Is this just a reality TV show?
Dear Reader,
I’ve never been a big fan of reality shows. You know the classic setup: Producers take “fish out of water” contestants and put them in difficult situations where they have to work as individuals or as a team to achieve some objective they’re probably not prepared for. Then, at the end of the episode, some unfortunate soul gets voted off the island.
Well, I’m pretty sure Jenny and I have unwittingly signed up for starring roles in one.
Here’s the premise: Twenty-one gringos, most in their early 20s—but just for laughs, let’s add a Midwestern couple in their early 60s—are dropped into the homes of local families in a small pueblo in a small South American country and told to learn the language in just a few weeks. To distract them from that already daunting task, they’re given mind-numbing classes on history, personal safety, culture, theories of international development, natural disasters, kitchen fires, crisis management, the current political climate, food safety, how to treat in-grown toe nails, child protection, mosquito-borne diseases, and on and on and on and on and on.
Then, on top of that, in their fourth week they’re tasked with preparing, from scratch, four 40-minute workshops on topics like self-esteem, decision-making, and emotional control, and then presenting them—alone—to a room full of shy 14- and 15-year-old kids, all in broken Spanish. All the while, the Ecuadorian staff (the show’s judges?) watch from the sidelines, offering what can only be described as confusing feedback and thumbs ups.
And, we are only in training! When we finish in a month or so we will move to our permanent site. Where will that site be? We don’t know! It could be low in the Amazon basin or high in the Andes mountains. The producers think it will be fun to keep that information secret until the “big reveal” in the 8th week of the production.
And two of the contestants have already left the show. One twisted her knee and didn’t feel she could complete her rehabilitation in-country. The other had gotten married just a week before we left the States and decided she missed her new husband.
Really?
And as if all that weren’t enough, we’re living at 9,300 feet above sea level, and somehow I’ve managed to lose 14 pounds in just one month through a combination of bouts of dehydration, weekly diarrhea, and a day with a 101.9 degree fever. Are we having fun yet?
So yes, it’s been quite a lot, but despite all that, it’s been an amazing, time. We are surrounded by our fellow Peace Corps Trainees everyday, a truly fine set of young people you’d be proud to call your own. Our Ecuadorian host family is a joy to be with, always interested in our day, eager to hear and share stories, and ever patient with our poor Spanish. And we ARE speaking a ton of Spanish every day. Sometimes it feels like I don’t speak the language at all and other times it flows easily, but as they tell us, “poco, poco.”
They say that the training is the hardest part of the Peace Corps experience and we are now ½ way through. Perhaps it’s a little like basic training in the military. That’s probably a bad analogy for a number of reasons, but my thought is that they are trying to throw us into the deep end of the pool to see if we can save ourselves from drowning. Us making fools of ourselves is just a happy by-product.
So we continue on, trusting the process and knowing that this too shall pass, not wishing away the days, and knowing that we are learning and growing from every challenge we face. Which is one of the main reasons we are here, to continue learning about the world, ourselves, each other.
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