The Beatles were right, “Life goes on.” And it often does so contrary to our wishes, dragging us kicking and screaming along its path.
Even before I arrived in Peace Corps, friends who were ex-PCVs regaled me with tales of all the crazy stuff that would happen in the course of two years abroad. I nodded at their stories, but didn’t believe any of these things would actually happen to me or people I knew. Now that I am in the last stretch of my Peace Corps service I can say, that indeed, everything that they said would happen, happened, and more.
For example, that cute little microbe above is a stuffed toy representation of the parasitic disease Giardia lamblia, which I have personally contracted three times. It is disturbingly common among PCVs and is too awful for me to describe, so if you want to know more about it, click here. Speaking of diseases, I have had two friends sent to be treated in Panama after contracting Leish Maniasis, a flesh-eating parasitic disease. I’ve known male volunteers who lost 30 pounds since their arrival in-country and many more females who have put on the dreaded Peace Corps weight. One PCV couple got divorced, a handful of other PCVs have married Ecuadorians, and I’ll be attending another PCV-Ecuadorian wedding in June. Some volunteers in my Omnibus who came in not speaking a lick of Spanish are now fluent. Some of the people I thought in training would make the most motivated volunteers left after a few months in-site. Peace Corps was evacuated from Bolivia and eleven Bolivian volunteers transferred here.
I have camped in an indigenous village in the middle of nowhere, endured 14-hour bus rides, and thrown up out of numerous bus windows. I have spent Halloween in the jungle and New Year’s on the Pacific Ocean. I’ve started some projects that have been successful and some that went nowhere. I’ve spent a lot of time in some incredibly poor villages with some of the most generous people I’ve ever met. I have given more nutrition and hygiene charlas than you can shake a stick at. I’ve spent more time alone than I probably ever will for the rest of my life. The emotional ups and downs have been unbelievable. I think I’ve learned a great deal about myself and the things that are important to me (i.e. not material things).
I have met so many amazing, pilas people with whom, years down the road, I will still be friends because they will be able to understand the experiences that no one else will. PC isn’t perfect – there are cliques here just like anywhere else in the real world – but there is still a bond among many of us that could only have been forged under these particular circumstances. This weekend, we had a despedida (goodbye party) for the Omnibus 97 kids in our cluster, and I realized that the end for my Omnibus is not so far behind. I’ve still got a lot of work (and travel) planned for the next few months, but if I stop and think about it, my time here is winding down. It’s been quite a ride.
