed in the right direction. It keeps me from falling into some imagined reality where I’m the star of the show like a Doña Quixote stabbing at windmills and taking myself way too seriously. I get out scissors, paper, markers, or maybe some Playdough exported from the US by a kind friend who knows my peculiar habit. Free stuff is even better; milk can labels, plastic straws that come with yogurt containers, random dry and not too disgusting trash, or old receipts on colored paper are always good options. I make whatever: collages, small sculptures, stationery, wall hangings, book covers, little books, or recently posters with inspirational quotes. I scribble words on paper, stick the note to something, and never let myself wonder if it counts as a poem. My creations are never pretty and I really don’t care. When my wee neighbors come to visit and ask about the odd collection of objects on my shelf. I say ahh yea (a ubiquitous expression here in Bajo Piura), “Want to glue scraps of paper?” They’re always into it.

My nearest volunteer buddy suggested that we get together to write affirmations for ourselves when we were feeling down a while back. We decided to call the other volunteers in the neighborhood, invite them over to my house, and play. It became Bajo Piura Art Therapy Day. We sat at my kitchen table and wrote self styled words that inspired us in pretty script. I suppose that was kind of therapy-y. Mine said, “It’s all about the fellow travelers” and was decorated with a cartoon I clipped from a back issue of The New Yorker.

It’s currently stuck to the wall next to my front door as a note-to-self that understanding is my destination and my road is listening well. All I have to do is carry on past the chickens to the good days that mark my path so that when no one shows up for the meeting and the municipality still hasn’t started the trash diagnostic I’m chill and sociable and generally enjoy the journey. To make this happen I must play for a bit and then go visit friends in town. We eat popsicles and talk. It would be great if that engineer would show up so that the mayor would let us weigh the trash but, I’ll work on that some more tomorrow. Today, it’s all about play.