Rather than type all of the lyrics out for you, I decided to just find a video and post it. Shelly had this song on her ipod, and I probably listened to it a million times that night. I didn't have the internet when I wrote out all the words, so I listened to it over and over. What a great song, by an artist with an incredible and strong voice! To this day, I am moved by this song. It always me think about my girls in Ecuador.
Here's the next part of the excerpt:
11:11PM... Ironic... make a wish! >>making a wish<<
What do you wish for in a third world country? What do you do in a third world country? You find frustrations at your inabilities. Inabilities to do anything of importance. The is reason is because this is not your place, this is not your poverty, this is not your sad fucking life. When your heart is of this place, as mine is to the very root, I feel you bleed along with them. Then again, you are not them. There is this valley that lies between me and the whole world... because what do I do with these things I see? What do I teach to these women who are raped of their dignity day after day just to put food on the table for their illegitimate children or alcoholic husbands?
The thing is, everyone in a better place turns their heads to the side. Even the Americans that are here are separated from all of this continuous bleeding. They are blind to the red river that runs through this city and country and into all the other impoverished places. I have found freedom in this place. I have found freedom from myself.
Raul just told me I need to think of myself. I am not of importance in this place. This is the very root of why I thrive, because my body is drained of my own blue blood and I am raining red into their river. As I flow along, I can jump out at any moment, regain my blood-- my very essence-- and be right back at square one: in the United States with my hot showers and sugary sweet wine and my drugs that take me to another place only temporarily.
What is love? Somebody, anybody, PLEASE tell me what love is, because in the eyes of these forgotten and abandoned children, I see no love for them from anybody. It all comes down to money. Money eats away at their food, their futures, and any hope for them. And what of the prostitutes in which I am supposed to teach? Why should I even begin to tell them of the language that takes me back to my nativity?
My native people look down on these women, and laugh at what I am doing. It is found odd and ironic and almost joke-like. Their children are seen as the product of something disgusting, not made of love but of a profession. I face these women and I forgot who they are and where they came from that very day. They are human, just like me. They have sex, just like every other human beings (excepts nuns and whoever else so chooses). Yet they are dirty, fucking filthy to the rest of the world. The world that has no compassion for anyone who does anything so unfathomable.
Who can see them as precious? Who looks into their eyes so closely, to see the beauty of the color and the soul that lies behind them? No one. No one offers even an ounce of love to any of these people, and I want to give the world to them: To my orphans, to my very children. I would pack a plethora into my suitcase if I could. I am willing to be the friend of these prostitutes. I want to hear their stories. I want them to learn that they, too, have a soul and a body that is still loveable. Where does this come from? The only thing I can think of is Jesus. God, the God that I have abandoned for so many years, comes back to me continuously. It is He that ignites this fire within me.
I am a wildfire. Perhaps that is why people here think I am crazy. I feel free to dance, to wave my arms to melodies, to stomp my feet, and swirl my hips in motions that only music can lead me to. I feel frustrated at the program I came here with. I have come all the way to Ecuador, to Guayaquil, to make a difference, and I am withheld by the fucking liars that sent me here. Let them all be known. Three volunteers have returned within a week of their arrival due to the same realization. I continue to fight, and I will fight. It is building in me. Not just anger at the fact that I am practically useless most of the time, because I have nothing that I need to make the most of my capabilities, but frustration at the lies that pollute a world that has so much beauty and potential and the dream of becoming a utopia. Go ahead and laugh, but it is possible. Anything could be possible if some of these people would just step back.
I am finding it is the people with prestige and money that really rob us all. You see it in movies and read about it in stories. Hell, even the industrial revolution when the rich geezers raped all the poor for everything they were worth, driving them to starvation, disease, jobs unimaginable and unworthy of record, and then eventually, to death. How many people have the rich killed? It is not a genocide, it is literally the murdering of all of mankind. The murder of hope and soul and spirituality. I am finding it is the poor that give you a multitude of gifts, and although small, hold so much value in the very gesture.
I have been bought a coca cola by a prostitute, given hair ties by the girls in my orphanage, a dollar from a guy at the mall to help me get home one night. The very people who are sacrificing their souls, freedom, and very lifestyles are willing to sacrifice something small that holds so much value for them, just to bring a mere smile to your face. Is it because I am American? No, because everyone here wants to get a dollar out of an American. It is because they, too, are able to appreciate the smallest of gifts. Jesus saw worth in prostitutes. Gandhi saw hope for a better future for his people. Mother Theresa believed there was a way to take in orphans and actually turn their pain into something greater-- hope. Hope, there is always hope. There is always something to provide when there is nothing. Yet I say always, and this is not even the truth. People starve every day as I toss the rice on my plate to the dog. I really would eat it, but I just am too full half the time.
I am baffled at the amount of idiots in this great Earth. The silly hogs that eat away their beauty, or starve themselves to old age; the people who rob a poor man for all he's got just to get another fix of cocaine, or support the addiction of a multitude of people just to get their luxurious lives. I can give a multitude of examples of this. How about the American Tobacco Industry? And you know what the truth is? They jip these third world countries, as I can tell the difference between an American Marlboro and a pack I bought on the street-- and it's not just because they're stale. They were made for here, because of the "fuma causa cancer" labels written on them. How about the British getting all the Chinese addicted to opium and then putting a tax on the drug? All the people that come from to Ecuador from Colombia to sell their cocaine-- their strong, can't-get-enough cocaine-- and then milk the addiction. How about xanex, valium, klonopins? All these glorious medicines to melt away your fear, your anxiety, but which also melt away your mind and your liver and leave you with a terrible fear of fear and dependency? Yeah, I can relate to that one. All these prescription drugs for depression, anxiety, ADHD and all this other bull shit... when really, it's all just a fucking market: an illusion for the rest of the idiotic world. And we partake, resulting in fear of not having more.
So here I am, on the other side of the hemisphere, where supposedly the toilet water swirls the other way (which is another lie), and I am bitching about all this stuff. So where is my hope and my optimism? It lies in the foreigners, people from all the other parts of the world, people who have traveled and seen, and decide to partake in this impoverished life. Why? Because in so many ways it is better. They see the hope in the hopeless, and enjoy the greatness of the simplest of gifts. They find freedom running from money and partaking in simple meals of rice and beans. They have also found the gift in giving and the uselessness in the delicious taste of a McDonald's hamburger.
My family here is my rock. They are poor as hell right now, but their genuine giving and lifestyle runs thick as a brick wall. And I am perched on top of their brick wall, soaking in the scenery, trying to look for a better way. A better way for the people I work with and for and for themselves. I am lost. I can find no answers. I see plenty of them on the horizon, but how I get there to obtain them has been guarded by the barb-wire fenced posts thrown up by all the rich liars: the government, the businessmen, the very people that sent me here.
No comments:
Post a Comment