Reinventing Yourself

06/13/08

Whatever the Peace Corps advertises and its intentions for a well organized, planned, and fulfilling experience in some exotic locale, the fact is what is written and what is actual don’t mesh. In reality you find yourself placed in a world where you are the oddity whose purpose is more a status symbol than an instrument of change. Your American hurry up world of objectives, deadlines, and measured progress are viewed in your new world as insensitive and useless. Yet there is a job to be done. There is the need to alter your official Peace Corps role so that you can become an integral part of your new social environment. It is you who must change. You need to reinvent yourself.

Maybe the word “reinventing” is wrong. It implies an attitude of knowingly being able to choose what you are, to be in control. Maybe “adapting” is a better choice. Adaptation is that mystical cosmic force needed to survive. This is the scary part of the Peace Corps adventure to find you are changing as if on this raft, shooting the rapids on the “River of No Return”, or worse yet, “Into the Heart of Darkness”.
Changes in me have not been planned or conscious. I don’t know how but somewhere along the way I find myself critical of the world I left and more accepting of the world I am now placed. I have become snooty about living in a rural village. Haughty if you will of even those Peace Corps living in Apia where the conversation seemingly is centered around cheeses, hot showers, movies, and restaurants. I am now a Savaii Village Based Development snob