Three Year Anniversary

Today is my three year anniversary of being in Peace Corps/Vanuatu. I can’t believe I’m still here. And yet, these past three years have been, without a doubt, the most intense growing experience of my life. I talk about this a lot, but when I was in training, our old nurse, Brenda, said that one old PCV said that he grew up in Vanuatu, the way you’d say you grew up in Pittsburgh or Houston. It feels true for me. In school, I learned a lot about things, but Vanuatu has taught me how to live my life. I’ve learned how to deal with a lot of disappointment, with joy, with loneliness, with frustration, with wonder, with rats and cockroaches and events that start four hours after they’re supposed to begin.

I remember getting off that airplane three years ago. My carry on was too heavy, so I had had to check my bag, and didn’t have any appropriate clothes to wear. I was stressing out, since I was wearing yoga pants, and Katelyn Connell offered me a dress to wear. I remember the line of staff and PCVs outside the terminal, getting a lava lava and a salu salu and being amazed at this girl who seemed super cool because she knew how to use a machete to open a coconut so we could get the meat out of it. (Ha). I remember that I felt so impressed with the two volunteers who jumped in a bus with me and some of the other new members of G25 because they knew everything along the road. Little did I know at that point that Vila is so small that it’s exceedingly easy to be aware of all of the businesses, nakamals, hotels, et cetera, along the road. I remember that we were deposited at this camp in Pango, which is a suburban village, and that they made us a nice dinner of good island food—rice and chicken and beef stew and island cabbage and salad, something that I’d eat now without worrying—and that I couldn’t eat it, that I felt disgusted by the food, and that I was convinced I would never be able to eat it. (Instead, I ate peanut butter straight out of the jar in the bathroom). I remember that we received island dresses a few days later, and we all thought that we looked absolutely hideous. I remember that we asked one of our language trainers, Terry, if he thought we looked pretty, and laughed when he was like, yeah! You look great!

I’ve been working on updating my resume lately because it’s getting to that time in my service. If we buy tickets for the day I think we’re going to, my last day in Vanuatu is February 15, 2016—131 days away from today. Because I want to apply for grad school, I’ve been trying to remember what it is I did when I was in college to prove that I wasn’t just drinking 2L of Diet Coke and studying until 11 p.m. every night in Club Hunt, although I did a lot of that, too. I found the resume I used to apply to Peace Corps, and while I was there, I found my aspiration statement, too.

As far as I can tell, the aspiration statement is something that only comes out if you die and they need to put something nice about you in a press release. It explains why, exactly, you want to join Peace Corps, what you think you’ll be able to give, and what you hope to get from it. I had forgotten that I’d even written it, but reading it made me feel nostalgic for those moments before I came here, when I wasn’t even sure what I was getting myself into.

"In order to work effectively with Ni-Vanuatu partners, I [...] will need to rely on my adaptability, patience, and knowledge of local culture. [...] I understand that there will be situations in which I will not comprehend why something must be done a certain way, or even why it is important at all, but I hope to develop the proper mixture of humility and awareness[...] I expect that my experience will frequently be frustrating, since my host country colleagues and I will both be operating from positions where it is easy to misunderstand one another, but I hope that I will be able to breach some of these culture gaps[.] [...] I hope to remember at all times that I will be [...] a guest in Vanuatu, and that it is my responsibility to learn and adapt my ideas of what is normal. [...] I must be willing to detach myself from many of my own cultural expectations. The way that I have lived my whole life should not serve as the gold standard by which all other people on Earth should live their lives." 

When I wrote that, I really had no idea what I was talking about. But I somehow got that all right. It's been a good, frustrating, exciting three years. I don't think I could have spent it in a better place.