Three More Months

I have three more months until I leave for Kenya. I’m trying not to get too excited. Sometimes I daydream about potential adventures and notice I’ve already wasted 20 minutes of the day. I have to remember to keep my excitement at bay. Words to live by when faced with new prospects:

It’s a marathon, not a sprint.

If I expend too much energy daydreaming about the Peace Corps, I won’t have any energy left to actually prepare for it. The same goes for any eventuality. If you waste valuable time being anxious or too excited for an upcoming event, you lose the opportunity to live in the present and take advantage of what’s happening now.

I recently met a returned volunteer that served in Africa. Some useful advice:

• Buy a head light to watch out for snakes hiding in the toilet 
• Take prenatal pills (super pills for the undernourished) 
• Avoid a type of malaria medication that induces hallucinations 
• Don’t be an easy target 

And most importantly,

• Your job as a volunteer isn’t to change anyone or anything. Your job is to understand. It is the hope that with mutual understanding and trust, you can eventually help the community you serve.

In A Jane Austen Education, William Deresiewicz says:

“The job of a teacher, I now understood, is neither to affirm your students’ notions nor to fill them with your own. The job is to free them from both.”

Wise words, Mr. D. I hope to overcome the community members’ skepticism of my seemingly neo-colonialist attitude to eventually build a rapport with them. I can’t attempt to serve the community if I don’t understand first. And from experience, mutual understanding often begets mutual trust. And I think that is a pretty good basis for teaching well. 

Nostalgia

I’m a nostalgic person. And ever since I was officially invited, I’ve had many dreams of people from my past. We’ve all made a bunch of mistakes and have learned from them. And I consider myself a relatively emotionally healthy person. So what accounts for the nostalgia? I’ve never thought much about it, but the dreams prompted the questioning of my chronic nostalgia.

There are pros and cons to being nostalgic.

Pros: Reflecting on the past can be healthy. It’s a review of my life. If I’m unhappy about an aspect of my life, I’m given the opportunity to reflect and possibly fix the problem by seeking closure. 

Cons: The con to being nostalgic is the probability of never looking forward. I’ve made a lot of mistakes. But perhaps looking back at all those mistakes won’t always offer an opportunity to learn because I may continually make those same mistakes.

So I’ve categorized my nostalgia in two forms: 

1. Reflecting for closure

2. Dwelling for self-pity

I don’t mean to put all my eggs in one basket, but I hope my Peace Corps experience can help reduce my frequency for self-pity by teaching me how to increase my capacity for resilience and for frankly, getting over myself.

Four More Months

I was officially invited to serve as a Deaf Education Volunteer. If I pass further legal and medical reviews, I’ll depart for Kenya in four months. That means I have four months to start learning Kenyan Sign Language (KSL).

I’m actually quite intimidated to learn KSL because first of all, I’m not even fluent in American Sign Language (ASL). So I sometimes lack the natural flow and grace that fluent signers seem to have. I once saw two deaf people get into an argument, and the way they signed reminded me of an intricate, modern dance. Second, I’m not taking up KSL to simply converse and get around. I have to teach in KSL. But I’m hopeful for an easy assimilation and confident that YouTube will again serve as the makeshift teacher I could always rely on.

So here’s to the next four months! Perhaps I should also brush up on modern dance fundamentals.