Chew the Fat

Last night I was scootering home in the rain. It was 11:30 I was tired, sick and hadn’t eaten for over a day due to this bug I can’t beat. In the month that I have been here I have lost about 10 kilos and have a cough that’s turning nasty. When I wake up in the morning there is black crap seeping out of my eyes. I have to wash my hair at least four times per shower to get the oil out. My face is always oily and my body is always achy. Many people have lived in Kaohsiung all their lives; they have never left the area even for a holiday because they don’t have the money. The pollution is so strong that they have never seen blue sky, just a grey and yellow blanket. They have never seen a horizon, they have never seen a star, they have never seen the moon, they can barely see the sun.

After the rain last night, some of the pollution had subsided; I looked out the window and noticed a mountain less than a kilometer from our place. I had never seen it before.

As I was waiting at the lights in the rain last night, my body falling to pieces from breathing in the fumes of about thirty scooters surrounding me, I felt happy. It has been hard, but I knew it would be and I have impressed myself with how much I have been ok with the pain. So far three out of the twenty people that we trained with have gone home.

I can understand it; this place is not for everyone. If you aren’t able to step back and think about where you are, and have the right mindset, you won’t survive. When I was at those lights I felt happy because I was sitting on a scooter with neon lights, dogs, food stalls and smells all about me. I had just come from teaching crazy six-year-olds how to speak English. When I got home I bought a beer from the 7-11 for 1 dollar and drank it on the roof of our building watching the wild dogs marching around the park below. After, we chatted to our toothless guard. He recommended some good places to eat. On Sunday I would be heading through the mountains and along the coast to a village where I will buy an indigenous umbrella from an old lady.

I know that if I only chewed on my hardships, I would have been home weeks ago. But if I was back home nothing would have changed, everyone would still be the same, and I would probably never come back to this amazing country again. What a waste.