One.

I’m not sure if the Peace Corps knows that their paraphernalia might be their worst enemy.

The whole application process is grueling. The months on end of seemingly irrelevant and mundane questions and checking to see if you’re still interested gave me an insight about what it must be like to be a guy in a clingy relationship. This all is a small price to pay, however, for the fully funded adventure into the unknown.

Then all the stats come at you like darts thrown from all directions.

 Only 17 percent of applicants are accepted, only 11 percent actually get sent to a country, and 10 percent of those will be sent home before training is even over. I’ve met several Marines, and only a handful of PCVs. Maybe the Marines should hand their slogan over. A successful Volunteer, perhaps those are the real few, the real proud.

For those that make the cut, the few, the proud, the chosen, the ones who answer the call of the world, they get buried in pounds and pounds of paperwork. Forms from every government agency, vaccination sheets, culture shock awareness pamphlets-all the thing that a dreamer never considers. The government wants to bring you down long enough to entomb you with disclaimers. I’m 22 and just filled out a form naming my next of kin, just in case I die. Their words, not mine.

All of their info packets on integration, all of the memoirs they tell you to read, they all have this stiff, formal tone to them, telling you for 75 pages how difficult your service is going to be, adding a sentence at the very end that it’s all going to be worth it- almost like an afterthought.

I wonder how many people they scare off with their information. It’s like becoming a really well informed inmate, but they at least have running water and indoor plumbing.

Why does anyone go?

I think every Volunteer hangs their hat on that last sentence. That flicker of hope buried in all of the bullshit. Maybe they’re trying to get you prepared for what you're going to face out in the bush. Buried in 27 months of service, maybe there will only be one student that I matter to. One person in Sierra Leone who will miss me when I’m gone. One person who found my Superman complex invigorating rather than infuriating.

Maybe one is all every Volunteer gets.

And maybe that’s enough. 

1 Is The Loneliest Number

Despite everyone’s efforts, the inevitable question springs up after not too long when people hear I’m jetting off with the Peace Corps.

“So, you think you’ll meet a guy there?”

I love North Park dearly, but as a female senior, it seems that the only options that make sense after graduation are either get married or do missions. The Peace Corps isn’t exactly missions, but it’s close enough that people don’t ask a lot of questions. Even my mother, who is bursting with parental pride, has let the question slip.

Throughout the seemingly endless application process, I admit that this thought never crossed my mind. It never even occurred to me that this happens to people. Although, I did manage to make it through 4 ½ years at a Christian school without a proposal, so maybe it’s not that far out that I wouldn’t think of it.

But, so much was my curiosity with everyone’s infatuation that I took to the wire to see if this actually happens.

And apparently, it indeed happens quite a bit. Something about higher dopamine levels and isolation from home makes people connect and attach easier when overseas. 75% of returned Volunteers report that they were in love at some point during their program.

Now, as a girl who spent 3 summers at camp, I’ve seen people fall in love under less-than-appealing circumstances. Hot weather and cramped showers never held anyone at their hottest.

But when you compare it to the tribal villages and rural, waterless landscapes that Volunteers are dealing with, it seems like Nirvana. I wonder how anyone can fall in love under circumstances like that?

I’m very aware of how much work it takes to keep myself looking presentable. I know that 6 months into my program, I'm going to have caterpillar eyebrows, Einstein hair and a permanent smile. I’m going to help people, not meet someone. But apparently, survey says that for Volunteers, they’re inextricably linked.

I suppose I can’t dwell on it. I won’t know what’s going to happen until I get there. But I will say that if the crazy happens and I do meet a guy, I hope he loves my adventurous spirit.

Because baby, I won’t be smelling that good. 

The World Is Calling.

It’s finally happened.

The culmination of all of my restless wandering syndrome had manifested in an offer from the Peace Corps to serve in Sierra Leone, West Africa for 2 years starting in a mere 138 days.

While I have some pretty proud parents, and that’s always a comforting thing, really I'm astounded with this responsibility that the government has entrusted me with. I get a classroom of 50 wide-eyed girls who have so much to offer the world, and I get to be a person who helps them get there.

There’s something sort of magical about teaching anyway, but it gets too bogged down here with standards and lesson plans and grading and bitchy parents or absentee parents. There are too many politics and you forget why you loved it to begin with.

But when I finally stopped reading the exponential amounts of paper that the Peace Corps sent me about everything from Malaria medication to menstrual cups (what in the name of God is that anyway? Besides revolting…) I finally let it all sink in. In the quiet that I so rarely let enfold me, I realized at the core of what it is that I get to do.

It’s so different living here than living somewhere like the tribal village in Africa that I’m headed. I always knew there was a world that I wanted to see. But these girls don’t know that. They know their tribe and maybe the surrounding ones. They know that they get married at 15 and then have babies. 1 in 6 of them will die in childbirth. Their lives are decided for them before they even have a chance.

But if they can read, if I can teach them how to open a book and make sense of the words on a page, they have a fighting chance. The written word is the great shining hope of the world. Even if for now they’re in the village, I want them to know that there’s a whole world out there to see, if they choose to. 

I want them to go to Hogwarts with Harry, Ron and Hermione. I want them to head through the phone booth with Milo. I want them to paddle down the river with Huck and Jim. I want them to ponder in solitude with Thoreau. I want them to think the thoughts that could lead them to recognizing their dreams.

I want them to want more. And they’re going to teach me to want less.  

Harvard should take some notes, there’s a lot of learning to be done here.

I can’t wait.