One of the things I love most about Peace Corps is the
freedom you have with your work. I set
my own hours, plan my own projects, and follow things through to measure
results and impact. Some days are pretty
typical to office work: I spend hours and hours preparing presentations or
planning for a seminar. Other days, I do
the Hokey Pokey with a ton of kids, hand out cookies I made at midnight the
night before, and hang out in my hammock reading my 3rd book that
week.
Before coming here, I fully expected my happiest and most
productive days to be those of the former- doing typical “work.” I thought that would make me happiest and
that would be where my biggest potential impact would lie. However, after a few months in my little village,
I’m starting to see things from a different perspective.
I still have hopes and plans for improving the local way of
performing agri-business functions.
Though I’m no longer naïve enough to believe that I could completely
change the community, I have several smaller goals: helping producers
understand basic business functions, taking inventory of their farms, starting
to use registers, and potentially even working with value added products
(chocolate bars instead of raw beans).
Making a difference in the way locals handle business
practices is certainly important, but I’ve begun to ask myself if there are
other equally, if not even more important, ways to make a difference.
In addition to my primary project (agribusiness development)
I also get to work with secondary projects of my choosing: education, youth and
gender development, nutrition, etc.- essentially anything other than
agribusiness. As is common with many
volunteers, secondary projects have quickly begun to be a large and important part
of my work here. There are the official
secondary projects: teaching English in schools and leading gender and
development seminars, but then there are also the non-official activities: days
I spend playing with kids, helping with art projects or teaching songs and
dances to draw shy kids out of their shells.
As a professional, I feel incredibly happy and fulfilled
when I teach excel to a local entrepreneur or when a women’s group asks for my
help in marketing their products. As a
person, however, I cannot imagine feeling more fulfilled than when a kid runs
up to me to show off the better grades he or she is earning, or when a group of
kids starts calling me Aunt to show me that I am a part of their family.
So, it seems like there are two stories to be told: That
which is on my resume, and that which you’ll only hear from listening to the
little moments.
