On letting go of expectations

I kept saying “I have no expectations! I can do without internet! I can do without lights or a fridge! I’ve lived in vermin-infested shoebox in Spanish Harlem – I can live anywhere! Just give me a community that needs me, and I will be what they need.”

They said it in training too – have no expectations, let them all go. I never let myself picture my future home. I never made plans for projects that might suit my ego but not my site. I kept the mental picture of my future purposefully blank. I focused on the language, on my health, on learning to cook with local foods, on the txiga integration strategy. I was finally in the Peace Corps, and how could it not be great?

I truly believed I had not brought expectations, but it turns out looking at all the beautiful marketing materials for the US Peace Corps, reading blogs from Tanzania and South Africa, and living in rural Santiago for training had me thinking I had a pretty good idea what Peace Corps in SSA was going to entail. I said I had no expectations but in fact all along I was unconsciously forming “not expectations.” I called it being prepared. I told myself I did not expect a really nice house (but I was prepared to be as poor as my poor neighbors). I did not expect to find many of the comforts of western living (but I was prepared for everything to be strange). I did not expect to be working with teachers who already had advanced degrees (I was prepared to work with newer teachers, less experienced teachers – or maybe just less educated teachers). I didn’t expect home internet, or to hear English out of the mouths of half the people I met. I was prepared for a whole new world. And then I was assigned to a perky little port city called Mindelo.

My first four months on site have largely been about discovering and dealing with these expectations I “didn’t have.” I am a little ashamed to admit how many times my thoughts or comments have begun with “It’s not…” It’s not in the fora. It’s not humble or downtrodden – it is in fact educated, stylish, and very proud of it. My school doesn’t need my recycled ricebag posters – we have laptops and projectors in every room. It’s not lacking for infrastructure – the garbage is picked up once to thrice a week, the water truck has never let our tank go dry, the power rarely so much as hiccups, and they put up christmas lights for god’s sake! It’s not lacking for talent – my supervisor told me day one “we don’t need English teachers,” my colleagues have years more experience and degrees than I do. I began to suspect I was going crazy because whenever people would remark how “lucky” we are I could only grind my teeth harder. At my lowest point I found myself thinking I hate this place, I hate this city, and wishing wishing wishing I could somehow change my site, my island, my country of service!

And finally, after venting and writing and staring for too long into the blaze of the beautiful sunset that I can take in every night from the balcony in my large, airy apartment, I let myself owe up to it. The truth is, I didn’t join the Peace Corps entirely out of selflessness and the desire to do anything, anywhere that my country wanted me to go – I joined in part because I wanted to go off the grid, to live in a rural and cozy locale, to prove to myself I didn’t need all the trappings of modern life, to find something meaningful in a life so unlike my own. And that was a very painful admission; I am not the volunteer I thought I would be. I am not the volunteer my friends and family congratulated me on being before I even left.

Peace Corps asked me to go where they wanted to send me and “to serve under conditions of hardship” but I overlooked the teeny-tiny conditional phrase in that sentence – “…, if necessary.”

The first step to fixing the problem is admitting you have one, right? Well, here I am. A Peace Corps Volunteer with too many expectations. I am by no means giving up on Cape Verde, and I can honestly say I have never considered terminating early. I could just slide through the rest of service as a moody expat but I think I am finally ready to embrace the unique challenge Cape Verde is actually giving me. It is not to go without water, or fresh produce, or lights, or internet connectivity. My challenge as an Education volunteer is to step into a professional environment, surrounded by people with years more experience than me, and overcome my limited language skills to work with them as equals. My challenge is to bridge the gap between the American workplace culture I know well and the Cape Verdean work culture that appears so similar on the outside but is quite more complex once you are in it. I am here to find ways to offer new insight, encourage the adoption of new ideas, and to simply provide a different perspective, unique to my own life experience. My challenge is to look beyond my well-to-do neighbors to where I might be of more help, perhaps in communities far from the city center. And above all, I can try to influence the kids I have the privilege to teach. I might not ever learn how to carry a sack of pigeon peas on my head but maybe one day I will be able to name all the kids in that motley group that hang out in front of my apartment complex.

I was so happy to greet the new year this month because sometimes the perception of a new beginning, a chance to reset, can go a long way in changing attitudes. This will be my one entire calendar year as a PCV. Time to let go of all the expectations. To stop thinking “if only…” and accept the fact my service will not look like your service. Time to find ways to love this sometimes tourist-pandering, always bozoffa (yes, I’ll keep my badiu kriolu thank you), Portuguese fala-ing, laid-back-to-the-point-of-not-starting-the-NYE-party-until-2am-the-next-year city, on what probably will be the only desert island I will ever be able to call “home.” And that is not an expectation, it’s a choice.

View of the sunset from our new home, Mindelo, Cape Verde, West Africa