Personal Reflection: Fears and Desires

I knew that joining the Peace Corps would be challenging for me  in many ways.

Early on in our first week in country we had individual interviews with our Assistant Program Country Directors (APCDs). In this interview we discussed desires and fears for the upcoming two years of service.  The one desire that Suz and I had previously decided upon was to ask for a site that was as rural as possible.

Susie was hoping for no electricity, no running water and a mud hut as far off the beaten track as one can get in South Africa. I on the other hand thought running water somewhere near-by and maybe electricity would be nice too. Hey, how else could I get my tech fix, the battery in my laptop isn’t that good. One of our fellow volunteers suggested that I could hook Susie up to a bicycle generator for our electrical needs, considering her never ending supply of positive energy. I am pretty sure this would have actually worked. <grin>

As for my fears, I had two. The number one was language.

I rely heavily on my abilities to communicate verbally in order to get things done. I feel that I have a decent ability to move situations forward in a positive manor with a few well chosen words or to explain anything from physics phenomena to camp games, but in a new language I thought I would be so limited that frustration would take over and I would be rooted in a field of miry clay unable to move in any direction.

My second fear revolved around my need for structure. I have heard that successful Peace Corps Volunteers are the ones that can create their own, find their own projects and create their own timeliness. My background in the public schools provided me with just enough freedom to create my own curriculum, or rather, to engineer my own way of implementing the state curriculum, while having clear cut expectations for time lines and end outcomes. I relied on the fact that my students in the States needed me there when the bell rang to begin our mutual exploration of the world of science together. Whereas sometimes I envied Susie’s more flexible schedule when she rose from her bed at 7am for her daily yoga practice, and then to eat breakfast and finally to get ready for the day where her arrival time at work varied widely (keeping in mind that her knock-off time also greatly varied) after I had left for school at promptly at 6:50am sharp every day to catch my carpool so that we could walk through the school doors at 7:15, most of the time I appreciated knowing that I had a daily routine that others counted upon.

The world of Peace Corps has goals and objectives, we were given a chance to dream and to plan. We share ideas with fellow volunteers for projects and workshops, yet at the end of the day it is up to us to set our own time line; to gently force our way into the lives of our communities who have routines of their own. We ask question, make suggestions, testing the waters for areas where our skills and gifts can meet the needs of our village and those that surround. This process of continual seeking can be exhorting in-and-of itself and some days, when all of my previous projects have tapped out, I find it easier to get up, wash, eat breakfast and then to read the news, or a new found book, check my email and generally avoid starting over seeking for new ways to find inroads toward positive change.

These days, of which today is one, are the days that my guilt factor kicks in. I begin to make assumptions about the ways that the village sees me. I wonder if they see a slacker who has chosen to hold-up in his little two-room house, avoiding real work as he bides his time waiting for inspiration to strike again. (They probably don’t really even notice… but…)

Today I will head to the high school to make sure their computers are networked so that each individual computer can print on their one printer. I will meet Mahlate, a young boy from the village who has borrowed a digital camera to take pictures of the village and his daily life. We will go to the upper primary school to take the pictures off the camera using the computers there so that he can someday load them onto a flash drive and have them printed in town. I will take a group photo of the Chrysalis Girls Club, Susie’s primary project, so that we can make perfect attendance awards for her ceremony next week, as well as put the finishing touches on the certificates of participating in girls club itself. I plan to cook dinner, continue planning for our backpack trip in the Drakensberg Mountains this December, read some more maybe watch a episode of Chuck (a TV program that Bob brough with him on his visit to SA – thanks Bob) and then head to bed.

This may sound like a lot, but the reality is that I just came off of five years of public school teaching while simultaneously working to complete my master’s degree, playing in the praise band at Aldersgate UMC and helping Suz with the youth group when I had a chance. My PC work is significantly less stressful in many ways than my work back in the States, but in others I pine for more solid expectations with measurable outcomes.

My fear, revolving round a world with less structure, is one that I wrestle with on a daily basis. Susie has excellent suggestions, which keep me going. I think I need to adopt a project within my skill-set that has a more clear focus. One in which I can work towards goals, with time-lines I write down and to which I adhere. If Peace Corps has helped me with anything, it has forced me to struggle with freedom, the freedom to do as I please, driven only by my inner compass. What do I really believe, what do I really want, how can I be an instrument to help others, yet not be used and abused.

I knew I would struggle without structure and in the end I hope that I can look back on the great Peace Corps experiment and say, “I grew a lot those two years in rural South Africa. I may not have realized at the time but positve change did happen, and it happend to me.”

Cheers, Benjamin