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.