Do what you love. This has always seemed to me to be the best advice given on the subject of what to be when I grow up. My biggest challenge in following this advice is figuring out what I love. I’m pretty specific on the things I dislike, but I like a lot of things. Generally liking something provides the motivation to pursue it until you’re really good at it, and this combination usually produces something to love. However, I have been blessed to be good at almost everything I am interested in. I don’t say this to be cocky, but to point out its downside. It gives me too many options while preventing a particular focus, or anything that stands out as something I should pursue.
When I got my assignment to Kenya, I was asked to fill out a resume to be shown to my host organization. On that resume I needed to list my hobbies and interests. I had a really difficult time doing that. While I could have listed twenty or thirty interests, my hobbies have been pretty limited. I am happy to do almost anything, but have trouble choosing what to focus on, so usually just go with whatever the people around me are doing. Since the people around me are frequently changing, so the hobbies are changing too. I don’t stick with many things long enough to consider them a personal hobby, just something I did for a while.
So why am I bringing this up today? I’ve been reading a lot of the other volunteers’ blogs and seeing the kinds of projects they’re already becoming involved in or making plans to initiate at their sites. And then I look at my site, and my lack of inspiration for these things, which the PC calls “secondary projects.” I am really glad that I have a main project that is so interesting to me (coffee), but am at a complete loss to figure out what I should be doing for that, let alone figuring out anything else. Others have started dance classes, libraries, special interest clubs, business classes, and environmental projects, according to their interests. I walk around my town and look at things.
I knew coming to site that I will not be one of those volunteers that immediately jumps into the community and finds ways to be involved. That has never been my style, and even coming halfway around the world is not going to change that. But now that I’ve been here for some time and am starting to feel comfortable in my surroundings, I’m starting to feel like I should have at least some idea of what else to do here. And…I have no clue! We have six more weeks until we get together for the last phase of PC training, so I think it’s acceptable to still be figuring it out until then, but even thinking that I’m starting to put pressure on myself to be a good volunteer. One of the cool things about PC, though, is that there are so many definitions of a “good volunteer.” What one person does at one site to be successful is not what everyone else has to do. It’s like a choose-your-own-adventure book come to life. And while things probably won’t wrap up as easily as they do in a story, the twists and turns are just as exciting.
As I think about what it will mean for me to be a successful volunteer, I have thought a lot about the reasons I joined PC in the first place. It’s fun to be able to see some of those reasons already validated, even in this short time. Yes, they may be the more self-serving reasons because the altruistic ones will take more time to achieve, but it’s still comforting to see they’re being realized. I’m living in another part of the world, I’m being challenged to learn new things, I’m reinforcing life skills that I will need no matter where life takes me, I’m gaining a more balanced perspective, I’m meeting some really great people, I’m traveling, and while I may not know what kinds of projects I want to do here, I think I’m figuring out some things for when I return to the US. The things that will take more time are exchanging my culture with people in my community and figuring out sustainable ways to help my community and my host organization. These are not exactly easy tasks, so I hope that I can figure out ways to complete them and thus earn the title of a “good” volunteer.
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