The toughest job you'll ever love

“If the day and night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emit’s a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, starry, more immortal-- that is your success” -Into the Wild (quoting Walden; Henry David Thoreau)

The Peace Corps slogan has taken on much greater meaning in recent weeks. After being in country nearly 5 months and teaching nearly 3, the initial awe and charm of it all has begun to wear off and it has started to feel a bit like actual work.

Even in the time I am not physically in the classroom or preparing to be, there are so many additional, unanticipated responsibilities to deal with. Things such as being prepared at any minute to receive visitors who arrive spontaneously and insist you serve them an impromptu coffee; being constantly vigilant of my appearance, my dress, my attitude and demeanor. I must be willing to smile and greet any number of people along the road to anywhere I happen to be walking, and willing as well to carry on complete conversations with those who desire it. When a crazy person stops me for an extended period of time while I’m in the market I have to wonder about the culturally appropriate approach to escape (which is actually quite similar to that of the U.S. approach, I learned the hard way, as Claude walked on, leaving me stranded with a woman babbling nonsense at me before a crowd of onlookers for nearly 10 minutes once).

I had envisioned Peace Corps always as this tranquil, perhaps even lonely 2 years of my life. I always figured I’d have a chance to make a hefty dent in my “Read Before I Die” list. To the contrary, everyone in the village seems to notice every move I make. The children of the neighboring compounds have taken favor with playing in the yard and veranda of my house so oftentimes when I am not shouting at kids at the top of my lungs to “STOP NOISE” I am listening to them chase each other in droves, in circles round my house. Yesterday when I went to plant some seeds in the garden, another thing I envisioned being a bit peaceful aspect of my experience here, at least 7 kids stood staring at me, speaking in mother tongue and laughing as though they’d never seen a person put seeds in the ground despite that the entire culture is pastoral.

Leading such a public life is far more exhausting than I‘d imagined and as a result I have found myself slinking into a more introverted personality than ever before. I have begun to look forward to evening and thunderstorms for the opportunity for a few brief instants of freedom from scrutiny and relative calm. Some days I find I do not even feel like opening the shutters because it is the only way to escape the worry of visitors dropping by and children staring at me until I can‘t stand it and move to another room away from their peering eyes.

I suppose that this behavior sounds a bit depressed but that is not the case at all. I am still extremely happy here and never doubt my long carried desire to join the Peace Corps. Some excerpts from my journal can provide insight into the euphoria, in fact, that I am feeling:

15 October-
…Is it really possible that life can be this good? Everyday I feel completely shocked at what I’m living right now.
At the moment I am sitting in the bedroom of my very own house with a glass of warm coffee as a cool breeze is blowing in through my ancient pane-glass window. I can hear the sound of a foreign language being spoken as people barter and exchange goods at the market down the mud road. There are a great variety of birds chirping, the leaves of banana trees swaying calmly in the breeze. Out the window I can see the rusted tin roof of the entrance to the Chef’s quarters, surrounded by an array of fauna including my favorite tree here; long and skinny in the trunk, they sprawl out with scrawny, broad arms and bushy leaves at the top and our polka dotted with a beautiful deep but bright orange flower. When the sun hits them they look like something from a children’s storybook illustration…

…At 25 I don’t believe there’s any place or experience I’d prefer to be having right now. I partied my ass off and lived up my early youth as appropriate; I feel ready at last to march into that period of adulthood where you slow down a little, let a little calm in and start contemplating the next chapters of your story.


Overall I am finding the experience as a whole rather humbling in many ways. I have never been the biggest patriot but after spending a bit of time in Africa, seeing the rampant corruption, stumbling through problems with seemingly simplistic solutions which wind up becoming inherently more complicated than they initially seemed, understanding that though I feel like a poor youth barely out of the post-college ramen noodle diet days, I am actually extremely wealthy here; all of it molds a rather deep appreciation of my country’s accomplishments in a relatively short period of time. Granted most of our success lies rooted in the fact that a few British soldiers relocated, slaughtering everyone in their way to build exactly what they wanted of a nation, but, I am loathe to admit that just a few hundred years later the world is an altogether better place for it. I’m certainly not absolving our nation’s role in a multitude of vile things throughout our history; I did, after all, spend the two years of my life before coming here repudiating such things as our grossly excessive military arm as a career choice. It’s simply more clear now how undeniable it is that the world in general looks on our history, people, and way of life as a model of what they’d like their nation to be and such admiration turns the wheels toward a certain intellectual progress.

As nearly a half a year has already rushed past in my time here and I have already taken on virtually an entirely new identity, it is impossible not to speculate about who on earth I will have become at the end of all this. One near certainty is this, in the long run the impact will be deep and I believe that for the most part the changes will be positive.