Its been almost four years since I left for the peace corps, a scarred unsure recent college graduate, and about a year and a half since I've moved back to the U.S. I have for the most part readjusted to life in the States, every waking moment of my life is no longer spent yearning for a land I called home for over two years. However, one sentence that encapsulates the essence of St. Lucia in someone else's facebook status, yes a facebook status, can make me weak in the knees and pull at my heart till it aches and my eyes fill with tears wanting more than anything to go back to my place in the valley on my island in the sun.
This place I want to go back to no longer exists though. Of course the geographic location is still there, I'm sure the roosters still crow at all hours, the goats roam free, there are banana fields as far as the eye can see, and the beach is just a bus ride away in any direction. These are not the things I want to go back to, this is not what I miss with that aching in my heart. I miss being a peace corps in that place. I miss the overwhelming feeling of pride when one of my kids accomplished well practically anything. I miss that feeling when a kid I taught stopped saying I can't and started saying I can, or a vaulter cleared a new personal best, or just sitting on my balcony as the kids in my community ran around free to be a kid. I miss that feeling of being a part of something so much bigger then me, and being pushed past whatever I thought were my limits, learning I am capable of so much more than I ever realized.
I've been told by other returned volunteers that no other job they do compares to peace corps, no matter how long they have been back. I can't help but wonder if this is because our peace corps experiences was so much more than any job, it changed the essence of us. Made us realize that there are no such things as limits, understand a completely different way of life, view the world differently, and know that we changed lives that have faces we can see whenever we close our eyes.
Thursday, January 17, 2013
Sunday, July 15, 2012
What is Poverty?
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| Composting Toilet at the Lodge on the Beach |
A St. Lucian once asked me if I realized that
the lifestyle I was living was better than most people living in the country,
something that yes I had realized. People in my community didn’t see me as living
in poverty; however, I think most people in the States would think I was. If you have running water and electricity
100% of the time never have to worry about how much food costs, and always have
an abundance of if, that obviously isn’t poverty, but how many people really
live like that even in the US? What if you
have running water and electricity, but only can afford cheap food? Or
ocassionally don’t have running water, but can afford expensive food?
Do the
people living in poverty even see themselves that way or is that just a label
someone with more puts on them, and would someone with less see that person
living in poverty as someone with money?
I didn’t view myself as living in poverty in peace corps, mostly because
I knew I still had so much more than others did, both in my country and in the world,
but I’m not sure how my people in the US viewed my situation. Would I view someone living in the US the way
I did in St. Lucia as someone living in poverty, most likely. The standard of living is so much higher in
the US, so I guess this means the definition of poverty is relatively higher
than somewhere with a lower standard of living?
Is poverty
partially about priorities? Would you
trade some food and material comfort for a house by the ocean with coconut
trees all around you and sand beneath your feet.? What about running water for
a slower pace of life, hot water for living in a place you never had to shovel
snow, a cleaner environment for a flush toilet? Thursday, July 12, 2012
Not the Africa Everyone Expects.
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| Fancy Building in a medium sized city, Takoradi |
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| Sunrise at the beach in South Western Ghana |
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| Pool next to the Ocean Busua Ghana |
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| View from the Lodge near Dixcove Ghana |
There is a lot of wealth and a lot of development. Of course there is also poverty. There may be more poverty than in other parts of the world; or maybe less hidden then in other places. Maybe though its that when we come to Africa we seek out this poverty in a way we never would in the US or Europe. There we do everything possible to avoid poverty. When’s the last time you heard someone with a university degree say, you know let’s tour around the inner city, I want to see what life is like there? It seems however anytime anyone comes to Africa myself included, we don’t feel we are getting “the real” African experience if we don’t see mud huts and poverty. But the real Africa is the nightclubs and the development, it’s the Africa everyone in the development field hopes will start to happen isn’t it? So why do we try to hide from this part of the experience, why do we feel like we are cheating or aren’t getting the real experience if we have running water and hang out with African friends at fancy clubs?
Saturday, March 3, 2012
8 months back and still missing St. Lucia everyday
I've been back in the US for just over 8 months, and every day I think about St. Lucia and miss life there. I never imagined when I applied to Peace Corps about 4 years ago now, that it would be so hard to come back to the US. Never would I have guessed that I would miss the music so much, the language, the food, this sense of belonging even though I stuck out like a sore thumb. They tell you readjustment back to life in the US will be hard, its that land I am from and for over 20 some years of my life was home and the only culture I really knew, so I thought how hard will it be. They didn't tell me it will take over 8 months to feel comfortable back in your "home" culture. They didn't tell me that I may never really fit back in, cause I will always be a little Lucian. Or that my family, friends, and people I meet will expect me to shed that other side of me because its not really normal in this country(USA), but I will fight as hard as I can to keep that "foreign" part of me. I worry that if I loose it, it may take away from that experience that drastically changed my entire being permanently in a way I am so incredibly proud of. How could I try to shed any of that? But mostly nobody prepares you for how much you will miss the people.
I miss my second family, my second home, and the place where no matter what I some how could find peace. The whole family took care of me as one of their own, and in their own way kept me pulled together. Even though I haven't gone more than 3 months at a time without seeing my two best friends due to them visiting the US and me visiting St. Lucia, I miss them like crazy. Its strange how much friends that are like sisters become such a crucial part to keeping you sane, they know how to keep you calm, they get your crazy comments, and understand exactly what you mean even when you make no sense at all. Most of all they enabled me to be a better version of myself. I mean who else will tell me three times to eat after get to distracted and forget to eat. Or tell me that outfit is completely unacceptable and give me replacement clothes that shouldn't fit but some how always magically do, then do my makeup so they barely have time to get ready. Or stay up to 2 am making some concoction cause we never had all the ingredients for our recipes, and then stay up till 5am talking about what really matters in life. Or teach me to dance, grease hair, and how to make the best shrimp meal ever. Only sisters can do that, we may not look as similar to other people as we think we do to each other, but you know me like family and to me your family always will be. Now if only we could live in the same country!!!
I also miss my kids, I wonder everyday how they are doing. I hope that they don't fall back to negative ways, that they keep striving for the future and being everything that I know they are capable of being. Mostly I hope I taught them to believe in themselves enough that even if nobody else believes in them, they will know they can do better. I worry about them like they are my own children, but I can't read them a story after school anymore, I can't tell them that they can do anything, and if they believe that there is no limit to what they can do. Instead I just have to hope that I really did make a difference in my little corner of the world.
I also miss all those people that I saw all the time and became a part of my life. My host family that welcomed me into their home and took care of me from the first day I arrived to the day I left. Knowing they were just across the way made know I was always safe, didn't need to worry, and I had a place to just cool out. My neighbors, some of whom all I ever really said anything to but good afternoon and you safe gave me this sense of belonging and I miss those good afternoons. I miss all the teachers especially those that may never know how much they helped me keep fighting when I wasn't so sure it was worth it. The teachers at both of the schools I worked at, were some of the first people to make me begin to feel at home in St. Lucia, and they continued to give me something to believe in for my over 2 years shared with them. The fellas hanging out on the block usually just made me smile, which sometimes was something I needed.
Sometimes when I'm feeling really nostalgic, I even miss the bucket baths, not enough that I want to take one though. I just hope that I can always keep the Lucian part of me, and no matter how long I'm back know in my heart I'm Ameri-Lucian.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
The impact of peace corps!
As volunteers we all have slightly different reasons for joining the peace corps; a love of travel, a desire to travel for the first time, the need for a change of scenery, an uncertainty of what to do next, but one thing we all have in us is a desire to leave the world a better place than it was before us. This is the real reason we join to change the world, to wake up and say I made those kids lives better, I gave them hope, and an opportunity they didn't know was there.
For the two and a half years of service this is the reason we woke up, got dressed and fought like hell to see our projects succeed, to see our communities grow, and to see a child find hope in themselves. Along the way we became part of the culture we lived in. We starteed to act differently, picked up mannerisms, words, actions, and a way about us that said I am from here. We gained friends and in some cases a kind of family in our new culture as we began to shed our own. Our perspectives changed, we learned what it meant to not have, maybe even what it felt like to really be hungry. We learned the struggle of poverty, how hard it is to break the cycle and raise above it when you are fighting just to survive. We learned a kind of patience that almost makes us freaks of nature in this I want it now way of life. Of course while we were living this life, we weren't fully aware of what was happening, we were just living life trying to make it from one day to the next.
Then we came home, and it hit us how much we were this other culture, this other way of life, and how much we changed. Yea we maybe came back tanner and weighing a little less, speaking a strange broken english adding foreign words in randomly, and not really being able to articulate very well. But our core being changed too, the way we view the world and ourselves, want we want from life, the way we live, the way we dance and eat. We will forever be marked with this peace corps thing. In some ways its a curse, you know that whole ignorance is bliss. It is definitely easier to fit in, when you feel like you fit in. I doubt very many of us would change it for a second though because for most of us this change in ourselves, this ability to serve the world community was both the most difficult experience of our lives, but also the most rewarding and amazing two plus years of our lives. We have each other that get that, and few others that fully understand all that was our experience. We miss a land that was our home but never a birthplace in much of the same way an immigrant misses their birth place, longing to return but never knowing when that may happen. Back in the US we search for people like us feeling out of place with people that a mere 3 years ago we would have fit in with. When we go to a new US city we question whether the water from the pipe is drinkable, and wonder if there is hot water.
Hopefully though no matter how much we miss life in our other country, the people, the purpose, the way of life, the being a part of a community, not just a face in the crowd, we know that we were that difference in someones life and we accomplished soo much more than we ever thought we would. Maybe not in the ways we thought but maybe in a much more human sense instead of a project sense. I know for me, not a day goes by that I don't remember the children by the sea, and I hope that they grow up to be the amazing men and woman I know they can be.
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Missing St. Lucia
As I'm back in the U.S. trying to adjust to life here, I'm constantly thinking about everyone back in Saint Lucia.
Just wanted to share some videos I've created about my life down there and what I'm missing.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
26 Months Later :(
It's hard to believe I have been in St. Lucia for 26 months now, and for most of the group I came in today marked the end of an amazing journey and the beginning of whatever is next. After a trip to the the airport and saying goodbye none of it really hit me. I'm still here they aren't, but what does that mean. Well it definitely doesn't mean the end of friendships. They are some of the only few Americans that when I say sorti la, eh eh gason, or speak Lucian English to I won't get a blank stare from. They have seen and felt my struggle here, heard unbelievable stories and sometimes told more ridiculous stories, experienced things beside me, and become American Lucians alongside of me, and for that they will always be in my heart. It does however mean the end of phone calls to kill time cause I was given stones to hold or I am waiting way to long in US terms for something to start. It means that when I just need a break from life, I will have less places to go, I have fewer people to make free phone calls to, I will feel a little more awkward at peace corps functions, and a part of my support network isn't here with me anymore. The good news is I get all sorts of tips on returning to life in the US, and closing out my life here...when crying on an airplane face the window so your seat mates doesn't notice, what kind of ID you need at the bank, and many more I'm sure are yet to come.
I have been incredibly lucky to have been blessed with such a great group to share this journey with, and I wish you all the best in whatever is the next journey. I'll keep St. Lucia warm(???) for the next month in case you decide this is where you belong.
Imagine all the people living life in peace, you may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one....
Thanks guys for making the past two years so remarkable!
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