After a week with my head in the clouds in Cambodia, we returned to the US to reconnect with our home culture and our families in New York. A rough fever on the 13 hour flight didn’t make me feel too great, but nonetheless the girls sang in excitement as we approached New York. The weekend was chaotic as I didn’t quite know how to act around my parents, what to say, what to do but sleep. I had my first good steak in a year, saw “Spiderman”, went to a fancy lunch with the rest of the TBB families, had a great weekend looking solely at what we did. Our hotel was incredible, an atrium with statues and stone floor, but it all didn’t quite fit. My stomach couldn’t take the steak I had eaten with ease before the trip, the hotel seemed absurdly big compared to the modest hostels I was accustomed to. My first meal in New York was a bagel with salmon and cream cheese, but the first thing I noticed about it was the size. It was massive. After hounding food over the trip from the rest of the group, I barely ate that weekend and had little ambition to see any parts of New York. Commercials appeared excessive and foreign, and with so many people and lights in the city I felt constantly lost and distracted…a space cadet’s worst nightmare. Everything around me just felt too complex, too complicated, and why did everyone go so fast everywhere? Everyone was in a hurry, and I struggled to make sense of a lot of what I saw. Going back would definitely prove harder than leaving.
Throughout NY and DC we continued to visit
different organizations and the confusions continued. I committed myself to asking questions at
meetings like Planned Parenthood, Iris House, the UN, Global Financial Integrity,
but after immersing ourselves in a country and a service project, I couldn’t
grasp many of the organizations’ purposes, and more importantly how those
purposes related to work on the ground.
With such short meetings, I couldn’t understand actual work that the
organization accomplished- it was all general, all statistics, all abstract
ideas and motives and reasons that had little meaning compared to the detail we
went in with each country. I could no
longer nod my head in satisfaction that an organization fought poverty or
helped empower others because such words no longer have a set meaning or
definition. Development has become more
broad, and thus harder to understand in an office when the actual work does not
happen in that setting. I expected to
feel satisfied with such examples of change in the US, and I did feel hopeful,
but generalities no longer mean as much as work on the ground.
In DC we had the
chance to learn how to lobby with an organization called RESULTS, a chance to
do our own research on bills and budgets, to voice our support to our actual
representatives in our home states. I
had no idea that anyone could really do that!
But looking through the bills and acts I understood the incredible
difficulty of policy. I didn’t know what
to support and even if I did find a bill or appropriation ask that interested
me, I couldn’t begin to understood how the language of the bill translated to
action. It was too large scale, too
sweeping for me, so disconnected from the real implementation.
My fellow Connecticut resident Katherine
and I set out prowling the streets of DC in search of a bagel before our
meeting with staff of Joe Courtney, Jim Hymes, Richard Blumenthal, and Joe
Lieberman. I felt a bit stiff in my suit
but thankfully I fit right in with the citizens of DC. I guess there are a lot of important jobs
there or something. We were off to lobby
for the Education for All Bill, and surprisingly got through security in all of
the buildings, it was pretty easy really.
They didn’t even ask who we were seeing or if we had an appointment…US
security. I felt very intimidated
looking at all the flags and plaques of the representatives lining the stone
interior of the building, the immaculate carpet in the office, the tv showing
live broadcast of voting on a recent bill in the House. But all of the staff agreed with our points,
agreed that we should support education, and in many cases our representatives
already supported education. I’m not
sure if I really felt that fulfilled because the meetings were so short, and
though the staff did take notes they have many meetings a day with many
different issues to try and solve. Did I
make an incredible difference? Probably
not, but at least I could have the chance to, and never before did I realize I
could. We met another Connecticut couple
with a man lobbying against budget cuts for science classes in school, and even
being so close to DC, I never had interest in such political procedures. I probably won’t in the future either, at
least for a job, but unfortunately I need to realize that change can happen in
that environment, and politics is a vital part to making change anywhere else
in the world.
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