New Endeavors

18 april 2011

Peace Corps is not always what you think it is.
In fact, I’ve decided it’s NEVER what you think it is. What a paradox! I thought I was coming to a developing country for 2 long years to live in a village, train some people in a probably behind-the-curve host agency, inspire some community empowerment, develop my own technical skills, and make some positive impressions and some friendships, hopefully ones that last a while. You know, like, a lifetime.
And I find myself after two incredibly short years, still here! Having lived for a while in a village, then an “urban center” (Toto is its provincial capitol, but seems smaller than the small town I went to grade-school in), having trained in some coworkers, some teachers, and lots and lots of kids, having made many friendships so profound I find it hard to imagine life without them, and having worked in an actually very professional host association and now working for a global U.S.-based one, I am STILL learning that Peace Corps has never really been what I thought it would turn out to be.
So I’m staying, in part, to find out what it actually is – to fully discover what it can mean to be a Peace Corps Volunteer. As one fellow Guatemala PCV put it, we are fully subsidized do-gooders! Are we effective as such? A common perception is that Peace Corps volunteers go out to save the world. Debatable. Unlike USAID, and a host of other development agencies, try as it might Peace Corps does not have benchmarks, does not have clear black-and-white indicators, cannot easily chart its progress, impact, and dollar amounts thrown at development over its 48 years here in Guatemala. Does that mean I won’t be able to prove my success or impact upon Completion of Service? Probably. At least I won’t be able to point to very many tangible development benchmarks.
Another common perception of what Peace Corps implies, does serving for Peace Corps mean I live in poverty? Close… but not compared to my neighbors, really. It has been a means to convince people I’m in for the long haul, because I committed to live at their standard of living (and didn’t move to Xela, the big touristy city, despite being given the green light to!). I think I’ve gained trust and local confidence, and the idea is to find grassroots ways to empower people and open their minds and opportunities toward our communities’ development.
Does being a Peace Corps Volunteer mean I train people? I have a lot to add, but I’m still learning from the people I meet here, far more than I feel like I’ve been able to teach anyone.
For instance, last week I worked as a translator for a Kenyan man who works for CARE, another international development agency. He globetrots to wherever CARE is working to do diagnostics and implementation plans of potential community forest-conservation projects, the idea being to set up a carbon credits sale or other form of Payment for Environmental Services (PES). (For those unfamiliar with the idea, it’s like setting up a financial incentive based on a forest’s environmental services like soil conservation, oxygen production, water conservation, biodiversity protection, etc. Somebody somewhere else pays the locals for these things to be conserved, to offset the immediate payoff for the timber, the firewood, and the land to cultivate.) This Kenyan has helped diagnose carbon capture and storage of forests of all sizes all over the world, and has designed and implemented many pioneer projects finally involving communities (instead of only privately owned land) in the carbon and PES markets. So what did I learn from him? We went tromping around in the forests with the local forestry technicians, and I learned how he does his diagnostics – how many trees in how many meters radius around point n, how many centimeters diameter-at-breast-height, how tall the tree, what kind of undergrowth and forest litter, what slope of the ground, and how to integrate all that into the calculations of carbon sequestration – and how he does NOT want it done (thanks to the young Guatemalan high-school grads who were our technicians whose measurement techniques were bad according to the Kenyan, and whose GPS points were wrong and led us wandering out of the municipal forest we should have been in, and caused us to walk around lost the rest of the afternoon before finally finding a road at 6pm). He told me about his environmental consultancy work and how he considers it to be the most exciting work out there. I learned from him what being a forestry consultant means, especially these days with carbon capture and climate change being such pressing issues. I learned through careful question-by-question scrutiny (and translation…my job!) how he designs surveys to carefully measure communities’ use of forest resources, and establishes baseline indicators of standard of living, income sources, sanitation, and education. I picked his brain about how community trust funds can be established in communities without on-paper ownerships of forests but de facto ownership and administration of them, as is the case in Totonicapán. And he gave me hope that communities in his experience are willing participants in economic-environmental systems that benefit them if they can trust it and have power to make decisions about it.
And as I write this, my new host agency Rainforest Alliance is sending me to the tropical jungles of the Petén province to see their community projects there and, most importantly, to discuss with their Petén personnel what processes and materials we can also apply to climate change education/environmental education with community groups in Totonicapán (and which ones we simply can’t, for cultural and environmental reasons!). I expect to mostly learn on this trip, but I can’t help but feel like the pressure is high. This is the first time I’m being employed because somebody thinks I’m valuable. With this privilege comes responsibility, and we haven’t really defined yet what they’re going to be expecting from me based on the information I’m going to see and report on and/or give my feedback on. But what could be better than be sent to learn, about how people learn, and then go implement that by teaching people, and end up learning more oneself?
So I go, not knowing exactly how all these different experiences will weave together into something coherent and well-thought-out, but I’ve decided that the point for now is to be a sponge – soak up as much information as possible, somewhat indiscriminately because one never knows when some detail may become of supreme importance. So many times in my life I’ve played the role of “sponge,” it seems! Because for now, I don’t have benchmarks, I don’t have to chart my progress, and I don’t have to prove my completion of indicators. All that will come as, I hope, the project objectives, timeline, budget, and all other details become clear. I sense that this project for which I am staying an extra year in Guatemala may actually have the tangible impacts in the end that I maybe regretted not seeing in my work in El Aprisco for the past two years. But then again, I’m still learning what Peace Corps means, what my service has meant to me and to others, and what another year might mean to my community members. Another year in poverty, here I come!!! I imagine some of you reading this were once Peace Corps volunteers yourselves… One day, I want you to tell me what Peace Corps means. I probably still won’t have it figured out by then. :)