"And The World Spins Madly On"

Well it’s the last day in January as I write this, and I’ve been in Peru for almost five months now. It’s been a ‘full’ process, to date: I’ve struggled a lot, to say the least, but I think I’ve finally begun to find my stride. I teach English classes four days a week, with four separate groups—two groups of little kids, one group of teens and a group of adults—and on Fridays and Saturdays I usually go out and do interviews in my community as part of a ‘community diagnostic’ that the Peace Corps asks volunteers to do during their first three months of service. I’ve done over 30 interviews now, and in addition to helping me find out about the health and sanitation issues in the town, it’s also been a great way to meet people ... to see their houses, to understand the layout of the streets, and to learn the ‘factions’ that exist here (as I imagine they do in all small towns). I think that getting out more has allowed me to feel more like a volunteer, finally, to feel useful and, by extension, more enthusiastic.

And now that I’m a bit more settled, I’m beginning to wrestle with the ‘how’ of this whole experience—how to approach these two years in a meaningful way.

"Don't ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive."

- Howard Thurman

My older brother Graham sent me that quote in an email a little over a week ago, and it’s been rattling around in my head ever since. It gets at the crux of life’s central conceit, I think, and one of the things which has flummoxed me up to this point: what can I do with myself that will make me feel vibrant and alive?
Too often I think I’ve been guided by the impulse to “ask myself what the world needs,” only to find that, of course, that question is too damned big and too damned overwhelming to come at from that perspective.

Now that I’m Peru, actually doing this Peace Corps thing that was just a concept in my head for so long, I find myself upset, quite a lot, about the way the organization is run and miffed as to why there’s not more organizational clarity and project management. Yet I’m beginning to realize that, for all it’s failings, the Peace Corps remains a wonderful ‘idea’, a wonderful concept, a wonderful chance to learn about another culture. And I’m trying as hard as possible to move toward a more productive sense of community development on my own terms … because that’s what it’s really all about. Sure, I would have more support if the Peace Corps were managed more effectively, but it’s not, and a person has to accept reality, right?

What’s more, there are plenty of “Type-A” personalities in the Peace Corps here in Peru, doing wonderful work—they’re incredibly self-motivated and ever-energetic, but I, unfortunately, am not one of them. I prefer one-on-one conversations, small groups, quiet spaces. In his email to me, Graham offered up the idea that we can’t all be those “cheerleader” types … we can’t all be “on” all the time, and instead of trying to force myself to fit some pre-determined mold, maybe I ought to focus on the things that make me “come alive”. In other words: care for myself first, care for my enthusiasms and my passions, first, with the understanding that my heart is in the right place in this venture and good things will flow forth during my service if I can just keep myself enthusiastic and motivated.

So the follow-through, I suppose, is self-care, and it’s been doing me good. I’ve developed a ‘quiet time’ for myself—apart from the neighbors and my noisy family—when I’m out on the road running. Now I actually look forward to my evening runs, and I get to catch more sunsets than I ever did before I started. I’ve also spent long afternoons and late nights reading in my tiny little room, roaming from book to book, with the knowledge that my mind, for some reason, needs these imagined worlds and stories to stay creative and passionate about the world we live in. They’re a guide, in a way, that gets me to thinking about the past, dreaming about the future, and ruminating on the present. Meditation and prayer, I think, are two more things that could ease the pain of being away from home, and maybe allow me to remain more ‘present’ in my days.

The fruit of this presence, I think, is that on good days I’m able to enjoy the odd moments that happen here, the funny bits of time, the weird Spanish turns of phrase, the totally beyond-belief health ideas. I was interviewing a woman this past weekend as part of a community diagnostic I’m doing, for example, and when it came to my question about “who was the last person to get sick in your household and what were the symptoms?”, the woman responded that her little boy, about 2, currently has the flu, which he contracted from eating a piece of watermelon that was “too cold”. I shit you not. For Peruvians, cold beverages, any type of severe temperature change, and, apparently, cold fruit, can all cause severe throat problems and bring on raging cases of the flu. I’m working on understanding, I really am.

Other experiences are just flat out funny: I was interviewing another guy, right after that woman, and he was ticking off joke after joke, laying there in his hammock, shirtless, round belly bulging, laughing his ass off. It took us about 10 minutes to start the interview in earnest, because he kept making little quips to my counterpart and me, and then breaking out into peals of laughter. This guy was so jovial and so clearly happy that I couldn’t help feeding off his good humor. When I asked him his occupation (though I already knew he drove a taxi back and forth to the city every day), he told me he was an engineer—a profession that’s virtually unheard of out here in the campo. When I asked him what he grew on his farm, he listed the usual staples and then added ‘dos hectares de cocaína’, just to see if I was paying attention. He then proceeded to lace his responses with so many sexual innuendos and quips about his ‘woman’ that my interview, which normally takes about 20 minutes, took about double the time. His responses were all delivered with such gaiety that I walked away grinning. He was my kind of guy: bawdy and alive, and quick with a joke.

The following day, in contrast, was a particularly good day for slowness, as the one and only interview I did took over an hour, and the woman I met sat on her front porch and regaled me with stories about how Oidor used to be when she was a girl, about all the Catholic religious holidays that are celebrated, about which customs have died off over the years and which have remained, and also about her feelings on various health and sanitation issues we have in town. She was expansive and alert, whereas some of the people I’ve interviewed just seem listless and uninterested. I walked away from my meeting with this woman feeling like I’d made a friend, and feeling like I’d gotten a small window into her memories and aspirations. I realize not all interactions can be like that, but I savored that one for the rest of the day.

In short, I think maybe I’m learning to listen harder, to sit and let conversations flow, and to smile more broadly in an effort to communicate to people that I really just want their friendship and their ideas about how to improve life here in our town. I still have dark and down days with some frequency, but the good ones are getting all the better the more I strip away the “shoulds” and the idea that I need to be following some kind of script for a productive Peace Corps service. No two services are alike, and I know that I need to find the practices and people that will help me come alive, here, because that’s got to be the starting point.

I realize this has been one of the longer posts I’ve put up, and perhaps a little more ‘intimate’, but I guess I just wanted to accurately and fully communicate with you all, you know? I miss everyone, immensely, and I’m looking forward to the next time we can get together. I will be home during the last two weeks of June for a visit, and for the wedding of two very close friends, and I’d love to see as many people as possible during that time.

In the meantime, please stay in touch. I hope you’re all doing well.