Relationships are everything

In the Peace Corps success is officially measured in numbers, in the amount of plants you grow, the amount of teachers you work with, and the amount of children who take part in your environmental projects. These concrete numbers are needed to show the government that the money invested in these programs is doing something tangible, it’s capacitating teachers and community members as well as teaching Nicaraguan children. I see the obvious importance and understand that this is the system in which nearly everyone works. How many hours did you put in last week? Did your project produce adequate outcomes?

But Peace Corps is about so much more. Every day things pop into my head and I think about how much I miss cooking my own food or speaking my mind about gender issues. But then I get a hug from ten of my students. Then my teacher buys me a bag of jocotes (a small delicious fruit). Then a cousin who always likes to bug me yells in the street. Then my one year old “niece” won’t let me take a nap because she wants to play with my Frisbee and steal my earrings. Then I soak it all in and think about how many relationships I will miss when I leave Nicaragua.

You could say that it is rare to think about this now, as I am still in the beginning stages of service, yet there is already a new group of volunteers in Nicaragua and the next crew arrives in August. After looking back at these past few months in site, I am terrified to think about how fast time has flown. I was so ready for Nicaragua that I don’t even feel like 8 months has passed without seeing my friends and family. Time will fly and I want to enjoy every second of every day.

So what is interesting is that I also want to explore this beautiful country. I love the relationships I have also made with my very tight-knit environment group. In a group of 19 all of us get along very well and support each other with amazing ease. The interesting things about the many relationships I have fostered in the past 8 months is that my relationships with one group seem to affect my relationships with the other. For example, when I spend too much time traveling (or even a little bit of time traveling) people in my town call me “vaga” like a vagabond who only spends his or her time in the streets. I love to see my PC friends, but then I come home and find that people have missed me or I have missed out on something fun. But the same goes for missing PC trips with my friends. Some weeks I feel like I’m so integrated into Nica culture that I forget to pick up the phone and call my friends, realizing I haven’t heard from them in a long time. I get isolated and don’t hear the latest gossip or news because I am working so hard at enjoying my relationships in site.

So I’m learning to find an interesting balance. And as with everything in the Peace Corps, I follow my gut, I do what my intuition tells me, what at the end of the day will make me happy. Never in my life have I made so many decisions purely based on my happiness and what feels good. That is the beauty of this life. Yes, I will write my reports and do my best to stay true to those numbers. But at the end of the day, success is built within these relationships that I have created. And success for me means following my own happiness.