Jonny Appleseed

So, how have I chosen to spend my last few days as a volunteer? It’s something we all have to deal with as Peace Corps volunteers, leaving our site. I believe that how we do it is just as important as those first few months after we arrived. Most of us came here thinking that two years was a lot of time, but many of us were really considering what would happen after. Some are planning out their grad school options and working on applications, others are doing grad school while they are here and spending their time thinking about what they hope to do when they finish. Still others hoped to find that magical answer for what job they really wanted to do. The interesting thing is that almost none of those things have to do with actually being a volunteer.

You see as well trained Americans (and I use that term knowing it is wrong) we spend a hell of a lot of time thinking about our future. Each phase of school is to get at the next one. Preparing you for college, which prepares you for work. [Yeah right, what part of work is even the faintest bit like college?] Even as we enter work we are told (at the ripe age of like 25) that we need to start planning for retirement!

I’m pretty certain I am not alone in this, but I think one of the great things about being immersed in the kind of culture we have here in El Salvador is that most of us have now seen that the now can be just as important as the future!

So what have I been doing? Well, strange as it may seem, I’ve been delivering apple trees to families. You see, one of the ideas that we had to help with crop diversification was that this climate should work well for apple trees. So, from the seeds of the apples that we occasionally ate, we saved the seeds and eventually planted them. The idea was, and is that these trees would provide the rootstock for us to graft varieties that might do well down here on to.

This means that we now have about forty small trees that we have raised from seedlings, and before we left we wanted to make sure we gave them out to various families we are close to down here. It has turned out to be one of the best ways to say goodbye to our closer friends!

I’ll take two to four trees out and walk down the street until I come to someone’s house. Go up to the open door and call out. Then I’ll be made to sit down. They’ll pull out their best chair, sit me down and we’ll start talking. These days the conversations are mainly about the hard fact that we are leaving. We talk about how they will miss us, how we will miss them. Simple things mostly, recounting some of our favorite times.

It’s an amusing insight to realize how they will remember very specific smaller instances of our time here that made big impressions on them. It feels good to have them bring up things that you thought were fairly trivial, but it’s obvious that to them they weren’t. It starts to make your time here seem more worthwhile, and you realize you did have an impact, however small. Soon, the coffee, chocolate, or fresco will show up and I understand that I’m not leaving any time soon. I explain about the trees, and how well will come back to try to help them graft the sap wood on to in February. They say that it will be great to see us, but they also are quick to point out that it won’t be the same as us living here. It will just be a “visita”.

Sometimes there are silences that previously would have felt awkward. Now they are just part of passing time with friends, that now I was talking about. They don’t want me to leave, and I’m not in a hurry to go, we just aren’t sure what to say at the moment and so we sit and ponder.

Eventually, after several more good stories punctuated by silent pauses, I do decide to make my departure. I have finally gotten better at this as well, I can leave without feeling I was rude, or that I left before they got around to saying what they wanted. I have more patience, and I can relax. Heading back I realize it is already noon and that I have only given out two trees. I shrug, not worried, I know that I will get another two delivered this afternoon, and that once again I will have a great conversations with good friends.