Why Am I Here?

It's a question I can answer for myself with a great deal of assuredness but convincing Paraguayans of the answer is a different matter. From the perspective of someone who lives in a brick/mud house that at times has running water and electricity and is under the authority of a corrupt and stunted government, volunteers seem like crazy people.

What Paraguayans have trouble understanding is why I would leave the US of A, allegedly the birthplace of freedom and the gateway to a better life, to spend two years living in comparative squalor with no benefit to myself. Unless, of course, I was a spy trying to conseguir the Guarani aquifer, one of the world's largest groundwater resevoirs. This they can imagine.

Guarani Aquifer

For me, the answer is the experience in itself. The relationships. And, oh yeah, helping the people.

Last night, I had the most intense conversation with a Paraguayan thus far in my life. This guy wanted to do know what I was doing here so I lovingly gave him the Peace Corps schpiel: I'm here to provide technical support and participate in a cultural exchange. He called my BS. Then he wanted to know why I didn't like America. Because if I've left my native country there's obviously something wrong with it. I explained to dude- very forceful and direct for a Paraguayan- that I love the US but I have a desire to help people in less fortunate situations than we've got going on with Uncle Sam. My Spanish was maybe not so eloquent, but you get the idea. Oh, and they know who Tio Sam is down here. Then he says to me, I would never go to Bolivia because they are poor and I don't want to live with poor people who have worse lives than I do. So why are you here?

Why am I here?

He said, You can't change our behaviors in two years, it's impossible. The things that hold this culture from advancing to the level of a developed country are based in deeply-rooted cultural norms that hang inevitably over every house like the thick cloud of trash-burning smoke that sits there as well. Impossible to avoid, almost impossible to change.

It's true. I can't change the thinking of all 2.000 people in this town in the next two years. I can't turn the culture around overnight and convince the people to partake in the behaviors they already know can improve their lives but choose not to execute.

But if I change the mentality of one child? Of ten, or twenty children? The sustainability of the Peace Corps isn't just in the concept of teaching people to help themselves. It's also in the idea that altering one person's mindset can result in a lifetime of small, seemingly inconsequential changes that, over time and with enough people, can result in the alteration and betterment of a society.

So- one person at a time.