Skeptical Smirks

Today I was talking with someone about how in their opinion the Peace Corps ended up being more beneficial to the volunteer as opposed to the community or to development as a whole. From my observations as a volunteer in Malawi, this point makes sense.Volunters first off only come for two years and often seem to gain more skills themselves rather than empart them. Most of us are fairly young and don’t have many skills and learn in a much more process-oriented in the moment way on how to be good teachers, health workers, farmers, envrionmental acitivists, and development workers.

Thinking about this made me anxious as our conversation turned to the personal achievements volunteers made for themselves, but often did not fully or sustainably make for the community. Feeling anxious turns out to be a quickly escalationg emotion here in Malawi, where I am isolated off, far from home, surrounded by a foreign community, and vulnerable to quickly slipping into thoughts of :” is my hurt and hardship going to do anything outside of build my character?”

But my recent anxiety was cut to pieces by the arrival of a package. Mail in Malawi is incredibly slow and I have been hearing tales of packages, but had yet to receive any until the other day, one of them pushed through escaping the Malawian mail limbo. It was from my grandmother and contained such wonders as Trader Joe’s trail mix, body lotion, Crystal Light, a packet of cheesy noodles, sweet and savory tuna…what?!?!?! And of course peanut butter M&M’s. Along with these items was a note from her. At the end of the note she had written: “I hope you get this package sometime and please let me know what you would like more of and what you really don’t care for.” When I got to this part of the note it made me choke up a little, mostly because it contained such a rooted, grounded sincerity and love directly pointed at me.

I decided that I couldn’t just receive this note, package, and grounded piece of sincereity and just mope around kicking cats allowing my anxiety to consume me, I knew I would have to convince myself out of it, not a pleasant or easy task.

The Peace Corps’ main goal is to promote a world peace and friendship at a global level. From the start I thought that though on one hand having the goal of world peace and friendship is honorable, it also sounds lame and I am not sure if I really want friends who naively go aournd thinking that sending a scattering of Americans all over the world for two year chunks is eventually going to lead to a rainbow collection of hands grasping hands. But I am reconsidering this label of “lame.”

Another item that came up in our conversation was how the Peace Corps model is outdated which in some ways is true, but maybe it’s not actually about being outdated and more about how friendship takes awhile. Really development would be a whole lot easier if people had more tolearance and trust in each other, if they were able to sacrfice for each other not for any other reason, except loyalty towards friends.

So yeah Peace Corps volunteers may do a little push and prod for development here and there, but maybe I should stick to it more for the encouragment and creation of friendship, American friendship, even if the first time I thought of that I threw up a little in my mouth. I’ll get over myself and maybe become more committed to the goal of world peace and friendship, which perhaps deserves more than visions of rainbows, clouds, and skeptical smirks.

Tags: anxiety, friendship, grandmother, malawi, package, peace, peace corps, skeptical, smirks, volunteer