Returned Peace Corps Volunteer

My time as a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) is over. After 27 months of what some call 'glorified camping' in Panama I  can finally call myself an RPCV. Reflecting on two years is difficult -impossible to deconstruct in a short blog post- but some immediate thoughts have been swirling around my mind.

Peace Corps Service is a deeply personal experience full of contradictions. Generalizing any one experience is a waste of time and the contradictions inherent in being a PCV make understanding any one experience head-achingly frustrating. For example, during the months leading up to my departure I grew jaded and impatiently awaited the end of my service. On the day of my departure, however, I was filled with overpowering sadness as I came face-to-face with what I previously longed for. At the crack of dawn, loaded down with emotion on the final exit from my home these past two years, tears streamed from my face and leaving became a reality I no longer wished to confront. But confront it I did and my contradictory emotions only increased my weariness and confusion.

Finishing Peace Corps Service gives me a great sense of pride. From completing a latrine project and learning a new language to creating strong bonds within my community and living through conditions of hardship I will always look back on my time in Panama with fondness, incredulity, and awe. Complementing my feelings of accomplishment are some sobering but appropriate questions I believe most PCV's face soon after their service: Did I do enough? Could I have done more? Am I glad I joined the Peace Corps?

The contradictions I feel toward my time here are perfectly expressed by Bill Bryson in "A Walk in the Woods" as he reflected on leaving the Appalachian Trail. He writes:

“I had come to realize that I didn’t have any feelings toward the Appalachian Trail that weren’t confused and contradictory. I was weary of the trail, but still strangely in its thrall; found the endless slog tedious but irresistible; grew tired of the boundless woods but admired their boundlessness; enjoyed the escape from civilization and ached for its comforts. I wanted to quit and to do this forever, sleep in a bed and in a tent, see what was over the next hill and never see a hill again. All of this all at once, every moment, on the trail or off.”

I have come to accept the complicated feelings involved in being a PCV but one this is not complicated: Panama has changed me and the rest of group 66. My talented friends now throw a machete with expert precision, eat immense amounts of rice, speak campo Spanish with eloquence, hunt cockroaches with scary determination, and tolerate sitting on a "red devil" bus for hours with no personal space and surrounded by deafening Reggaeton music in 100 degree heat.

But Panama has also changed us in ways that we may be able to apply to our lives again. By definition PCV's persevere and follow-through with commitments. They are also entrepreneurs in the sense of succeeding with few resources. They have real experience in grass roots development, understand how to run meetings, and know where to find help. They are practiced in empathy, support, teaching, and patience.

Now that I am done, one question remains: what am I looking forward to? The answer starts with slowing down. The second year of Peace Corps Service is exhausting and full of commutes. Busing six hours multiple times per month, traveling to other PC sites for work seminars, and miles of hiking have made me feel like packing and unpacking (or thinking about packing and unpacking) have become my life. Going home and being a normal twenty-something year old with a job and rooted in one place again  sounds therapeutic; especially when combined with ample doses of warm showers, real beds, American food, cleanliness, and exercise. And the prospect of being with my family over the holidays -a two year yearning that has carried me through moments of weakness more than a few times- buckles my knees.

Unfortunately that yearning will have to wait for two more months. Until then five friends of mine and I will be traveling through Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay; traversing the continent by bus and visiting the Amazon, Macchu Picchu, Patagonia, the Iguazu Falls, and many other less famous locations. Strolling through beautiful vibrant cities, consuming spectacular food, taking part in as many adventures as possible, and connecting with friends along the way should make this trip an exciting cherry-on-top to an unforgettable two years.

Peace Corps Panama Quotes

The "Readers Paradise" post from last month listed some of the best books I've read while in the Peace Corps. That post segues nicely into this post: quotations. I've compiled a list of quotes that remind me of Peace Corps service in Panama in a variety of ways. Reading "A Walk in the Woods" recently was an especially surreal experience; there are strong parallels between hiking the Appalachian Trail and being a Peace Corps Volunteer. Bill Bryson perfectly captures the range of emotions one feels when leaving something that has pushed you and tested your resolve for a brief period in your life. Take a look below:

• “This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning the universe, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air of every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words  but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body” -Walt Whitman, “Leaves of Grass” (1855)

• “To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition, to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived- this is to have succeeded.” -Incorrectly attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson (author unknown)

• “With the best leaders, when the work is done the task is accomplished, the people will say, we have done this ourselves” -Lao Tsu, China, (700 B.C.E.)

• “Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.” -Robert Kennedy (1966)

• “The optimist says the glass is half full, the pessimist says the glass is half empty, the Peace Corps Volunteer says ‘Can I bathe in that?’” -My boss, Tim Wellman, during Peace Corps training (2010)

• “Difference is a blessing, not a challenge. We define ourselves by knowing other people. We know our world by learning about difference. What is the word we often use? Tolerance. Is that a positive notion? Not really. ‘For the time being, I will tolerate you’? I’m against that concept. It means difference is a blessing and you don’t tolerate a blessing. You embrace it.” -Islamic Scholar Mohammad Mahallati (2011)

• “[The three-year-old] wasn’t afraid of my white exterior, I later learned, because Kanyenda had assured him that underneath I was black like everyone else.” -Mike Tidwell, from his excellent Peace Corps memoir “The Ponds of Kalambayi” (1991)

• “And on the day when we finally stocked the pond, I knew that no man would ever command more respect from me than the one who, to better feed his children, moves 4000 cubic feet of dirt with a shovel. I had a hero.” -Mike Tidwell, “The Ponds of Kalambayi” (1991)

• “The hidden forces of goodness are alive in those who serve humanity as a secondary pursuit, those who cannot devote their full life to it.” -Albert Schweitzer, “Out of my Life and Thought” (1931)

• “He’s still going to make those hikes, he’s insist, because if you say that seven hours is too long to walk for two families of patients, you’re saying that their lives matter lass than some others’, and the idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that is wrong with the world.” -Tracy Kidder, writing about Paul Farmer in “Mountains Beyond Mountains” (2003)

• “If one is not in a hurry, even an egg will start walking.” -Ethiopian proverb

• “It is a long-standing peculiarity of Panama that everyone not only wants to be president but considers himself the best person for the job.” -R.M. Koster, G. Sanchez, “In the Time of the Tyrants” (1990)

• “The only true voyage of discovery would not be to visit strange lands but to behold the universe through the eyes of another.” -Marcel Proust (1927)

• “We imagine that when we are thrown out of our usual ruts all is lost, but it is only then that what is new and good begins.” -Leo Tolstoy, “War and Peace” (1869)

• “Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul” -Edward Abbey (1990)

• “A smile is the shortest distance between two people” -Victor Borge

• “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel” -Maya Angelou (2003)

• “The river was the same as it always had been. It wasn’t like the people, who had changed so much in my eyes over the course of the two years, and who would now go their own separate and unpredictable ways even as they were frozen in my mind, pinned by memory –making chaoshou, teaching class, standing motionless on the docks. But it was different out on the river, where my guanxi with the Yangtze had always been simple: sometimes I went with the current, and sometimes I went against it. Upstream it was slower and downstream it was faster. That was really all there was to it –we crossed paths, and then we headed off in our own directions.” -Peter Hessler, “River Town”, my favorite Peace Corps chronicle (2006)

• “A full moon rose in the pale evening sky and glowed with a rich white inner light that brought to mind, but perfectly, the creamy inside of an oreo cookie. (Eventually on the trail everything reminds you of food).” -Bill Bryson, “A Walk in the Woods” (1998)

• “I had come to realize that I didn’t have any feelings toward the Appalachian Trail that weren’t confused and contradictory. I was weary of the trail, but still strangely in its thrall; found the endless slog tedious but irresistible; grew tired of the boundless woods but admired their boundlessness; enjoyed the escape from civilization and ached for its comforts. I wanted to quit and to do this forever, sleep in a bed and in a tent, see what was over the next hill and never see a hill again. All of this all at once, every moment, on the trail or off.” -Bill Bryson, “A Walk in the Woods” (1998)

• “There is always a measure of shock when you leave the trail and find yourself parachuted into a world of comfort and choice, but it was different this time. This time it was permanent. We were hanging up our hiking boots. From now on, there would always be coke, and soft beds and showers and whatever else we wanted. There was no urgency now. It was a strangely subduing notion.” -Bill Bryson, “A Walk in the Woods” (1998)