I used to be a regular blogger. I'd write at least once a day or a few times a week on the LiveJournal I had since high school. It used to be an outlet for me. I stopped since graduating college though. These days blogging is more like a chore, and I can't type fluidly like I used to. It came so easy to me before, kind of like stream-of-consciousness thinking. Although, I can probably attribute that to writing the majority of my entries in the wee hours of the night where my mind was tired and when I wrote, I tended to ramble. I would even start entries not knowing what to write about but they ended up completing themselves. Much like this one I suppose. Maybe I should get back into that habit. Find a good outlet for me. God knows I need one - I'm living in another country alone for 27 months of my life!
How many people actually read this though? It feels kind of useless to write if nobody reads. I can always escape into my own thoughts without necessarily writing stuff down, or rant to my closest friends instead of blogging. Plus, this blog is supposed to be for Peace Corps, and I feel confined with what I can write about. People expect me to write about my experience here, but honestly, I don't really have anything substantial to say about it.
Don't get me wrong, I am pretty much okay and enjoying my life here but I find myself questioning, almost constantly, my being here. How does this fit into my life? How is my being here contributing to the well-being or development of the Honduran people?
I found out about Peace Corps in high school from one of my best friends at the time. Before then I had no idea what it was. I was living in Egypt and attended a private American school called Cairo American College. It was composed of a number Egyptians from wealthy families, and children of diplomats and expats from all over the world. It only seemed natural that the Peace Corps would come up in discussion. In college I did my research about the organization and it seemed like something I was interested in. I had spent the majority of my life moving and traveling around from country to country, being surrounded by an infinite diversity of cultures, and had grown accustomed to that Third-Culture Kid way of life. The Peace Corps would serve as another way to continue with the life I had grown up with, although it would give me my freedom to do so on my own. I had heard that it had one of the best language training programs in the world, and that employers regarded RPCVs in high esteem when looking for job candidates.
I applied in April 2008, got an interview within 2 weeks after that, and received my nomination the same day to go to Eastern Europe and work with Youth/Community Development in March 2009. Everything happened so fast, and I started to prepare all the medical, dental, and legal forms. Unfortunately later in the year 2008, my grandpa, who had long been diagnosed with MDS, was given only 3-6 months to live, and I didn't want to take off for the Peace Corps while my family stayed behind taking care of him. I postponed the service and was told that I could reactivate the application within a year if I wanted to. My grandpa died February 2009 and the next couple months were spent taking care of his effects, the wake, cremation, burial, and having a service at the Buddhist monastery in his memory. It just wasn't a good time for my family and we all were there to support each other, which I feel got us all through it together.
Later in October 2009 I reactivated the application and had to submit an updated motivation statement, updated resume, obtain a letter of recommendation from my current job supervisor, and re-do many of the medical and dental exams. I then received a call from PC Headquarters in DC in April 2010 about a Municipal Development program in Central/South America. He made it sound interesting, and it was also one of the programs that was leaving the earliest (June 2010). I asked about Eastern Europe and he told me that there was a program but it was leaving September 2010 and it would be in some other program, like Youth Development. At the time I thought Muni D would tie in better to grad school and pursuing an MBA than YD would, so I said I was interested in the program and soon after the phone call, received my invitation which stated I was to be going to Honduras.
Honestly, I cried when I got the invitation because seeing the actual name of the country made everything so extremely REAL. It finally hit me that I would be leaving my family, leaving my uncle, aunt, cousin and grandma with whom I had been living for nearly 2 years after college to save on rent (since we all knew I would be heading off to the PC). I'd be leaving my friends, leaving California, the one place I had become comfortable calling "home" after not having a place to call home for my whole life. I wouldn't be able to see my two little cousins growing up, and kids at such a young age (they are 7, one of them will be 8 soon) grow up fast. I wouldn't be able to take my sister to Vegas for her 21st birthday like we planned. And for what? Is missing out on family stuff worth it all? To some, family is first priority. To others focusing on their career is at the top. My entire family agreed that PC would be good for me, and I figured it would too, so with their push, I decided to go. I told myself I could do it and I also made a commitment to myself that if I agreed to choose PC, I would see it through to the end. And I will. But I can't help but wonder if it's worth it.
Obviously, my motivations to come here were not all selfless. Yeah I was part of a co-ed community service based fraternity (Alpha Phi Omega) in college and still am, and figured I could do my part in another country, while also learning about the culture and learning another language. But I also joined because of the reputation attributed to RPCVs. Let's just be honest here. I think every volunteer has some ulterior motive for coming here. We think, ok, we'll just serve our time and be done with it and have a great spiel for our next job/grad school application.
What we don't realize at the beginning is that the service is much more than that. It changes us. And it changes us in unexpected ways. We come in, bright-eyed and eager to learn, paranoid about diseases and bugs, cold bucket showers, and the range of food-borne illnesses that send an explosiveness to our bowels we've never experienced before. Then we go through training. We experience all of these things I've just mentioned and survive, coming out of battle like pallid, sweaty, weak fragments of a human, armed with a stronger stomach ready to take on anything Honduras can throw at us. We adapt. And this, combined with other factors, gives us a newfound resolve to push forward and make it through the next two years of service.
Then comes the actual service, moving to site, and starting over, yet again. Staying with a third host family, getting to know the layout of the town, making friends with the locals, speaking Spanish 24/7, and the hardest part - developing meaningful projects on your own. Since cultural assimilation is necessary to be a successful volunteer, we have to put ourselves out there and make it known to our communities that we are here, and are not going anywhere anytime soon. We get involved at first in small projects, even if they consist of administration type work, just to build the confianza, or trust between us and the community. Eventually we make friends, they invite us to outings, and we make connections with people in other organizations that we could potentially work with. Things start to come together, slowly but surely. The deeper the involvement and participation in community projects and events, the more satisfied we feel with our presence, and the more we feel like we do indeed have a purpose for being in this country.
I guess the point I’m trying to make is that, yes, we all left our lives in the states behind. We left our families, friends, loved ones, everyday conveniences we took for granted, and anxiously shuffled off to a new, challenging life for 27 months. Most volunteers haven’t lived in another country for more than a few months before, and there are still others who have never even traveled outside of the states. For some, it wasn’t an easy decision to come, and for others, it’s what they've always dreamed of. When it comes down to it, we are all here, together. We’re experiencing the same issues of homesickness, dealing with integrating into a completely different culture, and discovering why we are here. We've been taken out of our comfort zones and thrust into a strange, unknown land and forced to survive. And you know what? We do. Being here has already changed each and every one of us, even if we haven’t realized it yet. Our contribution to Honduras might be small, but it will impact the people we meet, and seeing that firsthand is what truly changes us. Whatever “sacrifices” we had to make for coming here are all made worthwhile when we see the reactions of the people whose lives we have touched, and that feeling of giving back is something that will stay with us long after our two years of service end.
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