Work = Fun? Truly??

So, what if I told you that community work involves hanging out on the beach for an entire afternoon? If I had heard this a year ago, I would have said wishful thinking. For the longest time I have deprived myself of doing fun things in my community because of this weird guilt thing we PCVs tend to meddle internally with. Like, "Oh, I joined the Peace Corps to make a difference." We feel bad because we are not "working hard", meaning we are not going to an office M-F, 9-5. We are not waking up each morning building huge structures or saving peoples' lives. We are not "saving the world". Most of the time we do not even see a solid tangle result of our efforts.

Here is what I am finding out community work entails. It means walking around your village and talking to people, sometimes for longer than maybe you feel like that day. It means learning about all the different personalities and how these things effect the scope of community development. It means sitting down with children and making them feel good simply by laughing with them, throwing a ball, or reading a book. It means sitting by the bus stop and making small talk. It means sitting by the bus stop (I do that a lot here) and watching the rounders game, or even practicing rounders with the girls. It means, yes, going to the beach with the neighborhood kids and making sand castles. It means all these things that a year ago I would have not considered "work".

And this isn't to say all we do is sit around and talk either. I am accepting my role as the community mover and shaker...the nag, I guess. The one who has the time to finish the details or attend to the in-between work. The one who, when all else fails, will get it done.

I am learning to change my mindset on what my work here entails and simply be present day to day. I look for the ways I can move things forward, bring ideas together, or just sit and talk things through. It isn't the ideal image. It's real. It's the nitty griddy and I'm learning to embrace it...

And it only took me close to a year, ha! =)