What do you want to accomplish?
How can you intergrate with your community better?
How can you help community members achieve their goals?
Are you articulating your thoughts and experiences and processing your life?
How would you like to communicate your experiences to your friends and family?
All of these are great questions that make me think, keep me thinking and sort of wash me in a film of guilt. I realized lately that I'm feeling just slightly guilty about not getting a whole lot done since I've been here. The whole PC experience is strange. They drop us in these communities, set us loose with a little bit of cash to live on and an organization that we're supposed to work with and then give us official PC goals and objectives that we're ideally supposed to contribute in accomplishing. Being that I'm not in a school as well as based in a more urban environment, my tasks seem even more vague than for other volunteers. I try to listen to other PCVs when they say, "Don't worry, this is normal, you won't actually accomplish anything for the first six months of service..." and maybe that's true. But that doesn't mean I'm gonna sit down, read another couple dozen books and wait for six months to show up so that I can get to work. So for now, I email, blog, chat with friends from back home and friends here in Belize. I talk with other PCVs about what to do, what they're doing, what we could do together. We bitch and laugh about life here, differences, similarities, loves and frustrations of it all. And then I work hard to chat with people I work with about whats going on, what they're working on in life or on the job, and what they'd like to do. I also throw in words here and there about the fact that I'd like to be a part of this or that and get something accomplished. Currently with work my main contact person has been promoted to Regional District Director, pretty much effective the same time that I swore in to work with these folks. This means that she's got a whole new heaping plate of work to do, all of it new and wonderful and exciting, but it also keeps her out of the office quite a bit, or otherwise occupied with a bigger picture than mine. So to help her, the organization is hiring an assistant that will essentially do what she was doing before, manage and coordinate House of Culture activiites and functions. This new assistant will ideally be someone I can work together with on projects for HOC and for the youth of my community. But this hypothetical assistant, though apparently hired already, hasn't actually started yet and once they do start I imagine there will be lag time on actually getting started on something substantial. So I keep coming to work, doing personal things, and continually working on small tasks to progress or considering what more I could be doing. The gap between considering, planning and accomplishing seems insurmountable right now. But I know its not. Therefore I continue to persevere, show up and practice the utmost, astonishing amount of patience of a Peace Corps volunteer. And I keep my ears open, listening to what people say, what they're doing and preparing to offer my assistance to anything that could be remotely relevant to my vague position and purpose. I had no idea that it would be so challenging yet in such bizarre ways to be a volunteer. Sometimes life seems so easy. Sunny, beautiful Belize. Yet from within comes the challenging battle. Not content to sit around, yet with not a whole lot else to do sometimes, I am hard on myself to get something done, yet wondering what that something might be. And I don't want my family and friends back home to think I'm up to nothing more than traveling with other PCVs, drinking and laying around on the beach. Trust me, we do plenty of that it seems, but I really am working towards accomplishing something grander with this experience. On the other hand, I don't feel like I deserve any praise that sometimes is bestowed upon Peace Corps volunteers. While I am definitely stepping out of my comfort zone, exploring a new world, getting to know new people, etc. I haven't done a whole lot as of yet that can be concretely presented as an accomplishment. I will though! It will happen. Something will be accomplished and I will be proud to share with you all about it then.
When a year passes, and I look back on this thought process of mine, this internal struggle which I'm struggling to articulate, I hope that I can find amusement and satisfaction that I have accomplished something. I also hear from these wise, experienced second year PCVs that once the second year rolls around, you'll be so busy you won't have time to clean your house. Wouldn't that be a change of events?
I felt the same way in December after observing a class for 4 months. I was getting to the point where I felt I was wasting my money -- paying to learn how to teach and not getting to practice. But my patience paid off, as I'm sure yours will too, and I'm teaching, learning more, busy as hell, and loving all of it.
ReplyDeleteand anyway, even with the little you put here, it's obvious how much you've improved with Spanish. as a 6-year Spanish class veteran who can barely mutter "hola", I'm impressed!