invisible

                Some days, I wish I were invisible.

                I just want to be able to walk the half hour journey down my dirt road to the shop, without being pestered by shouts of “give me money!” and “where is my candy!?” and “hey, white person!”  I’ve been here for a year already; why are you still saying these things to me?

                I want to go on my runs without having to plan them during the least busy hours of the day.  I like lying in bed and enjoying the soft gray dawn as it comes up over the mountains and leaks through my lacy curtains.  I don’t want to rush out of bed just because on my morning runs, less people will be up to stare at me.

                If I were invisible, my teachers wouldn’t make comments about the “strange” food I bring to school for lunch or stick out their hands to taste it, leaving me with only a quarter of what I began with.  I wouldn’t have to explain to them why I’m trying to lose weight or why it’s important to eat healthy.  I wouldn’t have to listen to them tell me I’m fat when I eat more than usual.

                I wish I could stay in my house for an entire weekend and watch Parks and Recreation in bed and bake cookies and not feel guilty about later having to answer to my family’s inquiries about why I was “hiding myself”.  I wouldn’t have to put in that obligatory “face time” with my host family or my community, because if I’m a volunteer, I have to always be around doing things for other people, right?

                Being invisible would mean that I could also ignore the knocks on my door when I’m in the middle of writing a blog post, like I’m trying to do right now. 

                Peace Corps talks a lot about the fishbowl effect before you’re sent off for your service.  Everyone will be staring at you wherever you go…everyone will know your business…everyone will bother you and pester you and try to be with you at all times of the day.  I guess I knew it was coming, but I didn’t know just how intense it would be.  I thought, after two years, I’d slowly become part of my community.

                In a way, I have.  But in many ways, I haven’t and won’t ever.

                To put it bluntly, I’m white.  I stick out like a sore thumb.  I’ll never be the same color as the people in my village.  My hair will always be different than theirs.  And subsequently, everything I wear and everything I eat and everything I do is, as they think, different.  It’s interesting.  And I don’t blame them for being interested, but being different is really exhausting.

                Sometimes, being invisible would be much easier.