"Take care of your self and don't do more than you supposed to do, and don't do less than you are supposed to" - I found this quote, I had written it down with the plan to blog about it at some point, I've forgotten who told me this, I'm guessing it was my dad, as he has this special ability to give really good advice within a few simple words. Before I left for Antarctica the first time he told me "Don't do anything stupid, because it's probably really dangerous to do stupid things in Antarctica." Which is very good advice and very true.
Peace Corps has three goals:
1) Help interested countries meet their needs for trained individuals
2) Promote a better understanding of American people throughout the world
3) promote a better understanding of other peoples in America.
Peace Corps objective is to promote peace and friendship, or as we told the folks here a week or so ago in small speech we gave at the end of the school year celebration (they call it 'break-up'): "Tingting blong Pis Kop, emi yu no wantem mekem wan raorao wetem man yu save stret." (Peace Corps thinks that people are less likely to fight if they know each other well or -literally- thinkthink of Peace Corps is you no want to make one fight with man you know straight.)
From what we've gathered, every Peace Corps experience is different. We've met folks that say the spend most of their days reading and are bored and look for ways to pass the time - they can't really answer questions like "So what's your project?" and they'd much rather go into Vila or go on vacation than be in their village. We've also met people who had trouble remembering all of their projects because their list is too long and they complain because they are tired from working so hard. Some folks have many good 'projects', but the community doesn't think too highly of them because their always working on their projects and not taking the time to story on with the village. Others, the village thinks their great -as their always talking and hanging out, but at the end of the day they aren't doing anything that's along the lines of sustainable development for the community.
So it's tricky, there's nothing concrete about the next two years for Alex and I. We could read and garden and take long lunches (less than we are supposed to do) or we could work our asses off starting libraries, building renewable energy systems and creating an economy (more than we are supposed to do). We don't know what type of 'development' is best for the community - as that is unknowable - we don't know what will work and what won't - again, unknowable - or any of the multitude of unseen consequences of anything we do. Peace Corps has stressed that we only have 'projects' that the community ask for, and, I think that's about as safe as one can be with all the unknowables.
2 comments:
Luke
What an amazing adventure.
Can we send anything to help with day to day life for you and Alex or the village (water pump, camp stove, coffee press, first aid) from our stash of camping gear? Anything, let us know.
hey corey,
thanks for thinking of us (and checking out the blog). Living here really is like camping for two years, we kind of like it.
Alex and I decided not to bring our camping supplies and are really regretting it. It'd be good to have everything you could possibly need inside one backpack when settling into living in the developing world. That being said, I think we've settled in pretty well and have purchased or allocated most everything we could need. Thanks for thinking of us.
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