On unsolicited advice

I don't make decisions lightly and reflecting back on my year of service, I am so glad I'm here serving in the DR. Thinking back to the years before I applied and when I thought, “I kinda wanna join the Peace Corps," I wish more people had given me unsolicited advice on the subject. Surprisingly, a few months into service, a friend connected me to his old college roommate and the unsolicited advice came! I read his words and they've helped me time and time again throughout my service. So here is some uber helpful advice for anyone serving in the Peace Corps or contemplating it. All from a man who did the Peace Corps over 30 years ago. Many of the sentiments he describes from “back in the day” are the same feelings I have today...years and a world apart. The words are his, with a few edits!

  

"I served by myself in a remote part of Malawi where no whites had ever lived before (or since) working in a health program setting up child care clinics. What strikes me and reassures me is how similar Peace Corps is today as it was “in the day.” I am also very impressed with how you are approaching the experience.

I don’t want to be presumptuous but let me pass along a few humble wisdoms I gleaned from my service.

1. Expect to go through periods of depression and loneliness and wondering whether you are doing anything valuable.

2. You will never be able to evaluate the “impact” you will have, so trying to measure the effectiveness of your service by “things” accomplished is somewhat of a fool’s game. The eternal debate between the job and the experience is a false dichotomy because the job is the experience: the how you do what you do is more important than the what you do, and don’t let anyone try to diminish that.

3. NGO’s, aid workers, etc. etc. are not volunteers, they are not living with the people and working alongside them. We can never divorce our ego from what we experience, nor should we, and, yes, you will get more out of this experience then you think you will give but only Peace Corps volunteers enter the communities they serve with humility and an open heart and with no other agenda. Host country nationals are not fools…and they get that…and they respect and love volunteers in return because they get that.

4. When I stopped trying to help, I finally started to serve. It took me about 6 months to work through that one and you seemed to be sensitive to it from the beginning and maybe starting to deal with that now. Helping is our issue, it is our need to feel useful, significant; it is our need to get an “A” on our assignment (I am here to HELP so I must constantly evaluate how well I am doing by looking at what I am doing and then self-evaluate how the doing is measuring up to the standards I am setting for myself….I think you get the point.) It was when I finally stopped helping and started living without the burden of trying to self-evaluate something that is impossible to measure that I started to become a member of the community, an equal participant in the lives of the people that I live with, yes with more knowledge about certain things (and clearly a lot less knowledge about many, many other things) and relieving myself of that burden of needing to help, what I was trying to do became more organic and natural and human. The villagers I lived with got that…I had the benefit of living where dancing was a part of daily (evening) life of the people. It took me a while before I would leave my hut and just go to where it was happening and just watch (I also didn’t want to engage people until my language skills had improved until I realized I would never have the fluency to avoid instances of lack of communication and I finally realized that it didn’t matter, it wasn’t just that non verbal communication can work but that my presence was communication). In any case, I then started to watch the dancing and observe the steps then after awhile I took the plunge I entered in…..much to the delight and howls from the villagers…..until they realized that I knew the steps….and then…..I was one of them. I was no longer an “other”….I was someone from another place (they had no idea that whites came from different places) but I was in their world and living life on their terms, not making them engage me on my terms. I often say when I first came there they thought it was great that I greeted them (and could communicate somewhat) in their language, they thought it was even better when I would work alongside them, digging holes and doing the work of the community, but when I danced with them I was one of them, I was interacting with them at their most intimate level, and the respect and love I gained from that defined me and my experience from that point on.

5. My experience is my experience and the amazing thing about Peace Corps is that everyone’s experience is different and yet somehow the same….I encourage you to find a way to take the leap of faith that will lead you to connect with your Dominican community in a way in which you are letting go, finally, of the person who has lived 22 years in the US and been imprinted in ways known and unknown to be and act in a certain way. When you lose yourself in the experience and the barriers/divisions between “them” and “you” begin to dissolve is when you will learn certain truths about yourself and life that is the unique opportunity of Peace Corps. It is at that point, as well, that your impact really begins…although you will never be able to measure it and you alone will be the only one who will ever understand what you did and what your experience was like.

6. Lastly, whatever each day brings is part of the experience…it is all good…there will be bad days and good days, days when you want to hide with a book, days when you bond with fellow volunteers who can relate to who you are and you can come home for a day, weekend, whatever. Peace Corps is a “time away” when we can stop needing to grade ourselves, when there is the unique freedom to be out of responsibility and most importantly it is the one time in our lives when we can lose who we are (and all the unseen cultural imprinting that goes into defining who we are) in order to discover the “truths” to life itself that will become the jewels you will take with you for the rest of your life (and no one else will truly ever understand…but that is another story).

For almost every volunteer there is no other experience like Peace Corps…..and no matter what it is …it is all good……

Thanks for letting me bend your ear…"

Gordon Radley

RPCV Malawi ’68-‘70