This morning George asked me whether I felt that I was accomplishing what I wanted to do in the Peace Corps. His answer to the same question focused on the practical – whether what he was doing was advancing his career, whether he was gaining valuable skills that he would be able to transfer to some use when he returns to the US, or whether he was increasing the capacity of his counterparts here on the island.

My answer has a different focus – I don’t think that it matters where I am or what I am doing. To advance materially or physically in life may be the byproduct of my success, but it is not the goal. The goal is to feel closer to God. To know God in my everyday pursuits and challenges. To notice the limitations and weaknesses in my human manifestation and to discard them, leave them aside for my spiritual strength and limitlessness. This could have been accomplished in the life I left behind, but my focus was not clear enough to progress at the rate that I desired. I had many distractions and a lot of emphasis on things that were not important. The move here solidified a year of ridding myself of much of the material clutter in my life, as well as eliminating a lot of the mental and emotional clutter as well. So I think, yes, I am accomplishing what I wanted. I am finding that I am not easily annoyed by the many irritations that present themselves and could easily grate on me if I allowed myself to dwell on them. I am learning to accept those things that are the result of choices that are different than those that I would make, or even those that exceed the boundaries of what I would consider “right”. As I long suspected, I am finding that true priorities have nothing to do with material wealth, and happiness cannot be bought or found anywhere outside of one’s self. I am learning empathy. I am beginning to understand that each person has a place and a purpose here, and purported distinctions in a person’s value is superficial at best.

Life here takes place on more basic terms. Not the most basic of course. I do have running water, even if it is cold, but I don’t have to haul it. I do have electricity, most of the time. I have a fairly modern apartment with cable TV and Internet access. I’m up on the 2nd floor, so not too many bugs find their way under the ½-inch gaps below all the doors, and if I keep my doors closed, very few mosquitoes get in so I don’t even need to use the Peace Corps-provided net. My job deals with computers so many of the offices that I work in are air-conditioned, although I do have to provide my own toilet paper when visiting the very new and modern Ministry building.

It’s not hard to be judgmental; in fact it’s quite easy to slip into a mode of complaining about every little thing – and not just about the supposed hardships imposed upon us by living here with no money or our own transportation - from the government, to the lack of funding for necessary goods and services, to the habits of the people, the casual attitudes about timeliness, to the bad roads and the way dogs are treated and the trash that’s strewn everywhere and the mud and heat and bugs… But to what end? If there is a behavior or attitude or some thing that you can change, well then do it. But if you can’t, if I can’t, then it’s me that has to do the changing. My attitude, my perception, my reaction are really what I have control over, and they are what will determine whether I have a positive or a miserable experience. Isn’t, after all, my annoyance or repulsion to any of these things a reflection of my negative judgment of it?

Coming here has allowed me to focus. I have a lot of time to reflect and to modify my perceptions about the world around me. As Mrs. Jonas put it the other day, PCVs have a lot of time to think because we walk so much. So true. I sometimes think of this as the Reader’s Digest condensed version of life. My options for everything – what I’m going to do, and how I’m going to do it – are extremely restricted. A lot of the minutiae of life back home are just gone. Evaporated, or now made meaningless. It gives one a chance to focus. Or become extremely bored. It’s a choice, and I’ve been to both places. Focus is better.

I have to smile. “Mom” is howling as the ice cream truck drives down our street playing its perpetual tune. (Why don’t the drivers go crazy??) I’ve never heard her howl before. In fact I don’t think I’ve heard any dog here howl before. Mom doesn’t have a name – dogs aren’t pets, so they don’t bother to give them names. She’s the guard dog that’s tied up in the front yard and barks whenever anyone comes near. She had three puppies when I arrived so I call her “mom”. The 2 brown mongrel-looking pups have disappeared, probably joining the ranks of the strays that wander the island, randomly breeding and eating whatever trash they can find. Some apparently are worse scavengers than others, as evidenced by their protruding rib cages. The 3rd pup, a black and white one, is free to come and go on it’s own, but he always returns home. I bought some dog biscuits and started giving them to him as a reward for not barking at me. Now whenever I’m out back hanging my laundry, he’ll usually appear within minutes, waiting patiently at the bottom of the steps. He still won’t take them from my hand, but I’ll leave one on the top step next to me and now only have to move slightly away for him to come retrieve it. I was calling him “baby”, but George thought he should have a name since he wouldn’t be a baby forever, so now I call him Farley. I think it suits him.

Boggy Peak, at 1319 feet, is the highest point on Antigua. On a typical day, after hiking up the steep road to the top, you would be prevented from reaching the summit by a 6-foot high chain link fence with barbed wire strung across the top. The fence surrounds the Cable and Wireless towers and buildings, as well as the mountain peak. Impenetrable trees and brush obscure the view from the road, so on the way up, you’re only afforded peeks of the island and shoreline beyond. Yesterday however, we were invited to join Alan and some of his Cable and Wireless coworkers in an early morning climb up the mountain. Although paved much of the way, the road is quite steep (maybe as much as a 30% grade in places) and quite challenging. But even with a 5am rise time on a weekend morning, the spectacular view was worth it. You could see a 360° panorama of the island from the mountaintop. Just the weekend before, George and I sailed in a Round-the-Island regatta with Alan and Bernie and the crew of the Huey Too, so in the span of one week, we had seen the entirety of the island twice, once from sea, and once from its apex

It’s a strange thing when people tell you that they admire you. You hear that a lot when you join the Peace Corps. I have friends whom I care for deeply, who have led quite different lives then I have. They have families, children, stayed in one place, or moved around, been quite successful, or struggled at times. Been happy, been sad. Enjoyed what they do and do what they enjoy, or maybe not. I admire many of them for what they’ve done and how they’ve led their lives. We’re all different. Traveling to a foreign country in the name of “service” does not make me better or worse than anyone else. It’s just the direction that I felt I wanted to go at this time in my life. There was opportunity, means, and desire, and they all came together at once. That’s really the only difference.

My life is not particularly as exotic as one might think. Today I got drenched. I wanted to go to a shopping center up north for contact solution and that’s the only place I’ve been able to find it. They were out. That happens a lot here – stores don’t reorder until they run out, then you have to wait for the restock to come in on the next boat. Maybe. If you do find what you need in the stores and you’re smart, you buy several because who knows when they’ll have it again. I wasn’t so smart. I’m down to half a bottle and may have to start wearing my glasses for a while if I don’t find more soon. Anyhow, I had a considerable walk from where the bus from school dropped me off to where I was going, and it started to rain. I always carry an umbrella with me, but an umbrella only covers so much body when the wind is blowing the rain sideways. So I was soaked from the waist down. The nice thing about having bare legs in a rainstorm is that they dry off pretty quickly and it’s fairly easy to wipe off the mud. My dress took a little longer to dry. My shoes are still wet. The dye from the leather stained my feet orange. I couldn’t wait to get home to finally take off my soggy shoes and dry my feet.

So I’m not certain that I’m worthy of admiration. Certainly not envy – unless you like walking around all afternoon with soggy, orange feet. In a sense I’m not “leading” my life. I’ve turned a lot of the direction and decision making over to the Peace Corps. They have a ton of regulations dictating what I can and cannot do with my life. Of course I am a volunteer and don’t technically have to do any of it, but those choices would most likely result in them exercising their right not to keep me here. So you agree to their terms and then go about the task of reconciling your life experience and expectations with the conditions imposed upon you. But this is what I wanted. I liked the idea of immersing myself in the undertaking of service and not having to worry about figuring out the means to do such a thing. Dooh!

There was a poem in the latest edition of the “Serious Ting”, a publication by and for PC volunteers in the Eastern Caribbean. The author has been in the Caribbean one year longer than me. This lady I envy.

Feels Like Home
by Patricia Roberts, EC69, St. Lucia

Funny how the time seemed
so dark and overwhelming,
no focus, the strangeness of it all,
yet, now it feels like home.

I cannot mark the moment.
Was it in the gaze of some child’s dark beauty?
In the slow, steady, timeless pulling of the laden nets?
Or the flash of iridescence in the bush?

Perhaps it was carried as some mystery
within the basket balanced on the woman’s head,
or maybe hidden underneath an upturned shell.

It seemed to settle in with the soft wild night
and was caught gently within me
as the clouds in my Lady Piton’s hair.

I don’t know… yet now… it feels like home.

Well, that’s somewhat ironic – I just saw an email today that said that Patricia Roberts had just ET’d (early terminated, that means she voluntarily left the Peace Corps). I don't know the reason.

EC72 arrived in Antigua this weekend. The plan was to greet them at the airport Saturday morning, then head over to the Peace Corps office for brunch. Things didn’t quite go as planned. We went to the airport, but they didn’t show up. It turns out their plane was broken down in Grenada and they had to take a different flight. They were supposed to arrive at 10:10am, and instead got in about 12 hours later. So the staff and a few volunteers went to the airport to meet them Saturday night, and the rest of us met them for lunch on Sunday.

There are 7 trainees in this group, so we now have 22 volunteers on Antigua. The new group consists of 6 females and 1 male. There are 3 women in their 20’s, a married couple also in their 20’s, and 2 older females, 1 over 60, and the other is probably between 50-60. They are all in the Health or Community Development sectors. None in ICT or Small Business this time – they’ll be coming in August. They seemed pretty shell-shocked and the long travel day didn’t help. I remember the feeling well – so many questions and so many unknowns – just really no idea of what to expect; it was nice to finally be a source of answers.

They’ll be in training for the next few weeks, then the swearing in when they officially become Peace Corps Volunteers, then the looonnnggg Integration Period. I don’t envy them. They have a few months of hell ahead. Many boring days, many lonely hours, and still so many questions and so many unknowns. I finally feel that I have reached an acceptable level where the constant anxiety has subsided and I more or less know what to expect. I don’t necessary agree with everything or like it, but at least I don’t live in the unknown anymore, and that makes a huge difference. When I first arrived, there was such a feeling of helplessness. You are living in someone else’s home, in a place that you don’t know, with unfamiliar customs and ways of doing things, and you feel totally unable to care for yourself. That is not a pleasant feeling for an adult. You can’t feed yourself, or get around, you’re afraid to go anywhere on your own both because you don’t know the area and whether it is safe, but also you don’t know the bus routes and don’t know the places and could get lost, or stuck somewhere after the buses stop running with no way to get home. Culture shock is real and you are smack in the middle of it and you miss everything that is familiar. I still miss home. Terribly. I miss my precious, sweet Kenai. My home, my friends, my family. I miss being able to hop in the car whenever I want and go wherever I want and buy whatever I want. I miss courteous store clerks; people who care about what they do for a living, or at least act like they do. I miss clean streets. I miss being able to walk down the road and not have to watch my every footstep for fear of breaking an ankle on uneven pavement or falling in a hole. I miss dogs that are cared for. I miss people who care.

A question that we hear often is how do we like Antigua? I dread that question because I never know how to answer it. It’s not so much personal, that is, it doesn’t have so much to do with the specific place or people as it does with the fact that it’s just so different than what I’m used to. I got a ride from a couple of British ex-patriots the other day who have been here for 5 years. When the lady asked me that question I stumbled through an answer. Then she admitted that when they first arrived, she hated it. I didn’t feel so bad after that.

Karen wins the prize – she received a package this week that took 14 months to get here. That’s not a typo. The packing slip from Barnes and Noble was dated Jan. 18, 2003. The box was unopened, undamaged, and there was no indication what happened to it. It’s either been circling the globe all this time, or fell behind a cabinet somewhere and they only found it when they were cleaning out the office. George just received a package that was sent from the U.S. on November 2nd. That’s 3 months – hardly compares. His at least had markings that showed that it went to Poland first, then Great Britain. So there’s still hope for those birthday cards that I’m missing.

I was witness to some blatant discrimination today amongst Antiguans. It was early afternoon and I walked down my hill to wait for a bus out on the main road. There was a kind of seedy-looking guy standing there and when the wind shifted, I could smell that he hadn’t bathed in quite awhile. I stood about 20 feet away from him, primarily because that was where the shade was. When the bus came along, he put his arm out to flag it down and I saw the bus driver wave him off. This is the typical sign that they’ll give to indicate that the bus is full. My home is almost at the end of the bus route, so that’s pretty rare to see this far south. So he drove past the guy, pulled over by where I was standing, let me on, then drove away. The bus was nearly empty. My guess was he either knew the guy and figured that he wasn’t going to pay, or took a look at him and decided he didn’t want to listen to the rest of the passengers complaining about the smell or his filthy attire. The guy on the road didn’t question it either; he could easily have walked the short distance and got on behind me, but instead he just stood there and accepted the driver’s decree. So we went on without him and he was left to flag down another vehicle for a ride, most likely a truck where he could hop in the back and not offend anyone.