Existence is so much how we see it, i think. i feel like the world is big with endless choices and possibilities, but a lot of kids in our village have never left silk grass, maybe to go to dangriga once or twice in their whole lives. Sometimes we go 4 times a week. i cannot imagine my life being as small as silk grass. a whole new world is a hitch hike away. and yet that's it for so many of them. there are grown men who have never left hopkins. it's not like it is isolated or impossible, or even expensive to get in or out of. i wonder, maybe they are as scared of their world getting any bigger than their village, as i am as it ever being that small.
2 comments:
Its interesting to look at what "place" means to people and how they use it to construct their identity and knowledge about the world around them. If you leave your place you're unanchored, forgetting a bit of who you are and what you (think you)know.
Ashli, your post reminded me of an ethnography about place and how place is meaningful to us and shapes who we are through the stories and experiences we associate with different places. I think you and Todd would really enjoy it. Here's a quote from some of the Apaches from the Cebeque Arizona reservation. "The land is always stalking people, the land looks after people and makes them live right".--Anni peaches. "One time I went to L.A. training for mechanics. It was no good. I start drinking all the time and getting in trouble with my wife. it was bad. I forget about this country here around Cebeque. I forget all the place-names and stories. I don't hear them in my mind anymore. So, I forget how to live right, how to be strong." --Wilson Lavender
I don't know if you check your PC blog still, but I left a message for you there, it says that my wife and I just received our PC invite to Belize. Email me: scotteagan@hotmail.com
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