Life Lessons Learned

I have been doing a lot of posts on what is physically going on in my life and I wanted to take an opportunity to put up something a bit more thoughtful. Some of the posts I am most proud of are the ones that have been focused on my experience on a more mental level. My entry"Chunky Dunkin: A Fat Girl's Guide to Peace Corps" is about 30 hits away from having had 1,000 reads, which is awesome considering how specific an audience this blog plays to, and it was a combination of physical realities of my service, meshed with my thoughts on them.

That all being said, I want to reflect a bit on some things I have learned about myself while on this Peace Corps journey of mine. Some of these things are going to resonate with some of the volunteers who are reading this, and some are not, but putting them out there will make me more cognizant of these lessons and I think that is a good thing.

Me getting pumped about something
other than cheese (beet hummus)

#1: I have no will power when it comes to certain topics...namely cheese. This may sound like a joke but as I approach the 50lbs loss mark (17lbs to go!) I realize that this is in part because I am a lazy bastard. I eat raw foods for lunch every day not to make a statement, or because it makes me feel like a healthier and wiser consumer, but because I am too lazy to make my own lunch, and in my world there are no instant food options (fast food, processed packaged food, microwave meals... microwaves.) My biggest “win” has been weaning myself from a heavy reliance on carbohydrates, something that I tried to do multiple times while at home but was never able to fully achieve. Want to know how I finally did this? I stopped buying carbs. I eat a pasta or rice based dinner EVERY NIGHT, but that is the only meal in which carbs are present. If I had snack bars in my house, you can be damn sure I would be eating them, so instead of bringing them in and teaching myself a lesson on moderation, I skip the whole deal altogether by just not having them around.

My “lazy” person diet involves me having to work out my flabby will power muscles for approximately 30mins twice a month while I am grocery shopping. This is not difficult, I don’t go shopping hungry, and I don’t go down the sweet aisle. I get to have one candy bar while I am shopping, and other than that the unhealthiest thing that comes home with me is the container of feta cheese that I buy for omelets, and salads. 

This method has very much pointed out to me how much energy I devoted to food while I was home. Eating it, thinking about eating it, thinking about not eating it, worrying about what would happen if I did or did not eat it; hours upon hours a day! Here, I don’t have to freak, if I get hungry enough I have to eat a vegetable or a fruit, or I have to actually prepare something, which my lazyness will often prevent to a certain extent. By the time I get my unmotivated self to cook something, I know I am actually hungry! The lazy diet methods work for me.

Is it a child scribbling on the wall?
NO, its my PC emotional graph!

#2: Not everyone is the same when it comes to things that tick or set them off. Peace Corps is a crazy emotional ride of crazyness, and though at some point you do learn to level out or deal with your emotions, the ups and downs continue to be there, and it makes you get real intimate with yourself real quick. I think
the majority of issues that happen between people who generally care about each other are based around communication. Here is a situation that would not bug me: a volunteer in another village is having a party. The invitations are going out through word of mouth and we get to the week before the party and I have just heard about the event. This situation doesn’t bug me, and in all likelihood I would call this person up, and ask if I could come and if there is anything I could bring. The reason for this is because I like to assume I was not intentionally excluded, this person probably has a lot going on and assumed that the word of mouth tree through the volunteer community would take care of the needed guest list. This situation would bug certain people I work with though, and I could unintentionally offend someone by not taking this into account.

Dan Savage talks a lot about “price of admission” when it comes to relationships; this concept, in a nutshell, is that you are going to have to go out of your way in certain areas in order to keep your relationships healthy, and that if your relationship with that person is worth it, it is something you will gladly pay. Up to this point in my life I have assumed that most people see the world in very similar terms to how I see it. Though this is partially true, and I do think there is more that joins us together than separates us, there are also some very major differences, and that is what makes the world a wonderful, unique place to live in. When you get to a certain point in your relationships with people, you start to become more intimately acquainted with these little quarks, and being able to negotiate those is what continues to move you forward. I need to start being more active in recognizing these bits in other people, clearly seeing my own, and coming to an equilibrium in order to more actively engage in the relationships around me.  

#3: Who I am, and who I want to be, are going to slowly come together in unexpected ways, and I need to make room for those discoveries as they appear. You know that trend on facebook about a year ago; the one where there would be a series of six pictures and they would all have captions like “How my mother sees me”, “How my siblings see me” and “How I really am”? Though these are hilarious, I think the reason behind their comedy is because they ring really true in some cases (like the Peace Corps one below.) If I had to do one for just myself I think it would sound something like this:

Who I want to be: nomadic, adventuresome type, who traipses around the world in order to meet new people and try and make their lives better. I want my facebook profile pictures to include yurts, and me learning traditional Brazilian dances, and smoking a pipe with the native peoples of New Guinea. I want to have stories that start off with lines like “I was cutting my way through a dense jungle rainforest...” I want to tell people about all the gross bugs I have eaten. What I want to be is the love child of Teddy Roosevelt and Mother Teresa.

Who I am right now: a peace corps volunteer (which means a lot of different things; see "Romanticizing Peace Corps") Someone who does not particularly enjoy living out of her backpack but can do so on the occasion, someone who loves meeting new people, but doesn’t not like to have to be “on” 24/7. I don’t like bugs, especially the big ones with scary appendages and though I love getting into the center of things, I sometimes need a little coaxing. I love and miss my American home, and the family that fills it, and going home at this point sounds almost as sweet as having another adventure lined up. 

For those of you still reading, congratulations! You get the prize of me coming home for Christmas again! J I land Dec 23^rd, and take off again Jan 3^rd!

Who I end up being: a person who can’t be pinned down to one thing or another. I want to be someone who values her sense of home and where she came from and uses it as strength to see new places. I want to be filled with stories, and I want to share them with everyone. I want to be able to unpack my backpack at the end of an adventure and have a stationary, solid place to contemplate it. I want to enjoy my favorite pub at home as much as I enjoy a new pub in the back alley of the Ukraine. Ultimately I want to be someone who never “ends” in evolving who she is and how she sees things. Having a place to stop and rest doesn’t mean you ever have to truly stop the life adventure. My home is not my weakness.

The man is riding a freaking moose
...who doesn't want to ride a moose?!?

A lot of this has come through thinking about going home again, and dealing with this weird sense that I have seemed to stumble into that involves me thinking that needing home is somehow weak. At some point I will unpack this a bit further, but I don’t want to dwell on it too much right now now.

#4:You can get an awful lot of education with just a sense of determination, a passion for knowledge and a few hours of internet access a week. Want to know about the Moringa tree? Ask me freaking anything within the realm of applicable uses and I could probably answer it. Would you like me to get into gender identity and politics and the differences between sex and gender? Awesome, I will talk your ear off! I know more about the different parts of old schooner ships than I ever thought I would because last year for National Novel Writing Month I decided to write 50,000 about lesbian pirate queens and I wanted to sound authentic.

Your education does not begin or end with school or university, I know this seems like an obvious one but to people straight out of undergrad it can be a little daunting. I have spent 17 out of 24 years of my life in some form of school or another and when I graduated I felt like I had lost what had become a constant presence in my life. What I had lost was a set of buildings and a specific set of mentors. What I gained was the ability to drive what I educate myself on, and find people around me that already know, or want to learn about the same things that I do.

#5 and this one ties everything together I like to think. You have to learn how to be happy and it’s not always going to make you happy. Things that make me happy that don’t make me happy (work with me on this one):

·        

      Working out

·         Budgeting my living allowance

·         Going to work on days when I don’t feel like leaving the house

·         Religious study

·         Cleaning

·         Practicing music (guitar, ukulele, harmonica, or voice)

·         Cooking an elaborate meal (love cooking, hate getting everything together and cleaning)

These activities are things that ultimately increase my happiness as an individual but are either a.) not fun to do or b.) are difficult to get myself to start/ do. The ease in which I can get myself to work on stuff like this is usually highly depended on my emotional state, and as made clear above that is something that fluctuates with the wind while in Peace Corps. I like to institute certain mental “hacks” when it comes to motivation on my part. 1.) Even if I haven’t started seeing the difference yet, if I am working out, I tend to be more comfortable with my body. An example of this was actually yesterday while hanging out with a few friends. We were at a house of a doctor who was out of town, who also happens to have a pool.

Normally, in order for me to get into any sort of body of water I have to have serious coverage of my thighs. I have been wearing board shorts into the water for the past decade or so, despite the fact that I don’t have the body proportions to make it look athletic, and I really want to wear girly swim suits. Anyway, I forgot my shorts, and the only way to get into the pool was going in, in my skivvies, which a few years ago wouldn’t have been an option, but now it was. My thoughts: screw it, I worked out this morning and also just happened to have shaved my legs, on top of the fact that I had on cute underwear...those two things never happen!!!!

Secondly, the biggest issue I have is often starting things, after which I tend to enjoy them, or at the very least continue until I am finished. I won’t stop a workout in the middle, so all I really need to do is get to the point where I have begun, and the rest will take care of itself. Pep talks will often do the trick when having to get the ball rolling when it comes to the physical things. Getting myself to practice singing is not at all difficult, I put on songs I like, and then just start singing, but it can be a bit more complicated when it comes to picking up my guitar. By combining these two activities, life gets easier. I practice my guitar with songs that I can sing to.  

Lazy diet works, unfortunately lazy happiness does not. I cannot be both lazy and happy, it is not how I’m programmed. Figuring out how I’m programmed is the bulk of what I have been learning here. What works for some, is not going to work for me every time.

At this point I think I am becoming a big unfocused so I’m going to leave it there. I have no doubt that there will be more posts about life lessons learned. Thanks for tuning in!

Claire

Green Sleeves..and Shirts...and Thumbs

Last time I attempted to grow something on my own it was the strawberries my mother helped me out with in our household garden. I was so proud of them (even though they were kind of little) and so sad when we got to the year we had to dig them up to let the soil rest. After that the only real plant I can think of was the one my roommate had in college. We called it the "Jesus Plant" because it would die and then we would water it and it would magically come back to life. Most of the time we used "watering" in the most liberal of terms, meaning we poured leftover cans of beer and diet pepsi into the pot, so I really have no idea how the thing made it through two years in the dorm and one in the apartment, but whatever. At this point you should have some idea of my limited gardening skills, so it will come just as much a surprise to you as it did to me, that I am looking at the next couple of months, and the only projects that seems to really be happening all involve gardening and plants (probably ones that won't be watered with pepsi.)

The moringa project is finally starting to take off with seeds in the ground at my place and the clinic! I am hoping to start the workshops soon, and then I am going to put together an easy way for people to continue running them once I am gone. In case you didn't know I have included this wonderful little diagram thingy to tell you all about how awesome this tree is! I have been trying to be very careful with making sure people don't refer to it as a "medicine" though, because I don't want people thinking this is a cure all (i.e. replacing their ARVs with it), and what the main goal would be is really to try and get people t include it in their daily diet. If I can figure it out we are going to have general workshops and then special workshops and health talks for pregnant mothers and people who are HIV+, since those groups have even more to gain. I think this will be a great substitute for those pregnant women who end up eating dirt because they have an iron deficiency.

Aside from the moringa project I have also decided to start my own garden as well as a garden at the library that could benefit not only their low income preschool but the one that functions at the creshe as well. A HUGE shout out to Downtown Home and Garden for sending me a bunch of seed packets!! I thought I was going to get enough to do my own little herb patch but it turns out they sent me so many that they are going to have a chance to be their own project. This will be wonderful because it will enable both of these preschool programs to supplement the students lunches with some vegetables, and save on money when they hold events that require food. I'm really looking forward to getting my hands dirty with these projects, and maybe this is even something I will want to bring home with me?

Everything should be starting off this week, and if not then next for sure. I'm looking forward to melon and corn and tomatoes and dill and eggplant all straight from my very own garden! My host brother is going to clear a plot of land next to the chicken coup which I can only image will actually make things grow even better since I will have a natural fertilizer being set down (though I have to figure out how to keep the actual chickens out since they are going to try and eat everything.) This is fitting into my larger plan to get in shape and stay healthy and use this time in Peace Corps to establish some god nutritional habits. Also my goal to save more money and travel and bit more :)

Can't wait for the adventure to start, and if anyone out there has some good gardening tips, let me know!

Hugs and smooches,
Claire

Gender Poem!

Part of some of my LGBT work here has been trying to connect the Bots community with an EXCELLENT project back in the states, called The Gender Book! Part of this involves signing up to be a Gender Scout, meaning I help do some street promotion for the project. Obviously, this is difficult to do any place but online while I am here. That being said, I have written a poem with a gender theme that I would like all of you to enjoy:

The African Princess

The swish of her skirt

The rouge of her lips

The dance of her hips

No realer a woman ever walked the dirt catwalk the way she struts

Proud, with head held high, and hair blowing in the breeze

Having fought for a pronoun title hard earned, one she never knew was hers by right

The African Princess apologizes to no one

Cargo short confines

A naked face

A stomping gait

Baggy pants and tshirt have never been more of a cage

Some accessories packed away while others having sprung from their rightful place

Their place packed away because they hide her true face

Into the political prison the African Princess goes, but not long will she stay

Scary Story Continued!

Alright, so this is coming a lot later than I thought it would, and it also isn't going to have pictures until a later date, but I figured I have kept you in suspense for long enough!!!

We left off with our heroes (Kalindi and I) being trapped in our tent by some unknown creature and very much being in need of the bathroom. It is at this point in the story that Kalindi hands me the wine bottle, which is the closest thing we have to a blunt bludgeoning instrument, and says "you live here, which means you have to go out first." I can't really argue with the logic of this, I do live here, and ultimately it would just seem plain rude to have a guest be eaten by some hungry beast first. So I took the wine bottle, put on my shoes, and crouched at the tent entrance. After hitting the tent wall, and making ridiculous loud barking like noises (I can only image what all of this must have looked like from an outside the tent perspective) I unzipped the tent an half jumped, half tripped out into the wilderness, ONLY TO FIND!!!

Nothing, I found absolutely nothing...

After doing a once around the tent, I let Kalindi know the coast was clear and that it was okay to come out and we both ran to the bathroom. I am guessing, based on the fact that the thing had fingers, that it was probably a monkey. But we will never know will we? Maybe it was a Tokolosi?

The rest of the trip continued on relatively as planned, and I have to say that Victoria Falls is no less beautiful the second time around. This time we opted for a slightly less adrenalin filled, half day canoe trip. There was a bit of a troublesome bull hippo at the start (our guide was awesome, and we knew it was time to high tail it out of there when he calmly started repeating "okay, there is a hippo, we need to get to the center of the river...right now. Quickly!") but the rest of the day went swimmingly and we got to see the beautiful upstream view of the Zambezi.

After Vic Falls we made our way, with a series of pretty decent hitches, over to Maun to stay with the Ferguson's a couple of days. Maun is awesome, and to be honest it was just great to hang out in a house setting with wonderful people, sharing the responsibilities of making and eating wonderful food, and just shooting the breeze. It was so wonderful in fact, that we staid an extra day!

At this point in time, it was off to Ramokgonami, for about a week of hanging out in my village. I would love to say that there were a whole lot of adventures had at this point, but Rams is pretty laid back. We hung out, we hiked around a bit, and I introduced Kalindi to all of the wonderful people that make up my daily life here in Botswana. Sharing my house with people I love is a major point of awesomeness for me. I may not be the best house cleaner in the whole world but I like to think that I am a pretty gracious host. Showing off my home to Alex and Kalindi and Dana and anyone else that makes it out my side is a pleasure and I wish I had the opportunity to do it more often. Its times like that when I wish I lived in a major hub, but maybe if it happened all the time it wouldn't be as fun?

Kalindi leaving was horrible, she is going to be the last person from home to visit until my parents come in February, and though I tried to keep it together at the airport, it was incredibly difficult. Maybe someday I will post a little more about what her trip meant to me, but for now we will keep it at that.

Youth Empowerment Camp: For realz this time!

After Kalindi left I had a few weeks to get back into the swing of things, and then it was off to youth camp! As regular readers of this blog know, I helped put on a youth empowerment conference a few months ago, but it was much smaller than intended because of funding issues. Well we got funding! This time around the camp was at the Gweta Lodge, and we had about 25 campers, and four PCVs helping out. 

We did a ton of awesome workshops on identity, community mobilization, leadership and self confidence. We had a fashion show, talent show, and a movie night for evening activities. Everyone had an awesome time and I couldn't have been happier with how things shook out. I am hoping we can pull things together to do at least one more before the end of my service, and I plan to shoot even higher that time around. 

Mural Painting Part II

So the mural at this point consisted of a clean and primed wall, and two slightly agitated volunteers, which isn't exactly the end product we were looking for. So Dana came back up and we decided to finish her up! Chad (you remember him, the Beerlmpics champion?) also decided to come down and lend a hand, and I couldn't have been more thankful for it. 

Man did we kick some serious booty :)

We painted everyday for pretty much a week, with help coming in from random community member that were walking by, along with some of the primary and preschool kids and the creshe staff. It was hot, it was dry, and at times the paints were incredibly uncooperative, but in the end we persevered, and the fruits of our labor were oh so very sweet! (insert picture of mural here...later)

What is great about this whole project is we added to the beauty of the community by putting what people are most proud of into the mural itself. We did it with other community members and even though the creshe is off of the main road, the mural is so big and beautiful that people and cars passing by can see it from the road. As self centered as it may sound it is also nice to do projects like this because it is tangible proof that I was here, that I worked and made something that makes the community better. I can look at that mural and say "that wouldn't have happened without me" and there aren't may projects that I'm involved in that have that type of tangibility. But that is part of what we sign up for I guess. 

The mural finished up just in time for us to attend the community cultural day at the library, and even though the giant meal that Dana and I got in on wasn't for our mural specifically we decided to pretend that it was. We filled or bellies, chatted it up with community members, and then found Dana a lift back into town. I went home incredibly satisfied and only slightly exhausted. It was an amazing way to wrap up three months of crazyness. That whole circle of life, if you know what I mean.

New Projects in the Works

So there are a few new things that might be happening in the next couple of months, and I feel like if I write them up here, the universe will keep more more accountable for them. 

-SOP project for the clinic: I want to write a document that goes through different "stations" at the clinic, step by step, and lets the user know how much time it should take to complete each task. I think this will help for training new staff that come in when there is turn over. 

-Moringa: I actually started this one yesterday by planting a few of these on my compound, but I really want to start spreading the word about this amazing tree to the whole community. My hope is to get my hands on more seeds and then to give workshops on harvesting and uses a few times a month at the library/ clinic until most people know what they are doing. 

-STEPS Movie Nights: STEPS is a program that creates awesome movies, many of which are in the local languages, about certain health and social issues. The point is to watch a movie and then facilitate a discussion afterwards. I got the librarian to be on board with the idea of having a once a week movie night, sometimes STEPS and sometimes other entertaining media to keep people interested. I think this will not only be a great way to get community discussions going, but also a sneaky bit on getting more people to come to the library. 

-LeGeBiBo Documents: So I haven't been super open with my involvement with LEGABIBO here, but I want to post this because I am proud to be working with them and I don't want people to think any differently. LEGABIBO (Lesbians, Gays and Bisexuals of Botswana) is the only LGBT organization in Botswana which functions under the BONELA umbrella out of Gabs. I have been getting involved in a few of their projects and as they have begun to grow, I want to be able to make sure they have the structures needed to expand. That being said I am going to create some documents for them (grant requests, support group starter kits, resource lists) so they can more easily accommodate a growing movement. It may not be as exciting as the other projects, but I love it equally. 

-English Lessons: I have begun teaching English lessons at the primary school twice a week for the Standard 3s. These guys are a bit older than my preschoolers (8&9) and present a whole different bundle of challenges that I am looking forward to meeting. :)

There are a few more minor things in the works, but that is about it for now. I will post more, as more happen.

Plans for Life PPC (Post Peace Corps)

So these are a bit all over the place at this moment, but why not try and work them out of my head online for everyone to see?

At this point I have figured out that I am not going to stay an extra year...but that doesn't mean I won't apply for a 6 month extension. The current plan runs something like this: apply for 6month extension with LEGABIBO, probably get turned down because that job would involve a whole lot of politics (I 100% support Peace Corps stance on not getting involved with politics in any given country. It is what helps keep volunteers safe, and the organization legitimate), plan awesome COS trip to Southeast Asia, go on said trip, come home and readjust while looking for a job that can hold me down for about a year. After working said job for a year, find a more fulfilling job in a city and move there. See what happens after that. 

I would love to get involved with grassroots movements and I would love even more for that job to involve people, writing and activism. I am also painfully aware that I am not the only bleeding heart out there, and that these types of jobs have a lot of people competing for them, but that doesn't stop me from wanting it any less. I am not opposed to moving to Canada, and I think that everything works itself out in the end. 

At some point a few of you may be saying: "But Claire, when you left you said you were going to come back and go to graduate school!" and you would be right, I did say that....almost two years ago. 

I have figured out that I don't want to work in development all my life, and I can't thank peace corps enough for enlightening me on that one. I think activism is going to be more my thing, but there isn't exactly a graduate program for that. As it stands, the last thing I want to do is spend time and money on a Masters I won't use, so I am going to put it off for a while. Doesn't mean I won't come back, but if I do, I will be damn more certain of what I want than I am right now. 

In the case my 6 month extension is approved, I will move to Gabs and work for 6 months before doing the aforementioned plan only slightly later. As I said, I'm not thinking this is going to happen, but I am also not ruling it out. 

So I kind of have a plan...I guess? It just has a lot of holes...and unknown parts...and bits that aren't filled in. But what is the saying? 

"Men make plans and God laughs"

Will add some pictures later, hope this finds you all well :)

Claire