A memory: when my brother and I were young, we would tell each other “why did the chicken cross the road?”-type jokes, but I quickly understood that I could not outsmart him using normal punchlines (i.e. to get to the other side). So I would make up ridiculous answers like “to get to the bench to go to the rainbow land with the pot of gold and then to Bart Simpson land.” I remember saying Bart Simpson land.
Why do I mention this? Not sure, maybe I miss my brother and our childhood. Maybe chickens are a major part of my landscape these days. But that line keeps popping up in my head as a parallel to the question: Why did Rachel join the Peace Corps? I might as well be that chicken who blindfolded herself, took a step onto the asphalt, and ran across propelled by the idea that there was something worthwhile on the other side. I was expecting: learning about tropical/Global South subsistence agriculture, sharing my knowledge to enrich people’s lives, sharing my culture and learning about another culture. As I come up on being in Panama for one year (Oct. 8th is the official date, and if Peace Corps had kept their word as things had been when I transferred from Bolivia, I’d be going home that day), I have been forcing myself to think about what I have accomplished and what I have yet to accomplish. In a sense, I have done the aforementioned things. But not on the grand scale that I had envisioned. I had images of working with groups of people who would learn things from me (like doing worm composting or intensive inter-cropping) and put them into practice within their systems of home gardens or farms, all of us smiling and cooperating along the way. That definitely is not the case, and unfortunately not because it’s physically impossible, but because of some more invisible forces.
Last Friday, in my apparently vain attempt to hold the weekly nutrition/health class (nobody wanted to do it, for the nth week in a row), one person told me that I must be really bored here, with so little to do. In a way, I am, but I haven’t given up. Then she told me how I should have brought in an English language class or something, because agriculture and the “other things” I do are useless here. Or I should have gone somewhere else. Inwardly enraged, I tried to calmly explain for the millionth time to the millionth person here that I graduated from a good university (the BEST, GO BIG RED) with a degree in Plant Sciences, not Teaching English. I explained that it IS possible to do agriculture here, I’ve seen successful gardens in this very town. I didn’t even bother to explain to this person who just told me she couldn’t “do nutrition class” this week for ambiguous reasons that nutrition is in no way useless and maybe the most exigent item on my to-do list, based on what I feel is needed here. Children learning English is not on the list. Of course, the government here has convinced the population that English-speaking Panamanians make money…so all parents want is for their children to get into an English immersion school so they can make money. No matter if they are eating fried hot dogs and a bag of Cheetos for breakfast (that’s not an exaggeration).
What this woman was saying is nothing I haven’t heard or inferred from conversations before, but her accusatory manner, as if I had made the bad decision to come here and desire to do agriculture projects, is what hurt my feelings. This site was not my choice, though I suppose agriculture was and I stand by that choice. But the chicken crossed the road, and got what she got. That joke never says she didn’t like it so she went back, does it? Fortunately for me, I know I’m here for a defined amount of time. I can be miserable or not with what I got, but it will end one day. I’m trying to do things that will tip me to the not-miserable end of things, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. However, I have no intention of being bossed around or bullied into doing things I don’t believe in. I plan on fighting the good fight promoting nutrition and gardening for the next 6+ months, and then I will be done. I do think that there is value in finishing what I started, no matter how hard the days are. Thank goodness I’m stubborn like my late Pop-Pop! Then there will be no doubt in my mind that I fulfilled every promise I made to myself and to the Peace Corps. Furthermore, I think I’ll realize later on that a lot of good came from this experience, that I did learn a lot and possibly that I did have an impact on people here. (Side story: When we were in training in Bolivia, we heard a story of a community in rural India. A visitor there noticed that people there had exceptionally good teeth. When asked why, people said it was because in the 70’s, there was a Peace Corps volunteer in the area who always brushed his teeth, so they all started doing so. That volunteer may have never known what an impact he made). It’s just hard to always know what that good is while I’m here, hearing such negativity from people who should be thanking their lucky stars they have an expert (comparatively speaking) in agriculture who speaks Spanish and has only their best interests in mind living in their town for another six months. But even if I’m just a silly chicken on the other side of the road who will never be sure if this was the right choice, I’m glad to be pecking my way along, independent, scrappy and proud. And what separates me from the chicken is that I know one day I’ll go back across the road, changed in many ways.
