Dar y Recibir

The past couple of weeks have been emotional for me.  I miss my friends from home/college a lot more than usual, and I feel like I should be in Latin America right now (especially thanks to all the SIP pictures and status posts that are inundating my Facebook newsfeed).  I know I'm where I'm supposed to be at this moment, working with immigrants in a society that overwhelmingly mistreats them.  I know that I'm learning a lot about myself while improving my Spanish and being somewhat useful at the clinic.  But I also know that I'm being called elsewhere.  I am extremely excited to start graduate school and begin studying global public health in a more academic way.  I am also starting to look forward to hopefully going abroad next summer to do my thesis research and then joining the Peace Corps the summer after I graduate.  Mercy Volunteer Corps has given me an amazing opportunity this year to take a step back and discover where my passions truly lie, but now I'm in an awkward period of being phased out of my job while anticipating my next steps.

In order to calm my sense of restlessness lately, I decided to spend the majority of my money on plane tickets for the summer.  I'll be going to Pasadena, CA from July 22 to July 26 and then to Philadelphia from August 2 to August 8.  That leaves me nearly three weeks to spend time at home to see friends and family, have jury duty, and go to like 4 doctor's appointments.  I can already feel my time before entering grad school slipping away.  I have plans for nearly every weekend until then, but I guess that's just how I tend to cope with big life changes.

Anyway, I've been reflecting a lot this weekend on my ability to give and receive mercy/love/kindness/whatever you want to call it freely.  It's sometimes really strange to have all the people I know here in Savannah be aware of the fact that I only make $100/month for spending.  People always offer to give me food or to pay for an outing, and they never fail to bring something (usually wine) if I invite them over to my house.  It's certainly nice to be rid of the pressure to always reciprocate gifts but I still find myself feeling somewhat awkward when people just pick up my check at a restaurant or take me on special excursions.

Yesterday I arrived at Mass a few minutes late, and when I got in I awkwardly stood in the back.  Barely 30 seconds later, a man carrying a "hand baby" (that is definitely one of my favorite Savannah terms) got up out of his pew, found a folding chair, carried it down the side aisle of the church, and plopped it down, motioning me to go sit.  There were a few young men sitting on the floor behind where my new chair was, and I felt extremely awkward, like a "gringa princess" or something.  I know the man was trying to be polite, and I certainly appreciated the gesture, but I still felt uncomfortable for some reason.

As I try to grapple with why I have such a hard time accepting other peoples' "random acts of kindness", I guess I should start also considering how many other people I have made feel uncomfortable by trying to "help" them.

Mi otro trabajo: trabajadora social

This morning, one of the first patients I saw at eye clinic was Mr. J. I asked if he has refilled his diabetic medications, and he shamefully said no because he didn't have the money. I lectured him about how he needs to call me when this happens because his health is very important, but then he politely apologized and explained that he didn't have the money because he had to pay an $800 ticket. I asked why, and he explained that he was pulled over last week for running a traffic light that the cop said was red by that Mr. J. said was green-turning-yellow. Mr. J. is undocumented, and when he was unable to produce a driver's license, he was held overnight in jail and then given an $800 ticket to pay. That is normally how much Mr. J. makes in a month doing manual labor in the Savannah area. However, the conversation was kind of bitterly sweet because we had both heard talk that Gov. Deal of Georgia was going to sign HB 87 into law later today; if Mr. J. had been pulled over for "driving while brown" after July 1, he would be sitting in a detention center awaiting a deportation trial.

A few minutes after this conversation, I talked to Mrs. S. and her 4-year-old son. I asked if the son goes to pre-school and she said no because in order to go to a state-funded program (paid for by the Georgia Lottery by the way), her son would need proof of residency. He is a U.S. citizen by birth, but she lives in a trailer that is owned by someone else and the bills are made out to that other person. This is an issue that many trailer park owners near my clinic are trying to crack down on, but I don't really know what they're going to do because most of the parks would be empty if they only allowed people with documentos buenos to stay. I emphasized to Mrs. S. the importance of children going to school, but the other problem is that buses won't pick up the kids and she doesn't have a car. She has a neighbor that will charge her $40 round-trip to wherever she needs to go, but that's not exactly sustainable for a school year. I asked her what she's planning on doing, and she said that it probably didn't matter because if HB 87 was signed today, she probably wouldn't be staying in Georgia much longer anyway "because of the risk of being separated from my son." I told her that she needs to at least wait the 6 weeks it'll take for her glasses to arrive, but I'm not too confident in that decision...

After spending 3 hours interpreting at the eye clinic, I drove to my regular clinic and listened to all 15 messages that had arrived between 5:30pm yesterday and 11am today. One was from the medical director of the local cancer center, so I obviously called him back first. There’s this woman, Mrs. Z. (I’m starting to run out of letters to use for these examples) who was diagnosed with breast cancer about 6 months ago out in the boondocks of Georgia. Mrs. Z.’s one aunt died of breast cancer, and her other aunt survived after a serious set of treatments. Mrs. Z. is 38 and has a 3-year-old, 6-year-old, and 9-year-old. She is undocumented, but all three children are U.S. citizens by birth. Anyway, she had a mammogram, breast ultrasound, breast biopsy, and right mastectomy at a little community hospital, with the last appointment being the beginning of March. She was then told that she would need several rounds of intense chemotherapy beginning sometime in the next three months, but that she’d have to find somewhere else for that to take place. I’m pretty sure that’s illegal and called “dumping”, but since she’s undocumented and speaks about 5 words of English, who was going to file a complaint? She has a parish priest trying to advocate for her, but his Spanish is far from perfect and he is a very busy man. Unfortunately, the cancer center here came to the difficult decision not to accept the case because the medical director feels like the other oncologist never should’ve started the treatment without being willing to follow-through with it. The medical director here is a very kind and generous man who has accepted every case I’ve given to him, but he said this was a much larger community issue for the county somewhere in the middle of Georgia. I just hate to think of Mrs. Z.’s life being sacrificed so that people could “learn a lesson” about how to treat cancer patients.

Amidst trying to clear off my desk today, scheduling a neurology appointment, multiple surgeries, and some specialized imaging orders, I got a call from a community member who talked at me for about 15 minutes about how his throat is closing up and how he’s living on Ensure because he hasn’t been able to swallow solid foods in several years. He went on and on about he paid taxes for 30 years and now he’s going to die because no one will help him. I obviously feel bad for this guy, but my patience was kind of low at this point in the afternoon after a long week. I suggested he call a general surgeon who will do a consult for $168. He said he didn’t have any money and that he’d just die waiting. I wish there was something else I could do, but there aren’t any surgeons who will do things for free around here. The guy probably needs his esophagus expanded, but he has other medical issues, and every procedure has risks. That’s not something my clinic can handle, and I’d be giving him false hope if I made him an appointment. Still, it sucks to feel like another person who’s just not helpful in a very cruel society.

I thought my job this year was "office coordinator"?

La cuenta hacia atrás

10 weeks from right now, I will be at home in Massachusetts, most likely getting ready to eat dinner.

I hate looking forward to the next chapter instead of living in the moment, but to be honest, the present is kind of boring.  I don't have any updates about my work, and I still have the rest of May to get through before my incredible line-up of guests come to visit in June.

I guess it makes sense to feel ready for transition at this point; for the past four years of my life, the first weekend in May meant the end of school and the beginning of summer.  Granted, it's been "summer" in Savannah since like February, but I think seeing the Facebook statuses of my friends getting ready for graduation and other adventures has me longing to also get going on my new journey.  Besides, I signed a lease in Atlanta last week, so I feel like I have one foot out the door even though I still have so much time left here.  And although I'm sure June and July are going to fly by, May just seems SO long.

I think the other part of my antsy-ness is that I just don't like living in Savannah.  I feel very isolated here, and lately my feelings of not belonging have been exacerbated by the incredible conservatism that I've never witnessed before this year.

As an example, after Osama bin Laden was killed on Sunday, a sign on one of the main streets in Savannah was changed to say "Osama is no more. US military...score.  We will never forget 9/11."  Sure, Savannah is a military town and almost every sign here says something along the lines of "We love the military! Go USA!".  But the way people were talking about the conclusion to this almost-ten-year-old mission made me want to throw up. It was if everyone was blind to the trillions of dollars spent and the thousands of innocent lives lost to capture one man.  And it's not like that money was being used to further understand why people like members of al Qaeda hate the U.S. so much.  The U.S. military doesn't focus on how to create better-educated and better-developed communities, even though every research article regarding development demonstrates the correlation between violent crimes and poverty/its counter-parts.

I realize that Savannah is not the only city in the U.S. that was blindly celebrating the death of bin Laden.  In fact, most of the northeast was party central, claiming that it made up for those feelings of horror that I remember so clearly from September 11, 2001.  Watching clips of celebrations in some of my favorite cities made my stomach churn, but it was at least good to see some well-written responses to those celebrations.  Here in Georgia, I felt like I had no one to even converse with about the topic without being accused for the umpteenth time this year of being a communist hippie.

So, the countdown is on.  I imagine I'll eventually get nostalgic about leaving MVC, but right now I'm just way too excited about going home and seeing my friends and family.