We are getting ready for bed, a rest too short for our weary bodies. Our stay with our families was too short as well. We'll be asleep only a few hours before we have to get up to catch a 5am flight back to Panama City. It's been three weeks since we were in site; I'm sure that our cat has made the most of it.
During our first week out, Felix (a family name that also happens to be the "sainted" name of the town at our entrance off the interamericana) feasted on the toads and birds that dwell around our jungle shack while we were in the City for training-of-trainers. Then, I'm sure he chased the neighbor's female vixen in heat while we visited my parents in Phoenix. And towards the end of our vacation, he surely warmed himself in the new-summer's sun that dries out our muddy yard while we slogged through the slush in Virginia.
As our thoughts turn towards our shack like iron filings toward a magnet, a phrase that Lisa and I have been bantering around comes to mind: "reverse camping". We realized a few weeks ago that much of our activities could be described to the people back home, who would be and have been pumping us for information, in much the same terms and timelines as camping, only in reverse.
We plan our outtings to the world of electricity and hot water (hopefully) in much the same manner as one goes about planning a camping trip in the United States. We get our clothes and essentials together. We assess the food situation. We check on the life of our batteries. We pack our bags. Headlamps? Check. Lighter and candles? Check. Cash and cards? Check. We lock up the house. We hike down a wooded path.
The major difference between camping and reverse camping is that we do much of it backwards. The batteries that we checked are not coming with us. The food situation we apprised tells us how much to bring back home. The essentials that we are lacking will be bought on the trip, not before or on the way out. The hike through the woods (albeit in our case rather short) is to get to a car and down the mountain rather than into a camp site.
We also spend much of our time at home acting like Americans do while camping. We shower in the water from a mountain stream. We cook over a small propane stove. We eat only items that are non-parishable or that we picked up recently at a local food stand. We wash our dishes and clothes outside. An unusual amount of time is spent reading in the hammock or sitting with people (the latter being a major pasttime for much of the world outside America and doesn't necessarily mean we talk much, just sitting with someone is gratifying.)
There is a freshness to our camping lives as well. Every day holds the promise of something new. Every day we are likely to learn something new about ourselves, our friends, our worldview, human nature, simple trivia, or an number of sundry facts and truths. Our time is our own. Our culture is what we make of it, as a couple or as a small group of volunteers getting together. We can come and go as we please. Much like being out on a weekend retreat, we are free.
Not everything is analogous, however. Unlike a pleasure trip to a national park (though some volunteers in Panama actually live in a national park), that much free time ends up meaning plenty of time to do our work. All the independence puts more pressure on us alone to do it right. There is no one else to blame. If something goes wrong, no one else culpable. No one else is even around to affect it. We are it, total and complete.
Some PCVs hate that liberty and its burden, and they leave. Some learn to live with misgivings about success and how to define it, tell themselves everyone feels the same and accomplishes little, and they focus on the goals cultural exchange. Some throw themselves into every available project and task so that they will know with certainty that they did everything they could, but risk burning out. Some find a serene bonhomie in their core, learning more about themselves and about the art of self-direction, of honest self-appraisal and impetus.
I believe that this last discovery is one of the prime motivations for becoming a Peace Corps Volunteer. We know going in that helping people improve their own lives will not be easy, so the challenges are guaranteed. We are understand that our personality will be magnified in a new culture, so self-awareness is assured. We are conscious of our choice to leave everything that makes us comfortable, so we recognize that we will have to redefine our comfort zone. We know we are leaving our family and friends, so we've got to know that we will be all alone. And one is never so alone as in a crowd of strangers.
Like camping, part of being a PCV is getting out there on our own. Some of the appeal the self-directed and self-apprasing of going solo. And much of the experience truly is seeing just how far you can go. "How far will you go?"
