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!



Comments

  1. Nancy Boyer-RechlinMay 22, 2017 at 2:49 PM

    Concrete floors are good for feeling a bit more, well, concrete, about life!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

June 15 - Why Peace Corps is Hard

A lot of you have probably heard the “Toughest Job You’ll Ever Love” slogan about Peace Corps.   I’ve been here about a year now – one year on June 27 – and have done my best to share the experience through this blog.   I think most of my posts have confirmed the “love” part of that slogan – I do love this job.   It’s a truly amazing experience.   Whenever I leave or return to my village, I ride a motorcycle along beautiful red dirt roads, through fields that are now turning green again, past herds of white cattle and groups of brightly-dressed girls and women carrying big basins of water on their heads.   Dozens of people – the girls carrying water, men working in the fields or relaxing in the shade of trees – wave and call out my name.   “Gorado!   Gorado!”   The name I’ve been given means “One who has been sent from far away to achieve a mission, and returns with a good result.”   What a vote of confidence!   I have spent much of my life daydreaming over the photos and stories o
Read more

Musings from a Bench in the Port Vila Post Office

Image
All the post cards I bought during my long wait.   Yesterday, I was working in the Peace Corps Office resource room when a friend asked if I could help her run an errand.  Another Peace Corps volunteer who is serving on Ambae had a package at the post office, and it couldn't be delivered to her on her island until the customs fees were paid.  I didn't know much about how to do this, but I was free- and so I walked to the post office downtown, stopping into stores to browse as I did. When I got to the post office, I went to the desk labeled "customs" and explained the situation - but they were confused about why I had come and not the volunteer in question, and why I didn't have an invoice for the amount I was supposed to pay.  They suggested that I try another desk, labeled "items to collect" or something like that.  Before I headed over there, I got into a conversation with a couple of men sitting on bench.  In Vanuatu "storying", or c
Read more

My Life as a Port Vila Volunteer

Image
One of the benefits to Port Vila - weekend scuba diving! The other day, someone I met asked me how being a Peace Corps volunteer in the capital compares to serving in a more rural community.  While I haven’t served on an outer island here in Vanuatu, I did serve in a rural community in Benin – and told him that “it’s completely different – it’s like having a regular job, only without the money!”  Working with World Vision is very much like having a regular job.  I have a desk and a computer, I’m in the office from 8 to 5 – and there’s lots of work to do.  While I wouldn’t trade the challenges and rewards of serving in a rural area during my first service, at this point in my life this is exactly what I need.  I often find it amazing to look back over my time in Vanuatu so far, and think about how despite all the challenges and uncertainty of my first four months I ended up in a situation that is such a good fit – really a much better fit than my experience on Ambae would
Read more