Guilt: An Unexpected Emotion

April 14, 2011

I was sitting under my mosquito net in my bedroom one evening, stealing a little bit of time to work on this blog, when I realized that I felt guilty for working on the blog instead of hanging out with my host family. I actually felt as though I were “stealing” time from somebody else in order to spend it with myself. As I started thinking, I realized that this kind of guilt, in general, has been a very prominent emotion during my training here. Why do I feel guilty?

First and foremost, I often feel guilty for leaving my real family in the U.S. in order to be here. I truly love and value every member and aspect of my ridiculously huge family. My whole life has been mildly plagued with feelings of guilt for never being able to be in two places at once; attending one family event has so often meant missing another. (Indeed, being with one family has always been the equivalent of NOT being with my other family.) Greater than my fear of being kidnapped or raped in the Peace Corps was the fear that my family(ies) would learn to go about their lives without me, basically forgetting about me and finding it inconvenient to suddenly be expected to include me in their lives de nuevo upon my return in 2 years. In my nightmares I see myself as a RPCV who has left her friends and family for 2 years and is no longer an integral part of their lives, who returns to a place with basically no familial or social network, sitting alone in an apartment wondering what to do, who to call.

This is, of course, a relatively irrational fear. When I do get home from the Peace Corps, all it will take is a few weeks to spread the word about my return, and with a little effort on my part, I will undoubtedly have an overflowing schedule of family and social events in no time.

Second, I have found myself feeling guilty all throughout training for not spending enough time with my host family. Our training schedule is very demanding and allows very little time for us to be at home with our host families. Class starts at 7:45am and ends around 6pm, with no traditional siesta in the afternoon. So while my Paraguayan family is feeling refreshed from their 3 hour naps when I get home and are excited to finally see me, I am absolutely exhausted, with barely enough energy or time to shovel dinner into my starving belly and do my homework, let alone partake in whatever social activities are underway in my host family. And NOTHING makes me feel more guilty than when my adorable 5-year-old host sister Micaela asks me to do something with her (go get ice cream, play soccer, put on music and dance), and I absolutely do not have an ounce of energy left to do it. I want to spend every last free moment hanging out with my host family… but when I get home from class every day, I desperately need about an hour to myself to rest, shower, clean, study, or organize my things. (Hence the extreme falta of Blog posts during my first 2 months here.) 

Finally, I also feel guilty when I DO spend time with my host-family during training, because there is always more studying to be done, and I always feel like I should be working on my Guarani homework or studying our technical materials. Every night that I choose host-family over studying, I regret the choice the next day during class and promise myself that “tonight I will study Guarani for at least an hour” or “tonight I will finish reading the section on Parasites…” 

SO, when it comes to non-class time, I feel pushed into a corner, a lose-lose situation, a Catch-22, if you will. If I spend time with myself, I feel horribly guilty for neglecting my host family. But when I spend time with my host-family, I feel guilty for neglecting my studies and underperforming in my training classes. 

So basically, my feelings of guilt are inescapable no matter what I am doing here. Just like in the U.S., there aren’t enough hours in the day to get everything done and make everybody happy. In the end, it is my host-family that most often wins out. I am more disposed to ditch my homework for the day if Carlos pokes his head in my room asking if I want to come drink tereré with them, and to leave the floor of my room unswept if Mica begs me to teach her more salsa dance moves. This is a choice that I make consciously, for I recognize that no amount of technical knowledge will be able to be transferred if my community doesn’t trust me and love me, and por eso, I do my best to always put them first when I’m being pulled in different directions. 

So if anybody thought that the Peace Corps was just going to be one long, free, vacation… think again! It is extremely demanding: intellectually, physically, emotionally, and existentially. Pero es un desafío que nos hace crecer, que al reflexionar nos hace entender mejor al mundo y al nuestro lugar dentro de él.