Ambrym Lessons Part 1: Insights from Lying on a Concrete Floor

Peace Corps, especially in Vanuatu, is certainly full of adventure - but the experience also involves a whole lot of personal reflection and wrestling with complicated issues.  Figuring out personal relationships, dealing with uncertainty about what my service is supposed to be about, what in the world I'm doing with my life, etc.  When I spent three weeks on Ambrym last month (the island where I went through Cyclone Cook), a lot of this wrestling came to a head.  While there, I learned that the funding for the project I originally came to Vanuatu to do had still not come through, and there were some serious doubts about if/how the project would go forward.  Everything felt very uncertain - I didn't even know for sure if I'd be able to finish my service here in Vanuatau.  This was pretty stressful for both me and the other volunteer I was staying with, who was doing the same project in her community.

One day we were both particularly down about the whole thing, which is never a good combination - neither of us felt very optimistic or able to cheer the other one up.  This being Peace Corps, there was a lot of down time that day and it was also quite hot so I went to lie down on the concrete floor of her house for a nap.  This nap ended up being a sort of turning point for me - instead of sleeping I ended up thinking and praying about my situation for an hour or so, and by the end of the time my thought had turned around.  Nothing had changed about my situation, I still had no idea what was going to happen or even what I wanted to happen.  But I felt motivated and happy to find out how I could best be helpful.  Instead of feeling that none of the possible scenarios for what would happen next could work or make me happy, I felt like I had the ability to be happy no matter which one happened.  After all, if I could turn my thought around by doing something as simple as spending time lying on the floor, the ability to make my situation happy is clearly something inside of me, that I can never be without.  Once I returned to Port Vila it turned out that our program was cancelled after all, and it's taken more than a month to figure out how I'll spend the rest of my service.  I can't say that I've always felt perfectly calm and happy about all the uncertainty, but I've also never stayed down very long - my perspective had changed in a small but permanent way that day on Ambrym.

No good photos were taken of the concrete floor in question.  But you can see a bit of it in this photo of a cute dog!