Month 3 – I Might Just ET
December 22nd, 2005 by Sarin
This post’s title crept into my head once and I have been thinking about how true it is ever since.
A little heat off my chest before I go on Christmas vacation and regret all the bad things I said. I’m not going to sugarcoat any of the following. My 3rd month at site (Month 5 in country) saw many moments in which I seriously considered resigning and ending my service early. On some days, I could not wait to get home so I could write my goodbye letter and plan my exit strategy. Sometime in between, things seemed to level out, and all the things I said I would do never came to light. But don’t think I wasn’t one step away from packing up and catching the next plane out of Cape Verde. The option to ET (early termination, or basically quitting the Peace Corps) seemed like the exact remedy for my Peace Corps Blues.
I had all the words planned out for my goodbyes and just needed to pen them. In my mind, I had mentally written a goodbye letter to my fellow Peace Corps friends, thanking them and apologizing that my time has come. I had the words down for my friends back home, asking for sympathy because I didn’t quite make it. I thought long and hard about the excuse I would give back to my parents, considering I would indeed be going back to their house, only to try my hardest to get out. And lastly, I started researching for other development work overseas (what’s the best thing to do when you’re in the quitting your job? look for another one!), places to move to in the states, whether or not to go for an MBA, all while paying $2 an hour at the internet café to cure my anxiety. It seemed my forgoing decision to leave wouldn’t be too depressing once I had something else to fall back on.
To begin with, many things contributed to me almost pulling the plug. I’ve noticed them before, but when you start to get edgy, it’s when it makes the most sense.
First, living in a 3rd world country, especially when coming from another 3rd world country, can get very uninteresting.
In the absence of culture shock, instead I just get depressed. Sure, I may have lived most of my life in the states, but I have the mindset to understand 3rd world problems as if they’re nothing new to me. Contrary to others who might enjoy the PC experience as something new and exciting, to me, it isn’t necessarily new and it’s still depressing.
Second, contrary to the above statement, life in Cape Verde is not much different as expected.
Even when I live in the most ‘African’ of the islands, I have trouble backing it up. Where are the villages, the crazy tribal customs, flocks of wildlife and the very simple way of life? When I figure in Peace Corps Africa, I would imagine I’m entertaining the village and the village entertaining me, but instead…they’re glued to the television watching American movies.
Third, being an Asian Peace Corps Volunteer in a non-Asian country is tougher than expected.
No matter what you are, Korean, Thai, Cambodian, Vietnamese, to Cape Verdeans all Asians are Chinese. That might seem ok, but the kids will all assume you know Kung Fu and will try to playfully fight with you on the street. First, they might keep a distance because they assume all Asians are lightning quick, but soon they will try to hurt you because they think you’re solid as steel. That’s nothing though, compared to the harrassment and barrage of insults I get from Adults and teenage girls. I’m pretty sure my experience wouldn’t have been compromised, had I been the “White American” volunteer that these locals came to expect. On a local perspective, it’s more difficult to be an Asian volunteer when all the other Asians in town are unsocial China shop owners.
Fourth, maybe I should have been in China.
After all the harassment, maybe it would have been best to be a volunteer in an Asian country. Throughout the PC process, I’d have faith on the system, letting them choose where to go and what to do. But maybe I should have been more strict on my requirements. Not in cooincedence, the first place I looked for more work was back to Cambodia. Where Peace Corps does not have a presence. That’s right, stranded in the middle of the Atlantic, and really wanting to go back to my other other home.
Fifth, while the Peace Corps can really let you do what you want, they can limit your experience just as easily.
The free spirit of the 70s are over. Now I have to ask for permission to go to the next town to go buy pork. If I am somewhere where I’m not supposed to be, I get reamed. Of course, I know they want to know where I am at all times so they can easily contact me. But just a reminder, I am in Africa, not in Preschool. I’m starting to think of Peace Corps as my extended family.
Sixth, the whole idea of sticking to it and resisting the urge to ET gets really old.
Face it, I don’t have to do this. You start getting annoyed with the other volunteers who think of Peace Corps as some type of game, like some “are you tough enough” challenge. I was one of them too. I blame it on the male brain. Put it simply, you should have fun while in the Peace Corps. At the time, I didn’t want to go on thinking, “soon it will be all over”. They don’t call it volunteer service and expect you to hack it out the whole way. There’s always the option to leave and nobody is forcing you to suffer.
Seventh, I realized more and more that I joined the Peace Corps as a means to an end.
I joined the Peace Corps to delay the real world, get out of Rhode Island, do something impressive for my parents, and run away from being young. Well, maybe I should have fixed these problems before coming here. The real world is still coming and the motivation to delay seems very slackerish of me. Maybe a more appropriate time for the Peace Corps would have been after I worked myself a small fortune, travelled the globe a few times, and looking to slow things down. The longer I was in college, the more I wanted to get things done faster and faster with a bottom line mentality. I had huge ambitions in my open world. Now, there is only so much I can do. You work too hard here and you will depress yourself.
But somehow I am staying. I can’t pinpoint to how I got to feeling better but I guess I’m still here. I believe things started getting better when I started telling locals that Calheta was mean to me, and I assured them that I could take the next plane back to Boston to be with the other Cape Verdeans who have escaped. As if by magic however, the more I wanted to ET, the better my language got. The better my language got, the more I was able to goof off. And that’s when things started to turn.
Eventually I started talking out of my ass and not caring what I said. The strange part was, everybody I talked to seemed to concur with me. I would rip on the town, the locals, the street kids, the stuck up high school girls, and the suffering of the heat and lack of water. As much as I was venting, they all joined in. As if they have had enough of Calheta too. Finally I realized that my decision to ET would be entirely selfish, and deprive Calheta of any help that I haven’t given them yet. These locals don’t like life here that much either, and they don’t have the option to go back home to their “paradise”.
And about that “paradise”, going back home would be equivalent of swimming for air. I’ve got nothing there but a place to stay at my mom’s house, lots of books, several dozens of CDs, a beirut table, and racks of overpriced clothes. I sold basically all my life for my time in the Peace Corps, and I don’t even have a job to fall back on or even a car to look for a job. I know going back home would be wallowing in sorrow about the previous months without confronting it first hand. I then didn’t want to walk around with the label of Peace Corps quitter ingrained in my conscience. As I am still here, I start to recognize that I didn’t want to leave out of anger. If I were to leave, I want to leave on a very happy note. Kind of like a short service and not a disrupted service. I keep looking forward to events and vacations in the near future and without these, and as long as I have something to look forward to, it keeps me from picking up the phone to throw in the towel.
So yeah, I am staying. I can’t pinpoint why, but maybe this is exactly what I asked for. I still have the rest of my life to do whatever I would say I’d do and I gotta take things one day at a time. While I’m not having a blast, or getting any satisfaction about my work, I still haven’t given it a good shot. We’ll see how it goes in the upcoming months, and if things get even worse, maybe it is my time.
In the meantime, I gotta head to vacation up north and relax, go hiking, visit PC friends, and think about what a long 5 and a half months it has been. Merry Christmas, Feliz Natal, Happy Kwanzaa and don’t forget your Chismakuh gifts for everyone. It’s hard being away from home but I remind myself that I am not the only one. There’s plenty of volunteers across the globe that are celebrating their first Christmas abroad. Doesn’t mean we like it, but hey, I would have been home by now if I wished.
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