George’s mom, brother and sister-in-law have been visiting with him all week and I was invited to spend many of the days with them. We went sightseeing, went to the beach, snorkeled, cooked out at their condo, went scuba diving, … It was a wonderful break.

Did a 2-tank dive with George and Clark and Dive Antigua. John Birk, the proprietor, is a very gregarious sort; in fact he doesn’t even shut up underwater! He carries a huge dive slate that he fills it with paragraphs of trivial information about every single thing he sees, then waves each of the divers over with the expectation that they read every word of his amusing commentary. You spend more time reading than you do swimming or looking. It made my head hurt. I gave up very quickly trying to read the entire slate and instead humored him by looking in the general direction of the slate and nodding my head. By the second dive, I decided instead to swim about 20 feet away – George and Clark stuck close to John, which I felt justified my actions since I was certain that he was fully competent to handle any emergency that might arise with either of them – and that was far enough to be out of the range of his incessant chatter, but close enough that I could still easily see and be seen by my dive buddies. Besides that, the first dive, which was marred somewhat by a regulator that breathed like a pig, was simply beautiful with lots of sea life, an 8’ nurse shark, and a turtle. Got a replacement regulator for the second dive and breathing was much improved; the location was not as nice, but still had a good dive, especially once I figured out how to avoid “the slate”.

George’s sister sent a package for me with his mother and in it was a book on culture shock called “On Being Foreign”. There was a paragraph in the beginning that I thought was quite interesting; I hadn’t really thought of things this way before, but it gives one reason to pause…

At some point… there seems to occur a sort of crisis of personality, or identity, a period when the individual feels poised precariously over the abyss that seems to separate the two cultures. It is as though the sojourner’s awareness of the ability to function well in the host culture has triggered an awareness of the completeness of separation from the home culture. It is at this stage that all life can seem artificial and pointless. There is a deep sense of the ambiguity of one’s position: on the one hand, the newly acquired cultural identity opens significantly new vistas of experience; yet on the other hand those vistas are gained through an awakening, which is both intellectual and profoundly visceral, to the insight that all experience – even the experience of one’s self – is culturally determined. Hence, the sensation arises that life’s deepest values are fundamentally a fabrication, an illusion, a kind of grand pretense supported by the vast majority of people.

I have a belief that there is a truth that exists at the core of all life. I don’t think I would agree with the statement that life’s deepest values are a fabrication, but I would tend to agree that once you step only slightly above that level, there probably is a good deal of truth in it. Mankind has an inexhaustible supply of dogma defining ethics and values and it would be quite arrogant to insist that America’s ways are the true or right ways. Yet the cultural pull is quite strong and we become what we know. It is not our job in Peace Corps to change the people here over to our way of thinking, but only to expose them to who we are and for us to see who they are and to take that back with us. Hopefully there is value in the exchange in both directions. I don’t agree with everything that I observe here, and even if I understand the reason or history behind it, I often still don’t agree. But nobody asked me.

Things are winding down with the teaching schedule for summer. I just finished one group and have another finishing in 2 weeks. These students have been through our entire program and the Ministry of Education is planning a graduation ceremony next week to commemorate their achievements. They are all adults – schoolteachers, principals, and staff from various offices of the Ministry… I learned today that the local television station ABS will be covering the event – it’s a small island and it doesn’t take much to make the news. I think I’ve been on TV several times already – afterwards people we hardly know will spot us somewhere and tell us that they saw us on TV! After this I think I’m teaching a 1-2 week intensive workshop in July, possibly co-teaching it with Jim, then have a break till college and the new Ministry schedule starts up again in the fall.

Other volunteers that I’ve talked to that arrived in my group (almost 1 year ago, wow!) all seem to be experiencing a general feeling of dissatisfaction, even unhappiness, with being here. Some are cynical, some frustrated, some ambivalent with their positions here, some unmotivated, and all are universally bored. We’ve moved past the point of being surprised by people and things and into a stage where we anticipate the local’s responses or reactions (usually negatively unfortunately).

For example, Antiguans (actually I believe this is a Caribbean trait, not unique to Antigua) are always late. Always. If an event is advertised to begin at 7pm and you show up at 7pm, you will most likely be standing there alone, without a sign of another person or any of the trappings that you would expect to accompany the particular event (like chairs, or tables, or speakers, etc.). If you’re patient enough to wait about 45 minutes or so, a few people might begin to show up, but it could be 8:30-9:00 before anything really gets started. People are late to meetings, late to class, late to work, whatever. Sometimes they apologize for being late, but most often not. Such actions translated into American would generally not be favorable, but this isn’t America – people know it, expect it, and just plan that if something says it starts at 7pm, they don’t show up till after 8. Unless of course it’s raining, then they don’t show up at all. The effect on the volunteer is that it’s difficult to make oneself care about doing something when the people that are supposed to benefit from your service don’t seem to care about it themselves. That’s not necessarily true, but the casual attitudes about timeliness and attendance can make it appear to be so.

So to my other point – there just is not much to do here. I was trying to explain it to my mom the other day and I told her, “Imagine if you never left Carpinteria” (small town, California). “Wow”, she said. Yeah, wow. Several of us have vacations planned this summer either back to the states or to other Caribbean islands. I think we’re all hoping to get an attitude adjustment as a result. You begin to wonder if you’re here for the right reasons when the only thing keeping you from leaving is that you don’t have anything better to do if you go back home.

I’m trying, I really am. I try not to dwell on the negatives, try to avoid getting lost in whining and complaining, and try to appreciate what I have and the beauty when I find it around me. I try to keep my weekends as full as possible with fun things like sailing or hiking or snorkeling. And during the week I try not to schedule more than a day or two here and there with nothing to do. It’s not good for me to sit home inside my tiny walls, with no human contact, not venturing beyond my laundry line out back. To counter the boredom (and improve my fitness level), I started an exercise log and dated it all the way out to the end of the year with the goal of filling in an activity every day. I’ve gotten close – only have 4 “nones” recorded for the past month, and the rest of the month is full with items such as snorkeling, swimming, walking, yoga – I purchased a couple of DVD’s from Amazon.com and have been using those for some of my workouts. I also started an herb garden in my kitchen with cilantro, basil, and parsley growing in pots on the counter. It’s fun having the fresh herbs and the green plants help make my white house look not quite so sterile, but I need to leave the basil alone for a while; I’ve picked all the large leaves off and have been told that it looks like the goats have been at it!

So on I go, not really sure of the effect that I’m having here, and not really sure of the effect that this place and the people here are having on me. I’m hoping that before I leave I’ll have it figured out.

It felt like I was teaching in a battle zone… well, not exactly, but Thursday’s class reminded me of the old MASH episodes where they’re trying to work in the operating room with bombs and machine gun fire going off all around them. My Tuesday/Thursday classes at the Cultural Division meet from noon to 2pm, which is normally just the right time to finish since that’s when the school kids start showing up for their pan lessons, music lessons, dance lessons… the place is a circus of music, noise, and children nearly every afternoon. The garage where they store the steel pan drums is directly below the computer room where I teach. When the kids show up, they assemble either on the driveway directly adjacent to the building, or in the courtyard off to the side – still quite loud either way, but like I said, I’m normally finished by the time they start.

Thursday when I arrived, someone was already practicing on a drum set in the garage directly below, and by 12:30, the full steel band had joined them. These weren’t students, they were too good for that; my guess is it was the instructors or pan masters practicing for carnival or an upcoming show or competition. I don’t know why they didn’t move outside, maybe because it was too hot to practice in the direct sunlight or because there was only a few of them and they could all fit in the garage. Whatever the reason, the walls and floors reverberated from the drums and the music was so loud I could hardly think, much less try to shout out instructions to the students. Imagine trying to teach Microsoft Access while competing with a steel pan orchestra playing in your basement! Fortunately it’s a small classroom with only 5 students or it would have been impossible. The problem is that no one consulted Culture’s class schedule when they set up the computer training classes. It was only because I mentioned that they hold lessons there in the afternoons that they abandoned the later time slots (and even then I think they still attempted it with one of the other instructors). It hadn’t been a problem for me until now, but with school ending this week, they’ll probably start the kid’s classes earlier as well. At least my class has just 1 week to go, so we only have to persevere for a little while longer, and maybe if we’re lucky, we’ll miss the practice sessions for the remainder of the class (fingers crossed!)