One Year Wall

“It’s kind of like camping…”

That is what two of my most recent visitors have said about the way that I live. were champs during their visit to El Yayal – my mom shelled beans, used the latrine, ate the soup, and didn’t hear the mice at night! My dad ate everything that was given to him, including the coconut that my friend Eulises climbed up a tree to get for him. Of course, there had to be a pig loose in the back yard in the morning when Mom had to use the latrine, but she handled it remarkably well. I was very proud of both of them. I have realized in the last months how lucky I have been in my experience here. Upon reaching the 1-year mark, some of my fellow volunteers have decided they just couldn’t handle it anymore. The thought of yet another year of this life was just too much to take. One thing that volunteers say to each other is, “You can’t judge one volunteer’s experience against another,” which is funny, because that is mostly all that we do when we get together – compare horror stories. But really, there is no way to tell who will make it and who will throw in the towel, because it doesn’t have anything to do with your attitude, your willingness to work or your professional all alone with no one to answer to but abilities, though those things can help you get through some bad times. Really, you never know where that final crushing blow is going to come from and you can’t judge anyone when it gets someone, because most of the time it could just as easily have been you. Living here is hard, and Dominicans do a lot of things that don’t make much sense a lot of the time, and sometimes the two worlds collide in a way that makes it impossible to keep going. We didn’t join the Peace Corps because we thought it would be easy, and while we go through it together, we are still ourselves. So I am proud of Ambrosia and Lindsay for knowing when to say enough is enough, but I will miss them, and I hope that they both know how much they are loved and envied by a ragtag gang of crazy people still left on this silly little island. So good luck girls, and I hope you send us chocolate and trashy magazines.