tempus fugit

So here I sit in a tank top and skirt. I am sweating a little from the walk up the stairs to the internet café (a combination of the weight I’ve gained… go figure, women gain weight in Peace Corps… and the oppressive heat that the city never fails to provide). As I look down to the corner of the screen I am reminded again that it is December. How is this possible? I ask myself. Have I really been here for five months? Is it true that Christmas and New Years are right around the corner? My calendar tells me that it is true, but I cannot believe it. It is as if this tiny island in the Atlantic Ocean exists outside of the world’s hectic schedule in its own timeless glory.
Yes, when I look around my house I see the change of seasons in the arid brown land. I feel the change in the blasting wind, slamming shut the windows and destroying what is left of the crops that so many toiled so hard to nourish (not to mention the skin and hair of those that toiled). However, despite these evident changes, I find myself in awe with the manner in which time has passed. The constant heat is, for me, a constant reminder of the summer that, in Massachusetts, passes all too quickly. It is almost as if the two months that passed during training were a dream that existed within an eternity and single moment all at the same time. As I woke from that dream to find myself on the front porch of my new “home,” time again took a leave of absence. Is it possible that I have been teaching for three months? Is it possible that I have been living here for three months? It must be, because that is, again, what my calendar tells me, but I don’t believe it.
I feel the passing of time in the scattered correspondences of friends and family, not in the passing of weeks. It seems to me that the weeks here pass in the manner that a day passes in the states. In that sense, time is irrelevant. I feel the weight of time in the growing divide between the Callie that existed in the states and the Callie that exists now, supposedly 5 months later, in Cape Verde. Though I love to read the reports from home, when I read them there is an empty echo of what used to be trapped inside of what is becoming. When I first arrived here at site, I liked to pretend that the clouds on the horizon were the shoreline of the Americas. Of course it is absurd to think, but it made me smile deep down inside. As the time goes by though, it feels like that imagined land on the other side of the ocean slides farther and farther away.
In this sense, I feel that living on this island is appropriate. I myself feel like I am existing in limbo, neither here nor there, and, in many ways, I am neither here nor there. (Despite the varying terrain of this tiny island, there are not many places to go.) I feel as if I have been uprooted and left to the side. I no longer feel the strength of the lines tied to America that once tugged as the shoreline receded into the background. However, I am also just beginning to lay roots in the cracks of this dry, rocky island. Like a boat lost at sea, I am both homeless and at home. I see the passing of each day, but it is inconsequential. The world and its happenings exist in some other place, but here I am, lost at sea.
Yet, despite this timelessness, time is passing, and, unfortunately, time costs money in the internet café....

until next time...