The Strangest Job

Peace Corps motto de jour is that this is the hardest job you will
ever love. The longer my service goes on the more I contend that it is
the strangest position someone can choose to put themselves in
professionally for 2 years. It is one of the only jobs where
self-awareness, thinking and “me time” can become a burden rather than
a welcome gift at the end of a long day. I personally believe that it
is the only job where over 50% percent of the employees would probably
fail a mental health test on any given day. The only business where
almost every employee has cried or stared forlornly off into space for
longer than is generally considered socially acceptable in the past
month or two.

Its is probably one of the only businesses where the last time you had
sex and how much you miss it and how sick you were last Tuesday are
polite dinner-time conversation. I feel genuinely sorry for whatever
unfortunate soul takes me on my first date when I return to the
states. I have a deep seeded fear I will get frustrated with a piece
and just casually pick it up with my hands in a 5 star restaurant. I
also contest that this is one of the only professions an American can
enter where you can eat with your hands while talking to your Mayor.
Basically what I am trying to say is that it is defiantly not your
typical job and therefore it does not have your typical outcome.
What has really started me thinking of all these things was talking to
my fellow volunteers and realizing many of us are in the same place,
and yet not in the same place at all. The Peace Corps is so
individualistic that it is sometimes like comparing apples to oranges.
The daily battles that you face can make you feel like you are on
another planet, even if you are only 5 km away and everyone in your
town knows everyone within a 15 km radius.

Our lives can be so different on a day-to-day that it often is hard to
even compare it. There is commiseration. There are many shared
experiences. But life, plain and simple daily life, is not shared with
anyone really. You are the only one that can provide perspective on
what you just saw because John was 100 miles away when you got trapped
on the side of the mountain. Plain and simple some of your closest
friends may never see something so mundane as the inside of your room.
At the end of the day you are the only one that can decide if you are
going crazy or it was just having an off moment. While you can ask
friends for advice sometimes asking a Peace Corps volunteer for
emotional advice is like the blind leading the blind. Because honestly
none of us have any idea what the fuck is going on. At the end of the
conversation you may inevitably come to the conclusion that you have
no idea what the fuck you are doing. Or why the initiative you took is
now turning out to be one hellish mistake. Occasionally on a horrible
day and you make the decision to call a friend and find out they are
having the most productive day in South America. Why am I watching
paint that is already dry while you are helping with a dengue
vaccination campaign or already have a grant for S/.7,000? The
contrast can be so startling at times, you want to hate them for
having their shit together, but you cant really. What if it’s just
that day? What if it’s just their site? And really do they actually
have their shit together or does it just appear that way? There are so
many factors that it is really hard to tell purple from yellow
sometimes.

The one thing you have to constantly remind yourself is to not play
the “I’m better/worse than you game,” because you will always loose.
I’ll admit it I am one of those people that is secretly hyper
competitive and always has to win over my competitor of the moment.
This doesn’t extend to every facet of my life, for instance I hate how
competitive “Words With Friends” is, probably because I’m terrible at
Scrabble. But I generally like to win against a fellow competitor.
Even if that competitor was blissfully unaware that we were competing,
I was winning. Because lets get serious I always do. But here I can’t
use my competitive drive in the same way because it just leads to more
confusion and wondering if your answer is fact completely wrong. When
in realty there is no right answer.

There is only grey area. Let me tell you the first time you are
scorned in another language it can be overwhelming. Even if its not
technically your boss and you are not technically in trouble the
simple language barrier can make it feel like the most confusing thing
since the invention of the internet. Maybe I am alone here but
9-year-old Katie was very very confused by the Internet. So much so I
hoped it was a phase that would go away. I didn’t have time for
dial-up when there were Skip-Its. That and I didn’t realize my sister
set an email up for me until I was 21.

One of the most unexpected things that I have begun to realize that
many of the cultural factors I used to define myself are no longer
there. I have to find new ways to remind myself of things I once
easily knew to be true. You are the one that has to force yourself to
do anything and believe in will work out. There is just no other way
around it. There are new definitions of initiative, common courtesy
and relationships. For every time you get annoyed at someone cutting
you in line you have to channel that frustration into something more
productive, because if it builds who the fuck knows where its headed.
I have just learned to become equally as aggressive while standing in
lines. Sorry senora your time is not more important than mine when we
are getting on the bus at the same time. There are times when patience
and Mid-Western niceness are not a virtue.

Being so culturally isolated you begin to learn about yourself. Your
limits, your capabilities, your desires and how confused you really
can become. And trust me I could become very confused very easily
before. It generally took me about 10 minutes to get a joke.
I was recently reading a blog called 1000awesomethings or something of
the like; 2 of the 1000 “awesome things” struck me quite intensely,
me-time and thinking. Unlike almost every other American my life is
filled with me-time and thinking. I actually have to sometimes make a
conscious effort to stop having me time and thinking about things.
Partly because I would drive myself crazy and partially because I feel
the compelling urge to be productive. You have so much time to think
about your life that eventually it comes to the point you over analyze
ever misstep, accomplishment or random thought that comes into your
head.

Really if I wanted to have a whole day of me time I very well could,
and no one would scold me about it. They would wonder what I was doing
but there is no clock to punch or pre-set daily schedule. Once I
actually did stare at my room for about two and a half-hours before I
realized the time. I’m not even sure what I was even thinking about to
be quite honest. Maybe the fact the ceiling paint is an awkward shade
of off-white-yellow. Or that the hole in my floor looks progressively
more and more like a penis as the months go on. These are the
important investigations of my daily life.

I am not accountable to them in the way I was in every other job.
There are days where I am hyper productive, others not so much, and it
has nothing to do with the weekend or sense of days. My only real
sense of time is that I have to get up around dawn and accomplish
mostly everything before 2pm or after 6pm. I have learned is one of
the core elements of the Peace Corps experience is that time changes
meaning in a multitude of ways, not just a new perception of 9-5. You
have more time to yourself. Time to dream about fresh coffee with
Yours Truly natzo fries and an egg slider. Time to contemplate that
cereal costs 1/10 of your monthly income and everything you are eating
is laced with MSG. Peru, hate to break it to you MSG is not a
seasoning. It is actually illegal in several states in the USA, that’s
how much it’s not a seasoning. Time to have dreams that merge your
daily life into South Park and Sex and The City. Let me tell you
Carrie Bradshaw should not interact with Eric Cartman and Cusicancha
all in the same dream.

Its not that I didn’t stare off into space in my other jobs, trust me
I did. My staring off into space at my EPA internship is the reason I
know all the NBA teams and what city they are from. But here it is
different. In my internship I was in a freezing cold cubicle staring
at a computer and gossiping most of the day. I was at least
accountable to be physically in the office for 8 hours, but here no
one cares where I physically am. Half the time no one is the wiser. I
have a bad tendency of telling one person where I am going but not
giving them the full details and moderately disappearing. It still
holds true here. I think my host mother has almost called the police
about twice now.

You are so out of your element in the Peace Corps that it is as if
your self-awareness becomes hyperactive. You are the superman of
thinking about your own life. A weird superpower I never knew I could
possibly have. Any unresolved relationship or feelings you had will
have time to resurface. Any self-consciousness that you had will
inevitably find the time to rear its ugly head. Any music that you
loved in the states will get played on your iPod 68 times. Often the
steps you took to maintain your self-identity are now null and void in
such a foreign environment. You have all the time in the world to
learn about yourself. Even if you thought you had it pretty set in
stone beforehand.

Fun fact I still freak out about crickets because from far away it
looks remotely like a cockroach. But mice I can have a pleasant
conversation to while they crawl in and out of my shoes. I currently
have a mouse named Felix in my room. We share rice. Not really that
would be fucking disgusting. But he does in my corner and the thought
of killing him gorses me out more than his existence.
Every day in the Peace Corps, whether it’s about you, your community
or some random thing you would prefer to never know. Like what
vertical birth looks like. Today I found out that now that the rain is
over the ice starts. Aaawweeessooommmmeeee. Because I didn’t already
think every day “holy crap this is the coldest I have ever been in my
life.” I blame retroactive amnesia for my daily commentary on how cold
it is.

One of the third year volunteers recently told me that you have to be
your own advocate in this game because there is no one there to watch
your back. It’s really true. You have the office in Lima that’s very
supportive when you get robbed or need resources. You can have friends
by your side on the phone, provided you have the same phone provider.
If you have different phone providers, don’t expect a daily call that
costs saldo. Which is a luxury greater than gold on the Peace Corps
salary which is so high you don’t even have to do your taxes. But this
is more of a safety net than a vigilantly watching out for you.
If you are one of the lucky few you will have friends only an hour or
so away there to help guide you. They can be there when everything
seems to be tie-dye, sparkly, neon carnivorous dolphins on land. I
don’t know why but that is my metaphor for really fucking confusing
and strange. Just go with it. But at the end of the day it comes down
to only you. You were the only one that was there, the only one with
an American cultural perspective staring at the picture in front of
you. You are the last line of defense.

If I am being honest I don’t know I ever really fully depended on
other people in my day to day besides my family and my college
lacrosse team on the field. I was a girl you could know for 2 years
before knowing some of the most ordinary details. I sometimes got to
the point where I felt like I was self-reliant to a fault. That was
until I got here I never realized that I was still dependent on things
that were distinctly a part of the world I had built. Distinctly part
of the world I was born and raised in; external forces that had guided
me for years. When you have this much time to reflect on your own
life in a world that is so similar and yet so dramatically different
at the same time you can actually see yourself changing. See yourself
adapting to the new world in front of you. Having to redefine yourself
while still attempting to maintain the parts of yourself that you hold
dear. It’s a balancing act. A balancing act that at times makes you
feel like you are a 95 year old on rickety stilts and other times like
you are Roberto Louango durante de game 7 of the Play-offs. That can
make you feel like a sloth or the most insightful than Google.

Rain Rain Rain

So it’s the rainy season. I’m sure you could guess that by my witty and complex title. Anyways I’m glad that the rainy season has actually started to produce rain because in January there was a concerning lack of rain and many people were joking about starvation, having to sell off animals and lack of papas crop. Happy cuddly jokes. The rain comes normally in the afternoon. Some days the whether even tricks you into thinking that it will be nice with sunshine and joy in the morning and then a foreboding grey mist around 1 pm. Some days it is just a torrential down pour the whole day. On those days it’s a real struggle to motivate out of your room. Especially because when someone sees you outside they remind you of the fun fact that you are in fact getting wet. I have figured out however that I am taking one long ass vacation next year in the end of February.

Let me describe late February here for you. It is like Cleveland March, pre-global warming, with about 500,000 less people. If any of you haven’t been fortunate enough to experience a Cleveland marzo imagine a gray land, filled with drizzles and clouds, which tries to be warm sometimes, but inevitably fails and pours rain. Now in Cleveland it sucks because all you want is spring and hailstorms keep knocking lacrosse goals on your head but in Cuiscancha it is just down right depressing. Some days I would only really see 1 or 2 people on the street because everyone else vacated to the coast.

So in this daunting of rainy seasons where I wander around in 5 sweaters, uggs, 2 pants, 2 socks, scarf, hat and glove. Every day I think I have never been this cold in my life. Normally I mutter this under my breath and then remember that I in fact said this exact same statement yesterday. Somehow my retroactive amnesia made me forget that I am slowly freezing to death. I am never moving to Serbia. Besides reading the Hunger Games and watching Harry Potter 78 times I have decided to start teaching English with the jovenes of my community. I have learned that teaching English, or a class of any sort can be really fun and rewarding but it can also make you want to blow your brains out.

I tired to have vacaciones clases to teach English. But my classes would range from 2-12 boys ages 4-12 and my stomach was inevitably doing a dance with the devil. As much as I would like to believe I am Mother Teresa and taught them all English and inspired their young minds there were several days I just wanted to punch them all in the face. I should not be a kindergarten teacher. Ever. Lesson learned. When I had to drag a 4 year old off the table he was crawling across to bogard all the blue colored pencils I knew it was not meant to be.

I also am never having more than 3 children because if they are all boys one may end up at the bottom of a lake one day. Usually my vacaciones clases would dissolve into paper airplanes and coloring because that was the only thing that could hold their attention for more than 15 minutes. Fun fact I now know how to make a very good paper airplane. Also I am sure the municipality expected paper airplanes to come flying out of their building when I asked to use the auditorium. My mother would be so proud of the work I have accomplished in Peru. Now a hoard of boys knows the colors and the word “airplane” in ingles.

After my somewhat epic fail of vacaciones clases I read The Hunger Games trilogy in tree days. That’s the thing about the Peace Corps you can have a day where you do 5 encuestas, plan a charla, do an English class, go for a run. And you can have days where you read the entire Hunger Games trilogy without batting an eye. There are days where you feel super productive an on top of thins and others where you wonder what on earth you are really doing here. I must admit I was having a very befuddling day and feeling like I was doing absolutely nothing and failing at my plans, I wanted to have English clases for adults but was slowly losing all my motivation. Well this day I cried in the most melodramatic fashion to a Snow Patrol song. It was to the point where I was mocking myself because I was so perfectly timed to the music I felt like I should be in a movie. And then of couse as I sat down I snapped my headphones out of my ear as per usual, and snapped myself out of it. My clumsiness never fails to amaze me. On an unrelated note I went surfing the other day and I now understand why my mother never let me surf. Sometimes I really wonder how I’m still alive.

Yesterday I went for a run with my doctor and enfermera. On the run there is a tiny waterfall in the road. Normally I just trot right through the water and keep on going. I actually never realized that I had another option. When I was with my puesto on the other hand I realized that the bridge to nowhere was actually not just a random bridge in the sky it was a bridge over the waterfall. We climbed up a not so defined path and walked over a slick wood bridge with no handrails over a gushing waterfall. I figured that this would be a bad time to tell them that I am in fact afraid of ledges, and kind of afraid of heights. And generally afraid of walking on slick wood. I just don’t have that kind of walking skill. I think something happened in my development, I learned how to crawl, then walk, but some how never managed to learn how to walk in a straight line or not stumble over my own feet. One of my friends commented that he loves my walking style because it is completely arbitrary. Try walking next to me…it can be dangerous because I generally walk in a soft zigzag rather than straight forward. And sometimes walking can lead to stitches. You just never know with me.

Another fun thing I did in the rainy season was accidently almost adopting a dog-named Charlie. The day started with major hopes of productivity. But when I tried to work but the light was gone and inevitably the day that the light is gone is the day that you have let your computer completely die the night before. And then se fue the agua tambien. And of course the day that the water goes away is the day that you don’t guard any water. Don’t get me wrong last night I thought I should defiantly guardar water in case there wasn’t any the next day. Low and behold there wasn’t. Right after I had cooked myself some applesauce for breakfast. I just wanted to make sure that the dishes were good and dirty apparently. At this point I ceased my hopes of attempting to do any work.

During lunch there was no light so my host mom accidently walked in on me in the bathroom and then during dinner I somehow managed to step into the pot of lentils from lunch. She had quite a hoot from that one. What can I say I have got skill. On my way home from lunch I saw a pile of puppies and as a gut reaction I said they are so cute I want one. The response I got was absolutely not what I expected. One of my nurses said then go and take one. I’m used to dogs being owned by people and sold, not just randomly wandering ready for the taking. I picked up a dog and played with him. Even went so far as to name him Charlie. The love affair lasted about a day; until I realized my room is about the size of a shoebox and I am not even 100% sure I am allowed to have dogs in my room. Sadly I returned him to his mother, realizing he would inevitably grow and there was a high probability he would give me flees. I love dogs, but I hate fleas more.

Also now that my English language skills are slowly slipping away into the world of Spanglish I use phrases like guard water or I’m advancing. Who guards water r advances? But honestly I can’t think of a proper English synonym. So it’s guard water. Deal with it.

Anyways my awkward Snow Patrol, lack of people induced depression resided the first week of March when people started to return. Fortunately for me the girl who I had taught Christmas songs to in December returned, with the memory of an elephant begging me to sing Christmas songs for her. That and Justin Beiber, which I vehemently denied knowing. Anyways when I was washing my clothes in the river, which may or may not be filled with cow poop, my young little friend bombarded me with song requests. There is nothing like singing Christmas songs while hand washing your towel in a river to really make you appreciate a washing machine. She then preceded to prostatlize me, call me fat (fairly typical of Peruvian society), pick up my granny panties and ogle at their enormous size, and call me ugly when I took off my glasses. I have to admit I contemplated drowning her until she gave me a baked ava (kinda like a lima bean).

Two nights before I was set to leave for a Peace Corps training in La Libertad my health post had a unsa to celebrate the opening of the new Casa Materna. A Unsa is a party that revolved around a tree, literally. During the day the celebrants find a eucalyptus tree and chop it down. Then at night fall there is a band that plays songs that go on for about 15 minutes and all sound shockingly similar while everyone dances around a tree and slowly chops it down. Hypothetically a man and woman are supposed to partner up and stay together the whole night. Unless you are crafty and manage to ditch you far too drunk, mildly creepy partner. Anyways there is dancing the whole night until the tree falls over. And there is also an excessive amount of talc and baby powder. During the festivities the men and women are fighting by throwing baby powder on each other. Needless to say by the end of the night I was covered with a nice layer od mud and baby powder.

At one point I tried to chase after one of my socios Pablo, an enfermera, at the health post. He went off sprinting in the other direction. His run looked so much like Michael Cera in Super Bad that I had to hold together my laughter. There is something about a perfectly upright run with flooding pants that just gets me. anywyas as we went off running I was of course in Uggs, not the best running in mud shoes. Actually I would highly recommend against ever trying it. I was also wearing a bandeau, which is like a strapless sports bra with -0 support. So as you can see I was not equipt to go running after a tiny little sprinting man. When I was about to enter the plaza my bandeau fell down so I had to simultaneously try to run without slipping on the mud, hold a fistful of baby powder and button my shirt so I didn’t flash my mayor. As I tried to turn a corner there was just too much going on and I almost ate shit on concrete. At that moment I realized it was probably better to hold on to the light post to prevent falling face first than continue my futile chase. I would like to say I did successfully put a fistful of baby powder on Pablo’s face, at a moment that required far less sprinting.

So this is a general summary of what my life was like in February. Now I am doing planning and trying to figure out meeting to make real moves towards projects.