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The Mystery of Finding Work
By Marilyn Wheeler, Mak-9
As I sit here
writing this at
home, I'm actually
waiting for my
counterpart to
come so we can
finish what's
needed.
I realize I'm speaking to
the choir here, but perhaps, at least, we can
commiserate. Prior to
leaving home for this
Peace Corps journey, I
read every book and article I could find regarding the Peace Corps experience. I attended at
least 4 lectures put on by
the Peace Corps office
in Los Angeles and I
talked to returned volunteers. I wanted to be
ready and know what I
was getting myself into.
My first question when
talking with a returned
PCV was, "What was
your assignment and
what work did you actually do?" Because I was
to become an NGO volunteer, I was looking for
specific information. I
wanted something to
prepare for, some topic I
could possibly research
prior to going, something to imagine, but it
never happened. I remember one woman
said to me, "You're asking the wrong question!"
I could not believe my
ears. If that's the wrong
question then what's the
right question? She
served in Bulgaria and
said just walking down
the street she could find
many things to do. That
was puzzling, but I figured I wouldn't understand what she was actually telling me until
later, if at all. Others
would tell me their assignment, "I worked for
the Mayor or the Municipality," but would
never tell me what they
actually did.
I believed my problem
was that I hadn't found
the right volunteer to
talk to but surely I could
find the answers I was
searching for in Peace
Corps books. Every day
I would curl up in my
favorite chair, excited to
enter the life of a volunteer, ready to get clarity
about what was ahead,
but instead I noticed a
theme running through
each story. The theme
was one of uncertainty,
searching and a sense of
confusion, frustration
and feeling like a failure. One book by a PCV
in Estonia said,
"Everyday I go to the
waters edge and sit on a
rock and wonder, am I
going to just sit on this
rock for the next two
years?"
You would have thought
that by the time I was
done with all this re-
search I wouldn't be surprised by the challenges
that face me now, but I
am. The good thing
about all my pre-service
research is the fact that
the stories are surfacing
in my memory to help
me understand it's not
me. I'm not in the wrong
place doing the wrong
work. Instead, I'm having a pretty typical volunteer experience. Yippee!
When I arrived in my
assigned town in Macedonia to work with a
health NGO (I decided
to leave out the specific
name), I was excited
about helping with
really important work,
saving lives! I mean,
how great would my service be, to actually have
the ability to help people
live healthier, happier
lives! At our first meeting, my counterpart announced that because I
was here and I'm an outspoken non-smoker,
they would not smoke in
the office. I was very
pleased this office
would actually represent
good health! Hey, so far
so good! Actually it was
hard for me to understand why most of them
smoke when they are