On my moral compass

I’ve been reflecting a lot lately on what my expectations of Peace Corps were and how that played out during my service. Maybe it’s related to my moral compass and where it sways after 22 months in a foreign land. With the explicit goal of sending Americans to random villages with random people in far off lands presents an enormous set of personal challenges for the PCV and one that since Peace Corps’ beginning in 1961, has attracted “do-gooders.” But why? It can’t be all altruistic. On the reg, I stay up at night, or wake up in the morning thinking: am I still even a good person, what life lessons have I learned, how have I grown, what is my new place in the world?

We can never actually be as “poor” as them.

Even after two years and total integration, we will never truly be Dominican campesinos (country-folk). Why? Because we get to leave. We can leave at any time – because we want to, we hate it, we’re tired, sick, angry, in danger, etc. We will always have the “escape” factor. Which makes it seem sometimes like we’re playing a monopoly game with the money we make (more than the average working person makes here). So what does that mean for the idea that many have of "dropping everything for two years to live like the rest of the world does?" Well, for most Americans, we can't. Even though we may not have physical money, the majority of us are afforded a financial security beyond anything our community members will ever or can ever know. The majority of my community members do not have a bank account, debit card, or half the time even know where their next meal comes from. By pretending that we're "poor" for these two years feels slightly off to me. A double life. 

Our relationships have an expiration date. 

Some volunteers end up marrying their campo sweethearts, sending away for a visa, and taking them back to the United States. It does happen. But, probably more abundant are the volunteers who are with campesinos as a pasa tiempo (way to pass time). Makes sense on one hand? Two years is a long time to be celibate. But on the other hand, we make a habit of not taking the relationship too seriously. But why? Because sometimes it’s hard to take an in-love-machismo-Dominican-tiguere seriously. Example: My friend here was with a guy for a little less than two months. She knew the relationship was going nowhere – he hasn’t finished high school, can’t read, picks yucca occasionally and wears down vests in the summer – but he was nice to her, she was bored and who can blame her? One afternoon, he walks into her house with the top of a tattoo peaking out of his tank top. She gasps, what is that? He pulls down his shirt and there it is – a large tattoo of her name with six varying shaped stars outlining it. When she got upset and broke up with him on the spot, he looked confused. But I thought this would show you my love? No, she said, that’s insane.

Another example: A volunteer starts dating this guy and they hang out twice before he starts complaining about money, saying he doesn’t have the fare to make it to the university (but hey, points for studying!!). He doesn’t come out with it right away and she’s avoiding it because she knows he’s asking for money, which in Dominican culture is really embarrassing for a man to ask of a woman, typically a man will give a percentage of his paycheck to the woman to buy clothes and do her hair weekly. When she calls him out on it, he just yells at her saying “How could you think I’m only using you because you’re American?” It goes both ways though, was she using him because he was a Dominican pasa tiempo? Where does the moral line lie?

Why are we actually doing this?

I think as Volunteers, we like to think of ourselves as morally superior in many ways, especially when friends say “I could never do what you’re doing.” But the honest truth is, they could. And they’d probably be just as miserable as we are a lot of time. I often ask myself why we put ourselves through this ridiculously long emotional roller coaster ride. I think this quote explains it.

“So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future.  The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure.  The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.”  — letter from Chris McCandless to Ronald Franz, Into the Wild

There are the moments in the campo, village, etc where we are miserable and lonely and feel like we haven’t accomplished anything and will never be productive again, but we took active steps to leave that life of conformity, the life we knew and felt comfortable with back in America. That counts for something, right? But then those days thinking "what have I really done and why am I here?" sneak up o you and sometimes I can’t answer that until I’ve sat on it for a few days. Sometimes, I pretend like I’m a big deal, altruistic do-gooder, but I know that can’t really be it.

Maybe this is why:

“I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence.  I wanted excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love.  I felt in myself a superabundance of energy which found no outlet in our quiet life.” – Leo Tolstoy

Or this:

“If you don’t now where you are going, any road will take you there.” — George Harrison

After 23 months it can be hard to see why we are here, who we are helping and what good we’ve done. Thankfully, I feel happy with my projects, excited and content, but it wasn’t always like this. Hindsight is 20/20, reflecting helps you analyze the struggles, but it doesn’t mean they don’t happen. I haven't come up with anything to say with 100% certainty that I am better person now that I was before or that a community in the northwest of the Dominican Republic benefited immensely from my presence. I think it's all true, but I'll never totally be able to prove it. Regardless of whether or not that answer is yes, I will have helped myself and a community in the process of figuring it all out and that counts for a lot.