Why I joined Peace Corps

My mornings generally work like this:

I wake up about 7:30 or so, make coffee/breakfast, and then get back in bed where the sun is pouring in from the window and I sit and eat breakfast and drink my coffee while reading until about 10. (don't think me lazy! Things start later around here, and work lasts until later in the evening)

So currently I'm reading a book called "The Assassins Gate" loaned and recommended to me by my good friend and fellow Moroccan PCV, Xavier. It's written by a journalist named George Packer. It's about the lead up to the war in Iraq. I'm probably about 90% finished with it and from what I gather it is this reporter basically trying to dissect the war and make sense of the whole thing because all the details he has gathered make the entire war seem illogical. In the beginning he states that after extensive research and coverage he will still go to his grave not really understanding it. (There's a point I'm getting to, I swear.)

[He is also a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (RPCV) who served in Togo]

HERE IS MY POINT: Originally when Xavier loaned me the book, he had mentioned that a particular passage captured well why he joined the Peace Corps. While reading some of it this morning during my coffee/breakfast/book/bed/sunshine ritual I, by coincidence, picked out the same passage that had a resounding truth as to why I joined Peace Corps as well, though for different reasons.

Here's the particular passage from the chapter titled "Memorial Day":

"After years of sustained assault on the idea of collective action, there was no ideological foundation left on which Bush could have stood up and asked what Americans could do for their country. We weren't urged to study Arabic, to join the foreign service or international aid groups, to develop alternative sources of energy, to form a national civil reserve for emergencies.... Perhaps it was a shrewd political read on Bush's part-- a recognition that Americans, for all their passion after September 11, would inevitably slouch back on their sofas. It seemed fair to ask, though, how a body politic as out of shape as ours was likely to make it over the long, hard slog of wartime... So the months after September 11 were a lost opportunity- to harness the surge of civic energy."


So this says that post 9/11 Americans weren't urged to do all these collective pursuits for their country, but what I see in this is that, although it's not the norm, we (me and other like minded PCVolunteers)are doing these things. why? To take some kind of action-- to do something that may actually mean something. Although our generation seems to manifest senses of self-entitlement and egotism, these give us the confidence to actually enter the world and try to do something meaningful because we believe we are actually capable of having an effect on it all.

So, we will continue to try and call it Thriving (not just surviving*) because we hope that's what it is. And we will reflect when we're ancient (our 40s...just kidding!) and a little jaded-- and hope that we were right.



*Thrive-- do more more than just survive was the tagline Xavier assigned to his Peace Corps Service and I have absolutely stolen it to use as my own because I like it so much.