So when it happened again, I complained to my friend that I’m tired of being abnormal and there’s no real explanation for what’s going on. He said, “stress.” The thing is, I didn’t really think I had been feeling particularly stressed lately. It’s become such a regular part of my life that I don’t even notice it anymore, I guess.
Which brings me to a conversation I had with a fellow volunteer a couple months ago. I told her about the problems I had been having and she told me about hers. She only has a bowel movement about once every one or two weeks. She said it’s so bad she can see the difference in her stomach after she’s had one. “But,” she said, “when I went on vacation, I pooped every day.”
That’s when we realized how living in this country stresses us every day. We are always on guard, careful of what we say and what we do, acutely aware that we are always being watched. Some of it comes with the territory of being a volunteer anywhere because you’re representing America, but some of it is specific to this country because of the added paranoia. For instance, I use a black Sharpie to obscure the address labels on all the mail I get before I throw the envelope or box out because I know people go through our trash. Other volunteers know they are regularly followed. We have to deal with intrusive questions from authorities. [For example: I was asked to provide my school director with the names, nationalities, dates of birth, and occupations of my parents, grandparents and brothers. That ordeal bordered on the surreal when they asked why I couldn’t be more specific about where my brother worked in Korea. None of that is any of their damned business but because they ask for this information from all their workers, they ask it from me, not thinking about the fact that I don’t actually work for them, that I am a guest in their country and am there as a favor. So out of principle, much of the information I provided was fabricated, like that one of my grandmothers was named Josephine Baker and one of my grandfathers was a rabbi. My “pedigree” is some of the best creative writing I’ve done here.] Whenever I go somewhere I’m asked where I will be staying when I’m there, even if it is out of the country and there’s no way they could check up on me and no reason for them to. As in “what is your purpose for going to Germany and where will you be staying?” Um, I’m going to gather intelligence on liederhosen production and I’ll be staying at Hotel Fick Dich.
Perhaps the biggest affront to me and most disturbing was when my methodologist called my host mom and asked her to hack into my computer, find out my email address and not tell me about it. My host mom did not do that and obviously did tell me about it. It’s hard not to take that sort of thing personally, because even though I know the methodologist was asked by someone higher up to try to get that information, she’s worked with volunteers for years and knows (or should know) that we’re just here to help; we’re not spies. Just don’t even ask; wait a couple days and say you couldn’t do it, which is what she ended up having to report anyway. This added to my intense dislike of this woman, who has an uncanny resemblance to Rosa Kleb in From Russia with Love.
Knowing all of this in addition to the normal volunteer stresses of working, living in a foreign culture, feeling isolated, etc. really takes a toll on us physically. Sometimes so insidiously that it takes going on vacation to remember what it’s like to feel normal.
Vacation, here I come!