Becoming a Peace Corps Volunteer

As I sit here amidst the candlelight, alone in a large dark compound, the protestant church blasting its music right outside, all I can think about is that I haven’t showered in almost two days. I haven’t showered since yesterday morning and for someone who normally showers twice a day this is as close to unbearable as it gets. Some people join the Peace Corps because they want a “legitimate” excuse not to shower, but I promise you I am not one of them. Yet the more time passes, the more I get used to life in Ethiopia - it is the human way. We, humans, adapt, period. We may have cognition and vivid memories of our pasts, but we have an incredible ability to adapt, to get over things, to grow.

So every time it gets close to unbearable I say to myself “Jay you’re growing, you’re growing.” I just hope all this growing doesn’t mean I’ll turn into another shower hating hippie with zero respect for other people’s nostrils – but one can only hope. I wanted to become a Peace Corps Volunteer for many reasons, some that I have forgotten and some that are no longer important. Over the years it became #1 on my exhaustive list of “Things I want to be when I grow up,” which has unabashedly included all of the following: composer, singer, Rihanna, business woman, journalist, news anchor, first female president of the Dominican Republic, lawyer, diplomat, professor, writer, Nobel Prize laureate, richest woman in the world and so on and so forth. Yet despite the large span of ubiquitously ego-satisfying titles I hoped to bear there remained one kernel of truth – I wanted to make a difference.

The desire to make a difference sparked before my age hit the double digits. Highly influenced by my grandfather Antonio Del Rosario, a man of God and service, and by my parents who made painstakingly bending their backs for others their religion, I wanted to be of service but I wasn’t sure how. Then in 2005 I got the opportunity to go to Mali for two weeks to assist in the building of an elementary school in a small village. I mixed cement for hours under the blazing West African sun, made cement blocks with my hands, and dug the foundation with a shovel I barely knew how to use. I worked so hard I broke down both physically and emotionally several times. It was one of the most trying experiences of my life and quite paradoxically also one of the most fulfilling; somehow I knew that experience would shape the rest of my life.

I enjoyed my time in Mali so much that I promised myself I would return to Sub-Saharan Africa someday to “help.” I was thinking about development but I had yet to be introduced to it as a concept. I kept my promise and studied abroad in Cameroon my junior year of college. I spent most of my time in Cameroon traveling and doing research. I studied Islam, education, gender inequality and development. I fell even deeper in love with my idea of Africa because Cameroon proved to be the perfect place to perpetuate all of my erroneous and highly romanticized notions of the continent as a whole. While there I met Peace Corps Volunteers and asked them tons of questions about what it was like to serve for 2 years. All of the feedback was positive, which is probably part of the reason 4 of the friends I went to Cameroon with and I are currently Peace Corps Volunteers serving Africa.

Although the journey to becoming a PCV took some time, I don’t think I have ever been more prepared for it. Not that I am particularly prepared, but I’m far more prepared than I ever have been. Interestingly enough, Ethiopia has proven to be nothing that I expected and so far has been the toughest country to both tackle and understand. Ethiopia was never colonized and it is apparent because it has kept so much of itself untouched by Western influence. Ethiopia has its own calendar, which has 13 months and is now in the year 2006. There are 12 hours in the Ethiopian day so figuring out the time is an obstacle course alone. Ethiopians eat with their hands and raw meat is a delicacy. One of the main dishes, “Kitfo,” is a raw meat dish served with a spicy red or green sauce. I am eager to try it but I am afraid my GI system isn’t quite ready for it. In short, as one of my friends explained, for the westerner “Ethiopia is more different than different.” Its authenticity is something that I appreciate in theory but has become hard to love in practice because it makes navigating it so much more difficult. When I came to the realization that after 3 months I hadn’t even begun to understand this historically rich, politically complex and extremely culturally diverse nation, all I could do was take a deep breath and remember… “Jay you’re growing, you’re growing.”