Regaining Sanity

Peace Corps allocates up to three days per month for volunteers to rejuvenate. We call this "regaining our sanity". These days are normally taken consecutively and are for things like internet, a warm shower, or even dinner at a restaurant. Ideally a trip out of site coincides with other volunteers' trips and allows you to get some work done too. Every 3 weeks to a month throughout my service this is what I've done - I've left site to "regain my sanity". (Not that I lost it, right?...right?) That is, except for the the six weeks of June and the first half of July, when I left site only once. Those six weeks helped me focus on my continuing integration into Ngabe culture and reflect on the challenges I have faced.

If you ask me about the most difficult part of being a PCV, my rapid fire response would be: bugs at night (yes, even with a mosquito net), lack of food (especially veggies), people not paying for photos I print for them and children stealing my peanut butter. But if pressed to think hard about the Peace Corps experience, I would say there is only one great challenge: trying to balance a successful integration into a new culture and language (or two) while simultaneously being an effective co-facilitator, educator and empower-er. Recently, I ran across some literature that Peace Corps had sent me before going to Panama. There was a quote from a volunteer in Guinea-Bissau that I underlined over a year ago.

Most of us agree that although we knew Peace Corps was going to be hard, it is often hard in a different way than we expected. We all worried about adjusting to the bugs and the heat, but that's the easy part. It's more of a challenge to get used to dealing with a perplexing bureaucracy, the lack of motivation in some host country counterparts, the lack of technology and education, and cultural barriers.

 This quote explains how I feel very well and leads to the logical question: how do you get through those barriers and achieve real integration? As Peace Corps has taught us, culture is experienced through the behavior of individual people who have been conditioned by a set of values. With this in mind, cultural integration requires three skills: predicting the behavior of others, accepting the behavior, changing your own behavior. The secret to successful integration lies in the reality that you don't have to approve or adopt a particular behavior; you only have to accept that behavior as in line with the values inherent to that culture.

This is easier to do when practiced on oneself first. For example, once I realized why I want only one wife, (yes I know it's illegal, but ultimately, it's because polygamy is not socially acceptable in the U.S.), I can accept why my counterpart and best friend here has two wives (ultimately it comes down to status). Family and family size are highly valued in Ngabe culture, so having multiple wives makes sense here, but while I can understand that cultural difference, I still don't like it and find unfair. But, at least we can both approach a conversation from a feeling of mutual respect and understanding, rather than a paternalistic and ineffective "you are wrong, do-as-I-say" attitude.

These are skills that PCVs try to use when we are faced with perplexing new behaviors. After all, my friend in site has to deal with my selfishness, punctuality and excessive reading. Thus far the integration process has cruised fairly smoothly over the few (peanut butter related) bumps we've had. Sharing our cultures has been mutually beneficial, to the point that we understand and trust each other. Now, I honestly feel comfortable calling this place home. It seems that our out-of-site mantra "regaining my sanity" no longer applies to leaving my site. I will start referring to those trips as "remembering my American-ness".

Hearty Stew

For anyone accustomed to bathrooms, clean water, electricity, stoves, wood floors, personal or pubic transportation, television, restaurants, mattresses, cooking oil, shoes, a regular paycheck and other items meant to improve lives I have one question: are you happy?

By contrasting such comfortable lives with the rest of the world one would expect Americans to be the happiest people in Earths history. But it is not so. In Gregg Easterbrook's book, The Progress Paradox, he reviews hundreds of recent studies regarding happiness in America as related to wealth and concludes that American's (including the rich) are not any happier than we were a half century ago despite real average income doubling in that time. And compared to much of the rest of the world Americans can actually be considered unhappy.

Where the indigenous Ngabe people of Panama live life is stripped down and hard. Manual labor is a daily lifelong duty- cutting, planting, harvesting and preparing food, building living structures, hauling water from nearby streams, hiking everywhere, etc. They have to do this in either blistering sun or drowning rain -there's no in-between- with high rates of sickness and infant mortality and a low life expectancy. Rates of low education means that you are very lucky to work on a farm for $5/day for one month every year. Families here earn less than $500/year; you made that last week if you get $12.50/hour. If you are a high school dropout pulling minimum wage at McDonalds, in one year you make more than a family here does in thirty!

In the United States and elsewhere -where status is determined by how much one makes and not necessarily by how much good they do or happy they are- maybe we should acknowledge which is more important and judge success on that.

Although no studies have ever been done on Ngabe happiness, it is not hard to see that they are thoroughly happy people who relish each others' company and love to laugh, tell stories, joke, and gossip. And after spending some time here it is easy to see why.

Family clusters share in meaningful work tilling the soil under the sun. This work provides exercise and produces delicious and healthy vegetables, fruits, and grains to feed their huge families (any extra is given to other families). They are always outside experiencing beautiful views, lush greenery, and constant excitement from weather (incredible storms), animals (everywhere), and visitors (constant). They know their land deeply because they generally live on one plot their entire lives. They make beautiful bags and sombreros out of natural dyes and materials as well as other useful crafts -the knowledge of which has been passed down through generations.

These are things that have left many of our families in the last couple generation and I suspect evidence of reduced happiness in the United States is more than a correlation to these lost values and skills; it's a causation. So we see that comfort and cash are but two ingredients in the stew that is our lives. We're missing the meat and potatoes, without which we're left hungry and wanting more.

Outsiders Perspective

A fellow Peace Corps Volunteer and good friend, Jack Fischl, invited me to hang out with his parents for a day while they were visiting last month. We had a wonderful time and I was spoiled by his parents. Jack's dad is an American diplomat living in the Phillipines and below is the guest blog he wrote about the Peace Corps from his visit to Jack's site (less rural than mine...). A humerous and real outsiders perspective.

"Mo, Stella and I just spent ten days with Jack in Panama, touring the country and spending some time at his site, which was a great experience that allowed us to learn a lot about his daily life in the Peace Corps.  Mostly what I learned is that these Peace Corps volunteers are tough hombres and hombrettes (since my trip to Panama I try to use as much Espanol as possible).  We are talking about mas macho volunteeros, who are way grittier than you or me.  Their daily life consists mainly of extreme heat, humidity, varieties of bugs you’ve never heard of, intestinal stuff that we don’t even want to think about, tasteless foods, lots of mud, outhouses, bats, bat poop, big cultural challenges, communicating solely in another language etc. etc.  These are the good parts of the job – I can’t bring myself to write about the hard stuff. 

This trip was especially useful for me, because as I get closer to retirement from the Foreign Service, I have often thought that a perfect next step in my international career would be to join the Peace Corps. You know, live in a grass hut in an isolated location, and make a real difference by helping those who need help most.  An idyllic, sylvan existence full of simple charms.  Somehow in my mind’s eye, when I pictured the grass hut in which I would be living, I just kind of assumed that inside my hut I would find a nice soft queen size bed, fluffy pillows, a hot shower, refrigerator (maybe even a wine cooler with two zones for reds and whites), soft lighting, and of course, a nice clean bathroom well stocked with fragrant soaps and other bathroom products.  Muy incorrecto mi amigos and amigas!  Having now been at a real Peace Corps site, I can report that the grass huts DO NOT have these sorts of amenities.  There are no beds, and there are definitely no bathrooms overflowing with luxurious personal care products (because there aren’t any bathrooms).  There is however, the very soft lighting I hoped for, because without the electricity that we all take for granted, all you have is either a candle or a kerosene lantern to illuminate your reading - at least my fantasy hasn’t been completely shattered.

What is a typical day like in the Peace Corps?  From what I can tell from my short visit it goes something like this.  Wake up with the sun, feeling un poco sweaty and a bit dirty because you can never really get completely clean from your evening bucket shower.  Crawl out from under your  mosquito netting and take a quick inventory of the evening’s insect bites (hopefully they’re only insect bites), make a trip to the outhouse (which I can assure you is NOT one of life’s simple pleasures, although to be honest, I’m only guessing about this because I did my best to avoid outhouses while in Panama), prepare a basic breakfast that most definitely does not include things that require refrigeration, such as milk, butter, yogurt etc. and also does not include anything that requires electricity, like toast, waffles or that nice hot cup of coffee from your Mr. Coffee machine.  Get dressed in your hand washed clothes, or just wear the same clothes you’ve been wearing for the past few days, check shoes for scorpions and tarantulas (really), and then head out to do some good.  This of course is why you are here.  Since there are no cars or any kind of public transportation in your little village, you will of course be walking to your meeting, which is probably about two hours away, straight up hill on a bucolic dirt path (hope that it’s not raining).  Upon reaching your destination, wait around a few hours for everyone to show up, and then conduct your meeting in a foreign language that you’re still learning.  On a good day, people are actually interested in what you’re saying - on a bad day you’re greeted with blank stares.  Wrap up the meeting, walk home, prepare a simple meal before it gets too dark to see what you’re doing, read by candle light and go to bed.  Next day – get up and do it again - for the next two years.

Yup, this is not your typical day job, and I now know that you have to be a special person to be a Peace Corps volunteer (and to be honest, I don’t think I’m that kind of special person).  I of course, am already mucho impressed with my son Jack, but having seen how he’s now living and what he’s doing, I’m even more impressed.  This could be dismissed as fatherly pride, but I also met two of Jack’s colleagues (also Peace Corps volunteers), and I was equally inspired by their dedication and great attitudes.  Laura, who is also affectionately known as Coffee Lady because she graciously made us coffee each morning by boiling the water, and then patiently pouring it through a tiny filter that could handle about a thimbleful of water at a time, is also living at Jack’s site.  She’s a lovely young woman who is teaching English and advising on tourism.  We also met Scott, affectionately known as Toilet Boy (though now that I’ve thought about it, since he’s 6 ft. 4 inches tall, he should probably be known as Toilet Man), who has a two-hour hike just to get to his site.  This is a guy who is really getting his hands dirty, because his day job is building outhouses.  Now that’s dedication!  

These volunteers are living pretty rough, but I believe they are comforted by the sure knowledge that they are helping people that few others care to help.  From my perspective as a career diplomat, it is clear to me that these admirable young Americans exemplify diplomacy at its best.  So, my hat is off to PCVs all over the world.  From what I saw in Panama, the Peace Corps really is, “the toughest job you’ll ever love”. "