Reflexions on the One Year Mark

So, it seems like a normal time to ponder the last year, as well as begin to think about the year to come. We are at the half way mark! Our arrival last year was in September, and our two years of service began last December. So, how do we feel about the last year, and what are our expectations for the year to come?

One of the interesting things occurring these days; is that we are very involved in the training process for the newest recruits. This means that we now get to see a mirror of ourselves one year ago. All of our fears, worries, expectations, and challenges we are now revisiting in the form of the newest arrivals. All of the things that we now take for granted, they are still struggling to accept. It is a great opportunity to see where we came from.

Last week I gave a “charla” to the new “aspirantes”. It was my first chance to meet them and see how they are doing. Strangely enough, the very first thing that struck me was how clean and new all of their clothes seemed! All of us more “seasoned” volunteers are more weathered looking. Our clothes have had to survive a year of hand washing in caustic soaps. Sure, we can buy some clothes down here too, but almost all of us still have the mainstay of our clothes from home. This is without a doubt, the most visible difference between us and the aspirantes. This reminds me of two other “new clothes” syndromes. One was when I was traveling, we would first arrive in country and other travelers would state how clean we looked. It was always a look that you wanted to lose as quickly as possible because it meant that you had really “arrived” you were also a traveler (as opposed to a vacationer)! The other similar incident was during my time on the Hotshots, there again you tended to be overly proud of your filthiness. So much so that people would avoid turning in their ragged clothes for new ones. No one wanted to arrive on a fire with brand new boots and Nomex looking like a rookie!

So, now here we are once again having survived our trials and deserving to wear the clothes and “look” that brands us as “vets”. What have we learned? What about us has changed during this year? What besides our clothing sets us apart from the aspirantes? This is as good as any way to review the year, so we’ll see where this train of thought takes me.

The biggest change that immediately pops into my head is that of our expectations! When I surveyed the new group of trainees, once I got beyond the clothing, I saw lots of enthusiasm, big ideas, and optimism. Sure it was somewhat subdued behind the fears and uncertainties, but to use a cliché, it was the “out to save the world” look. Us “vets” don’t have that anymore. We have all had to readjust our expectations to deal with the reality of what we can accomplish in this culture given only two years of service and working only with a few members of a small community. Granted, some of the volunteers have taken this to the side of cynicism. An easy path to head down in those lonely, tired, and or sick periods. It is also the side that often comes out when volunteers meet up and have a chance to vent to each other in our native language. Mostly it is all just good mental health practices, occasionally it is true frustration at the many obstacles that we face.

The vets have all grappled with what their role as a Peace Corps volunteer means in their community. What can they provide? Almost all of us came in and did some, very typical for our culture, analysis of our community. We saw needs, opportunities and started forming ideas for projects that we could help with. All of this through the lenses of our own cultural biases. As we talked to community members we found that many times they didn’t mention the things that we thought so obvious, rather they mentioned things we didn’t notice, or things that we’d already thrown out as unrealistic. If we mentioned our own ideas they supported them enthusiastically happy to see us “working”, the bigger the idea, the better!

It took months for us to see that our first impressions were all wrong. That the organization we thought might exist, didn’t. That those important projects would have to wait for planting the milpa, weddings, having coffee with friends, and church. The first thing to go was our sense of how fast something could happen. After planning a meeting or two, having poor to no attendance, having to change dates a number of times, and then not accomplishing anything (by US standards) during those that finally happened. We had to adjust and realize it would take longer than we thought to do some pretty simple things, much longer.

To cut short a much longer discussion on cultural biases and developmental obstacles, just leave it at we all had to do some major re-evaluation. It took all of us around 8 months to a year to begin to have more realistic expectations. This is not to say we won’t further adjust during our next year, the process is not completed. However the largest of these changes has occurred. I’m not sure that any amount of training could shorten this period of adjustment. Many of the adaptations are very community specific. In order to be effective, we have to have a good understanding of how our community really operates. The various personalities of the leaders, alliances and enmities, even climate and seasonal changes to workload must be accounted for. Other changes to our expectations are culturally broader, and sometimes quirky. Like the fact that someone who battles their way past you to get on the bus first will later give their seat to an elderly woman or offer to take a heavy load from you while you stand.

After going through all of these experiences and feeling more comfortable at predicting the outcome of certain events and actions, I can’t believe that any development is attempted without this level of understanding. The sad truth is of course, that the majority of development tries to avoid involvement to this degree. The main reason being the investment of time that it requires. It is once again a game of if we throw enough money at the problem; we might get the desired result. The list of failed projects, or those with unexpected outcomes is gargantuan. The price tag for these types of “projects” is staggering as well. One of the bigger examples being the war in Iraq which is more like “development” using a cudgel than a military operation; the objectives are more civic, than strategic.

Ok, that was a big tangent. Probably one I should explore more later… I will try to get back on the year in review, and expectation for the following year. For Katie and I, one of the biggest changes in our expectations occurred when we were looking for housing last December. Instead of finding a nice little house that we could use to have demonstration gardens, meetings, and our retreat, we ended up only finding a small room attached to a house with a family! Not at all what we were thinking when we joined up, or even after training! However, though there are times that I wish we had that small house we thought we wanted, I now have to allow that we were wrong, and that where we are is really as close to perfect that we could get. Our family is great! They force us to do at least some communication in Spanish every day. The girls (Karina and Rebeca) are Katie’s best friends. All in all, our inclusion into the community has been greatly enhanced by our relationship with them. Plus we are very central and people can wander by easily. If we had found a house it most likely would have been off the main road, this could have isolated us further. As it is now, we have the insituto students dropping in during the evenings, kids coming by to borrow peliculas, and just the random folks using our covered porch for shelter during the rainstorms. What we have lost in terms of privacy is more than made up for in knowing our community, and being helpful in small ways.

Well, this has become longer than I really planned to write. These entries without any photos I try to keep a bit shorter, but this one is longer partly because since I started it, we haven’t been in to a place where I could post it. Tomorrow we will head to La Palma, and I will post this. These days, in order to keep down expenses, we try to hang out in our site for longer periods. Part of the problem is that we now have to go into San Salvador more than is good for our pocketbook. For instance, in the coming month I have to go over to San Vicente to give another charla to the trainees, this will involve going through San Sal, and spending the night somewhere. We have Thanksgiving, which means we’ll head to some embassy families house to share the holiday with them (pretty nice of them to let all of us “campo” types to come in). Plus we have our one year medical checkup which involves spending three days in San Sal. All of this means we will spend more money this month. Twenty dollars will last us maybe a few hours in San Sal, and around a week in our site. Anyway, I will try to do a photo blog entry next, promise!