The guest author for this post is Jim Doty, my fellow Jonesian and Rice classmate. We got to visit him in his Peace Corps post -- Senya, Ghana -- in September. Amazing trip, and an amazing friend. This post should have been written up a few weeks ago, but I was getting used to being a teacher, so better late than never.
In September, Lissa and two of her friends from Benin came to Ghana. Bridget and Victoria were coming to run in the Accra International Marathon. Lissa pretty much hits the highlights of the events that happened on her blog, so I think I will just point out some things that I noticed.
First, It was really nice to see a friend from Jones/Rice University again. We could have gone on for hours swapping stories about life in Houston. We did spend a good amount of time swapping stories on people that we were keeping track of. It was also reassuring to see someone I knew already a year into their service. It was really cool to see how calm, self confident, and adventurous a volunteer could be after just one year in country. I got the feeling that things were tough in the beginning. I was still very new in country, and was nervous about hosting someone. I was thinking they would be bored, or uncomfortable, or wouldn't like the food. Instead I got the three best guest one could wish for. I think a lot of that came from the fact that they had been around the block before. In summary, it really gave me something to look forward to. When times are tough here, I am going to remember that the girls were quite happy after a year.
Next, in Benin, their trainers gave them some good advice during training. First, "Not my village, not my problem." At first this seems like a callous bit of advice, but here in Peace Corps, we don't get to fix everything with a magic wand. Instead, we have been given the opportunity to work in a really small site, to win the hearts and mind of a community, and to make a difference there. So when you leave your site, you can't stress out, and try and change people that you have not been building bonds with.
Second, "Every Peace Corps Volunteer's experience is different." This one is kind of obvious, but I often forget about it when I get together with other volunteers. The living conditions vary quite widely between the sites, and even more so between countries. Sometimes when I meet up with volunteers, it can feel like we are trying to one up each other on who's site is tougher, or problems are rougher, or counterparts are better, or customs are stranger. But, this ends up being really unproductive. It is good to swap stories about site, but not even considering for a moment that your service is supposed to be the same, at least for me, has allowed me to try and use those stories as times to see if people have thought new solutions that I haven't thought up before. At the end of the day, humans are amazingly adaptable. What usually throws us for a loop is when you change the game on us. So I know I could get used to no electricity, but I have it most of the time. I have gotten used to not having a refrigerator, but I don't really think someone else should have to. When you have one convenience or another, it changes the amount of time that you have to do other things. If you have absolutely no conveniences as a volunteer, you spend a lot of your time doing things just to survive. If you have every convenience in the world, you could use that to spend more time and energy on the people around you. "Every PCV's experience is different."
Third, "Don't speak to much of the local language in someone else's village." All of us have varying levels of difficulty with learning these languages. This is also compounded by the difficulty of learning the language with out a tutor or teacher for the most part. If you come in and blow your host out of the water with your mad language skills, you take a little bit of their credibility away. So Bob is always kind and doesn't show me up in town, and I don't embarrass myself when I go and visit him. These little lessons I have been finding rather useful when interacting with other volunteers.
In return, I would like to offer an idea that came from our Country Director Mike. It came in the context of his fireside chat on how to be a successful volunteer. He stated that we, as Peace Corps volunteers, are agents of change. However, he made it very clear that we have to be very careful what kind of change we try to implement. "A Peace Corps Volunteer is not an agent of systemic change." The Peace Corps is an organization that focuses on grass roots style organization. We work on providing the ability for the host country nationals to solve some of their own problems. This is done in a variety of ways. However, we are not the panacea of volunteer organizations. We can't solve systemic problems like corruption, canning, or how well teachers get paid. We have to be careful to make sure we tackle problems we can solve. There are enough of those without burning out on issues that we can't solve.
From Ghana with Love,
Jim
[Thanks to Lissa, Bridget, and Victoria for coming to visit. We had a blast, and although we can't promise we will make it out, we will try and see Benin.]
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