Hubby and I got back from a decadent weekend in Vegas celebrating my birthday. The vista of bright lights from the window of our beautiful suite at the Vdara Hotel got me thinking - all that electricity on the Strip. The immaculate pool - all that water. The giant breakfast buffets - with all that food (from crab to Chinese to standard breakfast fare and Mimosas, etc., etc.) - got me thinking.
Everything about the comfortable and even indulgent lifestyle in the US gets me thinking about Marlow. Actually, just not Marlow, but the Burkinabe. It's not a sad, pitiful, the-world-isn't-fair feeling at all. Just a new perspective. A very logical comparison about how the Burkinabe live and how we live.
What my husband dropped (ugh) in the Vegas casinos would likely feed a family of six in Burkina for a year. For us, it was still a fun trip. Would Marlow's neighbors even be able to comprehend that? Does it matter? Yet, does it nag at me somehow?
By some standards I am a relatively worldy person, purely by fate through the kindness of a cross-cultural life in Europe and in the States. When I talk with Marlow about her life in Burkina it reminds me about my integration into a new culture; tolerance even. But more so, to truly accept that "it is what it is" wherever you are.
Indeed, wherever I am, such as a breakfast buffet in Vegas I can not help but suddenly and consciously contrast and compare with life in Burkina through what Marlow has relayed. Sometimes it's a palpable dissection in my mind of "have and have-not" and sometimes it's capricious thoughts of a type of happiness in Burkina that we do not have here. I can't decipher where the "have and have-not" really exists. What I can do is support Marlow in her Peace Corps missions and resoundingly let her know that she is absolutely fulfilling the mission to translate the way of life in Burkina to me in a meaningful way.
There was no To at the Vegas breakfast buffet. Maybe one day.
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