Peace Corps Guilt

I was reading a blog entry from a girl who is currently a Peace Corps Volunteer in Paraguay, just like me a few years ago.  (Thanks for posting, Jen B.!) As I read her post, I couldn't help but relate to many of the things she said and thought I'd highlight them here.  It reminded me not only of my time in PC, but my trips to Mexico, Baltimore, SE Asia, and any time I see someone in need.  Blame it on my good-old Catholic-guilt upbringing, blame it on my hippy genes, blame it on whatever you want....all I know is, I live with a good, healthy dosage of guilt every day and am happy to do so if it causes me to act more responsibly towards those less fortunate. I am VERY fortunate to have all that I have but I am well aware that it is just that, LUCK, and nothing else that separates me from those born into other circumstances and I can't sit back and watch others drown without trying to do something about it. 

To read the entire article, as well as see the source, please see the link below.

"Someone is drowning in a lake and you are watching. She is sinking lower and lower, her head tossed back so that she can just barely manage a gulp of air. You can save her. Most people would argue that ethically you mustsave her. In his 1971 essay "Famine, Affluence, and Morality," ethicist Peter Singer compares the general moral obligation to help the drowning to every privileged individual's moral obligation to alleviate global poverty.

People all over the world are dying. They are suffering and we are watching. It is immoral, says Peter Singer, not to do everything in our power to help them. iPods, spankin' new cars, vacations to Disney World... we spend money on these things instead of paying for life-saving surgeries, feeding hungry children or investing in third world economies. According to Singer, the fact that we don´t need to watch the poor suffer doesn´t change the fact that they are drowning and we know it. And we let them.

I can't claim that reading Singer's essay was the reason I joined the Peace Corps, but it definitely instilled in me a sense of... duty.....no...Guilt!

I tell people I joined the Peace Corps to understand what it means to be poor, but that´s just part of the story. I joined the Peace Corps to figure out how to escape the guilt of having so much while other people have so little.

Here in my rural-ish urban community in Paraguay, I am living in a vat of perpetual boiling hot guilt. And I've found that I am not the only one. All of the following causes us volunteers to feel that little pang in the chest that means we are doing something pretty horrible:

1) Taking time for ourselves

We feel guilty for staying in the house all day, or for being out of site and missing our neighbors' birthdaysopa. We feel guilty for watching a movie alone instead of with some Paraguayan neighbors. We're servants of the community, right? It's supposed to be a full-time job. Every hour spent watching a movie is an hour we could have helped a child with his homework. Every trip to visit a friend is a leadership retreat for teenagers that never had the chance to happen.

2) Not sharing personal possessions

Just this week I was called a bruja for not lending my computer to someone. And maybe I am a bruja. Families share with me whatever little food they have and I share nothing. I feel like the meanest witch alive.

3) Being too chuchi (fancy)

How can we live in a house with a modern bathroom if no one else has one? How can we buy the chuchichocolate from America when our neighbors can't afford a bag of rice? How can we be paying someone to wash our clothes, how can we go on vacation, how can we have hot water, how can we have running water, arrrrghhhhhhh!

4) Being unsustainable

Apparently the whole point of this helping others thing is sustainability. Don't give stuff to the community, get them to work for it themselves! So, that sounds awesome... until you have the opportunity to get 40 free pairs of reading glasses from America. You can nix the freebees or you can help 40 impoverished ancianosto read again. But then you have to accept the hot-headed guilt that comes with it, the possibility that you jeopardize your community's motivation because they realize the truth that their lives would be so much easier if the first world shared some of its money.

5) Failing to save the world

A couple weeks ago, a 9-year-old girl showed up at my house for the first time. I was surprised by the visit and amazed -- María had come a long way since she first joined our girls group six weeks before. She was the girl who smiled but rarely spoke, and even then rarely in Spanish -- only in the indigenous language Guarani. And now she popped by just to hang out. But something struck me as odd, as I glanced at my pizza in the oven and then at my watch. The time was 11:50. Almost lunch time... the holy hour of the only meal that really gets eaten in Paraguay.

¨María, what time do you have to be home?¨ I asked her.

¨No, my mother isn't cooking today,¨ she replied.

¨What?¨ I was shocked. Even the poorest families I know eat something for lunch, even if not very much. ¨Aren't you hungry?¨

She told me no, she'd had tortillas at 5AM.

It wasn't a question of feeling generous and tossing a dollar at a beggar child on the street. This was María. My María. Her immune system, her literacy rate, her confidence level and her general growth rate all depended on me in that moment. I shared my pizza with her.

She ate every bite. Even the green pepper and onions sprinkled on top... and you would be hard-pressed to find a child where I live who would eat a vegetable you can see. Then she asked me what I was making for dinner.

I immediately felt thrown into a moral crisis. All my guilt -- for leaving site, for being too chuchi, for not sharing and for being unsustainable -- charged forth dressed for battle.

I can't feed her every single meal. I can't be responsible for this little girl.

Stop being selfish. Yes, you can. You make more than enough on your Peace Corps stipend to feed another person.

But what about her eight siblings? What about her neighbors? What about everyone else who is falling through the cracks? How can I do this just for her?

You took a vacation to Peru. You did that instead of feeding a little girl.

It's not even sustainable to buy her food, I should try to develop the soup kitchen at our local community center instead.

You know that is unrealistic. The soup kitchen is open for three lunches a week and is already a strain for the women who cook. You are going to stand back and watch this little girl fall.

All this seems to me a pretty depressing lose-lose situation. Either I ignore the hunger of a child, or I create jealousy amongst her peers. And either way she will be hungry again next year after I go back to America. How do I cope with all of this burden? How do any of us cope?

It helps to remember Goal 3 of the Peace Corps: to help people back home understand human need and realize their responsibility to throw that lifesaver. In a sustainable way, of course. Because the guilt that we are allowing people to drown is not mine. It is ours."

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/esther-katcoff/peace-corps-guilt_b_2059161.html