Peace Corps is not for hippies

I used to get really annoyed when people called me a hippie for wanting to join the Peace Corps. Yeah right. Like a real hippie could stay in one place for two full years and complete monitoring and evaluation reports. It just goes to show how little people actually know about the Peace Corps.

I now live with more rules, regulations, policies, and expectations than ever before. 

The tail end of February wasn't the best. I slid into a slump in the post-fair emptiness that was my schedule. I spared you all the sad blog posts, because I've written sad blog posts before and people don't really get it. It's hard to make sense of crushing loneliness in so many words, and make it entertaining to boot.

Valentine's Day, a day I don't normally care for in the US, just seemed to amplify my loneliness. Buying tons of internet saldo didn't help the situation either as everyone was too busy with their loved ones to Skype.

Then I found out that the mayor running for reelection in my pueblo used a photo of me and two other PCVs in his campaign propaganda without my permission.  I have no idea how he got the photo, but I was pretty damn pissed off. Obviously, it's a big fat NO for a volunteer to support a political party. It diminishes my credibility and violates the relationship with Peace Corps. And to add insult to injury he calls us "tourists."

So many things wrong with this.

I know this particular man isn't above staging photo ops, but I felt like this warranted some kind of retribution. I wish my supervisors could have called him to explain that this isn't ok. Send an email? A text? Common! Nothing ended up happening and I'm left denying rumors that I voted for the mayor (or that I'm swaying the vote somehow). Fortunately all that died down when he didn't win. Guess the gringos didn't do you any favors, bub.

Adding to the general crappiness of the month, my host mom's mom is sick. I really like this lady and I feel terrible that she's in pain. I went to visit her with my host mom who, despite having nine other brothers and sisters, is the only one to care for her. I figured it'd be nice to brighten her day, but I couldn't do anything to make her feel better and her groans of pain were almost too much to bare. It felt eerily familiar to watch a daughter care for her sick parent, and I had to get out of there. I stayed the appropriate three hours then caught the first bus heading back to site.

Throughout this slump I had something I was looking forward to, keeping me going during the "total lack of control" days. Kai, my trainee friend from San Antonio, was making it back to El Salvador! It was just me, Maria and Kai back when we first got here and we quickly came to rely on each other. I was so excited to see him in person because social media and Skype could never capture his personality. A bunch of us made plans to avoid the elections (which I was especially trying to do since my house served as headquarters for the local FLMN chapter and, well, Touristgate...) and spend standfast weekend at the beach with our friend Kai.

Standfast, like I explained last year, basically means you can't travel or leave where you're at typically due to elections or earthquakes. So that could mean 3 days in site or... 3 days at the beach? They've been drilling it into our heads for the better part of a year that it's better to text Whereabouts whenever you're out of site than to be scared about taking too many nights out of site (we get 3 nights off a month). I think it makes sense. Better safe than screwed. I and the other PCVs took this "text whereabouts" campaign verbatim and planned to bunker down at the beach, follow the transportation policy by taking the PC micro, and allow one more night at the beach to avoid travel over the standfast.

Then all hell broke loose and we were politely informed by senior staff that if we were to carry out this trip we would be administratively separated. Read: kicked out. Over one more night at the beach.

Now I should probably get this out there to avoid confusion: I understand why we have safety and security policies, I abide by them, and I generally approve of their existence. I don't feel angry with PCES staff (anymore) and I can see why they felt the need to come down hard on this policy. (In fact, this post describes how much I like staff members and our 3 night policy. This is my attempt at being neutral on this.)

But why was the policy enforced this time? I thought our texts to Whereabouts were more or less private? Why did senior staff have to vote whether or not to even enforce this policy? Why aren't our policies uniformly enforced?! Is it really a policy to administratively separate a PCV who spends one more night out of site a month? What happened to all that bonding that took place at the Staff/PCV retreat? Aren't these kinds of oversights and mixed messages the reason we needed a retreat to begin with?!

As you can see, I have a lot of questions and I don't think they'll be answered. This bothers me. Even though the average blog reader might not care about policy distinction, it feels very important to me. I've been in El Salvador for 586 days and I've followed the rules and tried my damnedest to live up to the core expectations. It's a shame that this weekend, which I so sorely needed, was taken from me last minute. It's a bigger shame that I don't feel like I can trust staff.

So with all my newfound alone time I wrote this blog post. Why, though? The fight was beaten out of me, literally, years ago. I know PC is a huge government agency just like any other, and like any other they're bogged down by policies and regulations which sometimes are executed and sometimes lost in translation. Being a PCV puts you at the bottom of the agency totem pole, and you just gotta deal with it. There's no point in fighting. You're not going to "win."

Remember when I told you to take the application power into your hands and ask about the prospective PC country's safety and security policies, program indicators, transportation policy, etc? It's because these things will heavily influence your life for two years. Like... when you want to see your friend at the beach but you can't. If you value independence, do you think you could live with the housing policy or implement the program goals? Do you? DO YOU!?

I guess I just want to tell my story. I want to cite true examples from my PC experience and share them with the world. In my way, I'm trying to correct the ridiculous notion that Peace Corps is for hippies.

Because what hippie would really put up with all of this?