This I (Think I) Believe

From Tales from the Hood, an aid blog I intermittently follow:

"Someone very smart once said to me that 'the reasons why you stay married are usually different from the reasons why you got married.' And very much like marriage, humanitarian work is one of those things that has good days and not so good days. Some days the cold, harsh realities of what it would take to affect meaningful change, whether towards one of the many problems we claim to want to fix or towards the supposed brokenness of the aid system loom very large and seem impossibly daunting."

This really resonates with me, and seems to apply to the Peace Corps, too. We join the Peace Corps for so many different reasons. Some of us are seeking something--adventure, work experience, a break, an opportunity to make a difference in the world and/or atone for our sins of privilege, a sense of worth, a direction. Some of us are running from something--a terrible job market, a broken relationship, bills, loans, responsibility.

The reasons we end up staying are just as varied, even less obvious, and often don't directly relate to the reasons we came. We stay because of the relationships we've built or the commitment we've made. We stay because the sense of accomplishment and fulfillment we feel on the good days outweighs the feelings of failure or alienation we feel on the bad. We refuse to leave because we're stubborn, masochistic, would-be martyrs, or too prideful to face the judgment if we quit. Often we can't adequately verbalize what we're still doing here.

But that uncertainty's just par for the course in the development and aid industries. This line of work requires us to accept a certain level of moral ambiguity. As I prepare to leave Senegal, it's not immediately clear to me what the effect of my service will be, either on the people with whom I've lived and worked, or on me. And I think I'm coming to terms with that lack of clarity.