Happy Monday!
I would like to let you in on some exciting news!!! I have been invited to extend my service with Peace Corps in Panama! I accepted a position with Peace Corps Response, a branch of Peace Corps that sends Returned volunteers (who completed their original 27-month service) on high-impact, 3 to 12 month assignments to provide targeted assistance in places where they are needed most. I will be developing a community health worker training for an organization called Floating Doctors. Currently, the medical relief organization operates a health system in 22 indigenous communities in the islands called Bocas del Toro in northern peninsula of Panama (by the Costa Rican border), but they do not have local health workers involved with them and hence they're trying to develop a robust curriculum to train locals to be in charge of their own health care. This is an AWESOME opportunity! I get to expand on what I have been doing here with Trek Medics and my women's group to provide a solid deliverable for the organization and build-capacity in marginalized indigenous communities.
I leave the DR on October 1st and negotiated for four weeks of vacation at home before heading down to Panama at the end of October. I’ll be there for ten months, back to the homeland by August! Am I excited? Of course! I know it was the right decision for me to have made, and now that I made it, I am content to know that it’ll be my next move. Panama will be ready for me in time, I just get to enjoy my time left here. So that’s what’s up for the next few weeks and the good news for you, dear readers, is that you won’t have to say goodbye to my mensajes just yet, you get a whole other year with me and my musings!
This week, let’s take a reflective journey back to the beginning. These are short, selected excerpts from some of the most important entries I’ve written in the past two years and tell a tale of my growth and transformation over time. Enjoy!
August 20, 2013: It all began
Hello friends and family! For some of you, it's been quite a while since we last spoke and you might be wondering what in the world I've been up to. Well, I'm currently sitting in a hotel in Georgetown, DC as I prepare to depart for 27 months of service with the Peace Corps in the Dominican Republic! The last few weeks have been a crazy mess of packing, spending time with friends and family, and saying the inevitable goodbyes. Everyone has been asking me how I feel about leaving. Well, I feel great! I am nervous and excited and everything in between. I'm a bit anxious but I suppose that's to be expected. I'm trying not to over think the process.
August 28, 2013: I'm convinced I'll never learn Dominican Spanish
My family is super patient with me because Dominican Spanish is tough! When we are all together for meals, I hardly understand a word of their chitter chatter. Dominicans tend to drop the “s” off of every word and condense important words to speed up their speaking. Not to mention the millions of words from Spain that are unrecognizable here and vice versa. According to my host family, I can manage the language well...but little by little I will pick up Dominican words, and against my will, the accent.
October 28, 2013: I arrive to Manzanillo and realize I’m in over my head
To date, training has been pretty fun and very rewarding as I've spent everyday with fellow Americans and on a strict schedule learning technical health skills I knew I would be applying someday soon in the vague future. Since arriving in Manzanillo, I've been the only American around which leaves me exhausted and brain dead from continuously sticking my hand out and introducing myself to crowds of strangers and thinking in another language. The lack of schedule has given me an abundance of free time with which I've gone on runs, done yoga, read two books, sat on doñas' porches and drank more coffee than any human should ever ingest (even more than during finals period in college). It's now up to me to make my own schedule but its proving difficult when being new in town doesn't exactly lend itself to knowing where to go and who to meet. I'm not worried about finding my groove here though, I'm cut out for awkward small talk!
February 4, 2014: I reflect on the passage of time
Time here is not measured or kept in minutes, but in how many chairs one can add to add to a growing group on the street and how many stories you share with friends in a long, lazy afternoon. This is a country where yelling from across the house is the only way to call someone’s attention and whispering should never be done. One can scold a friend’s child herself, or take said child for a walk, motorcycle ride, or ice cream at any time of day without warning. I can show up at a neighbors, friends, grandma’s or the mayor’s house unannounced, and if I don’t stop by at least once a day, I’m in trouble. The sum of these small parts creates a beautiful reality - one I am thankful to be living.
May 5, 2014: I get a bike!
Now that I have my bike, it makes traveling around my town, visiting doñas and running errands so much easier. I don’t know how I survived so long without one.
November 13, 2014: I’m over the hump!
I’m at this really awesome in-between point in my service. I’m over the hump of my first year and well into my second year. It’s particularly awesome because I’m at this crazy moment where the old volunteers (who swore in a year before me) have left and now the new volunteers (who swore in a year after me) have moved to their sites and are starting the long daunting process of integrating, starting groups, teaching women and youth, and navigating professionally in totally distinct culture. And here I am, settled in and chugging along.
January 5, 2015: I recap 2014
I had a really great 2014! I overcame hurdles I once thought impossible, grew professionally and personally, and learned more about international development than I ever could have working in an office. A lot of the work I did was for my community, yes, but a lot of the work I did in the Peace Corps last year was for me. I’ve had what I consider to be a successful service so far, I’ve graduated my women and youth groups, constructed many improved cookstoves, begun to implement an emergency medical system, and taught a few English classes. I’ve checked off the boxes Peace Corps set for me. But I did a lot for myself too. I learned how to dance bachata, grew to like children (a valuable skill that was at first met with much resistance), practiced hours and hours of yoga and meditation, exercised daily, took beach days and visited friends around the country, found myself a Dominican family, read fifty books and learned all the words to Miley Cyrus’s new CD Bangerz. To me, these are accomplishments that deserves celebrating in addition to my professional achievements.
January 10, 2015: I learn to accept discomfort
Peace Corps is a two-year exercise into the depths of discomfort. In 2014, I turned alone time into a coping mechanism for that discomfort. And at first it was awkward and the hardest thing I ever had to do was spend four, five or six hours alone. But, I’ve really taken control of it. I’m better at setting goals, holding myself accountable, being patient (still working on it). I have become the ruler of my own mind, which sounds maybe like a lame thing to work on for an entire year, but it wasn’t. It took 17 months of Peace Corps service to get here and yes, I’m still working on it, but my alone time is no longer uncomfortable and awkward, it’s a shiny new tool for my life toolbox.
March 16, 2015: I find simple joys
Sure there are times when I’m frustrated here, but more and more lately, I find myself smiling. Just finding these beautiful moments and grinning to myself like I’m the only one who’s been told a secret. I have my own inside jokes that light me up inside and I spread an outward grin. Sometimes my grin comes out when I’m eating rice and beans and thinking to myself "Damn these are tasty", or when my little adopted daughter calls me Beita, which means “Little Bea,” an affectionate derivative of my name. It appears on my face when a doña gives me coffee and already knows I take it without sugar, when I learn all the words to a bachata song and sing it out loud to amazed spectators, when I spend the entire month of February memorizing the words to the DR’s national anthem and get it right just in time for Independence Day! I smile when watching kids invent baseball games with plastic bottles and dirty socks, being told I'm a good dancer, not feeling awkward at 24-hour funerals, realizing how fully I can express myself in Spanish and being called a tiguera. For these and so many more precious small moments everyday, I smile.
May 12, 2015: I become a reader
Books are an integral part of my service. I love the mornings, my time to sit on the porch with a cup of coffee and read while simultaneously watching neighborhood kids play baseball in the streets, the chicken lady slaughter her daily dose of pollo and feel the sea breeze. I wasn't much of a reader before Peace Corps, but this is the best quality reading time I'll ever have in my life so why not pick up a hobby!
June 8, 2015: I find the love of my service
I don't like children. When my brother had friends over when we were younger, I looked for any excuse to leave the house. Babies make me cringe and I don't have patience to teach the alphabet. All that changed with Gisaury...
June 16, 2015: My students die in a tragic car accident
Yes, today was better, every day it's getting better, it’s been three days. I don’t know what tomorrow brings, but I’ll be okay, humans are resilient, especially in the face of tragedy, we all just need our time, there's no one right way to grieve. We were a community before, but we’ve come together now, and will emerge stronger. We have to, for Enmanuel and Yunior, we will. I hope the visions and nightmares of that night go away, but there are some sights that cannot be unseen. Instead I’ll try to remember their smiling faces, tiguere spirits and raucous laughter because that’s what they deserve. May they rest in peace.
August 3, 2015: I feel grateful
When you’ve watched community members struggle to put food on the table, or give away everything to help their children go to school, you will learn that the world is a far more complicated place than you ever could have imagined. You will understand how fortunate you are to be able to live and serve in your community and appreciate everything you left behind to be able to do so. You will appreciate the phone calls you can make to home, the laughter of a child, the deliciousness of a homecooked meal, the beauty in human connections, the love of a family and the endless sources of joy in the world. After serving in the Peace Corps, nothing you look at can ever again be seen through the same lenses. When you milk your first cow for fresh milk, see your first live birth, and teach a child to say please and thank you, you will understand the simple things that make life so very worth living.
September 2, 2015: How I changed during my service
Physically: I’ve got better flow, shave my legs and wear lipstick. I can wiggle really good and my butt jiggles more. Practically: I’m better at sweeping, killing spiders, reading and speaking Spanish. I spend less time washing my hair and more time drinking coffee. Personally: I can take on the world! I love this country with all my might, I’ve build my self-confidence and taken risks and I certainly learned to appreciate the moments when I transitioned from surviving to living to loving my life here!!!
So there you have it, a journey from then til now. I can’t thank you all enough for following along and I can’t wait to keep in touch and see what the next year abroad brings!
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