One Year Down, One To Go

The end of October marked the half-way point of my volunteer service. For one year, I've been living and working in my community and lately I've been thinking a lot about what I've done so far and what I want to do in the following year. I've faced a lot of challenges, and not just the snake in the latrine type stuff. That, I expected. What I didn't expect is just how much cultural vales and norms would affect my work.

“Cultural exchange.” It sounds fun, right? Eating new food, learning new dances, and working alongside people of another culture may come to mind. That's the type of stuff I visualized before coming here. But those images make up the fairy tale of development work. It's really a whole lot tougher.

The biggest challenge I've faced while working has been with the adults involved in the youth cooperative I work with. Although it seems that the point of the group would be to teach kids basic business skills and inspire them to work in cooperatives, most people here think otherwise. Officially, the members are youth, but each member has a parent who must attend meetings and work days. All the while, the kids do NOTHING.

My American ideas clash with the general Panamanian understanding of working with youth. The youth here aren't respected like they are back home. No one tells them, “You can do it,” or trusts them. The idea of empowering them is completely unknown. I've seen plenty of parents sit down and do their kid's homework, and a 3rd grade teacher once told me that at the age of 8 kids “just can't think.” In the States, kids are encouraged to run lemonade stands, get their hands dirty and try new things, and learn as much as they can. What matters is that they experiencing new things and build their confidence. Trying to replicate that type of youth work here hasn't gotten me very far.

The teachers and parents don't understand my American approach to youth work. I've taught the kids to run meetings and organized projects that train them to work as a team, but the parents have been focused on money and that they're losing their influence on the group. One mother said, “I don't agree with CoCo. She thinks the kids should do the work, but that's our [the adults] work.” I almost fell over with shock and left that meeting angry, hurt, and frustrated. How can I feel good about my work here if the locals don't appreciate it? The kids have fun and are learning, true, but their parents and teachers want something else. They want me to do their paperwork and bring them sacks of gringo money. And that's just not why I'm here.

I've been thinking about what all of this means. Where is my service going? I have another year to go, and I'm don't know if I'm so excited about that. Not because I don't like it here. My village is beautiful and I've made some great friends. I love eating Pineapples like Apples and never wearing shoes. But the work is HARD. It's tiring to constantly push along my work with the kids, only to have the adults complain about what I saw as achievements. So I'm trying to plan out the next year and figure out what I can do that includes the kids and both the adults and I will see as valuable. This year, I've learned that I can't just jump into projects thinking that my community members will see their value. My values and their values are based on our very different cultures. Until I can find and highlight some commonalities between the two, I'm not going to get anywhere. So I need to take a step back, breath, and start again.

Looking back on this year, there's plenty of highs and lows. People will ask things like, “Are you happy there?” after reading my blog. Those questions always suprise me, because I love my life here. Being a development worker isn't easy, but it is an amazing, once-in-a-lifetime experience. The challenges are huge, but the payoffs are too. Those fairy tale images of development work do exist. Walking into the school and hearing a hundred little kids yell my name is Panamanian accents always puts a smile on my face. And working with my Girl Scouts makes me excited that some of my girls will try to achieve their dreams. Just today, I was working at my kitchen table when kids came by to go to the waterfall behind my house. After awhile, I gave in and joined them. I've learned to appreciate the laid-back culture here (that I may have at one point called laziness). Panamanians really do know how to enjoy life. As I floated on my back in the water and looked up at the jungle canopy above, I thought to myself, “Do I really live here?” And I smiled to myself because the answer most definitely is, and will be for another year, yes.