Working Together

02/14/08

Valentine’s Day emotes thoughts of love between two people. Indeed, it does for Mary and me. Layered over these endearments are the harsh realities of living together and working together in a foreign land. For us, living together part as gone rather well. Much like in Minnesota, we each have our domestic roles to fill. We have found continually being together without the release valve of separate friends and activities, manageable. The hard part is finding our occupational Peace Corps niches. The challenge is for each of us to develop a purposeful Peace Corps job where no specific job tasks exist.

In the U.S., both couples may work, but rarely do they work together in the same place on the same task. The skills of successfully living together do not necessarily transfer to working together. We and two other Peace Corps couples grapple with this fact as we try to define and execute what we are to do in our villages. It is difficult enough to structure a meaningful job for one and may be insurmountable for two. Someone gets left out, standing in the heat.

My personality blends well with our ambiguous mission. I relish starting things from scratch, organizing, problem solving, and using my domineering style to get action from others. Mary is the consummate listener. She can calm the most troubled beast. Her skills require picking up the nuances of others and translating them back in a suggestive, supportive manner. This is very difficult when faced with linguistic and cultural obstacles.

We are still young lovers, impatient in the game of Peace Corps. Like most young lovers, idealistic; but as a couple of oldies, knowledgeable that living and working together takes more than Cupid’s arrows.