Peace Corps is a Roller Coaster

Typically when I meet someone outside of Peace Corps they ask me about my service. At some point I'll mention the ups and downs which make it difficult to answer question. At a given time I might be really up, and a week later, really down. Peace Corps is a two year long roller coaster that all volunteers experience to some degree. I realized today, after contemplating the last few days that I'd gone through were probably the most rapidly changing part of the ride in months. What better time then, to clarify what the ups and downs of Peace Corps actually means through a 24 hour example.

6:00am: Wake up for a meeting with the regional representative who lives in the neighboring community to discuss funds for my project and a few other topics.

6:30: Begin walking to the community, thinking, as a night owl, this is the earliest I've ever been awake for a meeting.

7:00: Arrive to the representative’s house and get offered a cup of coffe and some bread.

7:10: After having some lovely converstion with the representative’s sister and brother in law, I ask where the representative is and then learn that she doesn’t live here so I finish up my breakfast and head over to her house.

7:40: Finish a great meeting. I’ve got $200 worth of materials for my project. My second goal was to setup a phone call between the representative and the head of Engineers Without Borders in the region which I had been working on for a few weeks, for that afternoon at 1pm.

8:10: I arrive home, and send a WhatsApp (3G texting) message to my sister, highlighting that I've already finished the day. More a highlight of how early my meeting was than a complaint about having nothing to do. Either way, she offered that I work on photography for a bit, good idea.

8:15: Camera's out and giving me a horrible mechanical sound every other picture. Everything is breaking, ugh.

9:00: Receive an email with attachments from a coworker that requires my input within 2 days. (Which is about an impossible deadline by Peace Corps standards)

9:01: Head out to a spot with better data signal to try and download the attachments. Spend, not exaggerating here, 30 minutes walking around in a cow pasture looking for enough signal.

9:31: No luck, give up.

12:00pm: Host family stops by with some lunch, probably a thank you for landing them $200 for the project.

1:30: Check my phone and find out that the representative was doing her banking when Engineers Without Borders called..

1:31: Decide to do nothing with rest of my day and just watch TV shows on my phone.

4:40: I find some inspiration to get out of bed and make a tasty dinner. Prepare some carmalized onions and peppers and toast the bread. I get eggs ready for the frying pan and realize tea and egg sandwiches sound delicious together so I put on the teapot. Drop the eggs into the frying pan and my gas tank runs out of gas. That's it for dinner. I end up eating toasted bread wth onions and peppers.

4:45: As I'm sitting and eating dinner at my desk, I look out my windo and spy a nice sunset, and force myself to go out. Turns out to be quite possibly the most beautiful sunset I've ever seen. A strong contrast between orange and dark blue, clear sky and storm clouds, light and dark, absolutely beautiful.

Not every day is filled with successful and unsuccessful meetings, failing electronics, and beautiful sunsets. Typically days and weeks are pretty mellow. But no matter how mellow, the roller coaster is still there, hiding a rise or fall around the next corner. Thankfully over time I’ve learned to minimalize the impact of life by preparing myself more and rolling with the punches. It’s is probably my most treasured skill that I hope to continue to develop and bring with me when I return to the States.