A Preface

“So, what are you doing over there?”

An often-asked, and for PCVs, an extremely loaded question that unknowingly preys on our worries and insecurities.* What are we doing over here? Depending on the day, we can answer our friends and family with pride, joy, anger, tears, or a vague, evasive statement.

I began writing a couple of entries about what it’s like to be a Peace Corps Uganda Education Volunteer and then decided that I need to preface them with this: I’m going to focus on the good things, but I don’t want to pretend the bad parts don’t exist.

Every PCV’s experience is different, vastly different, even within the same country. In describing my official position, I don’t want to seem dishonest. A lot of what PCVs do and experience is hard, and painful, and full of heartache. While we’re in it we don’t know how to process it ourselves. We also don’t know how to talk about it with others. We’re reluctant to explain the things that are happening in our host country which we really disagree with because we worry those are the only impressions you will take away. We can’t give you all of the context, have you meet all of the people involved to make you understand how we can disagree so strongly with something but still live with it. We don’t want to talk about how we’ve spent days in bed trying to understand it ourselves. We can, however, give you pictures of cute kids and tell funny stories about how we discovered that the word for “vegetables” here sounds just like the word for “buffalo.” Those are real things, true things, but sometimes not mentioning the other side of our experiences can make what we say feel like a lie.

Being in the Peace Corps also makes you question life, yourself, and your choices constantly. And you know what? Most people don’t do that enough. At my year mark in Uganda, I battled with depression, criticizing myself for not having done enough, grown enough. But then I realized that I haven’t questioned my life like that in years. 365 days would go by and the only thing that would really mark the passage of time was the ending of a lease. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed my life – but I never really looked at it. I wasn’t worried about self-acceptance or my personal growth. There were parts of myself I didn’t like, and it was so easy to not think about them, to distract myself. But here, you can’t do that. Here, life is so much more immediate and there is so much more time on your hands, time that you can’t fill except for with your thoughts. This job, this place, forces you to examine your actions, your thoughts, your heart. And it doesn’t allow you to close your eyes.

There’s no doubt that being a Peace Corps volunteer is the hardest job you’ll ever love, and I’m only just starting to learn how to love it – and how to love myself. But I want to think positively. I want to focus on the growth, the self-discovery, the connections, those moments that will be the ones shining in my memory. I will keep those other moments too, the ones full of confusion and pain and grief, but for now, those are just for me. 

"I sometimes find, and I am sure you know the feeling, that I simply have too many thoughts and memories crammed into my mind...At these times...I use the Pensieve. One simply siphons the excess thoughts from one's mind, pours them into the basin, and examines them at one's leisure."

- Albus Dumbledore

*But don't stop asking!

That Old Clichéd Roller Coaster

"Clichés remind and reassure us that we're not alone, that others have trod this ground long ago."  -Miguel Syjuco

Recently, a friend and fellow volunteer of mine posted a chart on her blog that I had almost forgotten about. It was a chart that they had shown us when we first arrived in Uganda and it detailed the roller coaster that is moving to another country and engaging in service work. Seeing it was like a bright, solar-powered light bulb had just gone off over my head. Suddenly, everything I had been feeling made more sense.

Image Source

We are four to five months into our time here, and just look at that dip in the roller coaster! I wasn’t losing it. The frustration, the anger, the crying – it was all normal for this point in our transition. What an absolute relief. There’s something about knowing that you aren’t alone in what you are going through, that everyone goes through it, that there is even a detailed diagram of it…it makes everything just a little bit easier to deal with.

At the deepest of the drops on this ride thus far, I doubted everything I thought I had known about myself. My time here combined with my service work has led to countless self-revelations, and facing them has not always been easy. Many times I have felt deeply disappointed with myself, as an excerpt from my journal a few weeks ago illustrates:

“Being strong back in the States seems like a lie. The result merely of fortunate circumstances. But I still want that lie back. I want that easy life. Life here is hard, it’s too hard, and how much I want to escape from it, how much I want conveniences and luxuries and to understand what’s going on around me deeply ashames me. To my very core. It ashames me and seems to tell me, ‘See how much you want this Heidi? See your struggle here? This proves that you are not the warrior or the idealist that you imagined and daydreamed you were. You are not the hero or adventurer you loved to read about and compare yourself to. You are not living up to that picture of yourself that you held so near and dear, so secretly and delicately, to your heart. You are being tested, and you are failing.’”

Service is hard, and I knew that it would be, or I at least thought I did, and I thought I could face it. But as I have come to so acutely realize, knowing something and experiencing that something are two entirely different beasts. There are parts of me, secret self-doubts carefully nestled in distant corners of my mind, that I hadn’t dared disturb before. Being in the Peace Corps has dislodged those fears from their resting spots, shone light on those far-flung parts of myself. When times are hard, we have a tendency to cling to who we know we are. But when everything around us is unfamiliar and reality is often harsh, we start to question who we thought we were. It is easy to hide from that glaring reality instead; it is easy to stop the fight to avoid the pain.

But I haven’t stopped fighting, although it sometimes takes more effort than I could have dreamed possible. I continue to learn more about myself every day and am beginning to accept the fact that I am not, perhaps, who I thought I was. Most importantly, I have come to understand that going through this doesn’t mean that I am failing. Wise words from friends, progress being made in my service here, and most of all, time and further self-reflection has helped me start to climb the next hill on this clichéd but ever-so-real ride. I almost decided not to write about my experiences here at the bottom of the roller coaster for fear of worrying people back home, but I think that it is important to do so because this ride is one that many idealists set out on. Facing what it means to actually attempt to make a difference can be disheartening. The realities of service are often hard, as is any endeavor to effect real and lasting change.

But I have not given up, and I am not alone. I have realized that being strong doesn’t mean that you always feel strong; true growth and change is painful. The light that service is shining on those far-off corners of myself may be harsh and blinding, but I will adjust, and learn, and become the better for it. And perhaps, along the way, I will be able to do some good as well.

“There is always hardness of pain that comes with real internal change…when you look at great leaders who imparted change in the world, they often suffered a lot, sometimes spiritually, sometimes physically, in their journeys. But they found the joy in what they did because they were following their bliss.”

                                    - Andrea Ruggirello

Culture Shock

 Culture shock is a sneaky thing. It has an easily-identifiable, obvious surface. Yet it is more than just figuring out that the light switches are backward, trying to call cookies biscuits, and attempting to stop constantly trying to climb into the driver’s side of the car. It is with you every second of every day, and it can be as exhausting as it is exhilarating.

Simply getting through a day can be a monumental task when everything is completely foreign. Is my coworker making a joke or does she really expect me to give her my skirt? Is there an etiquette to who serves themselves lunch first? Where on earth does everyone go to the bathroom? You are also constantly trying to pick anything you can out of the local language conversations swirling all around you. I heard “itaano.” That means “five!” What could they be talking about? Five what? Five thousand shillings? Five delinquent students? Five golden rings? You can’t keep your mind from wandering an hour into a meeting entirely conducted in Runyankore. When someone turns to you to ask you a question you give a blank stare and a nod, only later realizing that you are now heading the Debate Club at school. By the time you reach home, your brain is not operating above a level that instructs your body to put one foot in front of the other.

You also come to realize that you are just as foreign in their eyes – you know a student really isn’t “picking” you, as they say in Uganglish, when you ask them if they use a mosquito net and they answer, “Sponge.” You must politely explain that the marks on your face are actually moles, not mosquito scars, and guesses of your age range from 21 all the way down to 13. Thanks?

There are the exceptionally hard days too, days where you learn that someone you know has just lost multiple loved ones – and that’s not really out of the ordinary. Days when you are sick, from the food or who knows what else, and it saps your strength to deal with everything else that is going on. Or even days when you think that you are fine, and then, unexpectedly, one small thing sends you spiraling downwards again.

However, these lowest of lows also bring the highest of highs. Higher than anything that could be experienced back in that States. On the way to work, you are stopped and thanked by multiple strangers for the work that you are doing. Students with no shoes bring you avocados to thank you for teaching them. You watch your husband get pulled into a local dance, surrounded by people and drummers and singing. You ring in the New Year surrounded by your new Ugandan family, good music, and good food. When it comes time to leave for your site, your host mother struggles to hold back tears. And best of all are the open and honest late-night conversations with Ugandans that create incredible connections you never dreamed possible.

The roller coaster that is culture shock teaches you a valuable lesson – that it is the small things that really matter. You are finally able to enter a duka (a local shop) and conduct an entire conversation in Runyankore. Someone in the community, instead of yelling, “Hey muzungu (foreigner)!” at you, yells “Hey teacher!” instead. You successfully use a pit latrine without thinking twice about it. Three cheers for clean shoes! You learn to take care of banana trees and negotiate a ride into town without getting ripped off. And, at your school, you begin assessing the students one by one, knowing that you are slowly but surely starting your work here.

“You know in my language (Luganda) we say “W’obeera w’olabira enjuba n’omwez/n’emmunyeenyei.” Translated “You can see the moon and the sun/the stars wherever you are.” Meaning: It is in your power to be happy or to be unhappy. What I want to say is that no one will decide for us when and how to make yourself happy. It is in our power to do those things for yourself that make you happy; however small they are.”

            - Ven, a wonderful Ugandan woman and one of my Peace Corps supervisors