Mo’ on the Udall Experience

This entry I’ll keep to a minimum, because my adventures with my new Udall family are only beginning.  I am not often tempted to impose peer pressure, but to anyone who is considering applying for the Udall: DO IT.  First, anyone from any background has a chance to win.  My class includes everyone from a farmer dad who is back in college (triple-majoring in four years, I might add, while also producing all the electricity needed for his house and property) to a college government VP/green finance expert who is running for city council in Maryland this fall.  There was even one Republican!  Second, winning the Udall means that you become a part of Morris K. Udall’s living legacy, destined to bring his legendary passion, humor, and integrity to your own work.  A huge part of the Orientation is spent meeting the Udall family and Mo’s closest political advisors who now run the Udall Foundation.  Finally, the other Udall scholars really become your family.  Everyone has so much respect for each other from the get-go that it’s that much easier to let your guard down and be yourself.  It was proven time and time again, between engaging in outrageously silly dance parties and having candid discussions with alums and other scholars about their experiences in the environmental movement.  “See you soon!” was a common sentiment between scholars as we wished each other goodbye—there’s really a very high chance we’ll run into each other sooner or later.

These past five days in Tucson reminded me how to apply direction to my life, although it didn’t necessarily inspire me in any particular direction.  During my time in Argentina, I have often felt like I spend more time going with the flow than I spend directing the flow.  I am still mulling over whether having “direction” and “purpose” at such a young age is uncharacteristic of Argentine culture, or whether I just haven’t been exposed to that mindset in the laidback Biosfera office. It is certainly true, however, that the Udall Orientation is a leadership conference in disguise.  This obviously contrasts with the team-oriented focus of community development work and the team structure of the GESI program.  “Don’t do anything others could do for themselves” is a powerful lesson I’ll take away from this summer, especially so for a resolutely self-sufficient gal like myself.

[Side note: I should have access to pictures from the conference soon, since there was a professional photographer named Tom who ran like mad to capture all the most important moments…meaning every. single. one.  Kudos to Tom for pulling it off.]

Embarking at Udall, Reflecting on Argentina

It wasn’t the Gripe A that afflicted me in the end.  Instead, I’ve got a severe case of White Man’s Burden as I overlook the desert landscape from the comforts of my leather-trimmed and air-conditioned suite at the Westward Look Resort in Tucson.  It is a label that I have always resisted because it’s a burden I feel is my duty to make the best of, unlike the connotation that this burden is weighing me down to the point of hopelessness.  Claiming White Man’s Burden seemed like a cry for sympathy.  Let’s be clear: I’m in no way deserving of sympathy.  This trip to Tucson is a dream come true, and I occasionally surprise myself with how many cool places I’ve been lucky enough to visit in my life and how many truly incredible people I am lucky enough to know.  However, I do have a point in evoking the White Man’s Burden in this case.  It provides a familiar comparison for certain moral dilemmas I have encountered in trying to explain my life, particularly this surreal excursion to Tucson, to my friends and family in Argentina.

On my final day in Argentina I made a point to visit the comedor to say goodbye to Adelaida, Paulina, and Ramona—the women who work at the panadería.  I first asked about their weekends, and Ramona told me about visiting a close friend who lives far on the other side of La Plata.  She said that they took a remis (basically an on-call taxi, often cheaper) on their way there, but walked the 80 blocks back.  That’s probably over 3.5 miles. I then had to explain how I could manage to make a quick return trip, by plane, back to the U.S. for a few days.  I explained the scholarship, the obligatory nature of the conference, and cleared up a few misconceptions about the distance I had to travel (12 hours by plane=impossibly long by any other form of transportation).  After that, I didn’t have the energy to counter their assumption that I was going to see my family when I returned “home”—traveling that distance for strangers is ludicrous in this culture.

Oddly enough, it was even harder to bring up the subject of my trip to my moderately well-to-do host mom.  I shamefully waited until just over a week before leaving to inform her that I was going to be gone, simply because I could not find the words to explain.  Finally, I gathered the courage to give my spiel: “Es un premio, una beca, que gané para mis estudios del medioambiente.  La plata de la beca me ayudó pagar para esta pasantía en Argentina...esta reunión con los otros recipientes en los Estados Unidos es obligatorio, tengo que ir—si no asisto, perderé la beca!”  (It is an award, a scholarship, that I won for my studies in the environmental field.  The money from the scholarship helped me pay for this internship in Argentina…I am required to attend this conference with the other scholars in the U.S.—if I don’t attend, I will lose the scholarship!)  Not so hard, you think?  Actually, it was amazingly hard.  For Miriam, travel is probably the greatest luxury in the world.  Her wonderful husband lives 12 hours away by bus so that he can have a paying job, and bus tickets are so enormously expensive that they cannot see each other more than once every two months.  She has dreams of visiting the U.S. and is learning English, but only speaks wistfully of being able to afford a ticket.  Looking back on it, perhaps playing down my trip to Tucson was the exact opposite of what I wanted to convey: that it is a huge honor, that I am extremely lucky that I have this opportunity, and that I would never in a million years return to the U.S. for six days if it weren’t all free!  But it still felt rude somehow because a scholarship like this isn’t even available to people like Ramona and Miriam.  As I embark on this Udall experience, I know that I will appreciate every moment even more because I know how fortunate I am to be given the chance.