We received our permanent sight assignments today.
I will be in a very small village (about 400 people) on the south side of the island (Upolu) just over the mountain from my current training village. Four of my teammates are also on this island along with 3 others from Team 84. The other 10 members of team 85 and I believe 9 or 10 members of Team 84 are on the other island (Savai’i.) The school where I will be teaching is one of the smallest with only about 100 students and 5 teachers. Apparently my pule (principal) is a very sweet woman who is very open to letting me do pretty much whatever I’d like. My school’s library was built by another Peace Corps Volunteer several years ago so I hear it is very good–I will be teaching my classes in the library and since my school does not currently have one, I will likely be acting as librarian. It also sounds like the school already has some progressive habits in regards to the library – holding activities in the space and letting students leave with books in their hands – surprisingly rare here. Many school libraries are essentially storage rooms filled with anything the teachers don’t want in their classrooms but can’t throw away, along with unopened boxes of donated books.
I heard my host family is on the larger side, but it doesn’t sound like there are any young children (I think, 4 teenagers, parents, a grandmother and possibly some aunts/uncles/cousins.) I will be living on their property in my own little house that they are currently building for me. The project coordinator said she hopes it will be finished in time for me to move in. They were asked to build a bathroom with a toilet and shower inside the house for me which would be way above and beyond what I’ve been expecting. While I do not have an ocean view like some of my teammates, I am apparently walking distance from a beautiful beach. My village is fairly remote – about an hour and a half bus ride from Apia (the capital city), and I do not know how often the busses run. The closest person from my team (I’m guessing about 45 minutes to an hour away) only receives busses in his village on Mondays, Wednesday, Fridays and Saturdays. A girl from Team 84 is one or two villages over from me, about a 15 minute walk apparently. I’m sure she will fill me in on all the logistics. I will go and stay with her for a 2 nights this week and get to visit my school.
I feel exhausted.
We knew this announcement was coming, and I bound myself up in knots feeling nothing about it. Like balancing on a wire. Recently, one of my teammates commented that we’ve almost completely lost the ability to distinguish between excitement and anxiety. Everything is just, “THIS IS WHAT’S HAPPENING RIGHT NOW!” and we reserve judgement about whether it’s a happy feeling or a less-happy feeling until after it’s over (which it never is. We live here now.) One by one we sat down with the project leaders and received our 10 minutes of information about the next 2 years of our lives, then ran back to the group to relay everything we’d heard 6 times and write our names on a map someone had the forethought to bring. When it was all over, and we all knew and felt what we would feel in that first hour, I yawned and said, “I feel like I spent all of my energy today being anxious.” My friend, (who sits next to me and watched bemused as I chewed my thumbnail and twisted my fingers all day) looked at me sidelong and said, “That’s because you did.”
Of course I had imagined both a best-case scenario and a terrible worst case-scenario and logically I know that neither was likely or even possible. A few of my teammates had a fairly good idea of where they would be placed (and most of them were close or correct), but I was without an inkling. I offered no preferences and I don’t have any specific secondary projects they brought me here to do, so I was a puzzle piece that fit anywhere. “Very flexible, I like that.” The project director said when she gave me the opportunity to offer any opinions. “I’m choosing to be flexible.” I answered, and it’s a choice I continue to almost successfully make moment to moment.
It was Schrödinger’s Cat and I didn’t want to open the box. I liked yesterday better than today because I could be hopeful and today I have to be realistic. Realistically optimistic? Almost? I’m reserving judgement. I will make the best of it – I will figure out how to navigate my family. I will create a space that is my own. I will adapt to my work environment. Etc. Whenever I told anyone I was joining the Peace Corps, they would usually ask about the isolation. “They send you out all by yourself? Won’t you be lonely?” and I always said no. I like being alone. It’s easier for me than being with people. Honestly, the isolation was part of the appeal. But they never tell you that before they send you out by yourself, they lock you in a room with 14 other people for 8 weeks and torture you together until you can’t imagine being away from each other. THEN you’re on your own. Released into the wild. Training is boot camp. Everyone has said that this is the hardest part – if we survive, all the rest will seem easy. That is good news, but I almost don’t want it to end. I’m afraid that the people I’ve made into my family will drift away like icebergs and we will go back to who we were before this strange thing began.
Of course that is impossible. We will never be the same. That is why we wandered here. It will test us in all the ways we need to be tested and stretch us in all the ways we are least flexible, and strengthen us both in ways we were already strong and in ways we never knew we were weak. I did yoga today for the first time in my life. Running will be a challenge because I’m a girl (maybe I’ll make one of my host sisters run with me. Ooh! On the beach!) so I asked a friend to teach me something I could do inside my house. My muscles are neither strong nor flexible. Like my heart. They groan and complain with each new position, whine like babies. They resist tension, want to be at rest, always begging to be released. But you deny their requests. You listen to them closely and carefully. Adjust, and create more, better tension. You breathe. And hold. Tremble, adjust, and hold. And breathe. Deepen. And exhale.
not all who wander 