Something's Missing
After over 6 months at site my group, ID-7, is currently in Surabaya finishing our first week of In-Service Training. Tomorrow the 19 of us in West Java will return to the West and continue training with our Indonesian Counterparts as will the East Java Volunteers. When we're at site it's hard to visualize progress and success so for me and what I would do in normal life is make proposals, excel spreadsheets and charts. Create reasons for me to analyze the world around me and understand what is going on but also find ways to show my Indonesian colleagues this is me, these are my experiences and this is how I want to help.
Often times volunteers enter villages and especially as a young single woman, it is difficult to be taken seriously. Most times your community takes what they see at face value and automatically seeks to protect their own but for most independent Americans it feels more like smothering and overbearing. As the cross cultural experts we are as PCVs we simply remind ourselves that this is the Javanese culture and some of us adapt and try to conform ourselves to make others more comfortable and some of us are very direct and voice our needs.
For me I really wanted to get things done in my village and I thought to myself, if I was in their shoes and some foreigner came into my village and started spewing ideas at me I would immediately be turned off but more than being a foreigner they don't know our backgrounds or our experiences that have led us here. While culturally immersing myself into my community and school, I decided during Ramadan that it would be a great idea to have a work plan in Bahasa Indonesia that goes over: what Peace Corps is about, Peace Corps Goals, How I plan on achieving those goals through a project management framework and finally my professional and vaguely personal experiences that explained why I am qualified and passionate about certain projects.
It is often times unthinkable to Indonesians that at 23 I have already finished my Bachelor's degree. Aside from that, it is even more unthinkable that I have almost 10 years of experience in leadership development because of some really wonderful mentors like Mrs. Cimino or that I have at this point in my life planned, organized and executed over 70 events, speaking panels, seminars, workshops, conferences or retreats. Logistics and project management is where my heart is and my fellow teachers at school were able to see that and it opened up a wonderful door of communication and collaboration to want to improve things but also be invested in projects I wanted to do.
After this time at permanent site I was looking forward to coming to IST and sharing stories, experiences and methods. But for some reason I was ashamed to show my friends an 18-page proposal I had written in Bahasa Indonesia for my school that I then translated into English and instead adapted for myself as a way of compiling everything that is happening and that I would like to happen at site which is now 30 pages long. I love everything about who I am and what I did and for the first time ever in my life I was considering holding myself back because I was afraid of my peers thinking that I did this to show off or to make them look bad.
If I was in America I would not have thought twice about any of that. As Peace Corps Volunteers there are interesting dynamics in every group and every group in each country and batch are going to be different. When I walk into sessions and into a room and I see people from my group I am happy to be in a place where I see all of their strengths and contributions. At the same time, we are not only colleagues--we are each other's friends and family in Indonesia.
I recently learned that some comments were made about me, they were not meant to be malicious but they were to the tone of "attention-seeking" or "brown-noser". Any of my true friends back in the states would never think twice and I was really hurt to find out that what was supposed to be my support group was actually the same individuals who were trying to tear me down. The fact of the matter is they don't know my past, they don't know why it is that I do what I do but I should never have let them get to me and make me feel guilty for not half-assing things because that's not who I am.
I have to throw all of myself into something otherwise there's no point for me to be here. I realized the struggles that my parents went through to give me the opportunities they did and I work everyday to honor all the work and sacrifice they have committed to my life but more than my parents it's personal, I have followed my personal mission statement since I was 17 and every time I feel a little off course I go back to it and I remind myself of times in my life where I would have never imagined being the person I am today. I move forward to always improve myself but much of my personal values and morals have been sacrificed because I'm trying to dumb myself down to make others feel comfortable and at the end of the day- I am helping no one but I am hurting myself.
Our group approaches Peace Corps as friends first but because many of us may not know how others are professionally, we judge them because we think that they are being fake or trying to be something else. That's not who I am. I come from a long history of work hard-play hard, you accept the many facets of your real friends but to act as though I am insincere with my passion for what I am doing as a Peace Corps volunteer seemed insensitive because everyone is going to have their own way of working and their own reasons that drive them to do what they do.
So that's where I'm at right now. Something's missing.
Often times volunteers enter villages and especially as a young single woman, it is difficult to be taken seriously. Most times your community takes what they see at face value and automatically seeks to protect their own but for most independent Americans it feels more like smothering and overbearing. As the cross cultural experts we are as PCVs we simply remind ourselves that this is the Javanese culture and some of us adapt and try to conform ourselves to make others more comfortable and some of us are very direct and voice our needs.
For me I really wanted to get things done in my village and I thought to myself, if I was in their shoes and some foreigner came into my village and started spewing ideas at me I would immediately be turned off but more than being a foreigner they don't know our backgrounds or our experiences that have led us here. While culturally immersing myself into my community and school, I decided during Ramadan that it would be a great idea to have a work plan in Bahasa Indonesia that goes over: what Peace Corps is about, Peace Corps Goals, How I plan on achieving those goals through a project management framework and finally my professional and vaguely personal experiences that explained why I am qualified and passionate about certain projects.
It is often times unthinkable to Indonesians that at 23 I have already finished my Bachelor's degree. Aside from that, it is even more unthinkable that I have almost 10 years of experience in leadership development because of some really wonderful mentors like Mrs. Cimino or that I have at this point in my life planned, organized and executed over 70 events, speaking panels, seminars, workshops, conferences or retreats. Logistics and project management is where my heart is and my fellow teachers at school were able to see that and it opened up a wonderful door of communication and collaboration to want to improve things but also be invested in projects I wanted to do.
After this time at permanent site I was looking forward to coming to IST and sharing stories, experiences and methods. But for some reason I was ashamed to show my friends an 18-page proposal I had written in Bahasa Indonesia for my school that I then translated into English and instead adapted for myself as a way of compiling everything that is happening and that I would like to happen at site which is now 30 pages long. I love everything about who I am and what I did and for the first time ever in my life I was considering holding myself back because I was afraid of my peers thinking that I did this to show off or to make them look bad.
If I was in America I would not have thought twice about any of that. As Peace Corps Volunteers there are interesting dynamics in every group and every group in each country and batch are going to be different. When I walk into sessions and into a room and I see people from my group I am happy to be in a place where I see all of their strengths and contributions. At the same time, we are not only colleagues--we are each other's friends and family in Indonesia.
I recently learned that some comments were made about me, they were not meant to be malicious but they were to the tone of "attention-seeking" or "brown-noser". Any of my true friends back in the states would never think twice and I was really hurt to find out that what was supposed to be my support group was actually the same individuals who were trying to tear me down. The fact of the matter is they don't know my past, they don't know why it is that I do what I do but I should never have let them get to me and make me feel guilty for not half-assing things because that's not who I am.
I have to throw all of myself into something otherwise there's no point for me to be here. I realized the struggles that my parents went through to give me the opportunities they did and I work everyday to honor all the work and sacrifice they have committed to my life but more than my parents it's personal, I have followed my personal mission statement since I was 17 and every time I feel a little off course I go back to it and I remind myself of times in my life where I would have never imagined being the person I am today. I move forward to always improve myself but much of my personal values and morals have been sacrificed because I'm trying to dumb myself down to make others feel comfortable and at the end of the day- I am helping no one but I am hurting myself.
Our group approaches Peace Corps as friends first but because many of us may not know how others are professionally, we judge them because we think that they are being fake or trying to be something else. That's not who I am. I come from a long history of work hard-play hard, you accept the many facets of your real friends but to act as though I am insincere with my passion for what I am doing as a Peace Corps volunteer seemed insensitive because everyone is going to have their own way of working and their own reasons that drive them to do what they do.
So that's where I'm at right now. Something's missing.
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