The Horizon

Peace Corps is such an odd mixture of things. I work unbelievably hard everyday and almost every moment is a test of some combination of my patience, initiative, mental toughness, physical toughness, capacity to learn, positive attitude, and focus on my goals. Just to name a few. And you know me, the mornings where I don't start my pushups before 7am or I turn off my light a bit early so people don't clop clop on my door and I can watch a movie in peace - I feel guilty. Interesting fact - clop clop is what knocking is here and you say it, you don't physically knock. Probably because not everyone has/had doors and even if they do, they might not be mighty.

I know I've mentioned this before, so skim if you like - it's my blog too, after all. And I don't reflect as fully here as I probably need to be. It's hard to write for a public audience when I am actually a government employee who literally took an oath. But I need to capture these thoughts, and the deeper ones, because of what they represent. Growth. I'm definitely not going to get much added to my savings plan by these two years and that's not what I came for - I came to grow and to explore the unknown and take risks to help myself and help others. And to find something worth breaking a sweat over 24x7 - which the above qualifies for and I haven't found in this much abundance since Cornell Fight Team.

So when I say it's hard, you know I mean it because I know what hard work is and because you know I'm not complaining - to a surprising degree my research, guesswork, and training pretty much prepared me to expect what this is. I like that it's hard - it helps keep me motivated. It's supposed to be hard - that's how you know you are getting better. I've said that to my students at home in TKD and I say it to myself in the mornings when I do pushups and in the afternoon when four people are staring through my window talking a hundred miles a minute about me, at me, and through me.

So Peace Corps is that deep seated character building stuff that you need to know you have and people love to ask you about in interviews and you have great stories about for the rest of your life. It's pretty cool and I like it. But what makes it truly exciting, is that all of that is the backdrop. You have to do all of that, get past surviving all of that, get good at all of that as a stranger in a strange land in a strange language so you can get to the final third of the Peace Corps job. Having a measurable impact at helping people improve their lives. That's important for them and for me. I would be successful in the Peace Corps eyes, and probably to a large part in the community's eyes, if I just succeed at living well here - exchanging cultural and personal knowledge, spreading peace and friendship.

But as much as I love hugs, and I do, that won't cut it in my eyes. And, hopefully, not in the eyes of the people in the village who worked hard to bring me here. It's exciting because I have to apply the ephipany that I had in Tae Kwon Do at Cornell and never quite repeated at work - when you are doing something that is worth fighting for, it isn't enough just to show up and survive. Don't think about making it until the clock runs out, think about how much you have to squeeze out of each minute before the clock runs out. And this is about people's lives.

And the opportunities to work together to make a difference are starting to appear. The head master of my school started the first adult education program in the interior last year. He fought tooth and nail to get the teachers partially paid, but they are scrounging school supplies and motivation to keep teachers and students going. They managed to keep about 125 of 150 students and over 2/3 passed into the next grade at the end of the school year (an amazing statistic in Suriname). The headmaster has looked for more money to give things the kick they need to keep going and to grow, but hasn't found it. And now, a neighboring village wants to start a similar project.

So with the headmasters and the volunteer in that village, if we can find not even $US1000, we can fund a school year for nearly 200 adults. The numbers are heartbreakingly small, aren't they? But if we can find that money, 200 people are going to get closer to being able to read, write, and 'rithmetic. You could ask, how important is reading out here for adults that aren't going to move to the city. It's a fair question - there isn't much to read. But there is when it comes time to install a solar panel, or learn about aids, or even apply that medicine the doctor gave you correctly. And math is needed without question. Many people here get money from the government, but one problem is that most of them can't count well enough to know when the distributors of that money are cheating them. So it is pretty exciting.

At the same time, I'm helping the headmaster put his student records into Excel. It stinks because I'm sure there is a better way to do it, but this will work and probably be simple enough that he can upkeep it by himself. He wanted to be able to save them to a flash drive so they are more protected, because when you lose someone's record it is gone forever now and that can make a lot of things tough. If we do that, we will be either the first school or possibly the second (the government is working on a pilot project, but we don't know it's current status) to have computerized records.

Both of those will likely be relatively small, quick projects. Finite and easy to finish, though finding a sustained source of funding for the Adult Education Program is problematic. For larger work, I'm going to try to make a map of Pikin Slee. This will help with any number of things, the primary one being it will show the people here and the outsiders with money just how much they have and how much they don't. No one actually knows how many people are here - and that means no one understand how far how many people walk to carry drinkable water to their houses. I certainly don't understand that yet and I live here - how can you ask UNICEF or some rich Dutch guy organization too?

That happened yesterday and it was very interesting. I was talking with a friend of mine here about how he makes money and what he wants to do. His house is next to the primary dock for the village and he was talking about putting in a pay toilet and a small store so the boatloads of tourists can drop off some of their money, as well as other things, when they pass on their way to the tourist camp or the museum. I mentioned that, though I don't know a lot about it yet, there are several programs that help you get loans or grants to start businesses like that. He was casually interested, but not jumping up and down.

I was jumping up and down. I started doing back of the envelope calculations to get at estimated cash flow, profit margins, growth opportunities (you could put it pay toilets in several other locations and they would work, I'm pretty sure!) Obviously, silly. You can't foster entreprenuership without the entreprenuer. He is enterprising, but also clearly wasn't excited about a possible loan. Worth looking into for me to educate myself about the options so I can explain them better and help him or someone else if they are jumping up and down, but not a go just yet.

So the opportunities are beginning to show, in terms of concrete work I will be doing over the next few months. That feels good, though is certainly scary as well. Just living is almost challenge enough. It's hard to stay healthy and happy and keeping going back out there to live among people who don't yet understand me and that I don't yet understand. But only almost.