Friday, March 19, 2010

A More Perfect Union


I have been here since tuesday. I got amoebas. Maldita amoebas!
I just have diarrhea. And I have lost about 10 pounds since tuesday.
On friday the newest group of trainees were sworn in, bound by the
constitution and the truths therein to uphold the ideals from which
John F Kennedy created the Peace Corps Act. To volunteer and help.

Friday night we welcomed the newly trained volunteers to a night of drinking and dancing and all around rump shaking. It was a great night, and also something of an initiation. Imagine if you will, a group of mainly 23 to 30 year olds who for two months were "not allowed" to drink during training, being served at the embassy with some of the best food in one of the most beautiful/elegant places I have been to (seriously there is a Marine that opens up the bathroom doors), and then being finally allowed to drink on the eve of your first day in site. It is not a joke. It's swearing in day.

Fortunately me and the other veteran volunteers stayed an extra night to make sure we could walk properly back into our sites. We spent most of the day recovering, watching shows in english on TV, and catching up with people back in America. There was something I knew about Peace Corps before coming here that I had yet to experience. Peace Corps Volunteers. I knew a few before coming here, the brother of a friend who I had a spanish class with, and also the friend of a friend that I got to know before coming. Both guys were so incredible.

Every group that comes in brings in their own personality.
What I have noticed is that in this country with every volunteer that I have met I am at awe at how weird I do not feel. I was in shock for the first few months at how well we all felt around each other. Like we knew each other before, like we went to school together, or swam at the Sea horse together, or were made to play with each other because our parents were friends and yet we grew up and still liked each other even though our parents weren't friends anymore.
I hardly feel normal. What is normal? If I hardly feel normal
then maybe what I feel is what is normal and what I hardly feel
is not normal. What I feel around volunteers, and around the
people in my group is something that I am trying to learn to
explain.
Community is the closest thing to describe it. Its much more than that.
It is like being with a lot of people who are so much like you, and sharing a
sense of service, and passion, and love for the people, and this country, and
your own country, and any other country, and unity in moving forward. Forward.
Moving forward.
I am trying to learn how to bring that back. One of the goals of the Peace Corps.
And something America really needs today. Not for progression of this party or
that party, not for the gain of more capital, and most certainly not because we are
the best maldito country in the world. Because everyone is watching. Because we
got off to a bad start and we move forward and it gets better. We see in each
other something that feels normal. We know that there is some way for us to
volunteer. And help.