Be Careful What you Wish For

One of the most gratifying and aggravating thing for a Peace Corps volunteer is attendance at meetings. Gratifying if people come, aggravating if people don’t. A wise PCV once said to us during training to keep our expectations low. That way we would never be disappointed. While it may sound strange to some people, they are actually words that I adhere by whenever I’m doing a project in the community where I expect people to show up. 

Last year I helped start a youth center in my town, and while it was a great effort by many people in the community, I could pretty much call it “Annie’s Funland,” as I was the only one helping to run it. Attendance was low, especially since this was the first thing of its kind in our community. But once the word got out, poco a poco students started to come. I believe my highest number was 10 students at once, but that was successful. I was just glad that at least some students cared enough to learn something outside of school. 

This year I am continuing with my English classes on Monday and with a professional guest speaker on Wednesday to teach about any topic they’d like. I got two teachers to volunteer and they are teaching basic hand sewing and how to crochet. 

Now that I got some volunteers, all I had to do was get the word out. I put up some flyers at key places in town: health post, primary school, and high school. This year being its second year in running, I was hoping students would at least know what the youth center was. 

The first day finally came and I have to admit, I was nervous. There is nothing worse than putting your heart and soul in a project and then have no one show up. As the wise volunteer said, I was keeping my expectations low as to not get disappointed. I decided I would be happy if at least 5 students came to my English class, but I was secretly wishing that more would come.

So I walk up to the school with my key in hand, and turn the corner. And there, already, were one, two, three, FOUR students. Good. I’m on my way to success. 

We all head on in to the classroom and little by little a few more stragglers come walking in and by the time 30 minutes passed, I had a good 16 students attending my English class. 

This was great, I thought. A perfect number to teach. Not too many that I can’t help each student individually. Not too little that we couldn’t do group activities. 

So the next week rolls around, and I’m expecting my 16 students to come back give or take a few…when I round the corner of the school, where I find not 16, not 20, but 40 kids waiting for me. Not really sure what is going on, I head on back to the classroom where there is about 20 more students waiting for me. They all start barging into the classroom once I turn the lock, fighting to see how gets a seat up front. 44, 45, 46 I count. I turn around to put my things down and at least 10 more come in through the door. I count at last, 66 students. 

I wanted participation, but wow. I better be more careful for what I wish for. Never again.