3/28/09

I expected that at this point in my Peace Corps service I would feel more of a sense of accomplishment and pride. I have been here for one full year now, and you’d think that should amount to something. A year, you say. Twelve months spent in a foreign country, learning to adapt and adjust and integrate and respect and speak and work and LIVE.

Instead of rejoicing though, and giving myself some credit for this, lately I’ve been beating myself up and feeling an overwhelming sense of guilt; feeling like I’m not doing all the work I want to be doing, and having a hard time feeling like I’m getting any work done at all. On top of that I feel like I am spending less time being social with my Senegalese friends, and seem to be falling behind in my correspondence to friends and family back in the States. I apologize to those of you whom I haven’t emailed back in many weeks, or perhaps months - but remind myself, and you, that this is one of the reasons I started this blog in the first place ☺. So I hope you’ll forgive me, as communication Stateside sometimes falls last on my priorities list.

As for work, I would have thought by now that I would be full-on gung ho about what I’m doing here, and it’s hard to admit that I’m not exactly. There are some things that I’ve done that have really been exciting, but others I am involved in that I feel like are just putting one foot in front of the other and keeping plodding along. I suppose that’s development work for you, though, it IS hit-or-miss, and sometimes it IS just about simply showing up and keeping encouraging people to do the same. It’s just hard to realize that, though, being so ingrained in my American ways, with our focus on results-driven work. I’ve had to realize that the word “work” is not always defined the same way here, and that “success” has different barometers and criteria.

I was warned before I came about the intangibility of much the work I would be taking on here, how physical, measurable results are not necessarily the usual end product of two years of Peace Corps service. But knowing about something and living it are two very different things. Working in education as my main focus here, I know I am aiming for long-term results, ones that may very well not be seen in the next year I’m here. Despite the warning, it’s a difficult reality to come to terms with.

Last week I was invited to go back to Thies to help with training of the newest group of Peace Corps (soon-to-be) volunteers. It was a peculiar feeling, to be the “experienced” volunteer, and to be asked questions like I was the expert, when I know now how much I still don’t know, and there’s so much I feel I haven’t done. But these trainees had been in country for just three weeks so far, so my scope of knowledge about Senegal and Peace Corps far surpassed theirs, which was again, surreal. This is the second group of new volunteers that have come into country since I did, but the last one six months ago didn’t have as big of an impact on me emotionally. They were exciting and fresh, but after six months me and my stage-mates were still just getting our feet wet.

This year mark is a strange coming-of-age, a time to look back, and ahead, to assess how far I’ve come, where I am now, and where I still want to go. The group of volunteers who were a year ahead of us and helped with our training a year ago are in the process of leaving the country now (COS’ing - Close of Service), and saying goodbye to them makes me think about how fast time has been flying. I just hope that a year from now, when it’s my time to go, I can walk away and say, “Yes, I did something too.”