Our Cupboards
From Fearless to Fearful and Back
It’s incredible how our perception of risk changes with age and time on the field. My first overseas appointment was in the middle of my college years. I didn’t travel far from home, just taking a two-hour flight to Central America where I’d be teaching English at a primary school. I was young and naïve, and moved into a house with five other female volunteers and very little adult supervision. We were all a bit overwhelmed by the responsibility and the independence. Can you spell trouble? We planned weekend trips on buses to cities we’d never been to and went about our life in this small Honduran town as if we’d never left the United States. For example, my friend and I would go running through town in our shorts and T-shirts, never once thinking about how no respectable Honduran woman would be caught dead doing that. We were even less concerned for our safety. Needless to say, we endured groping on the street and didn’t quite no how to hand...
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