Service is Subtle

On a recent trip to Lima, Brian and I paid a visit to our old host family (the ones that we stayed with during the first three months of training). They are such good people! Curious, talkative, funny, and caring. One evening while conversing with Martha, the mom of our host family, we started talking about all the Peace Corps volunteers that they have met up until now. Martha and Ivan, her husband, have hosted four rounds of volunteers. And the most surprising thing was that, after two years of getting to know us volunteers, she still doesn’t understand why we do it. Why in the world would we leave family, friends, jobs – our life – to work in a far away place for free?

Aside from cultural factors, her comment has a hidden socio-economic subtext. Martha sees us as privileged; that being volunteers and not earning money for two years is something we can do with ease in economic terms. Martha and her family live just above the poverty line. Truthfully, she’s not entirely wrong in her perception. But the idea of volunteering should go far beyond economic class. So I tried to put the ball into her court. I asked her if she could serve as a volunteer for another community if her government gave her the opportunity. And you know what she said? No. ¨How can I help others if I myself am someone who needs help??¨ She even said that she didn’t think she was capable of helping others, because she herself had nothing. But how sad to think that in order to help people, one needs ¨things¨, be it money or some other kind of extrinsic resource. In this sense, Martha feels trapped by her social economic standing, unable to help herself – let alone others.

So then what is service? Who should/can help who and why? Generally, it is the Haves who help the Have Nots. That’s what the Peace Corps is. It’s true even within my own country. Back in the States, as a teacher in a high-poverty neighborhood, all of the staff at the schools was people of higher social-economic standing than that of the neighborhood in which they worked. But, why? Why weren’t there people from the same neighborhood in positions of service? It can be said that those in difficult economic or social situations don’t have the luxury, time, and means to think about much more than survival and everyday life. However, I always tried to teach my students that being of service to others enriches us, that we all can have a positive effect on humanity. That it doesn’t matter where you’re from, how much money you have, or who you are. You can always do something good.

Never in this life will we understand what it is to be something we’re not. I will never know what it is really like to be poor, although I will have lived in a village for two years that is officially considered under ¨extreme poverty¨ by the government. But is it even really necessary that I understand? Why do we have to be the same as those we help? Do we really need to understand each others´ immediate situations in order to interact with each other in a positive way? Do the ideas of ¨service¨ and ¨economic class¨ really have to be so dependant?

A person doesn’t serve because they feel guilty. Or because they want to be someone else, or even because they (unadmittingly) have a superiority complex. A person offers their service to others in order to share, exchange, learn, and amplify reality. A person serves to make connections and develop relationships. To cultivate love among us. Those who serve do so to discover hidden potentials and share with others the journey of reaching those potentials. Aren’t we all capable of that? And maybe the discrepancy between those who offer service and those who receive it is due to the fact that the more different the two sides are, the more there is to be learned; and thus, gained from the experience. This is not a one-way world!

As a Have, let someone change you. Listen to those with no voice. Let someone plant a foreign and maybe uncomfortable idea in your head. And pursue it even when it can be painful. For what I have found, after coming all this way for what seems like such a long, long time, is that – really – it’s the people of Sícchez who are serving me. Who are making me better, pushing me, making me reconsider. Who are improving my life. That’s just it…you can’t help without being helped yourself. And that is the most beautiful thing about it.