The Hard Part

The words “hard part” often crop up when people think about the Peace Corps, either when they´re considering doing it, when they´re in the middle of it, or when they´re reflecting back on it. I had been thinking about doing the Peace Corps about half my life, since I first learned of its existence. In more recent years, when I was more seriously debating whether to do it or not, the “hard part” was something I kept wondering about.

For a while, it seemed it would be the purely rustic conditions. I pictured myself completely alone at night, in a 5 by 5 foot wooden shack somewhere hot and tropical, where I´d have to haul my bucket of water 3 miles each day, fending off obscenely large insects. (While this is the reality for some volunteers, it certainly isn´t for me: I live with a family in a nice house, I have a large bedroom with a queen-sized bed, I have a hot shower just about every morning, I live in a cool alpine climate, with few insects... Sometimes there´s no electricity or water, but usually for no more than a day.)

Then I was very worried for my health. I knew I had a poor immune system and I imagined myself miserably sick the entire time or getting very deathly ill or ending up with an incurable parasite for life. (I did spend a couple weeks miserably sick as a result of getting asthma, but now I am able to manage it well with inhalers. Getting a serious illness or parasite continues to be a risk that I run here, but I just do what I can to prevent it and hope for the best. Still, I have not been sick ALL THE TIME, as I feared. I was worse off teaching preschool in the US last year!)

I worried about being able to maintain a healthy lifestyle. (The truth is, I eat incredibly well here. I´m cooking with more whole foods than ever before and gobbling up fresh fruits and vegetables each day. I also brave the stares and giggles and go jogging sometimes, and I have to walk 30-45 minutes to get to two of my schools.)

Then there was the whole being away from Montana and the people that I love for TWO YEARS. NOT significantly advancing my career, education, personal finances, for TWO YEARS. (Yeah, that actually is still tough. God, sometimes I can´t believe how far I still have to go! And I do get quite homesick sometimes. Yet I also can´t believe how much has already happened, how much I have seen, learned and done here, and how quickly the time is passing.)

And of course I worried about being lonely and no one liking me and being rejected and not finding a place in the community. (The truth is, I have been astounded by the incredible warmth and acceptance with which I have been received here. A chorus of children call out my name each and every time I walk down the street. The older neighbors try to talk to me in K´iche´ and laugh at my efforts; the ladies in the bookstore tease me about the boyfriend I may or may not have. I can´t leave the house without someone chatting with me. However, spending each and every evening alone at home can get a bit lonely sometimes, I´ll admit. At night, when everyone is with their families, I have a lot of time alone with my thoughts, which can be a good and bad thing. I´m certainly getting to know myself pretty well!)

Many things are hard, and many things are not so hard, and many things are extraordinarily rewarding and wonderful. But that´s not the Peace Corps, that´s life, especially when you´re doing something that significantly challenges you.

But the truly hard part of this experience, the thing that stabs at my core, more than the asthma, the homesickness, the loneliness, are the difficulties I watch the people I care about face, unable to do anything about it.


One morning in my elementary school a large man burst through the door while I was in the middle of a lesson in the third grade. All the children shrieked and ran to one side as if they knew him. I was confused. Was he someone that worked with the school? A member of the parent directive, a maintenance man? Was he here to pay a visit? Then I noticed he was drunk. He was very disheveled. He greeted the students and then came up to me asking questions that made little sense. He proudly pointed out his daughter to me, one of my students. At last the third grade teacher was able to usher him out of the room, but then I noticed his little girl began to cry. I can´t imagine how mortified she must have felt. It was surely hard enough for her to have to see him like that at home, but in front of all of her classmates? In front of the gringa teacher who comes once a week to give their special English class? My heart broke completely in that moment, as it does every time I think of her. And there is nothing I can do, besides keep giving my English class each week.

I have seen similar problems in my own home: the father and grandfather of the family are both alcoholics. Once the father was drunk for an entire month, morning, afternoon and evening. His daughter, my “host sister”, disappeared one day with her 6-month-old and two-year-old daughters that I adored. I found out later she had returned to her abusive, alcoholic husband (who is also abusive to the children). The host family has been very frank with me: I will probably never see them again. If there was anything I could do to give those little girls a secure and loving home, I would do it without a second thought. But there is absolutely nothing I can do.


It reminds me of the prayer that hung in cross-stitching in our dinning room, “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” Serenity. That is the hard part. Serenity in the face of problems that are far bigger than you, and that cut deeply those that you care about. These problems exist in the US, I know, as well as many others. Women go back to abusive husbands all over the world. Adults cause suffering in the lives of children. People hurt each other, even those that they most love. I have always known this, I have seen some of it in my lifetime, but I am not sure I have seen it so frequently and on such a scale as I have here. I consider myself fairly thick-skinned, and I think you have to be to do this job, to not fall apart every time you see someone that is hurting, someone that does not have what they need to live a healthy and productive life. I would fall apart every day. But sometime even my tough heart does break, and serenity seems a long ways from here. And that, for me, is the hard part.