One year down! old journal entry named "si dios quiere"

Ok hurricane Dean update! things were ok. week without power, roads HORRIBLE!, couple trees down. talk to my community- lot of wind strong, lot of rain, LOT of wind. everythings going good. soon i will be off to celebrate one year of peace corps with friends in an all inclusive (yeah we are indulging)! wrote a little something special. will post it later on this week.
currently trying to start up a sexual health promoters group, and a sala de tarea (tutoring). Just moved out but my dona jokes that i still live with her, just sleep somewhere else. will post pictures of it soon also. its beautiful with too much space. working toilet(think im one of the handful of people in my community with one of these), spout overhead for shower.
still take 2 weekly trips to the river with the kids where i practice my kreyol. the batey kids and women want to talk more and more. i should really study up.
heres an old journal entry (to make this update worth it)-

I think I'm begining to understand the depth of 'si dios quiere,' the proper response to just about any question meaning 'if god wills it.'

In the U.S. we strive for power. We strive to control. We live according to science, researching how we can better control the uncontrollable. How we can fix our inconvienences and predict the ever uncontrolable elements of mothernature.

In poverty everything becomes uncontrollable elements that you must adapt to. The water and electricity come and go as they please. Your house will fall over one day and moto will break. You may have food today, you may die today. You may have money today and if you do you enjoy it, it may not be back for a while.

When everything is an uncontrollable element, you must expect anything. You learn not to get to attached to things. You live in the present. God will give and take as she wishes. You learn to accept the bad with a sigh of loss and a shrug of the shoulders, "it was what god wanted." Plans for the future are never set in stone. Meetings will only take place if god allows for the meeting to take place. That is if god allows for those holding the meeting and those who are to attend to actually arrive at the meeting. We are pawns moving according to the whims of god.

Growing up I remember hearing the biblical story of Job. A person who lost it all but continued praising god with each loss. Priests and teachers presented Job as a stoic saint, a martyr. I know the truth. Job was no saint. Job was just a man who adapted quickly to poverty and was smart enough to know that the devil never pays off on promises.

As the things that have been keeping me sane are breaking I am beginging to adapt to poverty on a deeper level. I am beginging to understand the powerlessness involved in all aspects of life and the fatality of circumstance that comes with this. I think the other volunteers in my group are beginging to understand this also. In the climax of frustration my experience with another volunteer Adrienne summed it up best. Walking home from a colmado one night in the capital, after a haitian man poured us a few too many cups of his family's rum, Adrienne turns to me "Becky do you realize we are living in poverty?" This question struck me. Although to outsiders it may seem obvious, we go about our daily lives unaware of the poverty we are living. At this moment, thanks to the bachata music, the company of friends, and of course the haitian rum, we stop dead a street in the colonial zone. Arm in arm Adrienne and I scream into the sleeping city, "WE LIVE IN POVERTY!" The idea seemed so foriegn to our comfortable upper-middle class United States upbringings that all we could do is laugh, shrug our shoulders and walk on.