When you're in Peace Corps...

For many of my loved ones and former business associates there are always questions about "what it's like" here.  Google offers this perspective: Allow me to provide a clearer picture...

When you’re in the Peace Corps, things are different. 

It’s easy to focus on the positives. The random smiles you may get in the street. The free food and beer you get at parties. The compliments women give you on your curly hair and beautiful skin. That one kid that you teach English. The amount of insight you seem to be granted immediately following some major breakthrough like being able to communicate with your host family or finishing a project you have been working on for weeks or sometimes even months. It may be that first burger you’ve gotten your hands on in 60 days. Sometimes it’s the most seemingly insignificant things that make your day like getting Cinnamon Toast Crunch in your mail or a simple Google voice message from a lifelong friend (or your hot girlfriend).

When you’re in the Peace Corps, things are different.

It’s easy to fixate on the negatives. The stares, pointing, and gossip deliberately aimed at you wherever you go. The STARES. My god, the stares. Everything you do is a spectacle, especially because of your weird hair and really black, therefore, not white, therefore, not attractive skin. You are hungry. All the time it seems. No matter how much you eat, it never seems to be enough, and eventually this begins to show.  You lose weight, your clothes fit you differently, and basic bowel movements become a regular topic of conversation because almost no one has them regularly. For many volunteers, either it comes as diarrhea or not at all. Moments of loneliness are more intense. Sometimes you’re not even sure if you miss anything in particular other than just being in a place around people that you don’t have to work so hard to understand. You make strides in trying to teach and educate, but it sometimes seems like an unfathomable task just to get people to wash their hands.

Most of them still never wash their hands, and in a place where hands sometimes substitute for toilet paper... Yeah, we’ll leave that there.

When you’re in Peace Corps, time moves differently.

You will have periods where you and Facebook have a very steady, very intimate friendship.  You will look through your timeline and wonder if you actually did anything productive at all. After a failed project, this can seem even more substantial. You will read more books than you thought possible for someone who isn’t in prison. You rely on hobbies, habits, and menial routines just for the sake of not feeling like you’re completely wasting your time.

When you’re in Peace Corps, time moves differently.

You are busy. What seemed like just a few hours of language study and vaccine runs was actually almost half a day. At the latest, everyone in your community is awake at sunrise, yet you still find yourself wondering where the day went. Your sleeping patterns are never really the same. Sometimes, they are nonexistent. You can learn to play a guitar, draw, meditate, fix a bike, or play volleyball and be really good at it, but sometimes you feel like there isn’t enough time in a day to accomplish anything.

You define everything

When you wake up, you set the tone for whether or not your day goes well or badly.  You determine if the locals' apprehensive stares and glances at your physical appearance will be reasons to smile more and exude that much more kindness or excuses to become withdrawn and resentful. You determine how many projects you get to take on. You can do anything. Literally. Or you can just sit at home near your fan under your mosquito net

You don’t control a damn thing,

You are severely limited by a number of bureaucratic barriers at local, regional, and governmental levels.  Many signatures need to be obtained to get a go-ahead, and many egos have to be appeased. Do not for a second think that this only applies to the foreign nation you now live in; your own government can be just as restrictive. For what appears to be and arguably is no reason whatsoever, you will have many hoops to jump through.

It’s an intense balancing act that can, and often does, test your mental, physical, and emotional fortitude on a daily basis. Ultimately, it all comes down to faith: Faith in your abilities as a facilitator of positive development. Faith in your ability to cope and in the relevance of your presence here. At times, it can be very easy to wonder, “What’s the point?” These are, ironically enough, the times when you have the chance to make the most impact. Once you realize that, ultimately, the only thing you can change is your attitude, you begin to take much more responsibility for how you allow yourself to perceive things...and gain a LOT of patience in the process.