I had a bit more time on my hands this past week as I fell ill. It wasn’t too serious but I was asked to go to Quito to do an X-ray of my chest. Luckily my lungs were not affected as I feared and I ended up just having a bad pharingitis and sinusitis. Anyways this gave me time to take a step back, slow down and think. Nothing too deep of course but just a bit of reflexion on what motivates people like me to do what we do. I come from a priviledged background, never lacked of anything, had a good education and got a chance to travel quite a lot. So much so that I believe I now have the travel bug (I have lived in six different countries so far). Travelling to poor countries have had a huge impact on how I see the world particularly the greed and lack of compassion of most men and the complete indifference and hypocrisy of world leaders. Understanding of history is another critical element that has shaped my worldview and motivated me to take action. Having been given so much during my upbringing, I felt it was time for me to give back. Part of it is motivated by a need for redemption for my ancestors and contemporary westerners who are utterly indifferent to the real cost of their comfortable lives. Now I don’t feel better than anybody else, I simply have strong principles and I couldn’t live with myself if I witnessed the state of the world worsening from my couch. The guilt factor has always fascinated me and I am sure that it drives many people to volunteer for NGOs or any social uplift program, especially among white people.
A post-Peace Corps life is right around the corner with just three more months of service ahead of me so revisiting my motivation is essential as I begin a new job search. When I applied to become a Peace Corps volunteer I thought that they would send me to west Africa since I am fluent in french. I am certainly not disappointed to have served in Ecuador, particularly with the Awá people, but I have always wanted to live and work in an African country. To be perfectly honest I think that Ecuador is pretty well developed and shouldn’t have so many volunteers. The life expectancy here is close to that of the US, the main roads are in good conditions and most ecuatorians have access to higher education. Only some indigenous people like the Awá still don’t have such opportunities and live in extreme poverty comparable to many African communities. I believe that Peace Corps volunteers have a much more significant impact working with such vulnerable and marginalized communities. However, since the technical assitance piece is only a third of the PC goals, other more priviledged part of the country could benefit more from the cultural piece. The major concern that should consistently be considered is how not to replace any Ecuadorian job whether working in the IT sector or helping a local NGO with their accounting.
We should also consider the expectations of our counterpart and if you do so you will realize that their main interest in receiving a volunteer is precisely to get technical assitance. A trained professional working for free is hard to refuse and many counterpart organization can’t resist the temptation to save a few bucks on personel. This is why identifying potential sites and counterparts for volunteers is such a fundamental part of any PC program. Now that I am back at my original office job and that I’m assigned to work on different grant proposals, I obviously feel used by my organization to fill personel gaps. The FCAE currently don’t have neither a social development coordinator nor a planning and monitoring coordinator. I was gutted when the FCAE president announced that they would not renew the social development coordinator’s contract since he’s been my direct counterpart in the office and has done so much during his year here. Most importantly he is a profesional Awá (there are very few of them) and is respected by the communities. Unfortunately for his outspoken behaviour often criticising management for suspicious allocation of funds and unequal treatment of staff, the president decided to let him go. The way I see it, this is the last year of his mandate and he will not run for a third reelection so he wishes not to be criticised by anybody in the office during his last year. Apparently these two vacancies will be filled next month, they will both have a steep learning curve.
