It’s been a busy month. My Peace Corps fundraising campaign was approved and posted online (click here to donate), the incoming group of Peace Corps Volunteers has started their training sessions, and we watched as early elections resulted in the transfer of power to a political party that hasn’t run the government for nearly a quarter of a century. The latter two events have triggered a visit by the Ghost of Peace Corps Past.
The 27th group of Peace Corps Trainees arrived in Guyana on April 21st. They’re currently running through the training gauntlet that we stumbled through last spring. (Actually, let’s say, “last year,” since there aren’t really seasons here in the same sense that we experience them in the States!)
Kathrina and I were tapped to be “Resource Volunteers” and help out Peace Corps staff with this year’s Pre-Service Training. Involvement of established Volunteers is good for Trainees, because they get to hear about Peace Corps life straight from the horse’s mouth, but it’s also fun for us, because we get to relive the excitement and uncertainty of the first few weeks and months in the country. We’re looked to as experts in the mysterious ways of Peace Corps life; in reality we’re still figuring things out day by day, much as we were a year ago when we first arrived in Guyana!
For that reason, watching the new Trainees cut their teeth on life in Guyana makes us feel like our service is moving forward: our group is no longer considered the “newbies.” On the other hand, being back at the training facility, seeing our old host families with their new Trainees, and hearing about initial cultural experiences that echo our own, rejuvenates that feeling of excitement wrapped in an unknowable future that accompanied us as we stepped off the plane into the humid equatorial air last April.
The elections also felt like a step towards the future. The former president of Guyana dissolved Parliament last November (or “prorogued” Parliament if you’re working on expanding your vocabulary). The Constitution of Guyana allows for Parliament to be dissolved for six months before it either needs to be called back to work or new elections are held. The election date was set for May 11th. Given the fact that political parties in Guyana have traditionally been split along racial lines, and the fact that elections have often been followed by civil unrest, Peace Corps decided to “consolidate” some of the Volunteers located in more sensitive areas. (Consolidation is when Peace Corps gathers Volunteers together and keeps them holed up in a safe location until any potential danger passes.) There was only a single instance of elections-related violence, and the elections were deemed free and fair by multiple groups of international observers. When all was said and done, the opposition party, which hasn’t been in power for 23 years, won a narrow victory and has since taken up the reigns of government.
This, too, has felt like a move forward as well as a bit of déjà vu all over again. The process of dissolving Parliament, shifting into campaign mode, and holding elections seemed to happen in slow motion over the past six months. The fact that elections came and went without any of the anticipated problems has made us feel as though we’ve come out of a tunnel and entered a new phase of our service. At the same time, the process of consolidation and the specter of evacuating another country had been hanging over our heads and often made us think of the friends we left behind in Ukraine last February. In both Ukraine and Guyana we felt that our work had just been starting to take off when a national disruption slowed our progress and the country held its breath to decide its future.
This month’s events have, in some sense, defined the limits of the Peace Corps experience for us. Rather than looking out at an unknowable future, life in Guyana and our Peace Corps service in general have taken on more clearly defined boundaries. Instead of feeling disappointed that the shiny newness of service has worn off, it has been liberating to feel the cultural blinders fall away and become increasingly integrated into our community. Guyanese life makes more sense to us now than it did a year ago, and that fact makes us more effective at our work. Instead of thinking of Guyana, we envision our apartment, the market in Rosignol, the airport in Mabaruma, and Lili’s café in Georgetown. Instead of thinking of Guyanese, we picture Tiger, Sharleen, Mr. Merai, and Zorena. And instead of being baffled and uncomfortable with what’s happening around us, we can now make sense of what people’s priorities and motivations are. Seeing Guyana as a real place with real people rather than as census data circumscribed by an outline on the map has allowed us to understand our new surroundings on a deeper level and connect with the people who call it home. In that sense, no matter what ultimately comes of our efforts, we have already become successful Peace Corps Volunteers!
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