Before I left for the Peace Corps I read some article by someone who was basically arguing that the Peace Corps was a two year paid vacation. Let me tell you that it is anything but. I will admit that it is a good way to get some extremely useful skills without having to pay money, but it is hardly a vacation. In stage anyway, I am working my a** off. And its more than the 8-5 schedule of classes and the accompanying homework, which amount to what any full time job would require. Its also working to understand what your host family is saying. Scheduling time to teach English for the multitude of people who want to learn it. Meeting with other volunteers to speak French as much as possible so that I get to a level where I can actually be effective. Its the never ending and rather difficult process of adjusting to a new culture. Some volunteers may have a different idea of it, but from what I can tell nearly everyone here is serious and hard working. And its not just my own improvement that motivates me. I have to be able to speak better French to be worth a damn as a volunteer. In fact, I have to do better than that, because I need to speak French well enough to begin learning a local language. Many women in villages don’t speak French at all, so if I can’t speak the local language, I’m only half as effective.
It seems every day here I am reminded of how much I have left to learn, and how much more I need to be doing, in order to maximize whatever I can do while I’m at site. For a while I think I needed solitude because the culmination of changes was wearing me out. But I seem to be past that point for the moment, and concerned that even if I studied French every hour of every day I wouldn’t be at a good point by the time training is done.
Which brings me to another point. I have been reading Starship Troopers, by Robert Heinlein (who also wrote The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, one of the best books ever). The book amounts to a treatise on the merits of civic virtue, but it has one resounding message that has really stuck with me: that some people have created in themselves a sense of civic duty, and of being willing to sacrifice one’s own gain for the gain of the community. I like to think that something like that is part of what motivates a lot of the volunteers.
