I’ve had a couple hard weeks. Let’s be honest, I’ve had a couple hard months. It has been hard to write these last couple months because I did not want to write about something negative, but my friend recently told me, why not? I don’t really know how to answer that. It is hard to write or be up-front about what makes life hard, so here I am trying to be as real as possible.
It is my second year being in the Peace Corps and we had our mid-service conference that had brought this newfound confidence and drive that made me ready for the home stretch until I return home. I was told by many people that have come before me in the Peace Corps that the second year is a lot “easier” and I was really looking forward to that because I needed easier. Coming from the first year of my service, I started to understand my community and all of its flaws, but also everything that makes it so great. I love my community and everyone that I interact with as well. The people of Thailand have the biggest hearts and will do anything if it means it would help others because that is just who they are. My students actually want to come to my class when I teach because they started to actually understand my Thai for the most part and they enjoy the activities that I do with them. However, the flaws of my community are deep seeded and derive from the culture that is widely accepted throughout their country. The flaws consist of poor communication skills between organizations and within an organization, lack of drive to focus on the actual lessons but rather the image of an event or activity, the idea of hierarchy of age, job ranking, or gender and how it takes precedent over anything in any situation, and more. Now I am not an expert in Thai culture and I cannot speak to every aspect of their culture or the meaning behind everything that they do. Sometimes even the Thai people I talk to do not know why they do the things they do. Though, I have been living in Thailand for almost two years now, so I take notice to these things because they definitely affect my everyday life and the work that I do here. I will acknowledge that there are many people within Thailand that do not agree with certain traditional cultural norms and there has been a steady wave of change throughout the country mostly through the younger generations. This is something that we can most likely say about any other country as well, especially in the U.S.; whether you believe that it is a good or bad thing is up for interpretation. Part of the job of a Peace Corps volunteer is to work around the cultural challenges respectfully and to inspire the locals you work with to become experts in the work you do with them in the hopes once you leave they can do that work on their own. I am not here to change their culture. I am here to inspire and encourage those I interact with to bring new ideas and actions in order to lead the youth to bring positive change as the future leaders of their community; that is where my frustrations come from. How am I supposed to inspire and encourage new ideas, when the biggest obstacle that I am met with is the culture of the community itself? An analogy that I believe is an accurate depiction of what the youth I work with deal with is this: Imagine you are running a hurdle race, representing life. Each hurdle represents an obstacle or challenge you may face throughout your life whether that be individual, environmental, systemic, or cultural. For the most part you have to face these obstacles alone. Yeah, people in your life can assist you by lowering that hurdle, taking that hurdle away, or being a coach on the sidelines cheering you on to push harder and encourage you to go further. Though, you have to exert that energy and have that drive to push yourself forward. Each hurdle can be different in size representing the difficulty it can represent in your life and, sadly, each person in this race does not have the same size hurdles as you. The students I work with have hurdles that I do not believe most others face in other countries. Here are a few examples. Their parents work in other provinces, sometimes only visiting every other week, in order to make enough money to support their families. Due to their low income, many students aren’t able to continue their education past secondary education and stop going to school at the age of sixteen. Resources at the schools within the village do not have the money or resources to provide students the same quality education of the students that go to the city schools. In some households there are no adult role models besides their grandparents or older siblings. Sometimes classes are cancelled for weeks at a time due to events from the school or local government. Teachers on the verge of retirement have little to no motivation to teach and plan lessons. These are just a few that I know of and I am sure the youth in these communities are even met with many more hurdles. On the sidelines, I am there. I am there encouraging them to push harder, to meet the obstacles with a different approach, and encouraging other people in the community to do the same. However, I cannot be there for every obstacle and sometimes just encouragement and different ways to approach a challenge isn’t enough and at some point I will not be that coach anymore. I am left to hope they take what I teach them and it helps them and the adults in their life make the change needed to face these obstacles with the necessary resilience and drive to get them through the race. Sometimes watching from the sidelines is hard, frustrating, and I feel defeated, which has been a lot of what I have been feeling lately. I came into this year with a new set of goals and the motivation to push forward projects that I was not as confident before to do. I had clear plans and expectations that things were going to be so much better. They weren’t, for the most part. The same obstacles were in the way and no one was there to move them out of the way for the students or myself. I felt trapped in a cycle of feeling useless. But there is a silver lining. I learned to just breathe. Just breathe, taken in my surroundings, understand the support that I do have (still wasn’t a lot, but it was there), and remember to never have expectations. I needed to understand to not put the weight of the culture of the community all at once on my shoulders, but instead recognize what I can manage with the support that I have. I have one teacher that is amazing and recognizes the obstacles in place and has already made the conscious decision that she cannot take it all on herself. She makes the effort to be there every day for the students and teach them as best she can, and that is enough. I have some of the best students that come in with amazing attitudes when it comes to the activities and lessons that I do, and they make the time for me when they know they do not have to. I have a counterpart that is constantly busy with some activity he is asked to put on by his superiors, but still is willing to work with me and discuss the logistics of my projects and be patient with the broken thai that I can speak. I have co-workers that are willing to help me when I need, even when it has nothing to do with the work that they do in the community. I have a host family that loves me like a son and takes care of me no questions asked. Lastly, I have a community of volunteers behind me dealing with the same obstacles and situations that I deal with and are willing to listen when I just need to let out my frustrations. In a job where I face challenges constantly I try to look at what’s affecting me in my job and see what I can change to make the job easier for me or to work past the challenges. I can change my attitude going into my work. I can change the way I approach the problem in my job. However, in my life, I understand that there are things that are not in my power to change or fix. The systemic and cultural challenges are still going to be there in my way, and I know I cannot change them. Working internationally this is probably one of the biggest challenges that I have noticed for myself, besides the language barrier. I cannot change others’ attitudes or their work ethic. Every job that I have worked so far in my life has had the same issues and you learn to adapt and be resilient in the face of adversity. If life was not hard, then there would be no need for growth. My time in the Peace Corps has helped me grow and change to a very different person than I was when I first came to this country and I am grateful. I have so little time left with my community and it all seems surreal that in just a couple months this will all come to an end. These last couple of months left with my community I plan to be present and to take on what I can, which is how I should have been doing it all along. Sometimes I think about who I would have been if I didn’t join the Peace Corps and in all honesty I can’t because in every scenario I find myself going through this experience no matter what. I have been told that “you were made for this job”, in regards to being a Peace Corps volunteer, but in reality this job was made for everyone. We are living this job every day, interacting with people and cultures different from us all the time at home, school, or work, but the only difference is Peace Corps teaches you in extreme conditions. This experience also leads to the most important lesson. Just breathe.
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