There are 27 varieties of hummus at the local grocery store in my neighborhood in Cincinnati. Strictly speaking, it's not the local grocery store; it's one of three all on the same block. Staring at the 27 varieties of hummus tonight, the same string of thoughts and questions snake into my mind as have several times this week: Why does anyone need this many kinds of hummus? Why does anyone need this many varieties of anything? Do these people know what luxury this is? Do they know that people in their own country go without all of this? Without 27 varieties of hummus, without three groceries stores in town, without all the jobs the stores provide, without the fresh produce they sell? Six months ago, did I know?
I've been visiting home this week for Thanksgiving and it's the first time I've returned since leaving Ohio in late May. In my time in the Delta, I've been to Memphis and Jackson for a day here and there, but I haven't spent any extended time out of the Delta since leaving home. This week has been my first long exposure to the way things are outside of my bubble, and it's been a complicated week.
When volunteers and missionaries return from developing countries, they often report feelings of isolation and a sense of being overwhelmed by this place they used to call home. My experience is obviously very different from someone who has spent an extended time in a completely foreign country and culture, but that confusing lack of belonging in the most familiar setting has become one I understand. It's hard not to be overwhelmed and a little put off by the fact that there are more businesses in the Philadelphia Airport than there are in the town I teach in. Driving down a main road in a wealthier suburb north of Cincinnati, the inequity becomes staggering as I wonder aloud to my mother why anyone could need so many restaurants on one street. It doesn't seem right that such abundance should exist in the same nation where some of my students live in homes without running water. Starbucks tastes different from what it did last year. It turns out that knowing the statistics on poverty and inequity does not affect the taste of coffee the way that six months of living and teaching among it does.
In between the errands, there is time for family and friends. This time is sometimes refreshing and sometimes not. Sometimes it is an inquisition of well-meaning relatives demanding answers to repeated questions and often desiring a neatly-packaged, one-sentence explanation of exactly what makes my job so difficult (It's not the kids. Stop asking me if it's the kids). Other times it is the truly wonderful people whom I can speak honestly with either because they have been somewhere like where I am now and truly understand or because they are people who truly know me and my aversion to repeated lines of questioning and will simply listen without judgment to whatever it is I want to share in that moment. No matter whom I speak to I work to strike the right balance between speaking the harsh and uncomfortable truth about the place where I teach and working to change the outsider's narrative and perception of Mississippi and it's people.
At other times I rest and work to get ahead to make the three weeks between me and Christmas go a little more smoothly. The week goes by fast. I haven't yet had time to reconcile these 2 separate Americas, this one with it's 27 versions of hummus and the one I will return to where the black kids and the white kids go to separate schools. A week isn't a long enough time to do that, I suppose. No length of time really is.
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