What? Where? Why?
At some point, I guess I should explain the reason I made this blog in the first place: to chronicle my Peace Corps journey from preparation to departure, from training to service, and finally to my readjustment back home in 2014.
So, here goes… on January 18, 2012 I will be departing for Ecuador to start training to become a Peace Corps Business Advising volunteer. I will spend my first three months as a trainee living with a host family and attending training sessions on language, adaptation to the local culture, and the specifics of my job assignment.
After training, I will be officially sworn in as a Peace Corps volunteer on April 5, 2012. I will be assigned to a city/town/village in Ecuador and begin my two years of service. Again, I’ll be living with a host family for the entire two years (which I’m pretty excited about). As a business advising volunteer, I fall under the larger category of environmental awareness volunteers. Therefore, I’ll be focusing on sustainable business development. SO PERFECT after four years of learning and living anything and everything sustainable at Ithaca College. I’ll also have the opportunity to start up additional side projects, which could include anything the community needs from teaching in a school to starting a gardening project.
Well now that you’ve heard the ‘what’ and the ‘when,’ I should probably touch upon the ‘why.’ Unlike some other PCVs that I’ve talked to, I haven’t dreamed of joining the Peace Corps since I was young. I haven’t always known that I wanted to do this. In fact, when I applied in July 2010, I had only really started thinking about the Peace Corps two or three months earlier.
And so the story goes.. I was studying abroad in Granada, Spain and got the fabulous opportunity to travel around Morocco for five days with some of the other students. At that time, I had been considering the Peace Corps for about a month or so after an epiphany at a summer internship when I realized the public relations/advertising world just really wasn’t for me. Luckily for me, our trip would be led by a former PCV from Morocco (guess I can’t call her a RPCV since the ‘returned’ part never really happened). It was my golden opportunity to talk to someone who had just lived through the Peace Corps experience. I wanted to find out more and see if it was really something I could see myself doing.
It was. I think seeing Morocco, even if it was just for five days, really changed what I saw myself doing with my future. We got the opportunity to travel to a rural village in the Rif Mountains and there we used a translator to talk to a family who had lived there for generations. During the conversation, one of my friends asked a little girl (she couldn’t have been older than 12) what her dreams were for the future. She at first looked alarmed to have even been addressed. She clearly was not part of the family and seemed to be some type of maid or housekeeper. She stated matter-of-factly that she hoped to have a job when she grew up. I’m not sure this answer affected the rest of the group as much as it did me. I thought of what my answer would have been at that age. Whether I would’ve said ballerina, veterinarian or President of the United States, I’m not really sure, but I know my answer would not have been “to have a job.” I’m sure the same probably rings true for most children born and raised in the US.
After that, I got to thinking about why some people are born with so many opportunities while other people in the world struggle to survive. Maybe I don’t really want to know the answer to that question, but I did realize that I had the opportunity to do my small part to help. I grilled our tour guide with questions about her experience as a PCV and by the time I arrived back in Spain, I knew it was something I wanted to do.
I don’t expect to change the world. In fact, I don’t even expect to change the small town or city where I serve all that much. However, I am lucky enough to have the opportunity to travel, to learn a new culture, to try to live as selflessly as I can, and to try to do my small part to create some new opportunities for the people of Ecuador.
It’s easy to have an opinion. To see that things in the world are unfair, to believe it’s not right. It’s harder to take action and do something about it. During my application process (which lasted almost exactly one year!), I questioned my dedication to Peace Corps many times. I thought to myself, is this really what I want to do? Two years sometimes seems like forever. I know this will probably be one of the most difficult things I do in my life, but I also believe it will probably be the most rewarding and life-altering experience as well. So, in January I will take this leap of faith and not look back. I’ll live an experience that most people will never get the chance to. I will put myself in a place completely new and foreign and say to myself, “I can do this” because I never want to look back someday and say “I should’ve….”
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