To be or not to be

A tourist….that is…

So sorry for my lack of blogging lately, I have been up and down the coast of Peru this month and have only just gotten to catch my breath. It’s a bit ironic the way Peace Corps makes it for us volunteers. The first 3 months we are supposed to stay in site and work on our community diagnostic, which is fine because we aren’t able to travel, but on the flip side, there are many days that you don’t do anything. But once your 3 month mark hit when you are finally able free to travel, you are also starting to do actual work…so it gets harder and harder to be out of site.

So far this month, I’ve been in my site a total of 5 days….6 days by the end of the month. Why you ask?! 1. Semana Santa Vacation to the jungle 2. Early-IST Training with other health volunteers in Tumbes/Piura and 3. Lima working on Chévere and waiting for my parents to arrive. So in between that time I was either in my site or en route, since Peru is a humungous country with the majority of the roads unpaved.

Looking ahead to this month back in January, I couldn’t be anything but ecstatic, but now that I have been away from my site for so long, I actually am missing my campo-life and am dying to get back to work. Even in Lima, when we have options up the wazooo for food, I’m actually craving my meal of rice, beans, and onions. Funny how things go…

I’m also learning what it means to be a tourist, someone who sees a culture, and me, a Peace Corps volunteer, someone who lives a culture. I used to get offended when people asked me if I was a tourist, almost wishing that being here for X-many months would somehow change my appearance. I then started to think about my response…am I tourist? Or am I something more?

After my two years of service, I’ll have lived in my adobe house, eaten traditional Peruvian dishes, and lived the life of a campesina…and while I will feel truly apart of my community and my new family in Peru… I will always be that foreigner who came for two years and then left to go back to her country.

So with having that finish line already in my mind, I’m using that as a motivation for my work and life in my community. I am only here for a limited time, but hopefully my presence will be felt much longer. And as much as the lack of comfort may get to me, all I have to do is remind myself that this is short-term, whereas this is life for the rest of my community. So if they can do, I can do it too.