Peace Corps in Panama, like the Dominican Republic, has an internal magazine where Volunteers can submit stories and share their thoughts, musings, comments and glory three times yearly. It’s called La Vaina and I’ve been documented in its annuls three times and counting! This volume’s theme was “This I Believe” and I submitted a co-written story with Katie #1 that you all have already read. So this week, I turn to a fellow Volunteer representing the Bocas province who submitted a beautiful essay that is exactly what I’ve always wanted to say about Peace Corps. With her permission, I am spreading that literary beauty to you all. Enjoy! And PS. I also submitted a podcast article which many of you have read, but some not, and if you want to read my podcast proselytization, check it out (stay tuned for Round 2 coming soon!)
This I Believe by Taylor “Borrichi” Domagalla
For me, right now, Peace Corps is a pull – not in one direction, but in thousands. It’s a heavy blanket in the morning of an air-conditioned hotel room that beckons me to rest from the heat, from the dehydration, from the diarrhea; but it’s also the pang of frustration and hot tears spilt on said blanket when boat driver calls and says he can’t come tomorrow, keeping me out of site.
It’s a need to nest, to make my termite ridden, slowly rotting house my home; but it’s also the desire for friendship and confianza that can only be won by exiting my haven and entering the often less appealing, less comfortable and less structurally sound homes of “mi gente.”
It’s longing for human contact – the hug of a parent, the cuddle of a friend, the kiss of a lover; but it’s also sometimes refusing the snuggles of the cutest toddlers for fear of their lice and hungry boob-grabbing.
It’s the drive to fix the 1,000 needs apparent to my eyes – lights, latrines, water supply & treatment, soap, a bridge, jobs, medicine...on and on; but it’s also a rage at the lack of national infrastructure designed to help, and then an even more dangerous rage at the gente for not doing everything they can to meet these needs.
It’s the temptation to try to rectify all the problems, to seek out all the resources, to bring the goods on my own because I probably could do a lot; but it’s also the practiced restraint informed by the knowledge, both theoretical and seen, of the damage done to people’s self-determination by paternalistic development work.
It’s the excitement to train the gente, to teach them, to put the reigns of their lives where they belong (IN THEIR OWN HANDS!); but then it’s waiting for two hours for half the anticipated crowd to show up...and the doubt that they’re ready to stop being treated as dependent children if they can’t even show up for class.
It’s the values adopted from them, the oppressed minority: the dislike and distrust of the majority culture and its government agencies that never seem to help; but then it’s the gut-twisting, guilt-inducing thoughts and words that escape while venting about the gente’s lack of participation and motivation that ring of the majority’s claims of “lazy,” or “free loader.”
It’s a desire to integrate, to develop friendships and make new family across the language barrier, cultural barrier, socioeconomic barrier, every other barrier imaginable; but it’s also the hesitation and fear because giving way to all this newness could mean losing common ground long-held between myself and the ones I hold most dear in all the world – the friends and family from whence I came.
It’s the yearning to connect with those most loved ones – to go home to be with them, to flee to the place where internet enables me to see their faces via video chat, to climb up to that semi-remote service hill to be alone (maybe) and hear their voices, or to huddle in bed (where the Whatsapp signal is strangely the strongest, good building previous volunteer!) some extra hours just to read what they’re got to message you; but it’s also the reluctance or guilt for doing so because every minute. hour. day. doing this adds up to a lot of time not being present where I’ve dedicated myself to serve as a volunteer 24/7 for 2 years...because that girl still has to go get water, and that boy still can’t read or write, that woman wants to teach me artisanal crafts and sell them through me, and that man wants to learn English so he can work in Bocas to support his family...because in some capacity every moment of mine could be used to better their lives.
This I believe to be true: Peace Corps is a very unique life filled with pulls in a million directions, and while we all need and deserve breaks and indulgences as humans from the amount of challenges we face, we still need to strive to be the best volunteers we can be, if only for two years of a lifetime.
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