The Peace Corps Story

This is it as we're told it, we in the precious Peace Corps sectors where structure is something that's been left behind with our favorite hooded sweatshirts (of the excessively pricey, justified-by-graduating brown and blue Mount Holyoke variety in my case). Where really all we needed to hear during training was “you're a Girls' Education and Empowerment volunteer...nnnnow go.”

You're putzing along, chatting with neighbors and engaging in small activities in your community for months. Many of them. A year goes by. Your feelings of insecurity about your place in the community have never quite gone away. Maybe you've grown exasperated from all of the waiting around and have tried initiating something completely on your own (better something than nothing you think, even if it isn't completely community driven, completely hands-off on your part, or completely sustainable). Said something that you have tried initiating turned out to be a huge failure (people assured you they'd show up and didn't, no one indicated how drastically availability would change with the changing seasons, local politics froze any and all progress, etc) when out of the blue something hits you! An opportunity! A motivated community member who has identified an issue and wants a solution! After months and months and months of hanging out, literally just sitting around with people, it just came up in a random conversation. ...and suddenly you have a project staring you in the face! AND EVERYTHING FALLS INTO PLACE AND LIFE IS GOOD.

So yes, that's what's supposed to happen as far as we've been told. Don't worry about it, nothing really gets done during your first year. It's not until the end of your second year that projects really take off, things really start to come together. This is advice steeped in certainty, and advice I internalized pretty quickly. But...how much of a self fulfilling prophecy is this? Where's the line between letting things happen as they happen and not doing anything? And while at the end of the day if pressed I will always end up admitting that I think I'm doing a good job of laying groundwork and such, I sometimes wonder if I've taken that advice in too easily. It's a complex layering of stress, as those who know me well might not be too surprised to hear. We are reassured so much not to worry not to worry, that it is obviously implied that we are expected to be worrying...and I worry when I realize that I'm not worried. I should be worried. Right? Maybe that's part of the process, being worried. And then I GET worried, and then it's just all a ridiculous mental mess that takes me a little while to slosh through. Like a field full of slushy, icy mounds of snow. Which is just about as far from being around me as possible.

I'm a pretty strong individualist (American) and I have always been able to do things and do them well. ...and though I've been known to race a deadline or two I am confident in my ability to self motivate and get things done. And I like having freedom from a strict teaching schedule and harsh standardized test requirements. I do. But on more than one occasion I have been tempted to lift my head to the heavens and scream “OK! JUST TELL ME WHAT TO DO! Give me ONE thing, make ONE choice clear for me and I'll go for it!”

Because often when I think think think about the way things are going (progressing) I feel myself tugging myself back towards square one of life here. And I wonder if I'm strengthening connections with the right groups of people. If there are organizations in town I should be more acquainted with. If I should try to socialize with influential people more. Am I spending too much time on my campus? Am I spending too much time in town? Three kilometers is a pain in the rear distance to live from the center of your town, you know? And that's a deceptive distance anyhow, because all of the organizations, educational offices, NGOs, governmental buildings are PAST the town center.

But none of this is new information about Molly and her experience here. So I'll leave it be, and maybe write a lil' somethin' else.