investments...

Unfortunately, this post is not about hot tips from emerging African markets...but you probably figured I wouldn't have those in the first place.
No, this is about the (sometimes) far less lucrative investment of time in people and places. I have now invested almost 10 months in Rwanda and almost 8 months out East at my site. Sometimes I feel like this investment has returned dividends 10x what I put in. Sometimes I feel like I've lost my shirt. The most bizarre thing is that often, I'm not even sure of my investment. Do I measure it in time? In people left behind? In exertion of energy? In number of headaches? In moments of embarrassment? All of the above?
Then the question becomes how to measure the returns? When you're not dealing with money it's all obviously a lot more subjective. This all makes the question, "Is it worth it?" really, really tough to answer. Most of the time I just have to trust that my inner economist will stop me when I become irrational, when what I am getting back is less than what I'm putting into it.
It's weird too, I suppose, to be thinking of those sorts of things in my line of work. Isn't the whole point of leaving everything I left to be less selfish? Shouldn't I be worrying about what I am giving and not what I'm getting? The answer is, "yes." BUT, I guess through all of this I find I'm inching my way towards the 'No True Altruism' camp. Yes, I do want to spend my life helping people and investing my time and energy in that, BUT it's because that's what makes me happy. My joy comes from helping other people and seeing the benefits they get from my energy and work. I said it before that I think it takes all kinds and this is just my kind. This kind is still human. My ultimate goal in life is still to be happy. Again, how do you measure that happy? I guess we have to spend our whole life figuring that out and like most other things, it's just a little trickier to know here in Rwanda.

options...

Options seem like a great idea. But they get unsettling rather quickly when they become variables. Think about it, when making a decision it's nice to have a lot options so you can chose the one that is best for you...but it always becomes complicated and headache-inducing when all these unknown variables come into play. You have to make a best guess for what you think is the most likely outcome and base your decision on that. That's all just too uncertain for me, too many qualifiers.

That's life I guess, you only get to decide a few of your conditions, sometimes you get to set the things that matter most, as your absolutes; we all have those limits. But, what if they're only limits given the circumstances of your current situation? If this experience has taught me anything, it's that some things are way more negotiable then I ever thought they were and some things are way LESS negotiable than I hoped they would be. The most bizarre thing and easiest to think of (because of how superficial it is)...cafe culture. Who knew that this would become something I can't live without?? Now granted, I don't need a starbucks, I've created a culture (with the help of Danae) in tiny tea shops off dirt roads where they're milking the cow right then and then boiling it's milk over a fire. BUT it's a cafe nonetheless, after making some strategic alliances with cafe proprietors I can sit in there (relatively undisturbed) and sip my Nescafe and read my book...or talk for hours. Maybe my brain is only at optimal functioning over a cup of coffee or maybe it's the sounding board in the form of the friend across from me.
The other slightly less superficial is the necessity for other people in my life. Maybe I'm best with an audience (inherited from my mother), maybe it's because I was raised in a house of 6 and then moved into a quad dorm and then a co-op of 24... but regardless of the determining factor, I need people. I need someone to cook for and watch movies with. Living on my own is possible, but I just end up talking to myself a little too much.

This is all very theoretical and nebulous at the moment and not a great post after my two weeks absence, but something more interesting will undoubtedly be playing at soon, if not in the events of this weekend, than in the events of the next week. Stay tuned...

somebody to lean on...

So I'm sorry if my posts haven't been very uplifting lately. This journey isn't known as an emotional roller coaster for nothin'. I've had some bumps recently but I'm hoping things are starting to smooth out. I would thus like to expound on something about this experience that can't be overstated...My fellow volunteers are the most wonderful support I have, or any of us has. My parents have had an outstanding ability to listen to me whine and cry and blabber on joyfully about everything and my friends have been a constant source of encouragement at every point. But those two have also been huge pulls. In all of this, while here, while trying to work, you're constantly in the midst of a trans-continental tug of war. Now, I'm sure people aren't intentionally trying to push or pull, but it happens none the less. You talk to someone and even as they're telling you how proud and impressed they are, you're thinking how much you'd like to hear that face-to-face. How much nicer it'd be to be talking about these things over drinks or a cup of coffee. They unconsciously pull you back when they talk about their life, you think about what'd you be doing if you were there, where you'd be going, whom you'd be seeing, and even when they talk about their problems, you think about how once you too thought about those problems. I mean, where are the days when you'd wonder about when your phone contract would be up so you could upgrade or how you're going to possibly get all those papers done before your caffeine buzz runs out (esp. since Starbucks closes at 10). I don't mean to trivialize those things at all, they are our concerns and in the absence of such vital concerns as "will i eat today? will there be water tomorrow?" we look to the next set. I don't think there's anything wrong with looking at those problems, it's not our fault that our problems are less life and death. Even addressing the vital problems of people here can't be done by everyone and that's good, because it'd be a lot harder for me to get here and eventually, a job. Rest assured, I will not be attempting to steal anyone's position in accounting or engineering or nursing. I guess my point is, it takes all kinds. ALL KINDS.
And though I've strayed on a tangent, my original point is I miss those kinds of problems. I miss my old life and I got a glimpse of it when I came home, and that's been a huge part of why it's been so difficult for me recently. I tend to let my mind wander and it's been wandering away from this and being pulled back by the amazing people I left at home.
But I've luckily been pushed back by my amazing people here. My fellow volunteers remind me so much of my fellow Rotary exchange students. We are the only people who understand each other. Our daily struggles are the same with little deviation. I've found by reading other Peace Corps blogs, that many of these struggles even transcend the sector in which we work or the continents on which we live. We ask of ourselves and each other the same questions. And usually, while people back home can make you happy again, only the people here can make you sane again. People at home remind you of who you were but you wonder if that's no longer who you are. You start to question everything about yourself here and my fellow PCVs here remind me I'm not crazy, 'this is how things are', 'it's all part of the process', 'you're not a failure when things fall through'. They remind me to ease up on the guilt every time I'm away from my village. They remind me to ease up on guilt every time I feel I'm not doing enough. They remind me that today is just today and you never know what will happen tomorrow...and isn't it just as likely that tomorrow will be amazing? Isn't it just as likely that some part of tomorrow will remind me why I came here? Isn't it just as likely that tomorrow I'll wonder how I could ever leave? Those people have saved me so many times and I appreciate that more than they could ever know. We all have at least one person that has been our rock through this whole experience, so thanks, Danae thanks for listening and saving me time and time, again. I only hope to do the same every now and again.

complimentary!

Can censorship help heal Rwanda?

This is an article my friend David sent me that's quite interesting and touches on a lot of the same things I touched on in some of my recent posts. Thoughts??

Feb-bru-haha

I guess it's already February. Today, I have been in Rwanda 9 months. This is twice the amount of time I spent in Paris or Ireland and at this point in my time in Brazil, I was counting the days and prepping to head out and on to BU. But I certainly didn't feel the same way about that time as I have about this time and at this point.
It's been kinda a tough month. This week we'll have our third person leaving from my group. Technically, it'll be the fifth person but the first two left during training and these three have all gone in the past 5 weeks. In the spirit of full disclosure, I have also been in the midst of applying to a Master's in Development Practice program at Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin. I found the program in a fit of unhappiness and free internet. It's pretty typical to periodically check some favorites and plan for the post-PC days. I'm not dead-set on anything, but I get accepted to this program it'll be hard to say NO. It's bizarrely well-suited for me and I'd love to go back to Ireland, especially if I can do it with Fed. student loans and for half the price of Grad school in the states.
I'm still actively trying to put things together here and working with our senior staff on things that I can do to work through the problems I have been having at site. I really do want to stay and I want to help and I want to work through all the bad to say that I did and made something great of it. It's hard not to think of leaving early as a failure when you commit to the two years...and at the outset, you can't possibly imagine leaving early. BUT...once that idea gets into your head and all the possibilities of what you could do with that year begin to surface....it's hard to move away from that. It's hard to try and make big plans when nothing in your life seems permanent. My housing is still in the process of being changed, my job description is still in flux, and even my rocks, the people (PCVs) around me that I have come to rely on so much, are falling away.

I've had to accept a few things recently:
1. I'm motivated by motivating other people and this is not the same as motivating myself.
2. I need other people by whom I'm challenged, intellectually stimulated and loved by in my life.
3. Neither of those things makes me a weak person.