One year finished, what did we learn?

So it has been official for nearly a month now but I feel it’s still relevant to address the fact that I’ve reached the halfway point in my service. It makes complete sense to me, standing here, now why the Peace Corps asks you to commit two full years to service. It took me this long to even get an idea of what I can do if I want to. Granted, that makes it sound like my abilities are fully known and my options are listed on a sheet of paper, which is of course, not even slightly true. I will be learning and developing relationships till the day I leave, that’s just how it goes. But all in all, I feel as though I have command, albeit limited, of the situation. They say during training it takes a year to become fully comfortable; it does. They also say it takes a year to get the Swahili skills; it does not. It takes longer….at least for me. But I am working on it and I do see improvements. But I’m not going to worry about that because I’ve written plenty on that topic.

I had a productive exercise the other day. I took what I feel I can do, and wrote down what projects within that I think I would like to do in the coming year. I came up with a semi-surprisingly attainable list of goals. It was mostly made up of quality education and adding valuable non-academic information about lifestyle and health. But things like develop a library, within a Tanzanian budget, are things that are happening. It made me somewhat reflective on what I have learned while in country, and so I present to you, with no order whatsoever, and a range of sincerity, the things that I think I’ve learned in the last year:

1) Whoever made the connection between cocks crowing and dawn isn’t awake at any other time of day. It doesn’t matter if it’s day, night, or twilight. Those annoying birds will crow at any time, making eating them all the easier.

2) How to study. I used to think I knew what it meant to study, and to some degree I was right. But when I have to teach a concept I’ve never seen before, based in a science I didn’t do so well in, the true meaning of understanding becomes much more apparent. I’ve shared this anecdote several times, but my sitemate Theo and I were once discussing over lunch our preparations for class. In our commenting about the 3-5 textbooks open at a time, working slowly through material to get the details, and the vigorous note taking, I realized that I had truly studied for the first time. They say the third step in learning is teaching, and I believe it 110%. You wont learn more material faster but still effectively than if you’re expected to teach it to 40 kids the next day.

3) I have some really strange hobbies, and very selective commitment to them. In the same way that I could spend hours looking at weather forecasts and stories when I was a kid, I’ve developed, if possible, even further my affinity for transportation planning. Perhaps the time consumption is so high because I don’t have the tools I could potentially acquire in the states to speed up production. But I have filled nearly 100 pages of a workbook with ideas for a transportation plan for Wichita. I do want it to be considered but I recognize the impracticality of it, especially right now. Still, it is satisfying to produce something that, at least when looked at through my biased eyes, would effectively serve, and even develop the community.

4) I just don’t do as well with languages. I am able to learn when I give it effort and use it frequently, but if it is not something I am forced to use every day it can fall by the wayside and I don’t learn via osmosis in the way I can with the sciences. It still takes lots of practice and I have to give the effort, but for now it just seems like a lot more work than it’s worth, given I can get what I need day to day.

5) I really can cook; I just don’t think I want to most of the time. I actually enjoy cooking, when it’s a shared task. It is also quite satisfying to produce an enjoyable meal that is both filling and tasty. The problem is, when it’s just me, cooking for an hour for 10-15 minutes of eating seems not worth it. Therefore I end up with the same pasta every night with the same spices and the same filled but unsatisfied stomach. This should be a fairly limited issue as once I have someone who would get upset by the blandness of my meals, I’ll have someone to help me cook something better!

6) Apparently drugs are even less effective on me than I had previously thought. So I’m taking Mephaquin once a week, which is an anti-malarial medicine. The side effects can include insomnia and vivid dreaming. I know I’m a big guy, but when we arrived in country, we took a large dose to get it into our system. Many people didn’t sleep for two whole days but I actually slept really well considering the fact that I was also suffering from jet lag. Another side effect has been an upset stomach but that has only happened when I took the pill on an empty stomach.

7) Speaking of upset stomachs, they can ruin your day if you’re not careful. My time in country has been somewhat marred by a recurrent digestive issue resulting in abdominal cramping and long stints in the bathroom. At this point, I’ve accepted it as part of the experience and I work around it. I usually can recognize the onset of trouble and take appropriate action. I have yet to have it be a debilitating issue but we’ll see where the adventure goes!

8) Staying in the same theme. Weight loss has been fantastically easy! All you have to do is not eat anything of nutritional value very often and consume all filler foods. It’s worked without any real attempt to control the situation on my end. I eat fairly well on the weekends and I’m still significantly slimmer. I think it’s all the stuff in American food but between my digestive problems and the lack of worthy nutrition in the food I do eat, I have effectively returned my weight to the range I should be.

9) Culture runs so much deeper than ethnic clothing and dance. Maybe this was obvious for other people but I remember a discussion of culture always being accompanied by a picture of some non-Caucasian in ethnic get up doing some sort of dance. Still today, even in Tanzania, tribes who define themselves independently of Tanzanians can be identified by the clothing they wear. Yet, I’m finding cultural differences extend to everything from outlook on life to food preferences. For example, the people of Tanzania are very often fatalists and feel that what happens to them is out of their hands. (Yes Peace Corps I acknowledge you did teach that but I, predictably, didn’t file it away as important). Mungu akipenda (literally translated: if God likes), I will go to school next year. I think in America we would generally agree that that is mostly in our hands to decide and work through but here it really is mostly left up to God. Unfortunately, that approach also removes one from responsibility for failure, as it wasn’t my fault! God just didn’t want it to happen so it didn’t matter how hard I tried. While, there are obviously exceptions to the rule, they also are a culture of reproducing what’s given to them. I have seen a tailor turn down business because he was asked to make a shirt out of cloth that was sewn together as a skirt. it was plenty of cloth but because it wasn’t started from the simple flat sheet he was used to, he was unable to make the shirt.

10) I imitate not innovate. On the same lines as my Tanzanian students, I have a hard time thinking outside the box sometimes. I take what I see as a good idea and I apply it to a situation. My teaching is mostly made up of lecture since my students are a step away from college. Although, when I do try and make the experience more engaging, I find myself reverting to those who taught me and trying to emulate their very successful teaching methods. When I work with my transportation things, I tend to choose the most appropriate already-established idea for the given situation (or at least recently I have, LRT for Wichita notwithstanding :P), not thinking of some creative new system. (Although it could just be that there aren’t better alternatives :P) I recognize being truly innovative is really hard and perhaps beyond me, so I’ll take what I can be good at and further develop those skills.

11) I’m irrationally devoted to things at times. I have finished tv shows and books while I’ve been here just to say that I did. On more than one occasion despite not really enjoying the subject of my attention but I finished it to say I had. I’m not really sure what this says about me as a person, but I find myself wondering why I do it, only to realize three hours later I’m back watching the tv show “to finish it.”

And I’m out of ideas that come immediately to mind. Back to serious, I think it’s easy to look at something like Peace Corps service and see only the few central goals. Teaching school and educating about health issues are the really obvious surface issues. But 2/3 of the point of Peace Corps is cultural exchange and establishing relationships and developing them. Inadvertently, you begin to discover things about yourself which you’re then forced to acknowledge, develop, and utilize. I have my goals for the second half of service, all of which are attainable if I put my mind to it. I have to see the potential places where I can fail and either mitigate the risk or recruit someone else to help where I’d fail. I’m excited about the next 6-8 months with the possibilities, so we’ll see how it goes!