To be or not?

I wrote the following as a sort of helpful guide for those considering Peace Corps service. There is no single piece of advice I can give that would make your service easy. It has proven to be a truly challenging time of my life—-between overcoming cultural barriers to justifying your time in a foreign country, away from family and friends, when you have little to show for your time/work from an American perspective, you will stretch your limits.

Hopefully, the following thoughts will help to explain why I believe it to be a worthwhile experience. I am always willing to explain further so be in touch if you have any questions.


Considerations
Being in a relationship prior to leaving for service is incredibly difficult to maintain for 27 months. It is a reason many Volunteers leave service early or a part of the motivation to leave early when things are not going well during service. Be sure to give a fair amount of time to considering how you will handle a potential lack of affection and cope with not being near or
having a relationship for over two years.

The application process to becoming a Volunteer can take up to one year. If you have any medical issues expect extra paperwork and significant delays. The process is as much a test of your patience and flexibility as it is a test of effectiveness of the Peace Corps bureaucracy (Peace Corps is a government organization and therefore, you will have to deal with a fair level of
bureaucracy).

Training is intense and highly structured-—quite often in stark contrast to the remaining 24 months of service as a Volunteer.

Work is often hard to quantify from an American perspective. You must remember there are three goals of Peace Corps and the technical goal does not imply you will help build a school. Funding for projects can be difficult to find. Additionally, you may not gain specific technical skills but often you will gain greater skills in cultural understanding, patience, independence, and international affairs.

Every country is different in regards to many policies and/or how they are enforced often based on the infrastructure, technology, country director, etc. and means that it will be very difficult to compare a Volunteer’s experience in say, China, to a Volunteer’s experience in Mozambique.

Every one of the 187,000 Volunteers or Trainees that are currently serving or have served has had and will have a very unique experience.


My experience
It is likely that not a week has gone by when I have not questioned why I am still here as a Volunteer.

Cultural challenges, lack of work, lack of a long-term relationship, physical illness, and some or all of the above combining to cause near mental illness have led me to face some of the greatest challenges of my life.

On that same weekly basis, I have at least one amazing, uplifting day when I realize how incredible Moroccans are, how much they have given me, how much I have grown and how invaluable my time here has been if not for mere personal benefit.

While I do not think I would look to serve another 27 months (at least not in the near future), I am grateful for my experience and would not give it up.

I have learned basic cooking skills and first aid, and how to be more patient, flexible, persistent, humble, personally motivated, responsible, self-sufficient, kind, generous, honest, independent, and much more.

These 22 months, thus far, have provided invaluable time for personal reflection, thought, investigation, and helped me to refresh my mind. This in turn has helped me to further define my moral values, passions, and beliefs. I have committed my life to abating injustices, intolerance, violence, environmental degradation, poverty, and inequality. While I believed in
fighting many of these before, I have gained a further resolve from my experience here.

A part of my heart is and will forever be here in my village and Morocco.

By the time your final months of service are upon you, you may realize how accustomed you are to life in your country of service while you still struggle through misunderstandings. And, quite likely, you may come to be scared of the return to what once you considered normal-—that of your home in the United States.

At this point in time, you realize how incredibly distinct two lives can be. You realize you get to leave this life in-country behind while your community members most likely can not. And this, may, along with so much else, be precisely why you will never stop fighting the good fight. You realize how blessed you are and how difficult so many millions of other peoples' lives are.
And it is the reason why Peace Corps’ former motto, ‘The toughest job you’ll ever love’, could not be more true. But maybe you will come to realize that ‘job’ is not as accurate a term as is ‘life’.


Whether you decide to apply, accept an invitation, train and serve, you are challenging yourself. Remember that as a Volunteer you can choose to leave service at any point during training or your 24 months of service. Whether you complete one or 24 months, your life will change. And just maybe, someone’s life around you will have improved due to your being a part of it. But this is something you may never know.