My Dad lent me a very special copy of a poetry anthology while I was visiting the US in June, and the significance and history of the book have made me want to give my poetic ignorance a little more attention. The book, called “Other Men’s Flowers”, compiled by A.P. Wavell, is accessible in a way that I haven’t experienced before: organized by topics, such as “Love”, or “Music, Mystery and Magic”, or “The Call of the Wild”. Having these classifiers, I think, has given me an inroad that allows me to dip into the book based on whatever mood I’m feeling, stopping at titles that strike my eye. Also, the book used to belong to my Dad’s father—my grandfather—whom I never knew. The inside cover bears his signature, in pen, and there are comments throughout the pages, in pen and pencil, which could belong to my father or my grandfather. I don’t think I really want to know. I just know that I want to add my comments—I want to be a third generation of words in the yellowed pages of this hardcover tome.
Here are two that have struck me lately, perhaps because I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how tough this Peace Corps road has been, the whole way, and about how to think about my actions for the rest of my service. Courage, and Kindness, and the certainty of shelter from the storm—and friends to help guide the way—are some of the things that I believe in, and which these two poems seem to champion:
Man’s Testament
Adam Lindsay Gordon
Question not, but live and labour,
Till yon goal be won,
Helping every feeble neighbor,
Seeking help from none;
Life is mostly froth and bubble,
Two things stand like stone,
Kindness in another’s trouble,
Courage in your own.
---
Uphill---
Christina Rossetti
Does the road wind uphill all the way?
Yes, to the very end.
Will the day’s journey take the whole long day?
From morn to night, my friend.
But is there for the night a resting-place?
A roof for when the slow, dark hours begin.
May not the darkness hide it from my face?
You cannot miss that inn.
Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?
Those who have gone before.
Then must I knock, or call when just in sight?
They will not keep you waiting at that door.
Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?
Of labour you shall find the sum.
Will there be beds for me and all who seek?
Yea, beds for all who come.
I think I’ve been reading so much poetry because my head is trying to chart a new course in my Peace Corps service, and to redefine the way I look at my days here.
I suppose, when I let myself think rightly, I know that this experience is finite and passing. The days pass and the months rack up, and sooner or later it will all be finished.
Yet it’s easy to lose sight of this. Sometimes it feels like life has changed so drastically that it might never get back to that old normal of the American way of life. Like I said—clearly that’s not the case, but things are just so different here … and maybe on some level I’m curious about what life would look like if things didn’t ever return to that normal.
That’s the interesting part about this. Although it’s hard to be away from family, hard to be away from friends, hard to get used to the lack of physical comforts … there’s a certain pride when you DO persist, month after month, in being away from them. There’s a certain sense of accomplishment. I’ve begun to realize just how variable experience is, and just how different your life outlook becomes when you take yourself out of one culture, out of one socio-economic structure, and plunk yourself down into another set of experiences that are vastly different from the first.
What I’ve been faced with recently, I suppose, is how to make sense of the block of time that I have remaining. I’ve been in Peru now for almost 11 months, and I’ve been fighting the feeling that I have “nothing to show for it. This is, of course, wrong-headed, but I’m just trying to be honest about the stream of thoughts that’s going on upstairs. After all, I don’t have a lot of things going on at the moment. I have a couple of short projects, and several starts and stalls, but nothing still going on.
I taught English for several months during the kids’ vacation period. I’ve been trying to start up a trash program for months on end, with a ton of setbacks threatening to halt the whole thing. I’ve attended a lot of meetings regarding the AIDS awareness work that some other volunteers are doing in neighboring towns. I did a community diagnostic project at the beginning that allowed me to interview and get to know about 50 different families.
From here, according to Peace Corps, I’m supposed to harness all of the information I’ve culled together, all of the contacts I’ve made, and all the trust I’ve gained in town in order to improve the town’s access to potable water and trash collection services. I’m supposed to petition for grant funding from several sources that the Peace Corps connects us with. This seems a rather daunting process to me at present. I can’t get five people from town to meet for a trash committee on a regular basis, but I’m supposed to harness their ideas to write a project plan and a grant proposal by mid-August. I’ll do it, I know that, but it’s giving me a lump in my throat. If I do this project well, it will be the cornerstone of my service, and it has the potential to really improve the health situation in town. That’s where the lump comes from: I want it to work. I don’t just want some project that looks good on paper, works for a while, and then falls short when my time here runs out (as many of these types of trash-management projects do). There’s a town nearby that hosted a Peace Corps volunteers a few years ago, did a trash project with small micro-landfills in the peoples’ backyards, and right now there’s virtually no evidence that Peace Corps was ever there. I’m not saying that to downplay that volunteer’s service at all—I’m just saying that the prospect of that type of transient impact is scary.
It means, to my mind, that I should re-double my efforts for the trash project to focus on behavior change and small, finite steps toward the final goal, rather than trying to tackle it all in one go. If I can change 30 families habits, cleaning up one section of town, that’s a success that will last.
But more than that, I also think that it means I ought to focus on the present, on individual experiences and positive interactions, and not get so caught up in the big-picture “what’s my service going to look like” questions.
Sitting outside tonight, looking at the glow of the street lamps in the dark black night, I listened to the dogs bark down the street, posturing at each other, snarling, playing; I listened to the quiet murmur of my host Mom and her sister in law discussing their kids, other women on the street, gossip of all stripes; I listened to the sporadic honking of moto-taxis chattering down the dirt road in front of the house; I heard the cry of the toddler next door. All of it’s so familiar these days that I hardly stop to think about the new world I’ve come to feel comfortable in. At times, on quiet nights, I compare sitting on the porch here to sitting on the porch at my parents’ house back in Pennsylvania, and I get sharp pangs of homesickness. I remember being more relaxed, generally, on that porch in Pennsylvania, while I’m less so here. Here, I think, I let myself get too stressed about what I SHOULD be doing, and as a result I don’t always let the impact of what I AM doing sink in. People accept me here now. I’m a part of their days, and an actor in town. Though I’m somewhat of an oddity still, I’m a known oddity. Years from now, most of them will still be living here, walking the same ruts in the earth, leading a different generation of cows and goats in from their farms, and I will be elsewhere—an elsewhere that I can imagine a big better than they can.
But why imagine it? Why not just let it be, having faith, or trust, in the ability of the present to work out my future? I’ve been spending so much time wondering and extrapolating what COULD happen down the line that I feel more than a little bit guilty. I’ll never do anything like this again, and I want to cherish it in whatever small ways I can find.
So I have decided to make a renewed effort here. A renewed effort to live each day with purpose. To wake up just a bit earlier, to keep a schedule with the varied network of community leaders I’ve come in contact with, and to write out step-by-step plans for the projects that I think will improve the quality of life here. I also want to do some small projects that I’ll enjoy … like a community art and environment club (I just got $450 in grant funding for that!) … like a household composting bin/small vegetable garden … like a world-map project to teach the kids some geography. There’s a certain initiative I haven’t taken to date because I’ve been up to my eyeballs in culture shifts, language difficulties, and unhelpful community partners. Others in Peace Corps came to their sites and replaced old volunteers, inheriting a network of counterparts and projects that they could fall into. Others just lucked into sites where there was an NGO already working, or a health post with particularly strong leaders. I have none of that here in Oidor. What I have is a community that’s never been helped much by anybody, and which has come to distrust people who say they’re going to bring change. I’m determined not to let them place me in that category.
Earlier in the evening I was running, doing repeats up this somewhat steep hill outside of town. I was actually enjoying the effort involved, the exertion, the inherent thrill in conquering a slope, any slope. And I thought about the existentialist ideals that I first learned in English class in 12th grade (thank you Mr. Skinner)—about the myth of Sisyphus and his constant struggle to push that boulder up that hill. I liked the myth, and always have, but for very basic reasons: there’s something noble about the struggle, about gritting your teeth and continuing, through boredom, failure, lack of progress ... there’s something human in the idea that the struggle, any struggle, is not just worth it in order to reach some finite end, but inherently the struggle IS the end. The struggle, and how we comport ourselves during it, defines us.
Up until now, I’ve been in the arena of this service experience, but I’ve been sort of taking rests in the stands whenever things start to look tough. If the credit belongs to those who are in the arena, who are giving it their all day in and day out … then I think I’m ready to make a more concerted effort. I think I’m ready, now that I know I have friends in the Peace Corps here in Tumbes who are rooting for me and wishing me well. Now that I know I have other volunteer friends spread across the country. That support, I suppose, makes me realize that I’m not a solitary figure with shoulder bent to the rock … I’m one of a hearty team. Here in Oidor, where so many days look the same, where the people pass such listless hours, I want to practice a new type of discipline—not because I think I’ll someday get that rock onto the summit, but more so because my efforts, in themselves, might speak the words that I still haven’t learned how to say in this foreign tongue.
