The toughest job you'll ever love

October 27, 2007

The man who dreamed up this whole idea, President Kennedy, once said of the Peace Corps: “But if the life will not be easy, it will be rich and satisfying”. Boy, was he right! I haven’t written on this blog for a while, and I have been neglecting my other blog as well. Unfortunately, what President Kennedy didn’t mention is that life is going to change on a daily basis. One day you want to cry because your language skills are terrible, the next day you are laughing so hard you almost pee in your pants while trying on Peruvian dresses, or the following day you are rubbing your sore leg after a dog bit you while running. Even then, I still do not know what will come tomorrow. My life changes on a whim’s notice, and I am off doing something I had never expected to do. It is exciting, challenging, sometimes very frustrating, and yes, rich and satisfying.

Lately I have been getting more and more involved in my community. At first I was shy, keeping to myself and being incognito. It just doesn’t work. You have blonde hair, green eyes, waltzing through the plaza, a foot taller than everyone else – they are going to notice you. And if you aren’t there, they notice your absence even more. So, I have decided to stop caring so much about what my community thinks of me or what cultural blunder I might commit next. It is really difficult though, because even the smallest things are huge insults, like not greeting someone properly or sharing the food you have. But I am learning. I just have to laugh at my mistakes, cry quietly into my pillow at night, hold my head high, pray a lot, ask for forgiveness on a daily basis, and do everything with a sincere positive attitude. Most of all, I have to be myself.

The question I have been facing lately, however, is who I am exactly. I can say “be myself”, but who is that girl? Sometimes I attack all projects with a huge sense of idealism; this time I shall save the world! It is nearly impossible. Development work just doesn’t work like that. You can have the big victory in the back of your mind, but really you have to work on the small things first in front of you. I expected things to be difficult and challenging, but never so tedious and I will admit, sometimes boring. I have always wanted to be this person who is incredibly outgoing, witty, funny, and personable; with all of my sincere attempts I expected to make tons of friends and be weaving on the street corner with all of the elderly women in my town. It just doesn’t happen that way. First off, I am slightly shy. It takes a while before I can open up to others. Second, sometimes I really do prefer being by myself in my room reading, rather than out in the plaza dancing to huayno music or attracting attention. So, throughout these past five months, I have had to learn more about myself and realize that I can only be who I am, and no one else. It is difficult, because sometimes I just want to build a ladder and climb up to God and ask Him what in the heck is going on. I just want this perfectly laid out map of where I am supposed to go and what I am supposed to do. However, for the first time in my life I am going to be content with no answers. I am just going to go with the flow, take on projects that arise out of the community’s needs, and not be so persistent and proactive. It is hard, because I have a “Type A” personality, but perhaps the answers can be found in the things I cannot control.

Things are going well in Peru and I feel more and more productive everyday. A year ago I wouldn’t have thought hanging out in the city hall building for two hours, talking to random people would be productive – but in Peru, it is. Today I had several girls from the high school come over to my house and we all made vegetarian black bean soup. They had never had black beans and I think we enjoyed ourselves. It was pretty funny though, because we had to combine cultures – me with my vegetarian soup recipe and them with their rice and potatoes. And who knows, maybe this was just a random event to socialize – or perhaps these girls might have taken away something else. These are the small tiny details of development work that I never knew existed.

So, RMC community and fellow bloggers, I am surviving. They say it is the “toughest job you will ever love”, and it is true.


- Tiffany, Peace Corps Volunteer, Peru

Rilke has a way with words...

As I am prepared to tell the story of my summer field work tomorrow at RMC, I am rereading lots of old journal entries and other books that I read over the summer. One book in particular is Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet. I highly recommend this to anyone. I want to share a specific excerpt that has really spoken to me many times in the last 6 months.

"Were it possible for us to see further than our knowledge reaches, and yet a little way beyond the outworks of our divining, perhaps we would endure our sadnesses with greater confidence than our joys. For they are the moments when something new has entered into us, something unknown; our feelings grow mute in shy perplexity, everything in us withdraws, a stillness comes, and the new, which no one knows, stands in the midst of it and is silent.
I believe that almost all our sadnesses are moments of tension that we find paralyzing because we no longer hear our surprised feelings living. Because we are alone with the alien thing that has entered into our self; because everything intimate and accustomed is for an instant taken away; because we stand in the middle of transition where we cannot remain standing. For this reason the sadness too passes: the new thing in us, the added thing, has entered into our heart, has gone into its inmost chamber and is not even there anymore,-is already in our blood. And we do not learn what it was. We could easily be made to believe that nothing has happened, and yet we have changed, as a house changes into which a guest has entered. We cannot say who has come, perhaps we shall never know, but may signs indicate that the future enters into us in this way in order to transform itself in us long before it happens. And this is why it is so important to be lonely and attentive when one is sad: because the aparently uneventful and stark moment at which our future set foot in us is so much closer to life than that other noisy and fortuitious point of time at which it happens to us as of from outside. The more still, more patient and more open we are when we are sad, so much deeper and so much more the unswervingly does the new go into us, so much the better do we make it ours, so much more will it be our destiny, and when on some later day it "happens" (that is, steps forth out of us to others), we shall feel in our inmost selves akin and near to it. And that is necessary. It is necessary-and toward this our development will move gradually-that nothing strange should befall us, but only that which has long belongs to us. We have already had to rethink so many of our concepts of motion, we will also gradually learn to realize that that which we call destiny goes forth from within people, not from without into them."

Chew on that for a while and let me know what you think!

I can't wait to see some of your smiling faces tomorrow morning!

Peace,
Jodi

Christmas for Congo 2007

About a year and a half ago the Raleigh IDR held "Congo Night" at RMC. We sang Congolese songs, ate Congolese food, and listened as Tresor shared about the violence occurring in his country due to the civil wars and political upheaval that has continued there for the past 20 years.

At that time, RMC sent donations to Tresor's friend Nicholas, who with the help of Congolese churches, runs an orphanage and AIDS orphan ministry for many children, in Northern Congo. Nicholas' group provides housing, food and education for the kids, a few of whom are pictured in the photos above.

After Congo night we waited, prayed and hoped that the presidential election that took place in Congo earlier this year would put an end to the bloodshed. It has not.

So, it's time to help Nicholas once again. Let's send the kids around Northern Congo a special Christmas that they won't forget!

Many people at RMC have been asking how they can help support those working for peace in Congo. So, Tresor and the IDR have joined with Nicholas to plan "Christmas for Congo." Financial gifts will be accepted from October through the end of November, at which time they will be wired to Nicholas to help buy Christmas presents for the kids, and to provide for their other daily needs this winter.

Other churches in the Raleigh area have also joined in, and are making donations to the cause. If you'd like to make a donation to help Nicholas' kids, send your checks to Al Reberg, at Raleigh Mennonite Church, and note that they are for "Christmas for Congo." As the holiday season begins to edge it's way toward us. And let's continue to pray for peace in Congo, and to support those there who are rising above the violence to help others.

Happy Early Christmas to all! - Janelle, Tresor, and the IDR -- for Nicholas and the kids.