Saturday, May 12, 2018

Should you be PC?

Before I applied for Peace Corps, I half-applied a hundred times. I'd look at the site and the postings, get about halfway through the initial application (the easy part) and then never submit it. I wanted to be a Peace Corps Volunteer, mainly for the cool stories I'd be able to tell when I'm a crazy old lady with dementia (I might already be there...) but I wasn't totally sure I was cut out for it.
After all, two years is a really long time, and I'm not even going to pretend I don't have commitment issues. I have panic attacks just signing up for a cell phone plan, let alone leaving everything I know and being stuck somewhere for two whole years. Plus, what if I wasn't really as tough as I thought I was? What if I couldn't hack it? I mean, I probably could, but looking at the washout rates, maybe only hardcore philanthropic hippies with military-level toughness could really do it. I don't like people that much, I'm way too high-strung to be a hippy, and some days I have all the toughness of a baked potato. Still, if I was going to do this, I was going to have to really do it. I would have to stick it out the whole two years. I couldn't come home before my time was up. How embarrassing would that be? I'd have to explain to everyone every time they said "I thought you were going for two years...?"

For those of you considering Peace Corps (or already on your way in) does any of this sound familiar?

I finally bit the bullet and sent in the application. I'd looked through all the postings, and most of them seemed do-able, except one hardcore sounding one in Guyana. "Oh well," I thought. "As long as they don't send me there I'll be fine." What are the odds of that? So I checked the "Send me anywhere" box and said "oh god please don't make me work with kids" (in a more professional sounding way) in the "preference" section, and sent it off.

For those of you who have read more than this one post, you'll know I got sent to Guyana where even the "Environmental" volunteers work almost exclusively with kids, because there's nothing the world likes more than to laugh at any self-assurance I manage, and slap me back down to the high-anxiety gutter where I spend most of my existence.

Still, somewhere was better than nowhere, so I shrugged, packed my bags, and headed off.

When I got to staging, I had another horrifying sense of "I am so not cut out for this" when I walked in and met the rest of my cohort. They all seemed so confident, and one, Ellen, looked like she'd stepped right off a Peace Corps recruitment poster. Seriously. When PC Guyana staff had called me for a phone interview, they'd asked questions like "do you go camping?" Heck yes I go camping. I'm a camping pro. When I was a kid, my retired-Marine dad used to judge our forts in the woods. Camping? Check. Then there's Ellen, Miss "I was on a research project in the middle of nowhere in Alaska or something and we didn't even wash our hair more than about once a month" (my memory may be a bit exaggerated, but you'll have to forgive me because every time she opened her mouth my insecurity skyrocketed). Suddenly my camping looked like a six year old sleeping in a tent fort in the livingroom. Not exactly hardcore.

The one saving grace was my newly assigned roomie at staging, Sam, who confided that everyone else scared the crap out of her, too, and she was wondering if she had maybe bitten off more than she could chew. Yay! I'm not the only one!

Okay, so now that I've exposed myself to be neurotic, flaky, a little bit misanthropic, and wildly unsure about myself, I'm hoping that at least one other person is feeling like I did. If you are, and you've been reading this whole blog just to try to figure out what Peace Corps is really like and if you can actually last the two years, now that I'm almost done here, let me try to give you a better idea:

First, the necessary disclaimer: Peace Corps Volunteers' experiences vary wildly even within the same country. Most of the volunteers here live on the coast, and they might as well be on Mars as far as how closely their lives relate to mine. Kirsten, from my own cohort, is able to travel in to the PC office every Friday. I'd rather stick a fork in my eye, but that's just me personally. I'm going to just highlight some of the things that seem to be fairly across-the-board for at least the hinterland volunteers (meaning those of us who were cast out into the middle of nowhere).

1) Bugs are in your food. What do you do?
            A) If you answered anything like "what kind of bugs?" "How many?" "Maybe try to scoop them out?" or anything other than just straight up "ewww" that's a good sign. There will be bugs in your food. It's going to happen. Sometimes it's ants, and it's not so bad, sometimes it's little worm things, and sometimes you're not even sure what the hell it is but you seriously debate still eating the food anyways. Sometimes the bugs are the food.

2) How easily grossed out are you?
          A) "Not easily" is really the only good answer. My first week at site with my new host family at my permanent site, they asked me to rip the tongue out of a freshly dead cow. My first DAY with my training site host family, they asked me to eat a worm as big as my thumb. Many of you hinterland volunteers will only have a latrine, not a flush toilet, and it WILL be filled with cockroaches. Lizards and bats will come into your house and poop on EVERYTHING. Welcome to Peace Corps Guyana.

3) There is no one around, your cell phone is dead (or doesn't work), and you have no TV or internet. Relaxing day? Or torture?
          A) This is going to happen a lot. Be really sure that you're happy in your own company. Entertaining yourself is a huge part of Peace Corps. Being alone even when you're in a crowd of people is also an everyday event.

4) People are staring at you and whispering. How uncomfortable does this make you?
         A) If you're offended by the attention, Peace Corps is not for you. If you're uncomfortable about it, that can be okay (That's what I am, usually, and it hasn't messed me up too much), and if it makes you feel like a rockstar and you love talking about yourself, great.

5) (For the ladies) How much is it going to drive you nuts to be married off or advised to have babies?
         A) Yeah, this is going to happen all the time. I've never had so much attention paid to my uterus before. I don't think my gynecologist is this interested. If you can handle this with at least a tiny amount of grace, you'll be fine. If you're totally comfortable telling people to mind their own beeswax, that'll work too. Gents, for you it's going to be people just encouraging you to leave little half-Guyanese babies behind everywhere you go. Don't do it. Even if they come up with an adorable name for it. In Nappi, they keep suggesting Thomas make lots of little "Tomlets" before he goes. I applaud the name, but still not a good idea. (I've told him whenever he DOES have kids, if he doesn't refer to them as "Tomlets" we won't be friends anymore.)

6) How much do you need privacy?
         A) If your answer is "at all" you're pretty much hosed. You're not going to HAVE privacy. Every minute of every day, you're going to be on display. Your host siblings will invade your space on a regular basis, the local children will peep through the cracks in your house, or your neighbors will comment on the amount of toilet paper you seem to be buying. Are you okay? Are you having explosive diarrhea? You probably are, they decide. They'll discuss it with everyone else, don't worry. As someone who loves privacy, this was my biggest fear, and is still my biggest aggravation (along with the bugs.)

7) Are you a hypochondriac?
          A) DO NOT DO PC. You are going to get sick. You will probably pick up some parasites. The real illnesses are bad enough. Don't add imaginary ones. Plus, if you're a hinterland volunteer, your access to medical care might technically be within an hour's reach, but it will take you anywhere from 2-12 hours to actually get there.

So basically, there's no way to know for sure whether you'll make it two whole years. Lots of people leave, for lots of different reasons, and most of them are completely unforeseen. What will completely unravel one PCV will be no problem for another. In my case, it's mostly come down to sheer stubbornness.

My point is, if you're thinking about it, you might as well try it. You'll never know otherwise.

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