The Nature of the Job

The tagline that Peace Corps uses on their website and in all their promotional materials right now is “The toughest job you’ll ever love.” This is a very apt description. I tend to share only successes on my blog because I try to stay upbeat and, in truth, I am upbeat here most of the time. I also don’t consider the blog an appropriate place to “vent” when I do have a bad day.

That being said, I think to get the full picture of the experience, it has to be acknowledged that some days here are extremely frustrating for all volunteers. Ultimately, the cultural integration isn’t that hard on a day-to-day basis. Getting used to bathing from a bucket or going pee outside is really not that hard for most people. The struggle comes when we try to do our jobs in the American way that we are encouraged to by Peace Corps, and we meet with resistance from our partners, our students, and our directors. There are some days when I get home from school and I just sit and stare at the wall, trying desperately to think of something I did that day that is going to help make a positive impact. Unfortunately there are a lot of days when I can’t think of anything.

Today is a good example of one of these days. I taught about alcohol to my 5^th and 6^th graders. One of our activities was a True/False game where they stand up if they think the statement is true and sit down if they think it’s false. They got a lot of them right (pregnant women shouldn’t drink, alcohol is a drug, etc). But then we got to the trickiest one which was “If you’re going to drink something, it would be better to drink wine that vodka.” The answer is actually FALSE because you shouldn’t drink at all, which is kind of a trick question so I like to ask the kids why they thought yes or no. Today I asked that question and one 5^th grade girl stood up and said, “It’s true because when we are sick our mothers give us wine and it makes us feel better.”

A lot of my reactions to things like this depend on my mood and on a different day I might have just said, “Nope,” and moved on, but today I was horrified by this response. So I asked, “Your mother gives you wine when you’re sick to make you feel better?”

She looked very pleased with her mother’s wonderful medicinal skills and elaborated that yes, they boil the wine so it’s hot and then put some pepper in it and then all the children drink at least 2 cups. These are 5^th graders.

I asked her why she thinks that works and she said, “Because it disinfects our bodies.”

This is a very common home remedy in Moldova (I think I posted about it before once) so I’m not really shocked that this was proposed. But these same kids just THREE weeks ago had a lesson about what a germ is and what makes us sick and I taught them that alcohol does not disinfect your body and that only our immune system or medication from our doctor can help us get better. At the time they had all said they understood. And now the SAME kids were all nodding their heads and saying, “Yup, just a little pepper and it fixes you right up!”

So I told her to sit down and said very loudly and slowly that this was not true (which was met by several voices from the back row saying, “Yes, it is!”) and repeated what they supposedly learned several weeks before. I asked them if they remembered that lesson and about half of them nodded. So I asked them to name one thing that can hurt our immune system and they couldn’t name one. (Ironically, one from the list is alcohol).

I spent the rest of the class sitting at the desk while my partner taught her portion of the lesson, wondering if there was any way I could have been more clear or made the information stick with them more. Frankly, I teach a lot of things that they can go ahead and forget and it’s not going to affect their lives much (details of how the immune and digestive systems work, what a lipid is, etc) but if there are only 3 things I want to influence while I’m here, one would be their ideas about disease and what makes us sick and what makes us better. I had worked so hard to write a lesson that would make it super clear and, for about 5 minutes, I guess, it was and I remember feeling really good about that lesson. And then here we are, three weeks later and they’ve forgotten about it and are back onto feeding wine to their 11-year-olds to fight disease.

Ultimately, I can’t have an impact on the kids if their parents are at home telling them something different. I’ve had meetings and sent newsletters out to their parents as well but obviously that doesn’t do anything. I didn’t really expect that when I left NO ONE in the village would continue with the home remedies or believing that we get sick from getting cold, but I guess I didn’t expect to have it so regularly thrown back in my face that I can’t even get one class of kids to repeat what I teach them in the face of all those years of cultural conditioning.

Anyway, it’s not the end of the world, but some days are like that. I do love what I’m doing and love the opportunity to at least try and change a few minds while I’m here, but my response to Peace Corp’s tag that it’s the toughest job you’ll ever love is, “Yeah, no kidding.”

Noapte Buna.