Time

Your phone has not been backed up to the iCloud in 31 weeks. Security backups occur automatically when your phone is unlocked, plugged in, and connected to wifi. 

I don’t quite understand why, but my phone has been giving me these notifications ever since I got to Bolivia. I’m sure that at some point since September my phone has been unlocked, plugged in, and connected to wifi, but the backups are never realized.

The security backups, of course, are far from the point. The point is that for each of the last 31 weeks, my iPhone has slapped me with a reminder of exactly how long I have been in Bolivia and inevitably draws my thoughts to the unyielding passage of time.

Time has emerged as an unexpected motif of my Bridge Year experience. It pops up each day in the form of the “Bolivian hour,” which allows me to leave the house at 8:01 to catch an 8:00 school bus five blocks away or arrive home at 7:30 with no apologies when I had told my homestay family 6:00. It manifests on the weekly level as I juggle teaching, lesson prep, and group activities in a perpetual obstacle course toward the weekend. And most saliently, it works on a monthly scale, creating nine natural blocks to measure our development and reflect on the concept of time throughout our experience.

I once read that above a certain number (about 12), our brains can no longer truly comprehend discrete integers; we think in terms of “few,” “some,” and “many.” Time shares this frustrating property, which leaves me playing weird, unproductive mind games to try to understand how much longer I’ll be here. I note that as of this writing (April 6th) John’s arrival for his visit is just as far in the past as our departure from Tiquipaya is in the future. And John was just here. I open up my journal, now so thick in my left hand and so thin in my right, and remember when the sides were reversed. For months I have been aware of Julianne’s growing belly, a different sort of 9-month timer, knowing that she’s due for two weeks before we leave Tiquipaya. And then the games bring my inner mathematician out to play. I calculate that our trip’s 3/4 point was about a week ago, and the 4/5 point is about a week away. 5/6, 6/7, 7/8, etc. will only come faster and faster, both mathematically and emotionally. I have just 4 more peanut soups in the family restaurant, 3 more hellish, never-ending staff meetings at Kusikuna, 7 more lessons with my favorite group of sixth graders, 1 more Quechua class.

There is no logical reason to play these mind games. In fact, I don’t even know if I’m rooting for the time to pass faster or slower. I feel immersed in this rich, enlightening, and incredibly fun Bolivian experience, yet every time I look at the calendar, I viscerally root for a higher number. Even at Kusikuna, my favorite aspect of this experience, with my aforementioned favorite group of sixth graders, I hope for the clock to say 12:45 as soon as possible. This feeling is not at all rational; it already seems dumb and will surely seem dumber when I’m back in my bed at home wondering why I was in such a rush to get there. But irrational doesn’t necessarily mean unnatural.

“Seize the day” is easy to say but impossible to do- or at least impossible to do at all times. But that’s not a problem because I don’t remember days. Or weeks, or months, or for that matter any of the other units of time I’ve contrived here. I remember moments. I remember the crispness of the air in El Alto airport, the barks of stray dogs in Coroico breaking night’s heavy silence, the motherly mountains to the north watching over us as we first entered Tiquipaya. I remember Mamita María laughing and yelling at me as she demonstrated how to hand wash clothes, 19-month-old Lupe calling me “uh-KOB” for the first time, John trying to help teach my algebra class by replacing variables with ducks. I remember doing the Cotton Eyed Joe with ten other teachers at Kusikuna’s end-of-year show, getting foam spray in every opening in my face during the street-melee that was Carnaval, nervously tossing the ball to first for the last out of a national baseball championship. This is what defines my time in Bolivia, not an obsession over the concept of a month nor a reminder of how long my iPhone has gone without a backup.

I’ll no longer try to defy human nature by seizing every moment. Instead, I’ll be content to plant my feet in the ground, stay as present as I can, and be ready to relish those moments that engulf me before I can even reach out to seize them.