Half-walls

My host-family’s kitchen table has a 13 year history. More holes than table, it is covered by a plastic table cloth which has offered it one last breath of life. Any newcomer to the table must first acquaint himself to the table’s surface, or lack there of. No longer a newcomer, I no longer cause lunch-time disasters. The table also came with chairs but those were long ago relegated to the trash pile. Now we sit on chairs of the plastic variety, the only chairs in the house, a house which contains a mere 5 rooms and a smattering of possessions.

Some people go camping with significantly more possessions than my host-family owns. And, of those possessions, many have seen better days. The radio is from another era and the cell phone barely rings. The black-and-white TV is only borrowed and promised to someone else. The calendars, all nine of them, were free. The mirror is scratched and awkwardly small. By the end of the month, they’ll run out of soap and bathe with detergent.

Of the 5 rooms the house contains, 3 of them, the bedrooms, are divided by partial walls which make no false pretenses of reaching the roof. With only a half-wall, any feelings of independence remain at a minimum. If I so much as sniffle during the night, my host-dad asks me over breakfast how I got another cold. I wake up to the sound of my host-mom tinkling into the pee bucket. At 4:00 AM the light shines into my room before the sun, when my host-dad wakes up to transplant rice. Nonetheless, my host-family likes to feign the existence of an impenetrable barrier between their rooms and mine. My brother will frequently say, “Lazy, you slept in until 7:00...I was up at 5:00,” to which I reply, “Thanks, so was I, loudmouth.”

To a certain extent they’re correct, even half-walls remain walls, albeit, incomplete. On my side, you’ll find privilege; on their side, you’ll find something resembling desperation. Possessions don’t represent a person’s well-being but, if I run out of soap, I don’t have to wait until the next month to buy more. And, in the States, cups don’t fall through my kitchen table. This is not a picture of suffering; on both sides you’ll find happiness. However, I’m willing to bet that on one side you’ll find struggle and a family falling short of opportunity.

Sometimes I naively wish I could feel that, briefly, just to know what it’s like. But, as a volunteer, I live surrounded by a half-wall. I integrate but I don’t become. I see what living poor can mean, but I don’t feel the fear or the complacency. Probably, I never will. I just have to remind myself not to forget that it’s there on the other side of the half-wall.