In Bolivia I became repelled and the people around me became confused when I used the language of Peace Corps around people that were not Peace Corps. In Morocco I plan to forego that misstep in favor of a more clear, understandable vocabulary that doesn't demean the people and exaggerate what I am there to do.
An example is about money, jobs, work. According to Peace Corps I am a volunteer, living on a stipend with my loyalties divided between the bureaucrats that 1) pay me and 2) decide from afar PC's role in intl development--and those friendly locals that surround me.
Now, read that paragraph again. In Candelaria I made 2x more money each money on my PC salary supporting just me than the teachers who commuted 20 hours each month from Sucre, many of them supporting families of 4 or 6. Those were middle class people. In contrast, I likely made 4 times the amount of money each month as the farmers who sold their potatoes to a big conglomerate each week in Tarabuco. But for the first little bit, I called myself a volunteer. If you look at US standards, making 200 dollars a month is being a volunteer (minus the 6000 dollar stipend at the end, which made my salary really 125% higher, or 450 dollars a month... so maybe I should say I made 5x more than the teachers and 10 times more than the farmers). And they looked at me bewildered when I called myself a volunteer while being paid that much for 6 months for trying to FIND what job I was going to do, regardless of what I actually did.
And what about the word service? Does it count if I get more out of it than the people I am around, do? Doesn't that denigrate them further? Is it a sacrifice, really? Yes, it does and no it's not. The only possible way to call it a sacrifice is by the fact of being away from home. But you're around great, hospitable people. In a beautiful place. Likely with a DVD player and a Kindle and iPod (for the long bus rides that hurt soooooo much since you can't move your legs freely) and then you go back and have internet access on your Tablet PC. And for two years you are your own boss, more or less. If not that, then at least you aren't a slave to conditions beyond your control. In less than a day you can be back home. So don't puff up your mind with false notions of sacrifice, of service. The ideals can remain, but you are only making a barrier between you and the people. And when you think about it the way I do, you will be even more proud to be there, even more humble, more understanding and--especially if you eliminate the PC talk, i.e. calling yourself a worker in a town, not a volunteer in a site--you will enjoy it more.
It's counterintuitive at first but ultimately the more accurate perspective allows you to fully feel what there is, rather than what there is not. Sort of like how rejecting God allows you to live according to your own successes and failures, and to enjoy the real natural beauty of the world rather than putting all of those things in the hands of a God unknown that is unknowable. A flower smells as sweet (or even more) when you believe it exists independently of a divine power. Peace Corps is the same way, once you strip away the bombast. At the end of the day, I choose to be there. Noone forces me. I shouldn't use words that make it seem that way to the people who still will live there long after I have gone back home.
So, there you go. The language habits that PC used did not help me at all when I translated them and used them like other people understood what those words meant. In the final 6 weeks in Bolivia, I called myself a worker. I started calling Candelaria my town, since it sounded a lot better than an assigned site (a Cold War sounding phrase, if you ask me).
And I'll tell that to other people once I'm there. It doesn't help any, unless you're talking with another American.... maybe.
.jpg)
No comments:
Post a Comment