One Year

This week I had the opportunity to meet the new group of PCVs. They are basically the exact same as my group just one year later. They had a lot of questions about so many different aspects of Peace Corps life and it really made me think about the last year of my life. I also recently had a conversation with a friend back home who said that based on reading my blog, it seems like I’m having a blast in the Peace Corps and it must be nice to know that I’m “really making a difference”. This really stuck with me for several reasons. First, I didn’t really think that anyone still reads my blog. I’ve just been keeping up with it for my own sanity and as a personal record of my time here so that when I look back on this experience years from now I’ll be able to remember the details of these 2 years. Secondly, it stuck with me because it made me realize that even though I write a lot when I do post, there is still a lot missing. I am having a blast and I have no idea if I’m making some kind of difference, but there have also been a lot of challenges, some very rough days and quite a few tears. So I thought I’d take this opportunity to reflect on ALL of the experiences I’ve had here in Ecuador as I celebrate my one year anniversary here in country.

Living in a foreign country—any foreign country—definitely has its ups and downs. In your home you get settled into your life. You have your friends, your family, your daily activities, your hobbies, your favorite coffee shop, the brand of shampoo you always buy, etc. And there is nothing wrong with that. It’s comforting to have all of those things. You also get used to the system. Going to the bank, paying the bills, voting if you choose to, traffic laws, professional does and don’ts, the process of getting a job, all that fun paperwork stuff. When you live in a foreign country, however, you get rid of all of that. You start with a completely blank slate personally and professionally. Which is really exciting…but when you’re used to things being a certain way, it can be very frustrating when suddenly they aren’t that way at all.

I would say that one of the biggest struggles I have had in this year has been institutional bureaucracy. The Ecuadorian government has so many institutions working on development, the UN is here, there are countless NGOs working here, and even more volunteer groups. Every institution wants there name on a project to show how much they are doing to seguir adelante (meaning “to keep moving forward”—a phrase that Ecuadorians use on a regular basis in the sense of bringing about positive change that I have learned doesn’t actually mean anything at all), but no institution actually wants to do the work that is required to seguir adelante and all are even less eager to fund it. I was just recently at a World Vision meeting in which the national director explained that the work World Vision is doing is just wonderful and that they have the support of so many Ecuadorian institutions. Then one of the Ecuadorian institutions stood up and argued that it is really THEY who are doing all this wonderful work with the support of World Vision (which, in all fairness, I think they are right, I mean it is THEIR country. They should be able to take credit for the work that they do to help THEIR people. Even though everyone who works for World Vision is Ecuadorian, all the practices, policies and funding come from the rich gringo world). But the point is, we spent a whole day bickering over who is to get more credit for the aid that they are bringing to the communities in a beautiful venue with breakfast, a snack and lunch (of course paid for by the institutions themselves). But while we—or I guess rather THEY, I certainly was not going to participate in this institutional tiff—were debating this, who was in the communities actually doing said work? No one. I realize that every once in a while you have to step back and evaluate the process and give credit where credit is due, but we literally spent the whole day discussing absolutely nothing of substance that would bring about any change for the communities. But these types of events are all too common here and instead of wasting money and time on them, they could have been actually doing something to improve the communities.

Or another example: I was just recently at a workshop to train teachers to include sex ed into their curriculum. Ecuador now has a new law that says that ALL schools must have inclusive sex ed in their curricula—which in theory is excellent, but is a lot more difficult to achieve in practice. I went as a facilitator to help train the teachers. I was talking with one of the other facilitators (the director of an organization for sex ed) and she told me that if I wanted to work in the collegios that I had to clear it with her first since she works on a provincial level for the sake of “institutional respect”. I definitely value “intuitional respect”, and I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes, but her organization is doing absolutely nothing in this area and getting this “institutional respect” takes a lot of paperwork and even more time and the need is now and I’m here now. If I spent my whole PC service waiting to be approved for “institutional respect” I would be sitting around for 2 years doing nothing. Plus, I’m pretty sure the president of Ecuador signed off on PC/ Ecuadorian “institutional respect” when he asked PC to come/continue in Ecuador. I’m not trying to bash or bad mouth this woman’s organization, because there are definitely areas in which her organization is doing some great things…just not here where I work. And she seems to be more concerned with “institutional respect” (and by that I’m pretty sure she means “who gets the credit”) than with actually making any kind of positive change in the communities. I’m also not trying to say that this “institutional respect” shouldn’t exist. Without these collaborations absolutely NOTHING would get done. But if the real goal is to seguir adelante, does it really matter which institution gets more credit? Shouldn’t the most important thing be the actual work…you know the seguir-ing adelante? And can’t the collaboration and the involved parties receive joint credit?

It’s frustrating to try to work with all the red tape and bickering. That being said, however, I don’t think that this is an issue unique to Ecuador. I think this is something that ALL countries face. But fortunately, my life here in Ecuador is multifaceted and when one aspect is frustrating, another is there to rescue me.

One of the things I have most enjoyed about my time in Ecuador—especially Alausi—is getting to actually know people. As a tourist, or even as a summer volunteer, your time in country is so short that you spend all your time trying to see everything in the limited time that you have in country that you don’t get to know the people and the culture. I have two years here. I’ve got PLENTY of time not only to travel and see all of the beauty that Ecuador has to offer, but also get to know the people and the culture. I’ve been to pretty much every type of celebration there is: local fiestas, baptisms, first communions, weddings, birthday parties, anniversaries and even a few funerals. I’ve celebrated Christmas and New Years, Ecuadorian Independence Day, independences of provinces and cities, Carnaval and patron saint days, soccer tournaments, beauty pageants and local concerts. Ecuadorians definitely know how to party! Sure, I guess you could go to all of these celebrations if you happened upon them as a tourists, but I get to see why they celebrate all these occasions and share them with the people who understand and love the true spirit of the celebration. Just the other night I was dancing the night away with my friend from the hotel here in Alausí to celebrate the inauguration of the new bread store. Really, the new bread store means nothing to me. I don’t know the owner and after I leave here, I probably won’t ever buy bread there or even think about it again. But for my friend, she knows the owner and she feeds her family with that bread…so she’s totally right, we should celebrate it’s opening! Being with her, or really sharing time with any of my Ecuadorian friends, moves me from the world of being an observer to being an experiencer (yes, I just made that word up) of the life here. And I have to say, it’s really humbling and awesome.

Another aspect of my Peace Corps experience has definitely been the whole idea of “making a difference” and the conversation I had with my friend really made me think a lot more about it. I know I have said before in this blog and I tell myself on a daily basis that positive change isn’t always visible and isn’t always what you expect. And even if just one person is able to change their life it was all worth it, but we as people and especially as Americans aren’t really trained to think like that. We are very outcome oriented people. We want to see statistics that prove our success—indicators of quantity positive outcomes. But in the work I do here, the “positive outcomes” are the decisions people make…and not just isolated decisions, but the decisions they make their entire lives. Just because one of my kids makes a responsible decision based on what I’ve taught them now, doesn’t mean they will a year from now or ten years from now. How do you measure someone’s lifelong decision making ability? And how do you compile multiple people’s decision making abilities into quantifiable success? You really can’t. All of these NGOs and development organizations keep trying to come up with strategies to do just that—I mean you gotta make those annual reports to prove to all your donors that you really are a worthy cause to donate to right? But it really just ends up limiting development because people/organizations become so focused on trying to quantify the work that they do for annual reports that they forget about the actual work they are doing…Peace Corps not excluded. I have to fill out trimesterly reports with numbers and statistics of all the talleres I do and all the communities I work with. I realize the importance of monitoring and evaluating the work you do and I’m not complaining about these trimesterly reports I have to do. However, I think that extrapolating that 200 kids are now capacitated in Sexual and Reproductive health because they came to my talleres is not quite true. So what if I gave 20 sex ed charlas to 200 kids this trimester? How do you measure if any of the kids actually learned anything? Or maybe they did learn something. Maybe these kids do know now how to protect themselves from HIV or an unwanted pregnancy and maybe they could even explain it to someone else. But how do I know that the kids will actually put that knowledge into practice when they’re in a situation where they need to make a decision? That is where true success lies: the decisions that people make based on what they have learned.

The success I’m talking about exists on a couple different levels. Institutional success is what requires all this “data”. Who attended what charlas and how many actually learned? Then there is personal success. I send in my information with all of this data, but I see these kids every single day. Did they really listen to me? Are they making better decisions? I don’t know. Obviously, for me what I worry about most is personal success. Of course I want Peace Corps to succeed, but PC’s success is based on the personal success of the PCVs. And the PCVs (that’s me) are the ones right there in the thick of it. I’m not sitting in some national office reading reports and compiling the data to prove that my organization is actually doing good in the world, I’m the one on the ground supposedly doing this “good”.

But one of my 17 year old kids just got married because he got a girl pregnant, and every day I hear stories of 14, 15, 16 year old girls getting pregnant…some of them have worked with me and some of them have worked with other organizations. Or when I was working with the teachers I had just explained how birth control won’t give you cancer and that the pull-out method is not an effective method when one of the other facilitators stood up and basically said that birth control gives you cancer and pull-out is the best method. Changing the minds of the EDUCATORS is the real issue. If these kids get wrong information, they are just going to continue in the paths of their parents. But their parents and educators refuse to change. But if they themselves refuse to change their attitudes, how can they ever expect future generations to? And really, I’m just some random gringa. What do I know about their lives? Considering that, can I ever really make a difference? Is there really even a point for me to be here? It’s hard to answer these questions considering the inability to guage this type of success. I’m sure there is a point in me being here and in Peace Corps being here…I just don’t have tangible proof. And I and PC are not the only one’s struggling with quantifying success…anyone or any organization that has ever worked in development struggles with this. Coming from a culture that values tangible proof of success (and really anything), it’s really hard to say just how much success (or lack thereof) I have in my work here. So I guess personally, I just have to seguir adelante so hopefully I can help others seguir adelante.

One of the new volunteers asked me what I miss most about the US. I remember a while ago I posted a blog about some of the things I missed about the states. I still really miss Chipotle. But a lot of the other things on that list I have completely forgotten about. I’ve just become so used to life here that some of the things I used to do on a daily basis I don’t even remember. The other day my friend mentioned something about automatic check outs at the grocery store. I had totally forgotten about those. Or I used to really miss driving. But now I don’t really want to buy a car when I get home. Depending on where I live, I think I just want to bike and use public transportation. I used to be so attached to my car, but now I don’t really care. More than anything now what I miss are people, not my American way of life.

And it’s interesting because I used to miss my American way of life, but I never really understood it until now. In the book I’m currently reading, one of the characters said that all Americans should have to live outside of the United States for a while to really understand what America is like. I really couldn’t agree more. Even though I’ve been living and learning Ecuadorian culture for the past year, I have also learned so much about the US and myself as an American. Some things about the US and American life are just ridiculous, but there are also some aspects of the US are really awesome and I am so thankful for. I really can’t go into specifics here, but I guess overall this experience has made me more aware of and more appreciative of the impact (both positive and negative) the US has not only on a global and political scale but also on the culture of its citizens and the world. It’s really eye-opening to be able to see your own country—your own culture—from an outsiders perspective.

The past year has been a rollercoaster of emotions, experiences, people and places. I can remember specific days were I just sat back in awe thinking “This is my life right now…that’s awesome!” or “Never in a million years would I have guessed that I would be doing (Fill in the most ridiculous activity you can think of in the most remote place with the most random group of people. Now translate it into Spanish).” Even though I only graduated from college a year ago, it’s been a very FULL year. I feel I’ve grown so much and learned more than I ever possibly could have elsewhere. I’ve met some of the most amazing people and some of the most horrible. I’ve seen things that inspire me and things that make me incredibly angry. I’ve said, “That is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen/done” and “That is the stupidest thing I have ever seen/done” more times this past year than in my whole life. There have been moments that I’ve made myself proud and others where I have made a complete ass of myself. Overall, it’s been challenging yet amazing and I’m really excited for the remaining year of my Peace Corps service.

I hope everyone continues to be well back home.