Staying

I’m at a strange place in my service now. The point between COS conference and actually leaving site is a matter of wrapping up responsibilities and weaning your community off your assistance. I’m doing my best to hand things off and write reports for my successor, but I find myself in a detached place. My mind and energy is on the next step, ready for my move.

I announced to my friends and family a few weeks ago that I would be extending my service. The decision wasn’t made lightly – on the contrary, I deliberated over it for quite a while. Only when my new position was finalized was I sure about staying. I will be working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) offices here in the capital of Botswana. The tuberculosis division will be my new home, and I’ll be working on aspects of their research, data management and analysis, and reporting. Their current studies address the challenges with diagnosis and treatment in Botswana. My new job will have structure and a set of challenges that more closely resemble those of a job in the west, and I’m thrilled.

A few of my friends have closed their services a little early and have already left the country. It’s just the beginning of the mass exodus, in which almost all of my cohort will depart. A handful of us are extending our services for the next year, but the majority will leave in about a month. There’s a tinge of this left behind feeling, though of course I am excited to engage in my new job. Regardless, I think closing the door on my current site is going to feel very good.

At this point, most of the members of my support group understand the reasons for my pulling back and out of their activities. Some things will remain frustrating to me, though now I no longer have the urge or duty to fix them. It’s a relief, because this grassroots development work has drained me. The positive is that the members seem to be reinvigorated to take charge, almost as if my involvement was a bit of a crutch. I guess I never found the perfect balance of helping and allowing people to do things themselves – and I don’t know if there is one.

I can take away some final successes in my last couple months here. My building project for the support group is still moving forward, though of course I won’t be with the NGO to see it to any form of completion. I’m still unsure of whether or not the funding will ever go through, but I consider my contribution to be successful. The word at this point is that the US Embassy would like to fund the project and has, for all intents and purposes, approved the grant application I wrote. But it’s still a matter of policy allowing the funds to be used for such a project. I don’t know when that final decision will come through, but I’ll leave it to the next person with some sense of fulfillment.

The other project I have seen recent success with is a grant application I helped write and edit for the junior secondary school environmental club. They are planning to construct a fruit orchard, and the funding should be coming through soon. After all of my trial-and-error experiences with environmental projects in my village, I’m glad to see one taking root.

I have about a month left at this site. After then, I will be moving to Gaborone and starting my new job in June. My lifestyle in the capital will be markedly different from my current one. Village life is something you get accustomed to in a survival sense; it is rarely comfortable or easy, and I don’t think I ever stopped counting the days to when I was done with it. My attitude toward Peace Corps at this point is not that I loved my experience so much that I couldn’t resist staying; this next job opportunity is too good to pass up. Peace Corps made it possible for me and for that I’m grateful.

I’ve heard that a lot of RPCVs romanticize their experiences; sifting out the frustration, discomfort, boredom, and disappointment they endured to portray only the flashes of success. I had both, and while I’m still here, I’d like to acknowledge my complete experience. Talking about these last 2 years will undoubtedly boil down to a few sentences, and over time I hope that I remember the difficulty and joy with some truth.

Cheers

100

Can you believe fewer than 100 days (only 97) remain of my Peace Corps service? Believe me, I can’t either. It has been a crazy ride and it’s almost finished. This weekend is my Close of Service (COS) conference when I’ll meet with the remaining members of my cohort for the last time. It’s the only proper ceremony to mark all we’ve accomplished before we go our separate ways.

I have made some great friends here, with whom I’ll always hold a bond. What can you say about a group of people who drop everything to live in rural southern Africa for two years for no money? It’s not normal – some of my friends here have left high-paying jobs, sold their houses, and dealt with long-distance (thousands of miles) relationships. All of it, of course, is done in the name of virtue and service. When I reminisce with my friends over how we’ve adapted and how different our lives are, I realize how much we’ve all changed. We have spent a long time in the village and earned an intimate understanding of grassroots development – one that you can’t get from an office at an international aid agency, venturing into the bush occasionally for fieldwork. It’s evident that the clichés is true: we are biggest product of this experience.

Here I have experienced some crippling lows and questioned my self-worth. I’ve learned that as Westerners, we hold our productivity and success as benchmarks for our happiness. And I’ve learned how dangerous that is here. These two years have been anything but flashy for me – aside from the images of bathing in a bucket and using a pit latrine – I have grinded through my work thanklessly. I was talking with a friend of mine in the village, a fellow Westerner who has been here for more than 20 years, and he asked me how I felt about my service. It’s a loaded question to anyone in the same line of work and I had to be honest: the people and my organization have been very challenging. He followed up and was not surprised to hear that I felt my progress was slow and often invisible. There are few moments that capture me “changing the world” or will fit onto an advertisement for Peace Corps. It just doesn’t work that way. In Botswana it seems common for your praises to be sung after you’ve gone – without being too presumptuous, I think that the Volunteer who follows me will hear some of the good things I’ve done.

A couple weeks ago I got an email from a future volunteer, as I sometimes do, asking some questions and seeking advice. It’s so hard to compress my experiences or generalize them since every volunteer’s life is so different – even people within my district have much different lives. But in answering her inquiry, I realized how much of the story is left out of pictures and stories. This is such a personal experience, that in some ways I don’t want to share the whole thing. Likewise, I don’t think others can understand through asking questions or reading books – the unhappy discoveries you make during these two years, as well as the way you handle them, are your own points of pride, and indispensible to your experience.

February has been good to me so far. I went to Lesotho for some hiking and relaxation (and to use the remainder of my vacation days) – it was picturesque. The mountains and greenery made me envious. I also got into graduate school! Actually, I’ve only heard from a couple schools so far, but I got good news from one of my top choices so I’m excited: Emory University’s School of Public Health in Atlanta. I’ve been so anxious about what comes next, so I’m relieved that my options are starting to materialize. Within the next few weeks I’ll probably be able to start planning my move.

I guess this is the point when times speeds up again. I’m ready for it.

Cheers

De-stress

I have felt very stressed these last couple weeks, for a lot of obvious reasons: projects coming to head, uncertain of where I’ll be living 6 months from now, and beginning to wrap up some of my other responsibilities. Keeping perspective on how much time I have left has been difficult – 4 months is nothing in comparison. There’s a small part of me that wants to sprint toward the end and stay busy. But that’s not how this process works and I know I have to pull back.

I told my organization I would be reducing my role with them over the next few months, starting next week. Of course, if this last project gets approved it means I’ll still have a lot to do in the way of physical labor and organizing. But I’m leaving the other grunt work to my members. This is the point when I remember that I never was the executive director (although I often was) and someone else must take responsibility for this organization. If it crumbles, then it is not my job to glue it back together.

I’m still here, and I have other things to occupy my time. I started a computer class last week, which should be kind of fun because the students are enthusiastic. So far it seems like my class will consist mostly of older women – it seems to be the demographic I’m destined to serve here.

After this week my service will change as I enter detach mode. I’m taking the stress off and preparing everything for my departure. In a few weeks I have my close of service (COS) conference and that will really start the countdown.

Cheers

Last

It’s hard to believe that I have only about 4 months left in Botswana, and that I’ve completed 22. Saying that my time here has flown by would be a flat lie – parts of my service have been agonizingly frustrating and slow.

This post is born out of some of those difficulties in the final (and biggest) project of my service. I’ve written loosely about it before and have avoided definitive terms because it has always been shrouded in uncertainty. The project is a building for my NGO, and it represents the largest amount of funding the organization has applied for to date. “Logistical nightmare” doesn’t accurately describe the pangs we have endured in the journey to this point, a week before the board makes a final decision about our application.

Anyone who has worked in development knows that disorganization comes with the territory. In Botswana, the residue of the British protectorate years manifests itself in bureaucracy unlike anything I’ve ever seen in the US. Furthermore, no one – no one – knows how to navigate it. I have dealt with this for quite a while, but I am still astonished by how many barriers there are to progress. Without intention to generalize, aspects of this project seem to center around me willing people to learn how to do their jobs or overcome their laziness. There are good partners in my life here, and some of them have fallen victim to the ineptitude of people around them. Orchestrating people in time here has been horrible.

At this point, I am unsure of this project’s potential for success. After all, I am leaving in about 4 months and even if the building is funded, it won’t be complete until long after I close my service. I can hope to get a foundation of the work done before June and push the people of my NGO to take charge of it, setting up some semblance of sustainability. First, however, is the matter of securing funding. My organization received a site visit from the donor in November, and has since been working hard to position itself to be eligible. I honestly don’t know that we will be ready in time.

I have spent a large part of my service being frustrated, but this is the last time I will do so. By this time next month I should know whether or not my NGO was successful in its application for funding. If, we succeed, I will have a very busy 3 months. If we fail, then we fail – but I will not hold any regret about my end of the project.

Failure is obviously not something I enjoy, but I recognize that it’s essential to the Peace Corps experience. We learn most from our missteps, whether we are to blame or not (in many of my failures here I was to blame). Some things are not within our control and I guess that’s an important lesson, too. Either way, it is emotionally draining and I am almost through.

With or without this project, I am satisfied with what I have done here. I may not be in the right mood to convey that sentiment, and I can reminisce later, but I know that I have experienced moments of fulfilment. I’m ready to get back to an environment that doesn’t oppose me at every turn the way this one does. The first world has its problems too, sure, but at least I don’t feel singularly defeated there. After this project I am done failing in my service, and that feels pretty damn good.