I had no idea what the Peace Corps was until the fall semester of my senior year at college, and even then the idea of what exactly Peace Corps did was a mystery to me. “Yea, basically you go to some poor country and dig ditches,” one of my friends told me, “and I think you have to live in a hut—that’s mandatory.” During the on-campus career fair that fall, I cruised the aisles wearing my suit—brandishing my conservative tie—taking a look at all the big named companies that I seriously considered working for at one point or another. UPS, FedEx, Home Depot, IBM, Accenture, Enrst and Young; each had their own booth filled with goodies and branching out from the large flat tables like hungry tentacles of a beast were the recruiters. Always smiling and sometimes dressed in a polo shirt with the company emblem embroidered on the breast, they were eager to shake my hand and give me enough brochures on what they did that I sometimes thought that it would be easier to give me one pamphlet on what they
didn’t do. After walking down a one of ten rows at the convention hall, my arms were filled with so many knickknacks and brochures that I had to unload them all into the nearest trash bin. Walking down the second aisle I saw a tiny stand that seemed to be dwarfed and outdone by its neighbors. As I slowly walked to the modest booth wondering why they had taken the minimalist approach, a recruiter cut me off. “Hi, you look like a young man that has some direction,” he told me enthusiastically. “Let me tell you about our company. In the past five years we’ve expanded rapidly and we’re expecting to have record profits,” he told me aggressively, eagerly, and without pause. His eyes were so wide with enthusiasm that I was sure that if someone were to bump into him from behind his eyes would pop out of his huge skull, and anticipating this I held my hands out about waist high in a cupped position. After shaking his hand and giving him my resume, I made a b-line straight to the tiny booth.
Pictures of African children running; a young woman standing in a field smiling jubilantly while wearing a soiled t-shirt; a young man with glasses posing with his hut in the jungle; these were the images that I was confronted with while I approached the Peace Corps recruiting booth, and all at once it reminded of a Benetton ad. “What’s up,” the recruiter calmly asked with her eyes half opened, “do you know about the Peace Corps?” “No,” I answered honestly, “but it looks like you guys do aid work.” She looked at me from head to toe, and as she smiled and held her critical eye I was certain she was going to ask me if I was a stiff. As I talked to her about myself she turned her head to the left as if straining to hear every word I had to say, and after every pause she would say, “right on.” “So you, like, are going to really love the Peace Corps,” she confidently told me. Before I left she handed me her card, an application, and a couple of pamphlets to read through. “Here man,” she called out as I walked away, “take this key chain—it’s free.” Little did I know that the “it’s free” mantra would become my mantra after joining Peace Corps.
-Benetton ad:
-Peace Corps ad:
As I was applying to the Peace Corps I could not even begin to imagine what life in the Peace Corps would be like. “Would I really be living in a hut while digging ditches all day?” I hesitantly asked myself. As I read through the pamphlet and skipped through job titles that started with
environmental, education, community, I tried to find ones that had something to do with business and decided that the fastest way to find out what the Peace Corps was like was to ask someone who has previously served as a volunteer. As I scoured the internet and my local network for people that had gone through the Peace Corps experience, I always got the same answer, “I can’t really tell you what your experience will be like because everyone’s experience will be different.” I
hated this answer because I was sure that some volunteer could give me a generic experience overview, but I never found that answer.
As I sit here writing this entry on my six-month-a-versary at site, I finally realize why the people who were volunteers told me that “it really depends.” I never imagined that I would be in regular contact with the Peace Corps staff, or that I would constantly be going to the capital for trainings, conferences, or other business. The Peace Corps that I had imagined when I applied was the image of what I had seen the posters during the career fair. I figured that I would be thrown into the wilderness with nothing but a pocket knife, and like a well-trained machine I would be told that I must survive in the Amazonian rain forest, African dry-lands, the Siberian tundra, or some nuclear wasteland. And though I’m sure there are volunteers who are roughing it in the jungle, I find that I am in a comfortable home with hot running water, electricity, and satellite TV in the third largest city in the country. As I place calls from my cell phone or go to the office that is equip DSL and computers, I realize that my experience here is not what I ever imagined it to be, and, to be honest, it is both a relief and a disappointment. I never imagined I would hear the phrase, “Our electricity bill was high this month” or “can you go and get me a bottle of soy milk?” in the Peace Corps. I remember before going to the Peace Corps I told my roommate Glenda, “I’m going to see wild pigs crossing the streets! That is something you just don’t see everyday!” I no longer romanticize the rustic experience like my mom and some of my friends, because, well, the rustic experience is pretty gross.
The other day as I was chatting with my friend Lily and I told her that I hated to go to the outdoor market here. “I love outdoor markets,” she responded, and I thought about how the word “outdoor market” sounded like something a person might imagine himself or herself wandering around on a warm Saturday afternoon in Tuscany. Lily probably imagined strolling through the cobblestone streets as the smell of sunflowers, fresh vegetables, and fresh baked bread wafted through the air. In reality, though, the outdoor markets here are nothing impressive. I admit that I romanticized the idea of rustic living before I came. I too had imagined that outdoor markets would be like the things of any hippies’ dream, but when I first went to one and the smell of fresh sewage, spoiled meat, and musky body odor wafted through the air I became positive that I wanted no part of this so called rustic living.
There are other things that have happened to me while I’ve been in Peace Corps that I never expected. I imagined that I would
lose weight by joining Peace Corps by means of stomach worms, malnutrition, or some other illness. This has not happened, and I am one of many volunteers who have gained a substantial amount of weight since coming to ROG. Others have successfully lost a substantial amount of weight—probably 20 lbs on average—by a combination of bad food and disease.
-The glory (skinny and fit) days...i.e. pre-peace corps:
-now:
I also thought that I would somehow become less high maintenance, but I find that this is completely false. People who don’t shower or bathe at least every two days and prophesize that “you just eventually get used to it” clearly have no idea what they are talking about and probably had this filthy pattern back in the states. While my friend Chris who lives close by doesn’t shower until she “feels” dirty—which can mean anywhere from four days to over a week—I find that by my second day without a hot steaming shower, I break down into tears of anguish if I don't at least wash my hair in a sink. Just this weekend when Chris was over at my house, her hair stood up in a Mohawk that would make any 80s punk proud, and as I inquired if she intended her hair to be styled like that she only muttered “oh, sh*t,” and started to pat down her hair while explaining that it was standing up because of her natural hair grease. As my eyes widened with disgust I offered her the house shower, but she politely declined and said, “nah, I don’t
feel dirty yet so I’ll wait until I get back to site.”
One thing that I have successfully avoided since coming to ROG is a squat toilet. John likes to ridicule me that I have
never used a squat toilet, but I welcome the scrutiny if that means I don't ever have to subject myself to such nastiness. “How can you
not have used a squat toilet here?” he asks in disbelief, but little does he know that I absolutely refuse—both based on moral and hygienic principle—to use a squat toilet. John’s shock went so far as to lecture me on the origins of the modern porcelain throne—popularized by Sir Thomas Crapper, apparently—to try and persuade me that it is
natural to squat and
unnatural to sit. The English language does not have the appropriate words to express my disgust on how I feel about squat toilets here or anywhere. Of course, it is a simple matter of my inability to actually squat—flat footed—that also prevents me from ever using the toilets of the damned, but even in if I
could squat like any skilled Georgian I would
never use them.
It’s been eight months since I have arrived in ROG and six months since I moved to my permanent site. I have not been doing what I really thought I would be doing, but in retrospect this can sometimes be seen as a good thing. At this moment, though, I feel like it’s one of those important occasions where I need to reevaluate where I am in my life and if I am really happy here. It is time to weigh the cost and benefits, the good and evil, the pain and joy, the triumphs and frustrations, and the disgust and delight; but when I look at it on a spectrum I don't exactly know where I am. I have my ups and downs here, and even though I sometimes feel that ROG is changing me in a bad way, it is also shifting my idealistic views and approaches to ones that are more pragmatic and realistic.
There is a married couple here that I talk to sometimes, and the husband let me in on what they do whenever they have a yearning to go home. “When Lindsey is frustrated and wants to go home,” he told me with a smirk, “we make a list of
reasons to stay and
reasons to leave. If the list on
reasons to leave is more than
reasons to stay we will go, but so far it hasn’t been more.” I imagined for a second where this type of logic and decision-making might be used: comparing cars while shopping, weighing the benefit of going to the Bahamas in the winter or summer, or even buying generic brand to name brand. There are many places where this type of logic would not work, though. Making a comparative list of
reasons to keep a child,
reasons to get married, or any other list of emotional topics would probably not do well for a pessimistic or cautiously optimistic person like myself (just for reference, marriage would never happen and the child would have to go). Though it makes sense for objective decision-making, I can’t imagine it applying successfully to my ROG situation simply because it is easier to be negative about a place that is both uncomfortable and foreign. Even if I won the Georgian lottery or was made supreme overlord of ROG I am sure that if I made a list the negative would outweigh the positive every time. I know some volunteers who count down the time remaining in their Peace Corps service in
days, and when I calculated that out it came down to approximately 540 days. If that isn’t depressing I don't know what is, and that might explain the mental state of some volunteers who keep counting that way. Instead, the approach that I have developed is to count down by fractions—it seems smaller and therefore more doable. If I’m starting from swear-in, I’m already a quarter of the way through my service. If I’m starting from when I left America, I have been here for a third of my time required. Not too bad. Not too bad at all.
