My Peace Corps service is more than halfway complete, and with the new year in mind, I've been thinking about all the changes to my person and views of the world since September 07. Some of the changes are basic and obvious: I'm a better cook, more active walker and hiker, less worried, less harried. I can give trainings, tell stories, and tell jokes in English, Dominican Spanish, and a special blend of the two. My marriage is stronger for two years of adventure together. I'm better at budgeting money, permanently detached from any sort of emotional preoccupation with career climbing. I don't ever feel the need to shop. I'm happy with that - and it is but a small selection of the obvious changes I can name.
Some of the changes are epistemic, less discrete. The other day at my place, I was preparing tea for 3 teens that came to ask me to make good on a promise for a beach day. They had never tasted sweet tea or honey before, and I decided they should try. While I strained the tea, the girls went into why and when I should take them on this gira and the boy stayed silent. If you've been reading this blog for a while (thanks!), you may remember that aggressive teenagers scare me. I went through my arguments for no beach trip: they don't attend my classes, the trip is for students who completed the course, no one helped with a fundraiser so we could afford to go, I was very sick for much of December. After sipping iced tea, the girls started gagging and had to be given mints to kill the pain. The silent boy suffered through all of his with a forced smile. Oh, teenagers and trying new things - you can almost mark a person's emotional age by how well they try new things.
The conversation moved on to the latest person to be hit by a drunk-driver moto this holiday season. It turned out on of girls had gotten married to the brother of the other girl while I was gone.
I launched in a plea to the kids to avoid drinking and driving motos, talking about how much I care for their safety and such. They laughed me off. I offered to help the newlywed with family planning strategies, finishing elementary school, just be around to talk about how life is changing if she ever needs to. They stayed a while and left when it became obvious I would not be taking them to the beach. I know in the past I would have felt so hopeless - like, 'am I helping my community? Obviously not! These kids know what they think and they don't need me pointing out that driving under the influence and family planning is a problem in this community. They just laughed at me!'
But, I didn't feel like that at all. I had to take a step back and redo the logic - did I handle the situation well? yes: absentee participants don't deserve the graduation trip; Yes, someone should point out that the loss of lives and livelihoods to alchohol is tragedy; Yes, someone should offer education and emotional support to child-bearing teenagers.
The underlying change in habit is that I used to evaluate my work performance under the onerous 'did I do my my job?', (click here for the goals of Peace Corps) and now, I evaluate based on whether I think I did the right thing with respect to morals, ethics, and reality.
I'll spare the kind reader another convoluted anecdote, but other epistemic professional changes include:
- approaching work as an opportunity to be a trainer and facilitator to my colleagues in their overall plan, not just with respect to the task at hand.
- seeing my colleagues as The Benefit of having a job. (I know, I'm a bad person! Its just that in past I used to work in real estate - other desserters of big business will appreciate this comment).
- seeking jobs and making career decisons based on the diversity and personality of my colleagues. (Okay, I decided on this long ago, but Peace Corps proved it is a wise heuristic to follow).
- placing the development of my technical abilities in basic human needs like health, water, safety, literacy and numeracy above theoretical thought
This is a photo of my teaching my women's health promotor group to make floor cleaner as an income generation project.
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