Anniversary Post

Today is the two year anniversary of the day after we arrived in Ghana. Two years ago I woke up in Africa. This morning I woke up, still in Africa. 

These two years have contained some of the best days and some of the worst of my life. The emotional ups and downs I rode were far more dramatic than anything I’ve previously experienced. I’ve always considered myself a typically even-keeled, calm person. Not prone to undue stress or bursts of emotion. But Africa brought something new out of me. Anger, euphoria, sadness, hopelessness, defiance. These begin a list of emotions I newly became aware of feeling. Not that I didn’t experience any of these before, but the situation I found myself in, day after day, imposed a need for reflection and introspection. Also, the shifts were so sudden and seemingly spontaneous that I couldn’t help but think ‘what the hell is going on with me?’ It took me to realize, not much. I like to think of it as my emotions catching up to my experiences.

These experiences started two years ago today. The most important thing I was told in the beginning, in Pre-Service Training was ‘you are here for you.’ It’s true, I was and I am here for me. Altruism and compassion, sure, I’ll admit to being overwhelmingly full of both, but I came here, stayed here and will come back to Ghana for me. 

Let’s rewind a bit, back before I came to Ghana, back before I even really knew where Ghana was, back when the first inspiration to apply to the Peace Corps rocked my brain. I’m sure you’re thinking that it must have been a memorable moment that was looked back upon often as various trials (uncontrollable diarrhea) and tribulations (children screaming at 5:30am as their mother beats them) caused me to question the obviously delusional motivations that led me to this godforsaken country. But I never once thought about it in those times. Nor when I was feeling content enough to be sure I would marry and settle down in the village. This seeming ingratitude for divine inspiration is not due to any flaw of my person as one would suppose. The truth is I just don’t remember. Seriously. I can provide the context but I have no idea what the thought process was of the main character. Me.

I’ll give you what I can. 

I was in the second floor of the library at UConn. Next to the computers, at the tables opposite the tutoring area. I remember pulling up the page and opening up the application. This was in the beginning of my final semester at UConn. I had just ended a longterm relationship over the winter break. I was graduating in just a few months with a History degree and sub 3.0 gpa. It’s a bit of an understatement to say that I wouldn’t be scaring away other prospective applicants to jobs and graduate schools. On top of that, I had no idea what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, so even if I did get an interview, my conviction and enthusiasm for whatever the work  was going to be in whatever job I was applying to was not going to be an asset.

Peace Corps is a refuge for the uncertain. And it attracts many who are filled with uncertainty. But it is also far more than just a refuge. Some of the people I’ve met here are more uncertain but with more conviction than anyone I’ve met before. They need a refuge like I need to go to a sweat lodge. I was and am still uncertain. I didn’t necessarily have a disproportionate amount of conviction, and if I did, it was favoring a dearth of conviction. That hasn’t changed drastically, but after two years, I more excited to hear an argument of conviction, and be potentially swayed by it, or experience something that could lead to it’s formation, than ever before.

However, none of these really explain why I started applying to and ultimately joined the Peace Corps. I have thought about this a lot over the last couple of years and none of these explanations felt convincing to me(the last, while true now, didn’t hold much over me at the start.) The strongest reason for joining the Peace Corps, I’ve decided, is getting out. This might not be the obvious reason for anyone who has known me, and it certainly wasn’t obvious to me, as it took over year of being in Ghana to realize. But coming here, was as much about getting out of Connecticut and the world I had lived in for the previous 23 years, as anything else, and more.

Up to this point in my life, I have lived a charmed life.  I don’t say this because everything was easy for me. Some things weren’t. But nothing was particularly difficult. I had a very happy childhood and adolescence, a wonderful family, an abbey, good friends, and a strongly principled but loosely structured upbringing that allowed me to develop naturally as an individual but inside boundaries that directed that development in a good way. All these things were perpetual, and they remain today despite communications difficulties. However, the fact remains that I grew in a small conservative farming town on the border of Litchfield (old, wealthy, and waspy,) went to Holy Cross High School, and then went to UConn. The transition from Holy Cross (a Catholic school) to UConn was impressive because not only did close to half of my class also end up at UConn by the end of my four years, but a large number of the remainder of the twenty thousand students could have also gone to Holy Cross if I hadn’t known better. 

I thoroughly enjoyed my time at both, and wouldn’t do them over any differently if I had a choice (try harder at Stat 101 maybe, I could have gotten better than a C.) I met some really amazing people and still have friends that I value over anyone else, but I still imagine, ‘what else?’ What if I had done anything else? Done something a little more atypical of a middle-upper middle class white kid from Bethlehem who went to Catholic school? I had never felt quite content at any stage of the process because of these unanswered, and unknown, questions.

I can’t express how relieved I am that I didn’t leave that question unanswered for long. The answer, Peace Corps, has thus far proved entirely satisfactory. 

Continued next......time...