The End.
Two years. I remember one day when I was sitting at my desk in D.C., thinking about if I could really do the Peace Corps. If I really could take two years of my life and go live somewhere I didn't speak the language or know anything about the culture. Would I do any good? Was I going to help anyone? Would I get anything out of it? Would it be worth it?
Two years. Those questions, though they haven't been fully erased from my mind, ring more hollow. Whenever I fantasized about the Peace Corps (and yes, I wasn't just thinking, or daydreaming about it, I was fantasizing about it) I always thought that these two years would be a nice little cordoned off section of my life. I would leave my life in America. I would have a life in a hut. I would leave my hut and move back to America. End of story.
But it never really seems to turn out the way I want it to. I left Mosteiros this morning, left after living and breathing there for the past two years of my life. I have not gotten enough distance from it to start romanticizing my time there, and I hope never to get to that point. My time there wasn't easy, but it was rewarding.
It wasn't difficult because I lacked water or food or some other basic necessity of life. What may have oppressed me from the outside was nothing in comparison to what I faced from within. I didn't defeat many of the things that haunt me, but I see them now in a better light, and am less afraid of them.
As I sit in Praia and finish the final paperwork and medical tests, I am a Volunteer without a site. But can I really be a Volunteer if I have no place to be? A Volunteer without a site is as useless as a Marine without a rifle. What I have been for the past two years, I am no more.
Two years. Those questions, though they haven't been fully erased from my mind, ring more hollow. Whenever I fantasized about the Peace Corps (and yes, I wasn't just thinking, or daydreaming about it, I was fantasizing about it) I always thought that these two years would be a nice little cordoned off section of my life. I would leave my life in America. I would have a life in a hut. I would leave my hut and move back to America. End of story.
But it never really seems to turn out the way I want it to. I left Mosteiros this morning, left after living and breathing there for the past two years of my life. I have not gotten enough distance from it to start romanticizing my time there, and I hope never to get to that point. My time there wasn't easy, but it was rewarding.
It wasn't difficult because I lacked water or food or some other basic necessity of life. What may have oppressed me from the outside was nothing in comparison to what I faced from within. I didn't defeat many of the things that haunt me, but I see them now in a better light, and am less afraid of them.
As I sit in Praia and finish the final paperwork and medical tests, I am a Volunteer without a site. But can I really be a Volunteer if I have no place to be? A Volunteer without a site is as useless as a Marine without a rifle. What I have been for the past two years, I am no more.
posted by jende turtle at 8:23 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home