Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

Peace Corps is a life-changing experience. Or at least so I have been told from publications, recruiters, current volunteers, former volunteers, and even my friends and family at home. I have now been in the Peace Corps for over 10 months and I am still waiting (a little uneasily) to see how my life will be changed. Will I adopt the machismo culture and become a misogynist? Or will I abandon my reservedly agnostic beliefs in favor of Catholicism or Evangelism? Maybe I will take to spending my spare change on cheap moonshine and drink myself into a stupor every chance I get. Or I might fall in love with a woman and be engaged before the midpoint of my service.

Though I can’t predict the future, I think it’s a safe bet that my grand change (if I have one) will not be any of the previously mentioned. Yet, I have observed all four of these events (to varying degrees) in my fellow volunteers. Claiming these are changes is admittedly an assumption on my part as I did not know these people before their service. There is the possibility that for the 3 months of training, when I had regular contact with my fellow volunteers, they kept these behaviors on the backburner. This, however, seems unlikely.

I want to make clear that even though in this post I am and will be focusing on changes that I consider to be unhealthy, the overwhelming majority of personal development Peace Corps volunteers talk about and demonstrate is nothing but positive. And the examples I’ve given above are seen only through my eyes. Each situation could be defended or judged in a number of ways; I am simply offering my observations from my own limited perspective.

So why these negative changes? To borrow a line from Walter, John Goodman's character, in The Big Lebowski, “That’s just the stress talkin.’”* The Peace Corps experience, whether it be in a city in Eastern Europe or a backcountry African village, is physically, emotionally and psychologically stressful. Volunteers are alone. Even if they live with families and are warmly welcomed into their community, they have still left behind what they know and are comfortable with in the states. They are surrounded by a foreign language, a foreign culture, foreign foods, foreign diseases, and very little direction on what to do and how to do it. This is the nature of the volunteer experience, and being able to successfully overcome these stresses is part of what makes the Peace Corps experience so rewarding.

These stresses must be dealt with. Everyone knows recommended mechanisms for dealing with stress: exercise, talk to someone, yoga, etc. Nonetheless, everyone, at times, deals with stress badly. It is inevitable. Fortunately, stress is temporary, and hopefully the coping mechanisms used (if bad ones) are temporary as well. This is why it worries me to see my fellow volunteers making big changes in their lives in such a short amount of time. I think it must be recognized that we are living under sustained levels of stress, and for that reason, we must deeply examine changes in our behaviors, thoughts and beliefs. Looking at the examples I have provided, I wonder what will happen in each situation when the volunteer returns back to the U.S. Will the misogynist continue his ways causing a clash with a U.S. culture that is not nearly as accepting of demeaning attitudes towards women? Will the drinker continue to use alcohol as a coping mechanism, i.e., become an alcoholic? And will the religious convert and the fiancé retain such strong feelings when returning to the U.S.?

I hope I don’t sound as though I am resistant to change, because I am not. I don’t believe that any person or thing is perfect and could not benefit from positive change. I simply think that, especially given the volunteer’s stressful situation, we should be cautious when noticing ourselves changing—even erring on the side of conservatism.

In talking with others, my views have been met with the claim that my caution is preventing me from immersing myself into Salvadoran culture. To this I answer yes and no. There is no way of living where I live and not being immersed in Salvadoran culture (whatever culture really means anyways.) But, I think sometimes cultural immersion is confused with cultural adoption. I will not and can not completely adopt Salvadoran culture. Whether I want to or not, I will never be Salvadoran. This, I think, is important to remember. There are certain things Salvadoran that I wholeheartedly disagree with. I still, on an analytical level, try to understand these things, but that does not change my view of them. Likewise, there are things that I absolutely love and hope to adopt into my own life. This rejection of the bad and acceptance of the good, while always trying to understand why things are as they are, to me, should be the goal of cultural exchange. I don’t believe that, having grown up believing that misogyny and excessive drinking are bad things, one can take a two year hiatus from these beliefs under the guise of adopting the culture of one’s host country. (Insert quote by famous person about the need to stay true to oneself.)

As I’m lying here in my hammock thinking of all the possible grand changes that I might experience, I hope that my change will be more of an evolution. A stronger conviction in my previously held beliefs, a fortification of the good I have developed in the first 23 years of my life, and an adoption of all the good that I am experiencing here in El Salvador.

*The Big Lebowski reference seems completely unnecessary, except that it is always necessary to refer to The Big Lebowski.