Saturday, May 25, 2013

New Responsibilities and Old Questions

This blog post is long overdue. At the end of April I found out that my year extension was approved, and I was selected to become the new Peace Corps Volunteer Leader. Because there was no PCVL from the previous batch, I’m starting to take on the responsibilities early on. We’re still working out where I’m needed most, but starting in June, I’ll be away from my site roughly half of my time to assist our staff in Manila, or elsewhere in the country.

For those at home, I will have a required month leave in America sometime this Fall TBD, and then it’s a third year. My new closing of service date is October 22, 2014.

New Responsibilities
Although a lot of what I’ll do is still up the air, there’s a few ideas that have been passed around, plus a few things which are a given. First and foremost, I’m supposed to be a resource to both other volunteers and our staff. For the volunteers that’s mostly being a good role model, and being there for questions and concerns they have. I can also inform volunteers of staff’s perspective. Since I’ll be working closely with our staff, it gives me a chance to see firsthand why things are the way they are.

Batch 272’s pre-service training is coming up in July, which I’ll be a part of. Try to help them get a good set of expectations as they go into their service. Challenge them to learn the language not to pass the assessment, but to be able to work that much better with their communities. Emphasize that they are there to assess what the community wants, not push their own agenda. Understand that though not a lot of work will get done at the beginning of service, the relationships they build in the community is what will make the later part of their service exceptional. And so on.

Other potential jobs will be to do different assessments such as looking at potential sites for volunteers, seeing our success in different areas of the Philippines, seeing how well certain programs and committees work. There may be some tedious tasks such as database entries, but we all do our share with that kind of work. I’m also hoping to make sure we’re messaging as well as we can to our current national partners, and to find new ones as well. Perhaps network more with other foreign volunteer agencies.

Of course, this needs to be balanced with the work I’m already doing at site. Though I feel pretty confident I can get my work done at site only half the time there, the challenge will be schedule things. Postponement, rescheduling, lateness are common in the Philippines, and whereas before I’ve had a very flexible schedule, that won’t be the case anymore.

Foreigners!
I had the chance to go to a “Volunteer Sharing Session”. We had volunteers from Australia, Germany, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, and America. It was a lot fun getting to see other foreign volunteers and what problems were unique, and which ones affected us all. Know more people who work in Manila now which will be good since I’ll be in the city a lot more, and after the conference a pretty mixed group went to the volcano in Tagaytay. It wasn’t as if we could see lava, but there were spots where sulfur was coming out. At the top was the most serene and most quiet place I’ve been to in the Philippines.

Being around them made me want to learn more languages, and I think that it’s something I’ll be pursuing for the rest of my life. I’m lucky enough to be a native English speaker, but there were still a few moments here and there where I wasn’t able to connect with people as well as I wanted because of the language gap. I doubt I’ll ever be fluent in several languages, but at least enough to have some competency in everyday life. At least enough to show I’m putting forth the effort.

There were plenty of differences amongst us, but having the same kind of work, and most of us (even some of the Filipinos) dealing with a culture we don’t fully understand did make a clear connection to begin with.

Questions
As I take on my new role, I’ve been reassessing a lot of how I feel about my service, the Philippines, and life in general. After all, since very soon I’ll be in a position to influence over seventy incoming volunteers, I’d best have a good handle over my own beliefs as to what I’ve been doing. I’ve also been thinking about how I can convey those feelings onto other people in a way they can understand even though they haven’t lived through it yet. “You’ll have to see it for yourself” is the easy answer, and wouldn’t be in my character to take the easy answer out.

Manila in particular is a very hard city. I spoke of it a long time ago at the beginning of my service, where extreme wealth, and extreme poverty walk hand in hand. I see a mother spending the equivalent of my monthly allowance on a Barbie doll and shoes for her daughter in a department store, and scores of homeless people. I see men handing out fliers for prostitutes at the same corner of a mall with American amenities and fast food chains. The traditional Filipino hospitality mixes with a much more crowded, frustrated edge. Whereas in my own community I’ve developed a lot of relationships, and I can see potential for change, however humble, Manila is a strong reminder that I’m chipping pebbles away from a mountain.

What I have to tell myself though is that I’m not Atlas, that I would be if I could be, but I’m not. Hopefully I’m learning more and more, and setting myself up to do bigger and greater things as time goes on, even after the Peace Corps, and I’ll be able to influence others to do more themselves. The world’s always been full of problems, and although we can pick out everything that may not be as good as yesterday, the same can be said the other way around.

So as the new volunteers ready to come here, and as I prioritize what I want to communicate to them, I know I need to take the things that trouble me, that make me restless, that make me sad, and to use that to drive me, not to wear me down. Rather than throw my heart at every small (or big) problem I see, to take it in, and to let it inspire me for the work I can do, and will do. It’s easier said than done, but I’ll keep saying it in my head to help keep me on track.

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