Three Months at Site -- When Idealism Meets Reality

At the end of last week, our country director put up a chart showing the emotional roller coaster that is the Peace Corps. The chart shows a bottoming out at the three month mark at site. Well, here we are at the three month site, and here I am bottoming out.

After three months at site, and after a little more than a month of teaching, the realities of my role as a teacher are clear. Most of my students, in spite of opting to stay in school for the extra two years, don’t really have much interest in learning English. And it is easy to see why. The vast majority of students will never use English outside of the classroom. They will go back to Beira and speak Portuguese and Ndau. Or they will go back to Maputo and speak Portuguese and Changana. But most of them won’t speak English, so what is the incentive?

I understand this from a student’s point of view. I took three years of high school Spanish and barely learned a thing because I knew I would never need to use it. It was just a necessity to graduate, and the same may be true here for students.

I guess the difference here is the wealth of opportunities available for people who speak English. The examples are crystal clear. The people who work at the front desk of this hotel all speak English. I’m sure they get paid well. There are business and political opportunities for those who speak English. The chances are literally endless. What isn’t there, it seems, are personal drive and future orientation.

Some of this, I realize, is my job. Half of the role of a teacher, whether in Machanga, Managua, or Manchester, is to be a cheerleader. We have to get our students interested in the material. But we can only do so much. It is hard to be that cheerleader when the crowd isn’t responsive. As a result, it becomes more difficult to rally the troops, pick up their morale, and get them involved. It is a terrible cycle.

The worst part is that it gives me a feeling of being marginalized. If the students don’t want to be there, if they don’t want to learn English, what is the point? What is my purpose? And with the issues in Machanga, isn’t there something of more pressing importance that we should be doing?

I don’t mean to minimize what I am doing here. I would like to think that what I am doing here is important. I know that there are some students who are really eager to learn and – given the smallest window of opportunity – will do great things. But this is the smallest of minorities.

It’s not so easy to deal with this. As Volunteers, we want to “save the world,” even though we know it’s impossible. It is that hope or naïveté that drove us to this point; why shouldn’t it drive us now? The answer is this: because idealism has met face to face with reality. We come in with hopes and dreams and expectations that seem so reasonable in the United States, and when it becomes obvious that there are unattainable, we are forced to lower those expectations. And that is very difficult to do for Americans who are told to aim for the stars. It is difficult to say, “It’s okay to barely get off the ground.”

But there is hope yet. There are opportunities outside of the classroom to make an impact. A tangible impact. I am sure – or at least I hope – that I will do something of value for someone here beyond the classroom. When the situation is dire, even the smallest of stones thrown will cause waves.

That’s what keeps us going.