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.