Having recently surpassed the one-year mark in my Peace
Corps service (sort of, since this includes the 10-week training, so I actually
still have 14 months to go), I thought it a good time to look back as well as
ahead. When I think back over the 3-year
saga that brought me here, sitting in my little house on the school grounds,
surrounded by the shouts of elementary school students as they play volleyball,
soccer, and jump rope, the sounds of traffic from the two-lane ‘highway’ in
front of the school, the whine of small engine motorcycles, the roar and grind
of big transport trucks, looking out over pineapple fields and groves of rubber
trees to the mountains in the near distance, it seems both miraculous and yet
on the other hand, fairly mundane.
Miraculous in the way that any life event or situation results from a
million contingencies that might have gone a different way (and so in a sense
mundane for the very same reason); mundane in the sense that the path here was
filled with the everyday and often tedious activities of filling out forms,
making appointments, and just plain waiting, and also in the sense that life
here is filled with everyday activities: planning and teaching classes, going
to the market, playing volleyball, and just sitting around chatting with my
fellow teachers.
I have to admit that although I tried not to have any
expectations coming into this experience, I did have a few pre-conceptions of
what I thought it might be like, derived mainly from talking with returned
volunteers and reading a few blog entries of some currently serving
volunteers. I thought that I would have
lots of down time; I thought that I might be living without running water and
possibly electricity; I hoped that I would be able to successfully integrate
into a community and make a difference in the lives of the people with whom I
lived and worked. As it turns out, I
actually don’t have that much down time, have both running water and
electricity, have been moderately successful at integrating into the community
here, and have no concrete sense of whether or not I am making any significant
difference.
This last seems to be a common phenomenon among Peace Corps
Thailand volunteers (I can’t make any claims about Peace Corps worldwide). We were told right from the start that of the
three main goals of the Peace Corps (the first relating to the actual work of
whatever program you are in; the second relating to your capacity as a
representative of America and American culture; and the third relating to your
endeavors to convey a sense of Thai culture to Americans, e.g. through blogs
such as this) the first is often the one about which volunteers feel most frustrated
and uncertain, and so we were counseled to keep goals 2 and 3 at least equally
if not even more in the forefront of our efforts.
My main difficulty with this is that I have a hard time
saying what America and American culture are all about. Should I say that Americans are
individualistic? That they are
competitive? Hard-working? Materialistic?
Are any of these more true of more Americans than people from other
countries? And even were this to be the
case, what purpose does it serve to say it? If I say that Americans are generally
individualistic, will this encourage Thais to make assumptions about any
particular American they might meet in the future? Will it help them to understand specific
American rituals or ways of organizing society and social life? Maybe, but I generally feel that any given
characteristic or cultural phenomenon that I might adduce has so many
exceptions, qualifications, or contradictions that I am hard pressed to explain
it with any clarity, especially given that my language (much like that of my
students’ English) has still barely surpassed the “fire bad” stage.
And this, indeed, remains my biggest challenge and source of
frustration. I am already not a
talkative person by nature, so when saying the simplest things requires
concentration and effort, I am all the more likely to remain passive and just
listen. This is not to say that I have
made no effort to understand (how in Thailand) or explain (how in America)
things like the education system, health care and insurance, political
engagement, various rituals, ceremonies, and holidays, etc. work. I have conveyed and gotten a basic
understanding of these things. I have
also had conversations about relationships, family, career, politeness,
privacy, respect, and the like.
And yet, there’s still always a nagging feeling of being on
the surface of things. I think of the
movie “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” in which a man is paralyzed and has
only his left eye with which to convey the whole range of his thoughts and
feelings. Ok, so maybe I’m being a
little dramatic, but the fact remains that an optimistic estimate of my ability
to express everything I would like to comes in at around 50%. (I’m sure everyone who knows me and wishes I
talked more finds this highly ironic.)
To return to the three overarching goals of the Peace Corps,
and in particular the first one, I know that I have made learning (and I think
teaching, as well) English more fun. And
my co-teachers tell me that they think the students have learned more and better
this year than previously. I can only
hope that whatever improvements I have contributed to making will both be
sustained after I have left and have longer-range benefits for the students and
teachers here. And in terms of all three
goals, I suppose the only thing to do in the coming year is try again, try
harder, and let go. (Rinse and repeat as
needed.)
Coda: I have sometimes wondered why no one has asked about
the “WCGW” in the name of this blog. I
guess it will remain a mystery…
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