Life Lessons, Number Quadrillion

Like I said awhile back, I’ve been thinking a lot about the lessons I’ve learned so far in Peace Corps. Insert obligatory statement: this has been the weirdest/best/worst experience of my life, depending on the day. There’s a certain amount of discomfort, boredom, and restlessness that characterizes the bush experience, but it’s never like that all the time. Some days, I climb volcanoes; more typically, I stare at lizards and wonder if any diseases can be transmitted through kava spit.

I’ve said this a bunch of times, but I’m the only volunteer in my part of the country. Sometimes it’s lousy because I want a captive audience to hear me bitch and moan—and who doesn’t want that? Sometimes it’s no fun because I’d like to be able to watch a movie with someone who’d understand the punch lines. Sometimes I’d just like to share macaroni and cheese with someone who’d appreciate it.

But there are some things I’m so proud of. Tongariki is weird and different. I know that in a certain sense I joined Peace Corps to test myself, and now I know certain things. I know that I can live without lots of things – electricity, running water, a gas stove, a house that is sealed to the elements, access to fresh vegetables, et cetera. I know that I can spend two days on a ship if I have to, and that I can deal with endless ambiguity. I can deal with cockroaches and rats. I know that even though I don’t want to work in education, I can teach children how to read.

I guess what I’m saying is—this place has made me feel more confident and competent. Yeah, I’m a generalist. That’s the Peace Corps-approved way to point out that I have no real technical skills apart from being educated and able to read and follow training manuals. I’m not a lawyer or a civil engineer or a deaf educator. I don’t know how to clean up a reef or dig a toilet or start a fish farm, but I know that someone else does. And given that it’s Peace Corps, they probably wrote a very thorough manual on it. This place has made me realize how many jobs can be done by just anyone who’s … willing to do them. And projects are so much fun! When I was in school, basically all I did was write essays and do problem sets, and while that’s how you learn, I feel so much happier having active work to do. I always assumed in the back of my head that I wanted to go into policy work, and while I’m not uninterested in it, working on a more basic level is exciting. I like doing things, not just talking about them.

I’m still thinking about what I want to do next year, and I haven’t committed to anything yet. Hopefully whatever I do, it’ll keep going forward and help me to get to where I (ultimately) want to go. I wish I knew for certain, but living here is all about uncertainty. Is the ship going to come? Is the water going to be all right? How much time is any given thing going to take? I hope that in the next six weeks or so, I'll be able to firmly say, one way or another, what's going on. Awo...