Dazed and Confused

Two years ago i started reading Barack Obama's memoir, Dreams From My Father. It was one of the many books on my "to read" list, and my motivation for starting it was simply to be able to cross it off with a check mark at the end. At the time, I never finished reading it, and handed it back to the library with some over due fines. It wasn't until two weeks ago, when Sister Ruth let me go through her treasure chest of books that I rediscovered it, and started from the beginning.

To be honest, I didn't follow much of the book. In times, the writing was confusing and the insights too complex to be written down in simple wording. I found much of his critiques on race in the US to be overdone, wondering if he focused too much on color and not enough on substance. But then again, as I'm sure he would say, I am a white American upper class woman born on his "powerful" side of society. what do I really know about being an African American in the US?

After reading the book, I had the feeling that I needed to sit with it for a while. That it was one of those books that don't make sense when you close the cover, but somehow begin to take shape in the days, or in my case mere hours, that follow. 

Much of his book is about his feelings of being an outsider in a society where identity is pertinent. It's about his struggle to find his definition between different races and continents, between a white family in Hawaii and an African family in Kenya. Clearly, there wasn't much for me to relate to on an immediate level. I'm an Irish- italian American with a firm sense of self, spending the last 22 years figuring out where I stand in the world. Until 7 weeks ago when I stopped being a racial majority and started being one of a handful of white people in the city I call home.

Being American here didn't start to present a challenge to me until approximately 8 o clock last night. I've been blessed with the ability to live in a host family that is accepting of me and willing to help me learn. They treat me as an individual, as a member of their family, and help me to express and substantiate my opinions through my different experiences.  I realized last night that this isn't the case with everyone.  Being a white volunteer comes with preconceived notions, ones that I hate and that shake my firm foundation of comfort.

 It starts with people wanting my opinion, thinking that I'll agree or that I know best. It started last night with the declaration from a man that I must agree that his son playing with girls toys was unacceptable  and the worst thing that could happen. What do I say? Do I get into an argument in broken Spanish about how being a good parent is loving your child no matter what they are? About how I can already see the path of his relationship with  his child's and that it kills me? That I want to hug his child and tell him he's beautiful, no matter what he likes? No, because I'm in someone's else's home, because I literally don't know the words, and because I'm the American. I'm on the outside. If I agree,It collaborates their belief, which is the last thing i want. But if I disagree I can easily become the rude American, and create riffs in the family circle that seems to include everyone in Ocoa.  So I fake that I can't understand, look stupid and take another sip of soda, hoping that the moment will pass quickly. It does, and another takes it's place.

The ever so popular conversation of whether or not i have a boyfriend commences.  Apparently being 22 and single is absurd, leading people to question why I don't have a boyfriend, and then to assure me they will find me one. There is no space to explain that these five months are not for me to fall in love, but that this time is for me and the people I am working with. The last thing I want to do is cloud my short time here with a romance that won't last and that involves way too many tissues, chocolates and emotions that i would rather spend elsewhere. In this specific conversation, I was not only told that I could easily find a boyfriend among the many nice friends that this specific gentlemen, the father of the son playing with girls toys, promised me, but also that I could bring the said "chosen one" back to the US where we could both live. As the American girl, I am less attractive because of whatever beauty I may or may not possess, and am more attractive because of my ability to bring someone to the US. I've become a vessel for the new world.

As the night drew to a close, I started to understand what Obama was saying about being an outsider. I felt less like person and more like an ideal that I didn't fully understand, but was supposed to live out.This morning, it was solidified. I like to think, naively I now see, that volunteering time means more than giving money. That the personal connections are important, that they mean more than a check. At the nursing home I have been talking to one woman, bed ridden for years, on a consistent basis. I spend the most time with her and have come to value our friendship. Today, I felt as if the last  four weeks of conversations were stripped away in one quick swoop.Today she looked at my shoes and asked me what size they were. After I responded, she told me she wanted them when I left, that she would remember them. She then asked if I had anything else for her; that she wanted things. I was immediately taken aback and hurt. I felt like the only reason I was valuable was because of what I had, not who I was. Not to mention that she was already planning for me to leave, when i still have three and a half months left. It wasn't my story or friendship she wanted, but my shoes.

I don't know what the answer to this struggle, this being an outsider, is. Do i give away everything i have, because i can and therefore should? Or do I refuse to give shoes or things to anyone, to prove that it I'm not here to give things, but to give time? Do i stop sharing my possessions with others in a culture where all they do is give? Does that even make sense in a culture when people need so much? Does my time here even matter? Or is it just what I'll leave behind in materials that I should care about?

And what about my opinions? Free to express them in Freddy's house, I feel taken aback and defensive outside. I feel shy and like it isn't my place. But is it? When do you speak up and when do you know that it isn't your place? Is choosing one an abandonment of self, or identity?

Today, I feel confused. I've been faced with the struggles I knew would come, but didn't want to. I feel like my foundation has been shaken, and I'm not sure how to right it. I'm not sure how to dispel the American stereotypes when I can't stop being the white American girl. Sure, I can say I'll keep being myself, but I also have to keep being sensitive to the culture I'm living in. It isn't black or white. It isn't about just giving people things, but rather the expectation that because I am white, giving is automatic. Because I am American, I will bring someone back to the states. I will give money, just because I can. I don't know where to draw the line. I don't know where to right myself. What I do know is that I owe Barack an apology. Your book wasn't confusing. It was my own lack of clarity, lack of understanding of your life, that muddled the words. And honestly, I wish I didn't have the clarity to make sense of it. I wish I didn't have to be the outsider to understand your words. I'm sorry that you were for so long. I see where you stood, I hear your words, and with dread, I understand. I get it. I just wish that I didn't.