Colonized mentality

My host mother, Cita, never tries to explain. Whenever I don't quite understand her Visaya or she doesn't understand mine, instead of trying to work through the gap between us, she immediately runs to get someone who knows some English. Often I just need her to speak slower or gesture, so her helplessness in communicating with me is very frustrating. And her helplessness comes with shame; shame that she doesn't speak English, shame that she is wasting a white woman's time. And the insanity of it all is that we we're in HER country, in HER house and yet she feels at fault for our lack of common speak.

It's moments like this that I feel the sadness creeping back in, ever-present, ever-ready to take over one more time. It tempts me with the safety and familiarity. Do I like being depressed, do I like the feeling of utter loneliness? It's a drug. A drug I know because it served me well for such a long time. And in this country of color-based isolation and overwhelming poverty, it's an easy script to fill.

And I want it to fill me. I want to slip back into the place I know and clothe myself in my long-time companion. I love it, I hate it, I want it because it's frightening to not know the woman who shows up in the mirror. And that woman is changing everyday as I grow here. The girl with puffy eyes and the empty smile is my friend, the woman covered in mud and talking about small-scale revolution is from another planet.

Successful colonization is when the oppressed willingly give their souls to the colonizer because they don't know who they are without the foreign invader. Cita and I hide our eyes for different reasons, but our mutual darkness fills the air in leaky two-roomed shack. It slips in from the holes in the ceiling and the cracks in the floor. It seizes our hearts and creeps into our dreams as the soft rain on the rusted tin roof.