Imminent Departure

It's been half a year since I was invited to serve in the Peace Corps. During much of that time, I kind of forgot I would be leaving for two years service in a foreign country. But now, I've been receiving clear signs of my imminent departure, from tons of reading materials to a questionnaire that will be used to help determine future site placement. I've also recently attended a Peace Corps Welcome Back/Send Off event and completed a Language Proficiency Interview to evaluate my Spanish speaking ability. All of this made everything hit home and after running the numbers I confirmed that I will in fact be leaving in two weeks.

Some of the San Diegans departing over the next few months
Photo Credit: Rachel Satoh and the San Diego Peace Corps Association

 



Don't worry, I'm not making this post about my very minor anxiety. Instead, I'll answer one of the most common questions I've been asked: Why did you join the Peace Corps?

To begin, here is an excerpt from my Motivation Statement written in my application:
“I want to help the less fortunate abroad” I tell people when they ask why I want to join the Peace Corps. The inevitable response is “But there’s plenty of less fortunate people here at home”. It’s true, and for a period of time, I had trouble coming up with a response because I failed to acknowledge the selfish reasons I wanted to join. The selfish reasons being that I want to experience another culture rather than just learn about it. To appreciate the challenges refugees and immigrants face integrating into our own culture by facing the same challenges myself. To help me appreciate the luxuries I have easy access to that a significant portion of the world population does not, whether it be electricity, clean running water, or a toilet. But nonetheless, I still want to help people.

The first time I heard of Peace Corps was from my dad who, being wildly ignorant of what the Peace Corps actually does, explained to 9 year old me that "it's where a bunch of hippies go out into the jungle to do drugs and give the natives food." Maybe he intended that statement as a joke, but I couldn't tell.

Fast forward a few years later and I'm spending a summer month with my great grandmother in a rural village outside of Guadalajara. There was electricity which provided lighting, but primarily powered the refrigerator and TV. Running water allowed the washing of dishes and clothes, but it wasn't suitable for drinking. Instead, they had roughly 30 five-gallon water jugs stacked against a wall. Each meal consisted solely of rice, beans and tortillas. On one or two occasions, chicken was served. Drink choices consisted of water or Coca-Cola. The toilet had to be flushed manually with a  bucket of water nearby. Those buckets were also used for bathing purposes. Fun consisted of kicking a half-deflated soccer ball around with the village kids, watching old American movies and current Mexican political ads on the TV (and adjusting the antennas as needed). Washing clothes by hand with the lavadero seemed like fun due to the sheer lack of things to do. I considered the experience interesting and it was similar to the conditions described by some Peace Corps volunteers.

Approximately two years after then, a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer came to talk to my French class and told us about her experience teaching English in China. With a clearer picture of what the Peace Corps actually does, I kept it in consideration the following years. The summer before my senior year of high school, I not only determined that I was going to study Environmental Engineering in college, but that I was also going to join the Peace Corps after.

It is true that the water sanitation program I am assigned to will be directly relevant to my area of study and career, but nevertheless I applied to go anywhere and decided that if the Peace Corps had better use of my skills in a different program, I would have accepted the call. My primary motivation is, and has been, to give back to those who lack the same opportunities and privileges as I have had. As an example, I was afforded a college degree, something that is prohibitively expensive for my cousins in Tijuana, and indeed many people in the United States. However, my cousins also struggled just to pay for a high school education, something free and taken for granted here.

And so it is that I came to be where I am now. I'll be serving and living with those who've lived in impoverished conditions their whole lives, what's two years?