What to do and how to express yourself during your Peace Corps service when it is not all Sunshine, Rainbows, and Happiness. I don't know. I do have some guidelines, cautionary tales, and a general feeling of Don't be an international incident! that guides what I say, how I say it, and in what format. But does that self editing really convey to you, the reader, what it is truly like for me during this experience when things are not so nice?
Perhaps you are a potential volunteer and are deciding on whether or not to join. Perhaps you have made the plunge and are researching your country of assignment. Perhaps you are a friend of mine who gets my dark, dry humor. Or, you are someone who can make a big deal of what I say in a manner in which it was not intended creating a firestorm of unhappiness that results in the international incident! Trying to avoid that last one while being honest to the potential volunteer and ultimately talking to my friends is how and why I write what I do.
I have a little mantra that goes through my head any time I am out and about in the world - Don't be an international incident! This was instilled in me during my service as a US Marine in Okinawa. I served in Camp Hansen (Shout out Kinville and White Kitchen with your bad ass Yakisoba!!!!) in 2000-2001. At that time we had an international incident where some US military went out in town, acted the fool, did very bad things - all just before the US President was supposed to show up for a G-8 world leader summit in Okinawa. That resulted in the Libo Card system. At the time, the Libo Card system was pitched to us as being temporary measure until things cooled down. Eighteen years later and the Libo Card system is still around, evolved, and codified.
In 2002 I was in Spain on a deployment where the US military was participating in goodwill exercises between several nations. We were camped out on a Spanish Air Base, our pilots flew with their pilots. Our grunts did ground exercises with theirs. It was fun and good interaction between other nations military. Of course, one Marine had to go out into town, get publicly drunk, arrested, and the incident splashed on the front page of the newspaper.
Those two incidents, plus a number of stories that I have heard of about Americans abroad acting the fool and causing trouble has led to my little mantra. I do not want to be front page news for those kind of reasons. Because I significantly reduce NCDs in my town by implementing a kick-ass nutrition program - sure!! Because I built 500 new hand washing stations to go along with re-building all of the toilets in my town of service while enabling my town to do this task themselves after I have gone - you bet! Not because I got drunk and did something stupid. Or in this case, because I had a bad day and vented on the internet.
When I write something for public consumption, even if my readership is zero or two people, I try to be honest, fair, and respectful. I try to be honest in a reflective way, thinking about the situation, and talking about my ideas, conclusions, or questions. Sometimes though, being honest is what is offensive to people. No matter how you try to be respectful or fair about it. I will be called out by people, less so these days, that "You can't talk to people like that! It's not what you say it's how you say it." This typically happens when I'm presenting an unvarnished truth. I struggle with this and do my best to be respectful and fair, but in the end, if your insulted because I spoke a truth you don't want to acknowledge, that is not on me.
To me respect is being kind in the terms you choose to use. I believe in being politically correct which is when you choose terms and sayings that do not offend. I think that being politically correct shows that you have respect for your listener or the person you are referring to. Even if I grew up using a racial slur without realizing it was a racial slur - such as the term gypsy - once I learn from a person of that racial group that it is a slur that they find insulting, then it is on me to change my speech pattern to no longer include that slur. It's not hard, and I don't take it personally, to have to stop saying that word. Instead, I will say 'nomadic' when I am referring to a person who likes to travel as their way of life.
Being fair is about looking at a situation from the point of view of the other person and trying to understand that point of view. Then when I talk about the situation I will present the 'other voice'. For example, my family members who cannot stand being Politically Correct find it intrusive that anyone should deem to tell them what to say or how to say it. If it is a phrase that they grew up with, or one that they think fits, they will use it without regards to if it is offensive to someone. As I talk about being politically correct I think it is fair of me to point out this 'other voice' in the argument even if I think it is crap. You listen to all voices in the discussion because you learn something new, and learning something new is never a bad thing. It is how you find the common ground.
So onto the meat of this paper - what to do when you want to talk about a sensitive subject that has the potential to backfire such as the not so nice aspects of life? Or what if you had no idea it would be a sensitive subject and are completely taken surprise by the fact that it was taken the wrong way?
There are two main Peace Corps stories which shows the power of the volunteers words and actions in big ways. In the early days of the Peace Corps there was a volunteer who wrote home on a post card. She vented her thoughts about the living conditions of the village she was living in. Words like 'primitive' were used. Because it was a post card it was available for everyone to read and eventually was printed in the news paper, regardless of privacy rights that the volunteer may have had or expected with her mail. The Peace Corps program, I believe, was then asked to leave that country. At the very least, the volunteer had to leave for her own safety.
The second story is about a group of volunteers who got together and in high spirits decided to spray paint the town water tower, in typically American fashion. They painted the name of their area with 'Fuck Yeah!' which was a play on a popular theme song at the time. The intent was to show pride in their town. The way it was taken was that everyone took offense to the message, the story grew to include additional actions attributed to the volunteers that they did not do, the volunteers were expelled, and the future of the program in the area was under threat.
Glimmers of Hope: Memoir of a Volunteer in Africa by Mark Burke, page 171-172
I'm still very new to my service so I have sometime to go navigating this road talking about my experiences and not being the next international incident to ruin the reputation of Americans, Marines, and Peace Corps Volunteers. It's nice and interesting to read the posts about daily like how to cook over a fire and what do you do with your trash when there is no municipal services, but at some point these fluff pieces grow stale. I want to talk about things that matter, that impact our life, I want to examine the issues. So all I can say is that I will do my best to be honest, respectful, and fair in my writings. But I have no control over how my words will be taken once they are out there in the world. As the reader, there is some responsibility on you to try and exercise the same constraints on your reactions. To be honest, respectful, and fair about your reaction, reproduction, and reflection to my words.
With that little social contract in place lets see if I can even put anything down on paper that is worth a good read and which will potentially be beneficial to someone someday.
Cheers!!
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