Every Waking Moment, Citizen Cope

I sit on the wooden slat laid on top of two blocks of wood of different sizes.  It shifts without shifting my weight.  The girl beside me lays on the ground, backpack under her head, eyes shut, waiting.  Time ticks by, the sun beats down.  It’s hot, a midday in winter.

Finally, our bus arrives.  I quickly flag it down, holding my arm out and letting my hand hang.  He stops, pulling into the driveway in which we sit.  The door slides open, jarring, and we crawl inside.  Our bags sit on the seats next to us.  My companion leans her head against the window.  “God, I’m tired.”

I laugh, nod.  My head and eyes are heavy.  I slept in my contacts the night before and they feel sandy.  We had spent the night on the beach, passing the time with other volunteers, speaking English.  The night was fun, long and late.  We danced, we joked.  We had a good time.  The next morning, we wore sunglasses, drank coffee and soaked up the healing qualities of sun and salt water.  Waiting for our busses, possibly the healing qualities were not what we thought they were.

The bus stops the next town over from mine.  We need to catch the next bus out, passing to my dock and through onto her town.  The stop is covered, the rain is threatening to start.  We talk, about sites, about the night before, trading stories, trading advice.  We play games, we joke, we speak with the young girls who gathered to stare at the two white girls who entered their town.  We have missed our bus by almost an hour.

We start walking.  I check my phone, she checks hers.  We have no reception.  Thunder rolls in the background.  We keep walking.  I turn to her.  “Feel like a real Peace Corps volunteer?”  We laugh.  Cars  roll by.  One stops, rolling down the window.  I look in, see a friend.  He tells us to hop in the back of his pick up truck.

“Now I feel like a real Peace Corps volunteer.”  We laugh again.  Peace Corps has many stereotypes associated with it, from living in a mud house, living in Africa or Asia or South America, to being the only white person in a group of natives.  To calling the locals “natives”.  But what does it actually mean to be Peace Corps?

Is it having conversations with community members about environmental conservation, learning new languages, new livelihood securities?  Is it playing softball with kids and talking about trees and plants with others?  Is it standing in front of a classroom, teaching English, science, math or conservation?  Is it sitting on someone’s front porch throwing the story or teaching a two year old how to say “shit” in a language he doesn’t speak?  Each country has it’s own definition of Peace Corps.  Each person has her own.  To some, it’s the opportunity to meet new people, to others, it’s the opportunity to work in a community in any capacity.  For others yet, it’s a chance to see a new part of the world.  What does Peace Corps mean?

Peace Corps would define itself as three things: sharing the culture of the United States with your host country, sharing host country culture with the United States and providing sustainable education and development.  But each of these things means so much more than just the words.  Sustainable education and development doesn’t necessarily mean leaving a monument, a building, anything physical in your wake.  It’s about the people.  The community members that remember the volunteer’s name.  And the one before her, and before her.  They remember us.

Sharing our culture with them means we change the stereotypes.  Now, when a white girl comes into many places, around the world, she’s not seen as a silly American.  She’s a reminder of the American who came in and lived with them for two years, and taught them something.  She’s a reminder that they taught their volunteer about them.  That they changed her life.

What Peace Corps means depends on the person, but the moments that we lose our breath and we remember we are here, we are doing this, they are Peace Corps moments.  The moments where, no matter how hard it may be, all difficulties are forgotten.  The moments that you are so thankful for this opportunity, for these moments.

These are the moments that make everything else absolutely worth it.