October 11th will be my last day in Cerro Iglesias. That’s three weeks from today and probably only a week and a half from the time I post this. How do I feel? Reflective? Sad? Mostly just busy to be honest. Next week eighteen trainees from the recently arrived group will be here to learn about rural aqueducts and build a few more latrines that the community most likely won’t use. So that leaves only two weeks, and I’ve promised myself that I won’t do any work my last week, since I’ll probably need every spare minute to say goodbyes, pack up, and try to establish some sense of closure. That leaves one week. One week to try to finish the beneficio project, to finish putting up the now-corrected traffic signs, to write all the reports Peace Corps requires. It feels a bit like finals week in college: so much to do, and the worry that I’ll be doing it all up until the last minute and won’t get a chance to say all my goodbyes. All this I still much prefer over the curse of boredom.

In thinking back on the last two years, I’ve often tried to figure out why exactly this experience can be so challenging. There has been boredom, apathy, and failure, to name a few, and these are all significant factors. But living here, having long days of boredom, seeing community apathy, and enduring personal failures, feels more intense and more intensely personal than in the States. I’ve always felt it but only recently have developed a theory as to why. For the most part, I grew up in a culture of ideas and hard work. In school and in the jobs I had, the solution was nearly always that I needed to work harder or that I needed to find a different angle to approach whichever problem I couldn’t figure out. In the States we work longer hours with less vacation than anyone outside of Japan, and it shows. Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, George W. Bush. They all got to where they are through hard work and by being a step ahead of their peers. When I was falling behind on my thesis I spent fourteen hours at the library and caught up.

There is plenty of hard work to be had up here, but that isn’t necessarily enough to affect positive change. You can have an important and well-thought-out seminar topic and have worked hard to organize the seminar, but still no one might show up. Development work is like education in that no amount of hard work will compensate if no one is buying the idea you are selling. The idea was there, and you certainly worked hard to execute it, so maybe the problem was you. I think that’s at least part of the reason this experience is so emotionally intense. It is so personal. Successes are no different; they are a reflection on you, not your ideas or commitment.

This will most likely be the last time I update this blog, so I’d like to thank everyone who bothered to read it at one time or another, especially those who commented or told me in person that they were reading. The challenges I faced were a little easier knowing that someone else was listening. Having your support, however seemingly small, meant a lot to me. Thank you!















Photos: the coffee-drying house, after a long day's work, two guys fighting, supposedly over a woman, host bro Mariano, Isiais and I, me and la gente