Adventures in Humility

Adventures in Humility

 

As I’ve crossed the one year mark at my site, and things are finally active and underway, a lot has changed. Whereas before I kept adding on more and more hobbies and interests to eat up the time, I’m now trying to prioritize what’s important and what I can drop as there’s not enough time to do it all. Whereas before my main effort was poking around the community to find potential projects, I now find myself looking at an ever growing task set before me.

If you look around the web, you’ll see scores of stories of Peace Corps Volunteers who realize that their Peace Corps service isn’t what they expected it to be. Bureaucratic systems that weigh you down like a sea of molasses, working at a job where soon can mean a week and later can mean months, and struggling with cross cultural communication where knowing the local dialect is only half the battle are all common aspects of service. Dreams of helping with true development become more and more distant. For many, the journey becomes more of a personal one, than one about their adoptive community, and in truth there is no shame in that. It’s defined most of my service so far.

As I stated last time, one of my major projects coming up has been to organize the out of school youth. I’ve met with seven out of fifteen barangays, and introduced the program, recruited to people to help lay the groundwork, and received a lot of input about the situation with out of school youth. I’ve tried to emphasize at the meetings that the Unlad ng Kabataan (name of the project) isn’t a set in stone program. I want it to adjust to the community’s wants and needs. As such my role has been more of a facilitator than a manager, and the direction of the Unlad ng Kabataan is being shaped by the local officials and community members. When left to their own devices, they’ve chosen development as the main purpose, addressing the poverty in Dupax del Norte.

So, it appears that I have stumbled on the Peace Corps dream in many ways. On a project focused on underprivileged youth, the task set before me is to help coordinate the Unlad ng Kabataan to address the cycle of poverty that is stagnating the community in some parts, and in others making it worse. After being in the Peace Corps for over a year, and learning about development work in a much more profound way, I find myself filled with a great sense of humility, not because I feel honored, but because I do not have the ability to do this as things are now. I can organize youth, I can train them, I have both the knowledge and experience. I have neither when it comes to what is now being asked of me. However, I do have the ability to learn what I don’t know, and I have a lot of resources at my disposal starting with the Peace Corps. The Unlad ng Kabataan has grown much larger than I thought, and I feel a deep calm as I know that it’ll take the very best out of me for this to have a fighting chance.

Sally Forth!

I’ve learned a lot more about my community in the past weeks simply by travelling to as many barangays as I can. When geographically most of the barangays don’t have phone service, I have to resort to paper notices to communicate. Without a clear cut system to distribute notices, I’ve had to wait between half a day and a week for those notices to get distributed as people come and go to the municipal hall.

I’ve also seen first hand the transportation problem. Roads are not cheap. In fact, read any Econ 101 and you’ll see that when discussing the purpose of government, it always lists roads as a bare necessity as they are too costly for individuals to pay for, but roads are necessary for a thriving society. Dupax del Norte is doing what it can to make roads, but as we are far from the richest municipality and the mountain barangays make for some serious challenges for road construction, not everywhere is easy to get to.

One such case was Barangay Bulala. Our head officials were off on a budget meeting the other week, and with them went the municipal vehicles. Try as I might I could not find a transport, until one of my coworkers got a trike driver to agree to take me. So off we went the next morning. First we climbed the steep, steep road. Then we crossed what to most Americans would appear as a hiking trail when rocks and grass jutting up. Finally we went through the stretches of mud, having to get out and push the tricycle through it. Oh, and what is a tricycle you may ask?

 

 

A tricycle, or trike for short, is a normal motorbike with a side compartment welded onto it. Not exactly the most ideal vehicle for rugged terrain. Still, we made it, and got back. Most of my community thinks I was crazy for making the trip.

Foreign Service Exam… or Not

I talked to our Country Director (head staff person in Peace Corps Philippines) about potential jobs after my service. I know I’m at least a year out, but I really don’t want to leave the Philippines without a job knowing that student loan payments will be coming, and knowing the economy’s probably still some years away from being smooth again. First, he verified what I had been thinking all along and that it is hard to get a more career oriented job right out of the Peace Corps. To be fair, several of the volunteers in my batch who ETed (early termination) found work quickly, one getting their old job back, another two doing different things for the campaign season. Still, I feel the need to look around while I can.

One of his suggestions was to look into the Foreign Service, the people who work at embassies worldwide. To get in, there are several steps to take, the first of which is the Foreign Service Exam, a three part test, one of General Knowledge, then English Comprehension, then an Essay section. Luckily for me, I tend to do better on essays than multiple choice, and I do have a Writing Minor (I took a writing minor in college on the advice of a friend on what would be useful for a career, I think the advice was solid [because even if your job is technical, you often still have to write for it, and explain it to others]). The General Knowledge test, at least for me, is probably the most challenging covering things like US Politics, History, Culture, Management 101, geography, world events, and more. Luckily, most of that fits into my International Relations degree.

The real challenge was to decide on a career track. As you sign up for the exam, you have to choose one of five career tracks, and that career track sticks with you for your entire career (and therefore lives up to the name ‘career’ track). I had little interest in consular (the people who do visa work and work with Americans living overseas [even though almost all Foreign Service Officers start off doing consular work]) or management (pretty much typical management work only in a very different environment). However Economic, Politcal, and Public Diplomacy (works with the press, does a lot of outreach programs) all had their strengths and weaknesses to me. Of the three, economic is the least competitive, and the more I learn and read, the more crucial economics seems to me (just look at the Unlad ng Kabataan and what that’s turned into). Politics really goes to the heart of what people think diplomats do, and are the people who provide information to our policy makers. Public diplomacy is the one where cross cultural communication comes to play the most, something I’ve learned to revere and respect. In the end I chose political for several reasons I may go into at a later time. However, by waiting I missed out on getting a seat for the exam at the end of this month held in Manila. They almost got me in, but not quite. It’s okay though, there’ll be another one end of this year, or early next year. It’ll give me more time to study for the general knowledge section.

That being said, I’m not sold on whether it’s something I want to do. It definitely has my interest, but I’ll continue to look for alternatives as well. More than anything, the challenge of getting in is enticing. Even if the Foreign Service isn’t right for me, I still want to be a qualified and capable enough individual to be able to do it if I want, and I’ll only know if I take the exam.

Money, Money, Money

Financial, number one. That is what every barangay has told me so far as the cause of out of school youth. It is not the only one as broken families, lack of interest, negative encouragement from peers, and a few other things are also contributing factors. However, most youth drop out of school because they cannot afford to go. It’s not that school costs too much, it’s that their family does not make enough to support them unless they pitch in as well. It’s that a high school diploma, unlike in America, rarely offers a better job with more income than if they drop out in the second grade.

Six barangays told me this, and my response was the same. I encouraged them that yes, money was needed, but that first we needed organization. We don’t need money to get organized, but we need to get organized before we can get any money. We need to be organized so we can get money from the local government or a NGO. We need to be organized so we’ll know exactly how much we’ll need, and what exactly the money will be going towards. I also assured them all that no, I do not have oodles of American dollars just waiting to give to them.

Then came the seventh. This barangay receives the plurality of aid work. It is the third furthest barangay away. They are all too familiar with projects and aid, and when I met with their officials, I found we were all on the same page. It was refreshing for them to denounce a single, one off program, how what they need is something more consistent, a project that follows up, that is year round. However, they also brought up funding, but they did so in a way that wasn’t just asking for money, or assuming the American was there to give them funds. They’ve organized the out of school youth before, even as recent as last year. They’ve had trainings before. Their youth have been trained to be tailors, but they cannot afford to buy the fabric and materials needed to start. They’ve learned about farming techniques, but do not have the resources to get things started. No one follows up with them, and the project dies. It’s like the old Chinese saying ‘catch a fish for a man and he’ll be fed for a day, teach a man to fish and he’ll be fed for a lifetime’. However, they haven’t been given a fishing rod.

I found myself in a room of people who not only knew more about their community (which is what I expect, and why I need their assistance every step of the way), but people who knew more about development work in general. So what do I say to them? What can I offer them? Clearly I’m in over my head.

Or not. Maybe, just maybe, this is where it starts.

They convinced me, and I told them exactly that. And then I told them what I can do, and that’s to use what resources I have. First and foremost to that is being a Mr. Whitey, Mr. American. Although they are the ones who know better, if I’m the one to speak as their voice, to give their reasoning, potential funders might just listen to me more as the ‘foreign expert’. I can learn. I just read a book last month about microfinance. As I’ve grown older it seems like everything I’ve learned has a practical use that shows up quickly. I don’t think it’s fate, I think it’s that once we learn something new, we see the possibilities and potential for its use in our daily lives that otherwise was no different. I can, and have emailed my Sector Manager for what resources Peace Corps has. I can talk to other volunteers. I can get connected to not only my municipal office, but the provincial and regional offices as well. Once again I go back to how I’m filled with a sense of humility, that I will need a lot of assistance to make this possible.

And Me

I said earlier that for many volunteers, their journey becomes focused on the self. Just because I have stumbled upon this new project doesn’t mean my own life is suddenly out of the equation. As my life has become busier, I’ve struggled with my own schedule. I’m trying to learn Tagalog but I’m seeing how much more difficult it is now that I have my work and my own place to maintain than it was to learn Ilocano when I had formal classes and a host family. I’ve had trouble finding both time to work out and time to read, as I increase one to the level I want, the other drops.

And I’ve been tired.

However, I do feel with this new sense of humility I may be on the right track. I started the Unlad ng Kabataan in a big hurry. I was trying to go full steam. Study for the foreign service exam, get in better shape, keep reading, get the barangay meetings done quickly and move to the next step. Now I hear this voice telling me to wait, step back, and look at what’s important. I’m now fully invested in a project which is beyond my capabilities. What do I need to do to make up for that? What do I need to do to support myself so that I’ll stay healthy, ease my stress, and generally just enjoy life as I move forward? I’m still working on those answers, but I feel they’ll come in time.

I’m so not a perfectionist. Heh.

So What’s Coming Up

More barangay meetings. Seven down, eight to go. I have a date set for my training of the youth government this October 18^th. Our Mid-Service Training (MST) where we get our medical and dental exams after a year in country, and where my batch of volunteers will all meet together for the last time until the end of our service is the week of October 22^nd. Hopefully some answers on what’s important and not so I’ll have an active (but not too active) life beyond the work. No doubt a lot of learning as I into the full swing of this development gig.

Oh, and facial hair. We’re doing the time honored tradition of “Stache Bash” for MST. I’m growing a full beard out which after almost three weeks grown, and a little over three weeks to go, is filling in well enough. At MST I’ll shave the beard and leave the mustache which I’m sure will be quite the look. Yep.