I know, what happened, that I’m suddenly reverting back to college, or worse yet, high school. But considering that Peace Corps is a two year commitment, and there are two training groups that come in a year, in the DR we always have four groups of volunteers, with six months’ experience separating us. Since fall, when the older group left, my group has been the “seniors” a name not only appropriate because of the school class feel to our social environment, but also because of our regressive partying when we get together.
Since our Close-of-Service conference last week, where we starting talking about how to share two years of life-changing experience in one sentence (being realistic about the attention span and interest of the States-side listener), I’ve been finding it hard to motivate myself to work in my site. I got back from my last vacation in the United States in January with a burst of ideas for last-minute projects to squeeze the most out of my service. Now, I’m wondering why I signed myself up for this stuff.
This week I did “La Hora Americana” radio show about 10 Skills for Life, a charla I heard through Peace Corps’ sex ed program that lists self-knowledge, management of stress, and critical thinking as essential skills to master for a healthier life. I showed “Volver,” another Almodóvar film, to my cineclub. We talked about HIV/AIDS in my Escojo Mi Vida meeting. I went to a tiny community of 500 people with a two-room school house to check it out as a possible site for a new volunteer. Today, I’m supposed to help start a girls’ group to do gender-equality activities and help my journalism class with a radio show.
It seems like a lot, but I’m dragging. And there’s more I should be doing but can’t get up the motivation. I’m supposed to be helping the high school teachers learn the educational software I installed on their computers. I can hardly force myself to show up there.
I have this weird feeling of waiting for this part to be over and anxiety over the next steps back into the real world without the comforts of Peace Corps, where doctors are always waiting to give me free medicine and life advice. This week I made a calendar of the two and a half months that remain of Peace Corps. It’s totally full. On March 14, I’m signing up for summer grad school classes that I’ll do online in Port Au Prince, where David lives. I’m planning a group hike up Pico Duarte, the highest peak in the Caribbean, and my dear childhood friend Katie Gerber is coming to visit during Semana Santa, the second to last weekend in April (Easter for you non-Spanish speakers). In between all this, we are planning a conference for teachers and principals that will be a major organizational undertaking and I have all sorts of other things going on – journalism seminar, a trip for my Escojo group and a graduation, and the biannual week-long bitchfest that is the production of the Peace Corps DR Volunteer magazine, the Gringo Grita. Somewhere in all this, I have to do a page-long checklist of paperwork and interviews and medical processes (including stool sample! Panic!) to officially close service with Peace Corps. I know this list is getting exhaustive, but I’m also wondering which version of Peace Corps health insurance to sign up for and how to smuggle my cat across the border to Haiti.
With all this on my mind it’s been hard to think of how much I will miss this life and my community. My Dominican friends are so excited when they hear about my plans to be with David, even though it’s in Haiti, which is like saying you’re about to take a trip to Iraq for them. I keep telling them I will surely be back to visit – I joke that if the tourists come all the way from Europe to see Samaná, how could I possibly not vacation here when I have all these friends and “family” to visit? But the truth is you just never know. Life happens, a road diverges in a yellow wood, and you may not find your way back.
