PC Update #8.5/Fellowship and Crisis

“The world is not to be put in order; the world is in order. It is for us
to put ourselves in unison with this order.”
-- Henry Miller

Tuesday, October 02, 2007, 10:35 AM

Well I suppose it was inevitable, but I didn’t expect it to happen so soon or so fast. I have weathered my first crisis of confidence about just what the hell I’m doing here. But that’s getting a little ahead of myself, so first things first.

We had a great little fete with a bunch of Japanese volunteers on Saturday. They are here doing basically the same kind of thing we’re doing, through the Japanese government. There are about 35 of them in-country; about a dozen were there Saturday. We all met at a house shared by two of them, which happens to be right around the corner from a PCV’s house in Calavi (CAL-a-vee - a “suburb” north of Cotonou). We filled tons of gyozas (pot stickers) by hand and fried them up and had a feast with a massive salad and amazing little rice cakes. We had way more food than we could eat, but nobody went home hungry. It was a really fun time because we’re all sort of in the same boat; here doing the same kind of work, in an entirely foreign culture speaking a foreign language. So we had an automatic bond over that and yet we were also of two different cultures, which gave us lots of stuff to talk about and share with each other. In some other circumstance we almost certainly would have just hung out with our own people, but the shared “fish out of water” feeling really brought the two groups together. They were all very friendly, outgoing, generous, and open. It was great! Next weekend (the 13th) we’re going to return the favor. We have our quarterly Volunteer Advisory Council meeting that day, so we’ve invited them over afterwards and we’re going to cook for them.

So then, as it got later on Saturday, I was talking with the PCV who lives in Calavi about how great it was to have another bunch of folks to hang out with and musing about how they had all made their decision to come to Africa. And then I was talking about how I ended up in Benin with Peace Corps; Sept. 11th, quitting the job, going back to school, South Africa, PCMI, etc. And as I was telling her some of that history I started to think about what I’m going to be doing here, and how it is SO different from what I imagined I would be doing. I mean, I had visions of mud huts out in the bush and being actively involved in the lives of individual people and their community. But the work I’m going to be doing is about as far from that as you can get in Benin. And I started to think that maybe taking this posting had been a HUGE mistake.

Now you may not all understand how I could make that leap, but it started to look a lot like another HUGE mistake I made once; specifically, my decision to become an AF recruiter. In both cases (or so it seemed as I was having these thoughts) I was seduced away from what I should have been doing by an opportunity to get something (I thought) I really wanted. (In the case of the AF, I got to move closer to home; in this case, I get to work on an incredibly important project at a level that seemed impossible when I signed up for PC.) In the case of the AF, it ended up being a colossal clusterfuck that effectively ended my AF career. (Now that was ultimately a GOOD thing, but don’t get ahead of me here.) I suffered through months of agonizing uncertainty and torturous self-doubt, not knowing – or having any control over – my fate. It took me over a year to get back on my figurative feet after that. Only a few of you were privy to how really terrible that time was for me. And now I was afraid I had duplicated the same mistake, just under different circumstances. I was afraid I had “sold out” the chance to make a real difference in people’s lives in order to do “important” work that would look good on my resume and advance my career possibilities; not to mention that it’s a nearly perfect match for my degree program. When I talk about my time as a recruiter I sometimes say that I sold my soul to the lowest bidder. Well, this time the bid is a little higher, but I really started to think I’d sold my soul again.

[We’re in the middle of another one of those amazing thunder storms right now!]

I knew that if I kept up these thoughts, I might easily decide it was time to go home – that’s where my head was at. So, I just started talking it all out with this other volunteer. As I tried to explain my thought process, she got me to talk more about how the whole AF thing had played out. Yes, I ended up leaving the Air Force and yes, I had a very tough time for a while after that. But that also led to me getting hired at PEMCO, where I did interesting work for a good company with some great people. And it was PEMCO that was thoroughly behind me when I made the decision to leave and go back to school. This, in turn, led to me going to South Africa and finishing my degree and applying for the PCMI program and ultimately put me here where I am now. All of these thoughts led me back to my musings about the universe and my place in it. Maybe it was necessary for me to acknowledge my responsibility for making the decision to go a different direction and to acknowledge that this isn’t the same time and I’m not the same person I was back then. Today, I recognize that I am the most powerful force in my own life; I dictate what happens to me, rather than letting what happens to me dictate who I am. Yes, I came here content to make a little difference in the lives of a few people, if that was how the universe unfolded. But that doesn’t mean that if the universe unfolds differently and I have the opportunity to make a BIG difference in the lives of lots of people that doing so is a mistake. It is just a different path, with the same intention.

I have told many of you that my aspiration going into Peace Corps was to bring more of the world’s advantages to more of the world’s people. It still is. I believe wholeheartedly that if brought to fruition, the projects underway through MCA will make an enormous difference in the lives of the people of Benin. So if I’m qualified to assist in that effort then I’m honor-bound to do the best job I can to help make that happen.

And so the universe, as usual, is unfolding just as it should. Who am I to imagine that I know better than the universe?