It seems as though every time I go to write a blog post, I convince myself to wait a week to allow myself more time to report on projects with more certainty. I’ve come to realize that projects will always have things hanging in the balance, at least for me. Two years is a short amount of time to be working on community projects, especially when the first couple months are dedicated to mastering the language and discovering community needs. A year in, I can say with confidence that two years won’t be enough to see most of my projects come to fruition, and though that truth was initially hard to accept, it’s okay.
My relationship with time, especially within the context of Peace Corps is love/hate. Some days I curse the amount of time that I have left because it seems daunting that I still have another year to go, but more often than not, I curse the amount of time that I have left because it’s not enough. As volunteers with a finite amount of time to get things done, our internal clocks are always ticking.
It’s easy to feel rushed when the time limit is 27 months and even easier to feel frustrated at community members when they don’t feel the same urgency. Unlike me, however, community members don’t have a finite amount of time to see community projects through and have lives outside of these projects. I will come and go and they will continue on without the gringa as they did before I arrived.
Initially, I wanted to look back on my service and be able to see physical change in the community, a symbol that I left an impact during these two years. I felt this way up until recently when a friend said to me: “You aren’t there for your own success.” All at once I realized just how selfish I had been. Rushing this process might make me feel more successful as a volunteer, but ultimately would make the projects less sustainable and less beneficial for the community than they should be. Seems simple, but took me a while to see.
In the first year I mostly learned…about myself, the culture of Costa Rica, Spanish, where I fit in this community, and the dynamics of my pueblo. With all I have learned, I feel confident going forward and realize that it’s okay to be “necia” to get things done, and maybe most importantly, how to manage expectations -- to be realistic about what can be accomplished, and let go of the things beyond my reach.
That being said, this mid service marker has been also an important opportunity for reflection and celebration looking back on the past year. I’m proud of what I accomplished both personally and professionally.
In year one, I gave two community English classes, one youth entrepreneurship course, a women’s entrepreneurship course, helped the women’s group create a project proposal and timeline, started the project planning process with the development association to build a community kitchen, started the recycling program in my community, got way better at Spanish, lived with two host families, lived alone, traveled Costa Rica, adopted a dog (kind of), and have read more, drawn more, ran more, cooked more, and drank more coffee than I ever have in my life.
When days/weeks/months move slowly, its easy to forget what’s changed in a year. Of course, there’s a list of things I still want to accomplish in year two, but it’s important to celebrate and reflect on what’s happened in year one that’s brought me to this point. With this post, I bid farewell to year one, and face year two head on.
