My computer died my first week in south africa. After taking it to the mac store to get it repaired, I found that my warranty would not cover the cost and I would have to pay 5450 rand to get it fixed (about 700 U.S. Dollars, or to put it into perspective, two months salary) I decided to grab some money from my savings account and buy a netbook.
That was almost two months ago and I still haven't bought one.
For a peace corps volunteer, I think I live a pretty cushy life. I have consistent electricity, a tap that has water most of the time and great cell phone service. There is a decent supermarket a half hour away, a great one an hour away and khumbis that come very regularly to take me to those places (including a pizza place). There is a bus that would take me straight to pretoria that comes every two hours, every hour during rush hours. I mean, I'm typing this from my blackberry.
In the U.S., from june to january of 2011-2012, I would watch at least two hours of television, usually on my computer, a day. Many days I would watch more, up to ten hours on weekends. In November, when I was going through tough times, I went through a whole series, at least 50 one hour episodes, in a little over a week.
When I graduated college, I moved from a small town where I could find twenty friends within a hundred yard radius, back to my big city hometown, where besides two people, the only people I was close with were related to me. Lonely and involved in the limbo that was the peace corps application project as well as an anxiety making long distance relationship, I used tv as an escape from real life.
The more I look back on my life, the more I started to see how often I used tv to try to escape. I started watching buffy the vampire slayer during my 7th grade tough period. I remember lots of high school as a series of television marathons with my family, the sopranos, lost, gilmore girls, the west wing, nip/tuck, the wire. In college, when I had my heart broken for the first time, I stayed in bed rewatching Veronica Mars for a week.
I knew the peace corps was going to be hard. It is. Somedays are harder than others. But, for the first time I'm not using television to cope or escape. I take long thinking walks around the village. I talk to friends in america. I try to work on what is bothering me.
If I need a computer, I go up to my shopping town and use the internet cafe. I occasionally catch episodes when I'm with friends, but not that often. When I'm with friends, we are usually too busy doing stuff to watch tv. I can get by for internet mostly by just using my blackberry.
Peace Corps has provided me with many challenges. But in removing one of my main coping methods, I find myself more able to handle them.
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