Saying Goodbye

They are going to hate me. I had just quit the Peace Corps, and my thoughts turned to my site and the community I was living in. I now had to go back to my site, collect my possessions, and say goodbye. What would I tell my community? What would they think of me? What do I think of myself? What on earth am I going to say?

I arrived back in my town during the early afternoon. Descending from the microbus, some children recognized me and immediately started yelling the customary greeting: “Qawa Jordan!” Don Jordan. I could never say much to the kids in my town, because I never knew much Q’eqchi. I said what I could, and I got them to like me. The nice thing about kids is that it doesn’t take much for them to like a person. I’ve always thought children are better judges of people than adults. Children always know when you are being true to yourself.

I was nervous, so I smiled, nodded, and tossed back some phrases in Q’eqchi. What am I going to say? Why is this happening? I thought I would be a good Volunteer. I thought I would stay the full 2 years.

I approached my host family’s house. Martin, who was my host brother and also one of my counterparts, was standing outside with Don Santiago, my host father. They were really excited to see me, since I had been away from site for several weeks attending mandatory trainings. Their happiness was going to make it harder for me to tell them the truth. I hate letting people down.

They greeted me, but I immediately started talking. “I have bad news. Bad news.”

“What happened?”

“I have to leave.”

“What? Why?”

“I have to leave. I need to explain it.”

“Come sit inside and tell us what is going on.”

They pulled me inside the first hut, the house consisting of two huts in total. The second hut was where the kitchen was located. It always bothered me that so many of them had to sleep in the kitchen. The first hut had one room. This is where I lived for my first three months in site until I couldn’t take the incessant crying of infants any longer. To make a little nook for me, my host father tacked up three boards to separate me from the 6-7 family members living on the opposite side, which is where my host father and host brother told me to sit now.

“Now,” Don Santiago, my host father, said, “Why are you leaving?”

Do I lie? Do I tell the truth? What do I do? I decided to go with the truth.

“I’m really sorry. The house is still not built. The junta directiva has said for months that it will be built, but there is never any progress. I feel like I have been living on top of you. I can’t move any of my stuff out of this house until I have a place to live. There are issues with Peace Corps too. I can’t get support from Peace Corps.” I kept talking and talking. Eventually I started to ramble. At this point, the rest of the family had crowded into the room. People were translating to Dona Paulina that I was leaving. She looked surprised and very upset. Not the angry upset, but the kind of upset when someone wrenches on the strings of your heart. The kind of upset that hurts more than the angry upset.

Stopping me, Don Santiago says, “What kind of problems with Peace Corps?”

Alternatingly looking at the floor and up into the faces of the members of my host family, I reply, “Oh, nothing that you did. There are problems with Don ---------. They should have been helping me more.”

“We lost our opportunity to have a Volunteer,” Don Santiago said. “The junta directiva should have built the house. We lost our chance. It is bad, because the junta directive has not done anything. The members will change next year, and the current junta directiva has nothing to show for their time. This is a shame.” This is not how I expected this to go.

I didn’t know what else to say, so that’s what I told them. “I’m sorry. I…I don’t know what to say,” I stammered. “I’m…I’m….” I looked up at them. And I began to cry. I didn’t know if I would cry saying goodbye to the people at my site. I didn’t think I had built up enough emotional capital. I didn’t think that I stayed long enough to truly care about people at my site. I thought that I had failed as a Peace Corps Volunteer, and, therefore, did not have the right to cry about leaving these people. But I couldn’t hold it back. “I’m so sorry this is happening. I never thought I would leave early. I am so sorry.”

“The junta directiva lost this opportunity. This is a shame,” Don Santiago repeated.

Peace Corps had made me an emotional wreck. I had gotten teary-eyed after my boss told me he wouldn’t give me a site change, thus ending my Peace Corps service, and here I was now, bawling. Looking back on it now, I hadn’t cried since the funerals of my grandparents.

Dona Paulina suddenly spoke up. Her words were translated for me. She wanted to know if she did something wrong to make me leave. I said no. She told me that she felt like I was a part of the family. She started to speak again, but then started to cry. She started to speak. She started to cry. It was all so sad.

I told them I needed to pack my things, because tomorrow I would be leaving. Before I did that, I decided to take a walk down the trail that leads to the caves one last time. On the way to the path, I said some more goodbyes. Eventually I came upon the start of the trail. I looked down it with tunnel vision. It was like someone had blurred my peripheral vision like a painter angrily smearing the sides of his canvas.

I walked, and I thought. It was surreal. Why was I sent here? Why did I spend months applying and waiting for an invitation only to have this happen? I was a kaleidoscope of emotions. I worked hard during training and impressed my boss. He told me that only I could succeed at this site, but now I am leaving, I thought. It all was so sad. I meandered down winding paths, under hanging tree branches and over hills. I walked all the way to the mouth of one of the caves, looked into the dark abyss, and turned around. Usually, when I had walked this path in the past, I would pass at least one or two individuals. This time, no one. Not a soul. Alone. Kind of how I felt the entire time at site. Alone because I couldn’t speak Q’eqchi, and alone because the Peace Corps didn’t give a damn.

Suddenly, I remembered a question that I had asked my Peace Corps recruiter. During my interview I asked, “I have heard of horror stories where Volunteers are placed in a site and get absolutely no help from Peace Corps.”

His response was straightforward. “That does not happen. Only Volunteers who are not proactive, who do not ask for help from the administration, fail. Those are the ones who go home.” Great, I thought. That is not me. I have nothing to worry about. And it wasn’t me. I asked for help. I tried to make the best of a situation that was hopeless. I tried for four months to improve the situation, but I got little to no support from Peace Corps.

Back from my walk on the trail near the caves, it was time to pack up all of my belongings. Like always, the younger children and older girls were in my room watching me. Mainly, they were playing with my possessions strewn across the room, asking what they could with the little Spanish that they knew. I answered in a deadpan kind of way. At one point, one of my host brothers approached me. It was a 12 year old named Efrain. He stood there and stared at me, sizing me up. “Chawil aawib sa laa tenamit.” This means take care of yourself in your town. He said it in such a strange way that I thought he was joking. He repeated the phrase, but this time he started crying and hugged me. The Q’eqchi people don’t express themselves well, and, I guess, when there is not much practice at being emotional, it is hard to convey one’s true feeling. But Efrain’s true feeling was clear. He was very, very sad. His means didn’t match his end, but his end result was sadness, and sadness is the same everywhere. Two of his younger brothers and sisters were standing behind him. They were crying as well. I gathered them all up in a group hug and simply stood there with them. Sometimes all you can do is be present.

Emotionally fatigued, I sat down in the only chair in the room to rest. There was extremely hot weather that day, and I was drenched in sweat. While I was sitting in the wooden chair contemplating the future, Martin, my host brother and counterpart, appeared in the doorway. He was glaring at me. He hadn’t said much since I got back to site, and I couldn’t read him. He was never one to express his emotions anyway. Slowly, he asked, “Jordan, are you sad?”

“Yeah. I’m sad.”

“You shouldn’t be sad.”

“Why not?” Silence. I continued, “Why shouldn’t I be sad? I’m leaving. I’m leaving early. I never wanted this to happen.” Then I saw it in his eyes. It looked like Martin was about to cry. He couldn’t talk, because words would give way to tears.

“I don’t want you to go,” he choked.

“Martin, I don’t know… I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to feel. Four months ago, I didn’t know any of you, and now I am sad, because I don’t know---The tears in his eyes made me lose it yet again. Tears streamed down my face---- don’t know when we will see each other again.”

Two men crying in the strangest of circumstances. Two men from two completely different worlds, uncontrollably weeping. Life has a strange way of bringing you to your poignant moments. I stood up, and I walked over to him. We hesitated, and then we embraced. For a guy who never showed his emotions, he gave me one hell of a bear hug.

That night, at dinner, Don Santiago said goodbye to me. He told me that he had to be somewhere the next morning and that he would not be able to say goodbye to me then. He had to say goodbye now. A large man by Guatemalan standards, he now seemed lost in worry, a shrunken version of himself. We exchanged heartfelt goodbyes, and I went off to prepare for bed.

That night, I struggled to sleep.

Upon waking, I rubbed my eyes to focus them. Yesterday, unfortunately, was not just a bad dream. I really did have to leave my site and fly home. I put on my glasses and trudged to eat one final breakfast with the family. I was surprised to see that Don Santiago was sitting in the kitchen, waiting for me. Like he had done so many times before, he beckoned for me to take a seat at a tiny wooden stump next to him. One of the women gave me my breakfast. One egg, scrambled. “Bantiox,” I muttered in Q’eqchi. It was never enough food, no matter how many times I tried to politely tell them that I needed more food, no matter how many times I told Peace Corps that I was not getting enough food. I could eat it in two bites, but I made it last by sprinkling it into four or five fresh tortillas.

Don Santiago looked me in the eyes, and he said, “Jordan, I wanted to say goodbye to you again.” His eyes were red, as if he had been crying and rubbing them for hours. The whole family, like usual, was in the kitchen. I looked around. Accustomed to being stared at by the members of the family during entire meals, this time they averted my gaze. It’s funny, you spend so much time with a person, and intently watch him or her. Then you realize a person is about to leave your life forever, and you can’t make eye contact; you look away. Maybe it’s a coping mechanism designed to ease the pain, the sense of loss. Maybe if you don’t look at the person who is about to leave forever, then he is already gone. Maybe convincing yourself that he is already gone makes him gone. Maybe.

I ate my breakfast with my head bowed. I felt physically weak. Intense emotional experiences can make a person physically weak. “Jordan,” Don Santiago said, breaking through the silence. “I want to give you this.” He lifted from his neck a beaded necklace that he always wore. “You are like a son to me, and I don’t want you to go.” He started to sob. Again, I found myself doing the same, along with the rest of the family.

Too weak to say anything else, I uttered, “Thank you. Thank you.” They had accepted me as one of their own, but I felt desolate and ashamed. Why do I have to leave? My breakfast was finished, and I had already said all that I could possibly say yesterday. All I could think to do was stare down at the ground.

Eventually, I looked up, to the door of the kitchen, and the sight absolutely astonished me. If my life has ever approached a movie-like state, it was at this very moment. There, standing in the doorway of the family’s kitchen were people. Lots of people. There were heads of little girls and boys poking through the doorway through the legs of older boys and men. We stared at each other for what felt like minutes. One by one, many of the men came over and shook my hand and gave me a hug. Surreal doesn’t even begin to describe it. Perhaps, nothing can ever describe it.

My bags were packed. Finals words had been spoken. It was time to go.

I waited by the side of the road in front of my host family’s house with the family and others from the town. Approximately 20 minutes later the Peace Corps van pulled up, driven by a nice older man named Pascual. He loaded my bags in the trunk, and I waved a final goodbye from the passenger seat to a place where I might never return. This was not the way that it was supposed to happen, and that’s what I told Pascual on the drive back to the Peace Corps headquarters. I told him about how unfortunate it all was that I had to leave early. He turned toward me and gave me a quizzical look. “It’s funny. The way that you left, with all of the people there and everything, I thought you had just completed your service.”