Today, after 3 nights of not sleeping due to the screaming chickens in the surrounding area, I am in a lot of pain, I am dragging myself around doing survival kind of things, trying to move on towards my goals in spite of the deep tiredness that my body feels. As I go around today in this pain something different happened. It's almost as though, because of the state I'm in I'm finally able to connect to the local people. They are starting to not treat me as a tourist, they started to treat me as one of them. Perhaps because they see my eyes, and they understand, and they started to show their own pain in their eyes as well. Instead of the usual "how are you ma'am" greeting, they just look at me and they talk to me normally.
I think the hardest part of living here is the children, their living conditions and what they go through. I haven't yet met a child that hasn't been cracked at its core, broken in some way or other. You can see the desperation in the way they beg, coming from a space of emotional starvation and extreme lack. After witnessing yesterday's episode, and their harassment, I started to think that - I never imagined I would say this - but I think that narcissism is a good thing. What is the alternative for these little kids, growing up in these conditions, a life of torture? Do they deserve that? Of course not. Narcissism is nature's ultimate defense from the ultimate abuse to children. It shuts them down emotionally so they don't have to feel the pain. It's the ultimate resource when there is nothing else left to do. As usual nature's solution is genius, it protects these creatures from incredible injustice - alas with a huge cost to society in general. But what is the alternative, a life of being tortured?