#i had similar fatigue when it came to sans but eventually it passed because i actually liked sans

[neodiekido]

danganronpa fandom sucked so bad in 2018 that even 6 years later if i think too long about ouma i start getting a headache and feeling annoyed. sucks because he is an interesting character and i feel like his similarities to maki are underexplored in the fandom but alas

[onthegreenmountain]

remarkable the similarity; remarkable the difference

When I began displaying symptoms like a fever, a cough, and severe fatigue, my body scrambled to recover. I don’t know if you’ve picked this up, but I have a physical disability. Even as a student in the States, my body fights hard to keep up, but here? Here, I am an agricultural worker. Here, I lift and pull and carry every day. It’s incredibly difficult, but that’s how I was earning my keep here. That is, until two weeks ago yesterday, when I caught the flu.

What is wrong with me? I’m still recovering from the flu.

I continued going to the stable with a fever each morning at 6 AM, until my pharmacist mother implored me to stop before my flu worsened to bronchitis. Instead, I kept working every day, but on my computer. Some days, a few hours of tasks like indenting the paragraphs of my 17-page report were all I could manage.

As I slowly returned to my farm duties, I hoped for an encouraging welcome back. Not so. M recites many stories of his hard physical labor--while vomiting, with fever, after a back injury, etc. Again and again and again he recites them.

“Don’t you remember how hard-working I have been, M? Do you remember how I always sang to the chickens as I fed them? Do you remember how I came to the stable at 5:30 just so I would have time to help you milk cows after cleaning all ten pig pens?”

“Yes, I remember. So what happened? Why did you stop working hard?”

This breaks my heart.

I said that I was still sick. I asked if he wanted me to ever recover from this illness. I explained that I have been working on a project to improve his working conditions. I told him it was due in two days. I begged him to understand. He didn’t. I eventually fell silent. I had no more words. I breathed heavily with exertion as I slowly walked alone to the chicken house.

This afternoon over coffee, he spoke to me in his gruff, graveled voice, the one he reserves for conversations about work, referencing my laptop screen as I asked him questions for my greenhouse project. I glanced at his eyes as he peered at the screen. Dark, warm, sleepy, with tiny wrinkles appearing at the corners. Comfort to me. So many times, his face symbolized comfort to me. Remarkable our similarity. And now? In the past two weeks, because of the flu, I've been confronted by more cultural difference than I saw the full two months previous. Remarkable our difference.

Any way I try to explain it, the fact remains: my best friends in San Luis are blue-collar employees. Many have never traveled outside Costa Rica. Most have lived their whole lives in San Luis. Only two speak English beyond basic greetings. And when I caught the flu, I experienced a difficult truth of their lives. The Costa Rican blue-collar worker says, "Work with your hands and feet under every circumstance. Work that way until you pass out. Then, when you come to, stumble to your feet and keep working.”

I have a lot of grit, and I’m a very hard worker--most of you know some of the story--but this is an entirely different conception of hard work. Until this, I happily shared in all their joys and sorrows. With these blue-collar kitchen workers, maintenance men, and farmhands came my only moments of happiness at the UGA Costa Rica; with everyone else it has felt like a mess. So naturally, since I’ve been here, I’ve wanted to participate in everything of theirs. But not this. I didn’t want to participate in this. I respect it enormously, and I feel the weight of the difference between the demands upon ‘developed’ and ‘developing.’ But I don’t want to participate.

That is where our difference ceased to be a curiosity. That is when my work ethic, forged in the mental stress and anxiety of the word ‘developed’, and his work ethic, forged in the physical exhaustion of the word ‘developing,’ were made painfully distinct. I am unwilling to volunteer my physical labor while I can barely stand with the flu. Unwilling.

Correctly managing oneself. With people in a developing country. With people in a developed country. People. In countries. Remarkable the similarity; remarkable the difference.

Something I never considered until yesterday is the fact that I’m going home. I’m going back to a temperate climate, to fall leaves, to crosswalks, to graduate-level courses. At home, the wind does not carry a faint scent of livestock and citrus.  I won’t have to walk outside at 4:30 AM to reach the bathroom. I’ll have WIFI connection in my room. When I start a sentence with the words “because of my disability,” people will listen. When I tell them I cleaned pig pens each morning at 6 AM, they will wrinkle their noses.

I’ll be less challenged. I’ll be more accepted. I think I'll probably be relieved.