In my last post, I tried to list the biggest memories of my
service. That was a challenging post to write, and I found that I was sifting
through a lot of things in my head before I settled on those five. In the weeks
since I last wrote, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about what and how I want
to remember my service, and how I want my communities and friends to remember
me.
Peace Corps service means different things to different
PCVs, and to me the greatest meaning is more in the small things than in the
big. I will always remember making s’mores with my host family, taking walks
with Nombuso, those few magical weeks when we had so many tiny little kittens,
laughing long into the night with my PCV friends at Sundowners, and dancing
with my GLOW club. My service isn’t defined by the big memories, but in the
hundreds of small ones that I have made over the past 21 months.
My service has also been defined by relationships. I have
had 4 successful and sustainable projects, but many more relationships that
have impacted my life immeasurably. I’ll never forget talking with an uncle
during Pre-Service Training about vegetables, and how he always thought only
poor people who couldn’t afford meat ate them, and then we worked through
understanding nutrition together. The next morning, I found an avocado shell
outside his house and the core of an apple. Nombuso has helped me to see the
person that I want to be through being both a friend to me and a role model. My
host mothers (from each community) have shown me what real strength is, as well
as unconditional love. These relationships matter to me now, and they will
matter to me in 20 years when I’m telling my children about my service
experiences.
In my first year here, I fell into a rut. It’s easy to
become cold and unfeeling when you are constantly surrounded by insurmountable
challenges and indescribable hardship, and that did happen to me. While you do
have to learn that you cannot feed every orphan and save every child to protect
your heart, you also have to learn what you are able to give and give freely:
smiles, hugs, kind words, and maybe a sweet here and there. It’s easy to become
angry and hard when 9/10 men you encounter shout at you and harass you, and
maybe even grab your arm or touch you. It’s hard to remember that the 1/10 are
the ones who matter, and are likely the ones who are actively giving of
themselves and working hard to redefine respectful behavior. Being unkind to
everyone means missing relationship building with the movers and shakers of
Swaziland, and it took me a long time to learn how to live with this balance.
I don’t want to be remembered as being cold, unfeeling,
angry, or hard. I want to be remembered as kind, hardworking, energetic,
enthusiastic, approachable, loyal, and dedicated. In order to leave that
legacy, I have had to work every day to understand the cultural norms, learn
what appropriate responses to certain behaviors are, and never give up in the
constant battle that is living in a fishbowl. If I want to be remembered as
kind, then I need to respond to unwanted attention kindly but firmly. If I want
to be remembered as approachable, then I cannot ignore every child who screams
at the umlungu (white person) for money or sweets. If I want to be remembered
as dedicated, then I need to ask questions and really listen to the answers.
Relationship building is hard, and smiling every time I’m treated in a way I
dislike is even harder, but the rewards in the end are worth every bit of that
hard work.
The beauty and the curse of Peace Corps is that you only get
out of your service what you are willing to put in, and the only one who can
define that is you. Although we live in different cultures, Swazis are people
just like us, and they can sense when you don’t want to be there and don’t want
to work with them. If you treat them like they are lesser or different or a
burden, then you cannot expect to be treated as a friend and welcomed as a
member of a community.
Professor Dumbledore once challenged us to think carefully
when given a choice between what is right and what is easy. It’s easy for me to
write off my challenges as cultural differences and move on, but perhaps it’s
right to address them head-on, unflinchingly, with all my energy and heart. The
questions about what memories you want to make and what legacy you’d like to
leave behind have always been abstract and distant to me, but with only 4
months remaining in my service, it’s time to really think and make the right
choices.
I owe it to the girls in my GLOW group to be energetic at
meetings and come with a well thought out plan. I owe it to the men in my
community to start a conversation with kindness and not assume the worst. I owe
it to my counterparts to trust them to know more than me and to be perfectly
capable of working hard and working intelligently. I owe it to the women in my
community to listen when they approach me and ask about income generating
activities or savings groups or gardening. Perhaps most importantly, I owe it
to myself and to my country to treat all people here with the same respect,
benefit of the doubt, and kindness with which I’d treat any Westerner. Our
behaviors and the way we express our wants and feelings vary based on the
cultural norms with which we were raised, but things like hope, ambition, big
dreams, happiness, love, friendship, and family transcend cultural barriers. To
live in another country, to realize how little I truly know about the world,
and to rethink the behaviors with which I am most comfortable has made me
realize that I am truly participating in something that is unfathomably bigger
than myself.
There is no greater gift that Swaziland has given me.
