the 18 month funk

This has been a weird couple of weeks. I’m not sure why. I’ve been working a lot, mostly with the municipality and health center to get those pesky medications inventoried and distributed. It’s been frustrating because no one seems to want to help me do these things, and I hate feeling like I’m doing work instead of the people, not alongside them. Plus there was all that crazy electricity controversy, and various other political nonsense. And two failed events with the youth group (and a bossy youth group president).

And then there’s the sense that time is slipping away – with less than seven months left, have I done all I wanted, seen all I wanted, built relationships the way I wanted? What can I do in the time I have left? Today I picked up the latest copy of the National Peace Corps Association magazine. The stories written by other volunteers about their service always sound so uplifting, so positive and meaningful – some bring tears to my eyes as they tell the stories of people’s experience and connections in faraway places. But then I compare those stories with my own and mine just pales in comparison. I’m not doing great things, having big meaningful moments with people who will always remember me. I joke with people here that there are very specific things that they say repeatedly about Ryan, the volunteer who was here before me – she was a great artist, she loved kids, and she liked to drink beer. What will they say about me?

Time to force myself to be positive…. It’s far too easy to wallow in self-pity here (anywhere?) A kindergarten teacher out in a town 10k away has done a lot of work this year to put the alphabet on his wall, and he created little boxes of letters and with the magazines I left him has the kids put the picture of the “mano” in the “m” box. Not earthshattering stuff, but he’s taken a couple of ideas I shared with him and put ‘em into practice, without my being there breathing down his neck, so that’s pretty cool. Biked to that area last week to do a charla with the parents about reading, so I felt pretty hard-core about that, especially since it was my most guarani spoken to date. At the end of this month we’ll have the big culminating events of the reading project, with a big display of all the work kids have done in the schools. Hmmmm. Nothing really that inspiring. This afternoon, as long as it doesn’t start raining (tho of course we’re all praying for rain to finally arrive), I want to go to the big futbol game, maybe drink some beers and have a little fun. Hopefully.