Some thoughts on one year

Well well... it's been a little over one year in site (one year and three months total in Bolivia and eleven months left! Yes... I've officially begun the countdown and not because I can't wait to get out of here, but rather I can't wait to get back to the states! I´m beginning to really miss it.) and looking back on it well... I'm not really sure where to begin. Overall I feel pretty content about my service. Not amazing, and by no means horrible... ya know... pretty good. I suppose that the one thing keeping me from feeling great about it is the feeling that I should have accomplished incredible things by now (don't really know what those incredible things might have been exactly), but it's been a year and I feel like I should have something substantial to show for it. But here I am, still just chugging along, waiting for my big success. Don't get me wrong, I have had many little mini successes, but as far as one great (tangible) success story... I'm still working on it. Everyone says that things don´t really get cracking work wise till your second year anyways so I´ll try not to dwell on it.

I guess it doesn't help that I just got back in site from a pretty long absence (one week in Cochabamba for mandatory med appointments and meetings and two weeks in Peru vacationing with Mom...pics to be included in the next blog!) and after any long absence I feel like I'm starting from scratch all over again. Well... not from scratch exactly, but the energy to get it going again is substantial. A more accurate description would be that the energy to get ME going again is substantial. I guess that's just the nature of having a job with no real structure, one that starts and stops according to my whims.

And it also doesn't help that just before I left I had my first big project (the one I was so excited about, the one I thought would be the most significant and beneficial for my community, my success story!) basically blow up in my face. So to be honest, I wasn't really looking forward to returning. Not because I'm sick of Bermejo or anything (actually it feels good to be back, it's got it's own quirky kind of charm)... it's just that I was kind of dreading starting it all back up again. The fear of failing again I suppose.

It was really great to see everyone in Cochabamba. Besides just getting to spend time with some of the most amazing people I've meet in my life (really we're pretty awesome in PC ; ) it was really reassuring to hear that basically everyone is having the same troubles and frustrations as you. The most universal complaints being: unreliable work partners, cheap and otherwise useless Alcaldias, constant guilt that your not doing enough, people expecting you to do EVERYTHING for them, and the list goes on... and I can definitely relate to all of them!

Actually, I was a little surprised about the guilt one. A little guilt is good, it keeps you from being a completely worthless bum. But I thought I was the only one putting copious amount of completely unnecessary guilt on myself. I've always been kind of rough on myself... definitely guilty of being my own worst critic. I have high expectations of myself and for my Peace Corps service, but there comes a point when you have to realize that there are other factors preventing your success than you (especially true in Bolivia!). And your expectations are not always realistic (doubly true in Bolivia!). So yeah... I'm trying to lighten up on myself! It's funny you run across people that well... your not really sure what they've been doing in their sites all this time, but they are so proud of their service! Then there are others who are like golden glimmering model volunteers. They've done so much cool stuff and still they feel like they should of done more! People are funny like that.

I've definitely learned one thing from this whole crazy experience and that is- Development work is not easy! Especially when you have no money to offer... such is the case with PC. Bolivia is such a poor country that the people are used to having NGO's come in and just handing them projects with little or no investment from the people who are supposed to be benefiting from them. And many times because of that...a year later the big expensive project is a complete failure. Because no one had any investment in it! They don't care if it fails... it wasn't their money.

I do like the Peace Corp's philosophy- small projects with community investment (the theory is they are more successful and sustainable that way), but damn it's really hard to do! You'll talk about these ideas for projects and everybody is like yeah, yeah, that sounds great! But when you actually need to collect the money or have people show up to work it's a totally different story (I'll be sure to include my project horror story in here later so you can see exactly what I'm talking about).