Anxiety over my site placement

All the volunteers from Peru 5 like reinforce that the 11 weeks of training is not peace corps. Good. This definitely feels like I’m studying abroad again. Going to class everyday, having a very strict, busy schedule and hanging out with Americans. The people who have studied abroad whether in a Spanish speaking country or not are in general having a much easier time than those who haven’t. The year I spent abroad in Spain was probably the best thing I have ever done. Not only was it wonderful preparation for the peace corps and speaking Spanish, but the overall emotional maturity I gained was priceless. It’s that emotional maturity I credit the ease of my transition into the peace corps. But as we reminded daily, this isn’t peace corps. I am very excited to get out to my site so I can experience new challenges and obstacles. Right now, I feel like I’ve done this all before and I’m ready for something new. It’s also terrifying, cause I’m going to go from comfortable into a completely unknown world. It’s possible that I will get sent to a city and a lot won’t change, but I have a feeling I’m being sent to the campo (meaning out in the middle of no where, a town of 500 way up in the mountains). The things I have heard about the campo sound like the peace corps I had always imagined in my head. Not this Cable television, swimming pool and American luxuries around every corner.
The campo is where you have no running water, cooking over an actual fire, wash your clothes in the river, a balanced meal is considered rice and potatoes, domestic violence and sexual abuse is not just common but excepted, illiteracy is high and children have never been asked in their whole life what they want to do when they grow up because it goes without saying that they will work in the field just like the past 20 generations of their family have. The campo is hard core and most people are terrified of getting sent there. It’s scary not knowing where you’re going to get sent, especially since there are such extremes like living a life with all the luxuries you have back in the states to having to go to the bathroom in a hole you dig yourself cause there aren’t any latrines in your community. We’ve had one interview about our placement with our program director Kitty. What Kitty told me during out meeting, was that this interview was not about our placement, she was just getting to know a little more about us and our back round. She asked me questions like why I joined the peace corps and about my experience with kids. The only thing she asked me about placement was if I had a preference about working in community based or center based. I was definitely nervous the first two weeks about my placement. I finally dealt with this major issue by just excepting that there is a good chance I will get sent to the campo. I did join the peace corps after all, and though there is still a part of me that would love running water and internet that isn’t a nauseating 2 hour bus ride away, I know that where ever I go, there will be challenges and rewards. I am already starting to view things like money and possessions as things that are more abstract than tangible. Having “money” is so relative. As Americans, we associate money and positions with happiness. I get an allowance of $2.50 a day. I’ve had to cut out a lot of the frivolous things I spent money on in the states but I hardly notice it. I say that now, but I wonder what I will say when I am living amongst extreme poverty.
Something that is so frustrating to me right now, is how all the other Americans are dealing with the stress of not knowing where they are getting sent. To me it’s obvious who the people are that absolutely do not want to get sent to the campo. It’s obvious to me because they never shut up about it, and not just about how they are nervous, they have some how convinced themselves that they already have a set placement and it’s not the campo. During out first interview, they took something that Kitty said to them and ran with it. They only heard what they wanted to hear and molded what was said to make themselves feel better about where they are going. 20 times a day, I hear some one say “I’m going to the coast” “I’m going to be center based” “I’m taken the place of so and so from Peru 5”. If you ask them how they know, they say “oh, cause I told kitty I don’t want to learn ketchuwa, so I’m going to the coast”. It’s frustrating to us who genuinely have no idea where we are being sent. I want to scream at them that nobody knows where they are being sent and that there are so few city sites that only 20% of us will get sent to cities even though 60% of people have told me they know they’re going to a city. I am doing better now cause I realized that when people tell me they know they are going to the coast, they don’t actually know. They´re just really hoping. Plus, I try to think about that no matter where I get sent, there is always going to be some one at another site that has something I don’t and I will be jealous of that. Jealousy is completely natural. But again I try to remind myself that just because they have a few more luxury items, doesn’t mean they are missing home any less than me, or having an easier time learning Spanish or they aren’t struggling with work. I do think a select few do have a reasonable idea about where they are going. Tom was approached by Kitty this week who told him she has these 3 brand new sites way up in the mountains and are very remote and very primitive. She asked Tom how he would feel about going to one of these sites. Tom and I had a long talk I it seemed like Tom had the same mentality about being nervous about placement but finally settling on the acceptance that wherever we get sent will be a life changing experience and we shouldn’t bother worrying about it when there is little we can do. It’s gonna be hard regardless of where we get sent. So Tom told Kitty it would be okay if he got sent there. That still doesn’t mean he’s %100 going there, but it’s probably likely.
I don’t even know where I want to go. Every place has an upside and a down side. It would be sweet to go to the coast, but the coast here is desert and it is unbearably hot for most of the year, and it’s just dirt and sand. I would miss having trees and grass around. It would be nice to go to a city cause I would have access to a lot more resources and western amenities. But cities are also a lot more dangerous. I wouldn’t be able to go out at night alone. They’re big and crowded and I wouldn’t get a sense of community that I would in a small town. The mountains would be cool cause I could hike around every day and have community gardens, but I am less likely to have a bathroom and access to familiar amenities like the kind of cereal like and soy milk. Most people that live out in the campo make the hour to 3 hour trip into the nearest city every week to buy things like vegetables and lotion and things that aren’t available in the campo. The only thing I have decided I would really like to have would be to have a other volunteers close to me. There is one department (state) where there are 10 different volunteers all within 2 hours of each other. That is where I go.