Peace Corps – “It has the power to change you in ways you’ve never dreamed” (written March 1, 2009)

In the first 3 months, it is drilled into all of our little new trainee heads that Peace Corps is about sustainability, i.e., we don’t give stuff away, and instead make people earn it through manual labor, meeting assistance, and what-have-you so that they will feel ownership and projects will last further into the future. A year into service, however, which is exactly where I am as of our anniversary on February 28th, idealism starts to go out the window and you just want to get stuff done. Maybe it’s out of selfishness, but in the end, we’re all going to leave, and in the end, we all want to leave something behind.

Thus, let the scramble begin. I WILL build stoves as soon as my money gets here, I’ve started work on a small library, and just today a young girl made a comment on my shoes and how they look like they would fit her – I’ll probably give them to her when I leave. They’re 5 year old tennis shoes, and still sturdier than anything she has.

A while back, I did a fundraiser with my environmental youth group to get trash cans in our community, which apparently no one has figured out how to use.

The ground is still littered with plastic and glass as the cans fill up with organic waste; Dominicans, strangely, find leaves and the like to be more of an eye sore than old coke bottles and grocery bags, so that’s what they consider “trash”. So, in an effort to kick-start community awareness, I set up a walk-through with my youth group, scheduled to take place this morning, about an hour ago. We made a big sign, equipped with visuals explaining what can and cannot go in the can, and were going to walk through the community picking up trash and, more importantly, explaining on a house by house basis what the cans are for. Given, not the most fun activity, but we do fun things all the time and they seemed to understand that this is important. Besides, in a big group, they always have a good time regardless of the activity.

Not a single person showed up. I waited for 40 minutes, at which point had it not been for the free motorcycle ride I was offered to go home, I would have gone to the houses of each of our “officers” and demanded an explanation. I know our cultures are different, but I’ve been here for a year, and long story short, they know better by now.

It’s easy to fall into a downward spiral of pessimism on these occasions, so this is what is going through my head: if they don’t care enough to come (not a single one!), and people would rather throw away leaves than plastic bottles, and even if the truck actually comes to pick it up it’s going to get burned or washed into the rivers anyway…why do I even bother? At this point, you might expect for me to offer up some profound explanation as to why, but I haven’t stumbled across it yet.