Hardest Thing

One of the most common questions I get as a Volunteer is what is the hardest part of my service. There are a million answers to this, depending on the day, depending on my mood or what may be irking me, but we are going to look into some of the big ones.

The first and foremost for this is loneliness, hands down this is the most common “hard thing” I deal with on a daily basis. I’m a people person so being on my own is difficult, and it has only gotten worse as my service has gone on. I used to be SO PUMPED about weekends on my own, weekends where I could write and clean and read a book and just enjoy my time without having to worry about work or inter cultural communication. Now I dread them. I’m sitting here in my house writing this blog post on Botswana Labor Day because sitting in my house alone makes me desperate. Do I really have any business posting stuff this personal online? I guess my shot at a political career was probably killed when I started talking about sex toys and lube J

On a particularly emo day I wrote into an online advice site once and asked “How do I deal with loneliness?” Their answer focused along the lines of being okay being by myself and making sure that I wasn’t afraid of being alone because I was afraid of the company I would keep. Unfortunately, this isn’t really my situation, maybe it was at one point, but I truly believe I have passed beyond it. I still do need alone time, truly, but the amount I get is too much for an extrovert that needs someone to debate politics with, who doesn’t cook very well unless she is cooking for someone else, and who likes to talk about the books she is reading with other people. I live 30mins car ride from the closest Volunteer, which in Peace Corps land means practically next door, but I want to be around people more often. I want to be able to talk gender, politics, identity and race with people that can follow me, and don’t immediately switch to “homosexuals are Satanists”, or just have those conversations without having to tip toe and wonder if I am going to put myself in danger. That just isn’t possible with where I am currently living.

The next biggest thing is that I tend to over compensate with those I am trying to communicate with back home, which I then over think about, and then stress out about. I am one of those types of people who can be pretty damn confident in person, but have a lot more confidence issues when communicating through writing (which is weird because I LOVE communicating through writing.) Example, one of my absolute FAVORITE bloggers asked for politically minded people to watch a video of them answering questions that mostly dealt with intersectional points between race, fetish, sexuality, identity and gender, and to give them feedback on language and possible touchy points. I was SO desperate to be a part of conversations like this, and to be a part of the work they are doing that I stupidly offered to do so. I have very little formal training on gender work, I have slightly more education on race and pretty much my entire library of queer knowledge has been acquired due to my own initiative here, through online blogs, books, conversations with the LGBT community in Botswana, and my own experiences. I HAVE NO BUSINESS CRITIQUING A GENDER EXPERT!!

I watched the video, took running notes throughout about what I would have gone about differently and proceeded to write almost four pages to this person. I edited, re edited, took out the majority of my opinions, and re worded things a million times. I was worried that they would think I hadn’t watched the video, which would come off as unprofessional, and seeing as I want to do similar work when I get back, I didn’t want them to think I had just forgotten about it, so I sent it. I sent it and then I freaked the hell out. This is an email, this individual doesn’t know me in person and though I meant everything I pointed out from a loving perspective, sending opinions on race and identity through an email can get so twisted, and they are an expert, and who did I think I was??? I also riddled the email with small jibes at myself about how I wasn't qualified to do this, which just made me look more like a psycho. I called my partner and proceeded to freak to them about what I had done, and which point they tried to get me to calm down.

You know the GENDER book I was plugging in a few different posts on here? As much as I have only received positive feedback from the group that are running the project, I still worry that they view me as the freaky girl in Botswana who is a little stalkery in her enthusiasm. I sent an email to Ivan Coyote, whose books have been an amazing support and outlet for me here, and all I can think about it how, after the second update on how the support group was doing, that they probably weren’t interested and I was probably wasting their time...DESPITE the fact that they sent me a book...a signed book. You question yourself here in so many ways that you never would have thought about back home because you have too much time to be in your own head. I get that this is a normal process for a 24, soon to be 25 year old, and I can’t wait to get a little older, and to be a little bit more stable in myself, but I have the ability to be such a confident mofo, and the isolation just points out so much that is hard to escape and it throws me off my game.

Thirdly, and this is a super duper fun one, Peace Corps can sometimes act as this weird twilight zone kind of space when viewing your past and your future. I will preface this one with the fact that this maybe a specific experience for someone who has joined the service young. It is your real life, but it is nothing like the life before, so it is hard to mesh them together. It makes you question things like whether or not you actually want to live in the united states for the rest of your life, it makes you wonder about whether or not this nomadic type living may be what you want forever. It makes you think about what your life would be like had you stuck on the course that some of your friends had, like graduate school, or getting married, or babies. A friend of mine had an INTENTIONAL CHILD! I had a friend who had been married for a few years and actually planned, and succeeded in getting pregnant. I had friends who had unintentional babies, which was wonderful and still a delightful surprise, but people my age are now planning on getting pregnant and...you know...doing it...DOING IT FOR THE SAKE OF BABIES!

I’m planning a trip for after COS, and it was supposed to be Kilimanjaro but it doesn’t appear like I am going to be able to get a big enough group for it, so I’m planning something else. What I really want to do is go to Mongolia for the Naadam Festival which is this awesome nomad sports competition, which includes one of the largest horse races in the world. I want to do this, because the logical choice of Spain, seems to easy for me now. It doesn’t seem like enough of a travel challenge. SPAIN, I’m such a snooty world person now, that freaking Spain, which is one of the most interesting cultural clashes in the world of Islamic and Christian empires, doesn’t seem like it would be interesting enough. I have half a free ticket through British Airlines, which doesn’t fly to Mongolia, but does to Spain, and still I am thinking about Mongolia. I have spent the last 2 yrs getting paid about $300 a month, and half a plane ticket isn’t tempting me enough to knock out other options.

Stupid Peace Corps...

So the hardest thing about Peace Corps, is being in Peace Corps. It is going to open you up, rip out your insides, smoosh them around, and then put them back in you and do a shoty job of stitching you up. It’s going to make you question, and doubt and turn things around over and over in your head so much that they wear a track between your frontal lobe and the left and right hemispheres of your brain. It’s being your only option for company, and cooking for one, and questioning whether or not your role models think you are creepy, and at the end of the day going to bed, knowing you are going to have to wake up and do it all over again.

The best part of Peace Corps, is knowing that you can, and that you will, and that the painful process of expansion leaves you with a version of yourself that you love that much more.

It really is the hardest job you will ever love...

Thanks for reading my freak out, hope all is well where you are!

Claire