10 Things I Learned in Year 1

There were many times over the last year that I never thought I would be where I am now... more than 1 year in country, and almost 1 year in site!  June 10th marked one year since I landed in Peru, and I will complete one year in site in August.  So much has changed in the past year, but at the same time, I have become so accustomed to life here that sometimes it's hard to reflect on how Peace Corps service has changed me.  The change in my work life is easier to note.  I think I've finally found the sweet spot of having some good, sustainable projects and not killing myself to make the other ones happen.  It was necessary to do in the first year, when I needed to create my own work and find allies, but now I have an easier time finding good projects, weeding out the bad ones, and convincing the right people to get involved.  Finding ways to reflect on how I personally have changed is harder, but I would like to try to summarize- so here are my "Top 10" so-to-speak of lessons taught to me in Peru, so far.

1. Low expectations are the key to happiness.

Sounds pretty depressing, doesn't it?  But take it this way.  Life in a developing country is to be in a pretty constant state of uncertainty... will there be water in the afternoon?  What last-minute help is my municipality going to need from me today?  Is there some obscure holiday that is going to affect my work schedule this week?  All of this could drive an American crazy, until you learn to be really flexible and in most cases, plan for the Plan B.  No one showed up to my meeting tonight?  Oh well, I'll just go talk to them tomorrow.  The municipality has some absurd lie about why they don't have my document ready?  That's okay, I have another copy of what I need right here for you.  We learn to always be mentally prepared for Plan B, and when Plan A actually works out, we are super happy!  Oh, and we learn to always fill up the buckets of water in the house, and always carry toilet paper on you.

2.  Life is an experiment.  It's okay if you make it up along the way.

The Business Plan course that I, like all other Business Volunteers in my group, am teaching to people in my site is pretty technical.  So in order to teach contribution margins, and break-even points for a mix of products, I had to do a significant amount of self-teaching and preparation for each class, since I have a limited business background (not to mention, this is all in Spanish).  This made me pretty anxious in the beginning, because I felt unqualified to be teaching the class- especially because mine is open to adults and there are 40 year-olds with 20 years of business experience attending.  But again, I had to learn to let go, and just do my best to prepare.  If I mess up, it's not the end of the world.  I learned that self-consciousness is often my only obstacle.

3.  Just dance.

All Peruvians love to dance, whether on the coast or the sierra, but monsefuanos are known to be special party people.  The amount of family party invites here is exhausting, and sometimes I am just not in the mood to dance to the same old songs until 3AM on a weekday.  But, many times, I find that 20 minutes into the party, my internal grumbling shuts up when the 85-year old grandpa with a crippled arm pulls me onto the floor to dance.  The man that I am referring to just absolutely cracks me up, as he always insists that I go "bajo!" bringing it down low (totally normal at a family party here)- in fact, at my host mom's birthday party we were having too much fun and his family members had to ask me to stop dancing with him because his heart might fail.  Basically, Monsefú has taught me that there's never an excuse not to dance.  I don't always stay until 3 or 4 AM, but I do always find that the joy is contagious and dancing always cheers me up when I wasn't feeling it before.

4.  Do what you need to be happy, and don't feel bad about it.

Good Lord, Peace Corps teaches you to treasure your personal time.  Having no set schedule can turn out to be more of a curse than a blessing, especially in a culture where it is appropriate to visit someone at home for a work reason anytime, any day, between the hours of 8AM and 11PM.  And we often fall into the trap of feeling like we need to spend all of our free time with our host family, but sometimes that is just not relaxing when they are watching awful TV shows.  And taking time to really relax is absolutely crucial.  So, we learn to mark that "personal day" on our calendar every week and use it to do whatever makes us happy.  Lay in bed and watch movies?  Perfect.  Go into the capital city and drink with other volunteers?  Cool.  Eat a whole jar of peanut butter with crackers?  Sweet.  And when your work partners start calling your cell phone on repeat (3 calls in a row is completely normal here for non-emergency), turn it off or ignore it.  Work can wait.  This is your time. 

5.  Poverty is not cute, and there's not a clear way out.

What kind of images come to mind with Peace Corps service?  Barefoot kids smiling and laughing in front of the camera?  Rows of crop fields with the friendly farmers waving to you?

I won't deny that I do have warm and fuzzy moments like the images above (just check out my Facebook pictures).  But while I take my sunrise runs down the dirt roads and into the fields, there are other images that flood the scene, too.  There are the semi-abandoned kids who don't go to school.  And their uncle, who I find 80% of the time drinking chicha, a fermented corn liquor... at 7am.  And there is the time I saw a mother screaming and threatening her dirty, shoeless, and whimpering son with a fly swatter, while he cowered against a wall.  Obviously alcoholism and abuse aren't only problems in poor families, but it is more visible and heart-breaking when the kids aren't sent to school because the parents don't think they can "afford" it, and all the money has been spent on alcohol.  In Peace Corps we see first-hand what an unbelievable battle development work is, because of all of the interrelated pieces that go into the puzzle.  The best that we can hope for is that by infiltrating one small area of the problem, we can make change from there.  

6.  It is really hard to know what is "best" for someone besides yourself.

We come into Peace Corps with certain ideas in mind that seem like universal truths.  Then, as we listen more and finally start to understand the way locals think, we realize those "truths" may be wrong.  This is especially true for me, as a Business volunteer.  For example, why are all the hardware stores in Chiclayo set up next to each other, on one street?  Wouldn't it make a lot more sense to set up your store somewhere else, where there is no competition, especially if it was a more convenient location for a section of the population?  Now, a year in, I can kind of understand why copy-cat (I'm going to put up a business just like yours, right next to yours) systems work best here.  Capturing clients from competitors would be virtually impossible here unless your store is right next to theirs, because in the face of so many bad businesses out there, the clients go to the reliable option they have always gone to. Your best chance at winning customers is to have them visit you when your competitor has run out of something, and how better to do that than to put yourself right next door?

It's things like this, that I learned to understand as the months passed, that really give me a dose of humility when giving advice to local businesses.  I have to be very careful to do plenty of questioning first, letting them explain the reasoning for their decisions to me.  Often, their reasoning makes more sense than mine.  There are ways that I can help as a PCV, but only when it makes sense given the local context.

7.  Women are so, so, so far from achieving equality... no matter what country you are living in.

In the past year, I have been objectified on a daily basis, and it has threatened to unravel me at times.  Last week, a teenage boy reached out and grabbed my ass as he and his friends passed me in a mototaxi.  The day before, a disgusting man in Chiclayo loudly commented on my tetas (tits) on the street.  Sometimes when I am walking in Monsefú or Chiclayo, a solid 50% of the men that I pass make some sort of noise, comment, or stare.  For a while, I thought that the harassment was related to what I was wearing, so I avoided wearing anything feminine.  It got to the point that I stopped caring all together about my physical appearance (showering, shaving, looking put together, etc), but I came to realize that this was a manifestation of how the men were lowering my self-esteem.  Now, I try to dress normally and just curse terrible things at them silently.

When I was soliciting support for my artisan fashion show, a former mayor candidate told me he wasn't coming if I wasn't I modeling in a bikini.  A month ago, a Regidor (town councilman) posted a picture of a mostly naked woman to his facebook, with the title "Girl of the Week."  There are certain men I avoid talking to altogether, because I know that I won't be able to get more than a sentence out before they interrupt me with "listen to me, listen to me" and whatever they have to say that is so much more important than what I was saying.

There are a number of other factors that compound my feeling of helplessness in this situation.  Number 1, knowing that what I experience is completely surface-level compared to what the majority of women in Peru are forced to tolerate.  Rampant physical and emotional abuse, and with only primary school education for many, the independent-income opportunities are extremely scarce.  And some communities are so inculcated with machismo that the women passively participate in it.  In my artisan savings and credit bank of 13 members, who do you think is president?  The one man (although he is a great guy and not machista).  Housewives tell me that they can't leave the house before lunch time because "how would my husband eat."  Daughters do all the chores with the mother, while the sons and the father nap in the living room and watch TV (although this isn't always the case).  One artisan woman, whose parents didn't let her study past primary school even though she wanted to badly, told me that she is lucky because she has a good husband, who lets her go out to meetings... that is the definition of a good husband?

Compounding factor #2 in my feeling of hopelessness is the situation at home in the United States.  The debates over birth control and health care are so scary to me, because it makes me feel like there is nowhere in the world that I am safe as a woman.  And then, this month, the controversy over the sudden ousting of President Theresa Sullivan of my dear University of Virginia, where the reasons for her sudden, forced resignation are murky at best.  Unfortunately, it touches a deep nerve with me when a school that I love so much treats our first female President that way.  Obviously I have plenty to say on the topic of machismo, but I'll summarize by saying this past year has brought me extreme awareness of what it means to be female.

8.  Life is not a competition.  Stop comparing yourself to others.

This is something that is really hard to avoid in Peace Corps, wanting to be recognized as a "Super Volunteer" by other Volunteers, HQ, and our communities.  But Peace Corps work is so dependent on the specifics of the community, the opportunities for work, the personal situations that the Volunteer has to suffer, etc.  And at the end of it all, we learn to stop caring what other people think.  Be your own judge of what is enough and what is too much.  Dedicate yourself to what you love, and don't let others define what success is.  This is also really relevant during the innumerable hours we spend on Facebook.  As we dedicate two years of our lives far, far away from family and friends, it seems that every day a new engagement or marriage pops up on Facebook.  It's hard to feel like some of us are losing time, but then I think... since when was this a race?

9.  Every day is a new chance to be courageous.

I hit a pretty dark low during months 6 & 7, in the first version of the Artisan Fashion Show, and during the preparation for the second version, which I had no motivation to complete.  Every day, I felt like hiding under my covers and ignoring every phone call.  It seemed that around every turn, there was someone trying to manipulate me, expressing some dissatisfaction with me, or worse, throwing personal jibes that seriously crippled me.  The only thing that kept me going was knowing that the town and especially the artisans were so excited by the project, and that this could make a really big, sustainable impact if the artisans took it over later.  Giving up was not an option, we had gone too far.  In that reality, I just had to force myself to complete the daily tasks, with the motivation that one day, it will all be over.  In the end, it turned out very well, and I will probably consider it my biggest success in-site.

Sometimes, the stresses of the world threaten to eat us whole.  We feel like hiding and giving up.  But every day is a chance to face those challenges, bit by bit.  Bite off what you can, tackle it, and give yourself the credit you deserve for the courage you found to face the day.

10. We are here for the sake of each other.

Those dark moments made me feel like I hated all of Peru, and all Peruvians (sorry, it's true).  They filled me with aggression, distrust, and just general brokenness.  But someone always found me in that place.  Another Volunteer, someone from home, or most often, a Peruvian friend.  In the case of Peruvian friends, they were always there to show me how absolutely wrong my broad generalizations were, just by their unending love and openness shown towards me.  The artisans who thanked me for how hard I was working.  My host family who pulled me out to dance, against my will.  My university friends who dedicated all hours of the night to helping the Artisan Fashion Show happen, with no monetary or other reward.  And the rural men, women, and children who I pass on my runs, who give me earnest smiles with none of the glint in the eye that I get in the city-center.  These faces, who greet me bright-eyed and curious, show no hint of tragedy, struggle, or anything else that they have probably faced.  Makes me feel like my worries are pretty silly after all.

In November, I read a book my mom sent me called "The Buddha's Brain," and in it was this Cherokee Legend:

An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life.  "A fight is going on inside me," he said to the boy.  It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves.  One is evil - he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego."  He continue, "The other is good - he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.  The same fight is going on inside you - and inside every other person, too."
The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, "Which wolf will win?"
The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed."

In my life, I have a choice.  Whether to "live in love," choosing to see the positive in the world and in other people, or to engage in the animalistic win-lose mindset that we are so disposed to.  In my view, we have been given the gift of self-awareness so that we can chose to former, and live not only in harmony with each other, but with the purpose of achieving together what we cannot achieve alone.

So, there are my 10 Thoughts from Year 1... please excuse me for the existential ramblings, I blame my psychologist parents (like I do for most things).  Can't wait to see what Year 2 has in store.