To be honest, for a week or so I thought I might snap. In late March I was realizing I had been here for a year and accomplished very little. I still didn't know if the funding promised to us by the local government was ever going to come (my main project of 16 fogons), my soap making group had all but ceased to exist, my youth business group kept postponing their supposedly weekly food making and selling, and I still did not know if my chicken raising project would work out.
| the above depiction describes my sentiments |
On to more interesting things.
I got a new camera so I will hopefully be posting more of everyday stuff so you can see what my life is like hurray!
It got really cold really fast here. My normal attire went from t shirt and shorts (often minus the t shirt) to 2 sweatshirts, jeans and long johns underneath (yes they look silly and sound funny but so glad I brought those).
With the clod weather, social activities change too. Before it was volleyball late into the night with spirited drinking or terrere drinking and loud music booming into the night. Now the volleyball had begun to subside in favor of soccer but short sessions until it gets to chilly and people retreat to their homes to sit by fogon fires with ten layers of clothing on and drink mate. The change is sudden and drastic.
Hey Man,
ReplyDeleteThe Medical Officer has been talking to my group about this recently, I am about to complete 1 year in site too. Apparently it is very, very common among Peace Corps volunteers when they hit the one year mark to feel down. This is universal across all countries with volunteers and has a lot of data to back it up. Generally, Volunteers hit the year mark and get depressed because they look around and say "I have completed half of my service and feel that I haven't completed any of my projects! I haven't integrated in my community as well as I wanted either! If I keep up at this pace, my 2 years service will end being a colossal waste of time." It sounds to me that you might be feeling something along those lines.
Well, I can't due much to cheer you up, but I wanted to let you know that what you wrote about is an extremely common and normal phenomenon. Additionally, most volunteers that have felt this way have felt so temporarily, and by the end of their service they consider their two years work a success. Washington DC recognizes the commonality of this mid-service crisis, and your medical office might have some services to help you out.
On a personal note, I have been feeling similarly in my site. It seems that work isn't getting finished as fast or effectively as I want. However, upon reflection I realized that I have been analyzing my success based upon American principles of efficiency and productivity. I realized I need to pair that analysis with a HCN point of view. From the point of view of someone in my community, I have been working far more (and on a larger variety of projects) than is expected from community members. So from my community's point of view, I have been doing plenty of work. Perhaps too much. That's one of the reasons why people haven't been jazzed up about additional projects I bring forward. From their point of view, I've done enough work already, so why should I want to get myself into additional projects? Now, I don't think that the HCN point of view is necessarily correct, but it is a fact of our life in a foreign community. We need to accept that our American goals may be unrealistic given our situation, but that we may motivate HCNs to be a bit more active than they would be without a PCV.
In the meantime, focus on day by day quality of life. Visit your neighbors and enjoy their company, or perhaps read by yourself in your house. This current situation you're in is unique (few Americans are PCVs, and it is a short time within your own unique service) and you may learn some good things from it. Then again, maybe not.
I hope I made sense. This sort of stuff is odd to write about. Wishing you the best buddy,
-Jason