A note for the reader: I'm working on long and involved (read: lots of photos) posts about my trips to Madagascar and to Durban. Stand by for those. Chew on this post while you wait.
A second note for the reader: I think this post
is especially relevant and more well -thought-out than a lot of the other blathering
scribbles I post on here, so it’s probably worth reading.
Here
it is going on 3 days where the cell network has been down in my village, so
I’ve been doing a lot of reading and audiobook listening. This lack of cell
coverage is quite a good thing, actually, because instead of wasting time/data
on random listicles I found on Facebook or slightly less banal tidbits of life
found on Reddit, I’m chugging through some quality literature. For example,
this morning after going for a dog-accompanied run, I walked to the shop to buy
some papa flour to make food for said dog. I took the long way there and back
so that I could listen to Me Talk Pretty
One Day* on my iPod. I came home, and after playing a thrilling round of
that ubiquitous game “Tan Line or Dirt Line?”—and deciding to wash off what was
conclusively a dirt line— I settled down with Douglass Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy on my Kindle.
I stumbled across a few
paragraphs in chapter 7 that made me pause. Ford, after he and Arthur have
stowed themselves away on a ship somewhere in outer space, encounters a Vogon guard
who’s bellowing at them at the top of his lungs (or whatever bellowing
mechanisms Vogons have). Perhaps in order to stop the shouting and change the
subject from the duo’s illegally hitching on this ship, Ford asks the Vogon if
he enjoys his job. “Well, the hours are good….” replies the Vogon, “but now you
come to mention it, most of the actual minutes are pretty lousy.” Ford asks,
“But if it’s mostly lousy,…then why do you do it? What is it? The girls? The
leather? The machismo? Or do you just find that coming to terms with the
mindless tedium of it all presents an interesting challenge?” The Vogon
stutters around for an answer and can only come up with the suggestion that the
alternative (not doing this job) would be much worse. Sadly, it’s at this
moment, when they’re about to flesh out the struggles of being a bellowing ship
guard that the Vogon snaps back to what he’s actually supposed to be doing and
throws Ford and Arthur into the air lock.
I found myself immediately
identifying with the Vogon, especially in these weeks off school when I’m just
trying to amuse myself and fill the non-internetted time with things that
aren’t naps. I pictured someone asking me the same question Ford asked the
Vogon. Do you enjoy your job? Do you enjoy being a Peace Corps Volunteer? Sure,
I say. Why not? If asked to actually think about it, though, if it’s giving me
a “full, satisfying life,” I hesitate to say yes or no. The “hours,” or years
in my case, are pretty good overall. Bonding with my host sisters, going
travelling with my friends, watching my dog grow and learn to trust me, seeing
the progress my students have made, those are all great. Come to think of it,
these are all long-term things, things that take time to build up. But when I
think of the “minutes,” I find myself also thinking that they are, in fact “pretty
lousy”. The instances when time moves so slowly that I can actually count time
in minutes, recognizing each one from the next, are lousy indeed. Time flies
when you’ve having fun, but when you’re not, you remember those (and only
those) lousy minutes. Those times when I’m bored out of my mind sitting in an
otherwise empty staff room waiting for my next class, trying to get my students
to stop goofing around and actually listen to me, sitting in my house for
another straight weekend without seeing my fellow PCVs, missing friends or
family from back home, those minutes suck.**
So why do it? For “The girls?
The leather? The machismo?” or in my case, “The traveling? The RPCV perks? The
local fame?” Sure, to some extent that’s great and all, but like Ford
suggested, a lot of the satisfaction I get out of all of this is from the
personal challenges it presents. “Coming to terms with the mindless tedium of
it all” is definitely my most interesting (and unexpected) challenge of all. I
do get lonely. I do get bored. I can constantly feel my brain turning to mush.
One day, I spent a good 15 minutes contemplating the swirling wonderland that
is my fingerprints, and I could probably draw the inside of my thatched roof
from memory from simply staring at it for so long. Not only just coming to
terms with it, but going further and actually pushing myself to overcome this
mindless tedium (by seeking out new experiences and pushing the boundaries of
my comfort zone), will be one of the things I’ll be most proud of,
self-improvement wise, once I leave Peace Corps.
And for me, like the bumbling
Vogon who doesn’t know exactly why he’s doing this job, the alternative is
worse only because my alternative is unknown. A lot of the reason I’m here is
to try to have some time (and boy, do I have time) to think about what I should
pursue once I leave. If the alternative is losing my mind in a dank cubicle
instead of losing my mind in this beautiful and singular corner of the world,
then yeah, the alternative is much worse.
So thank you, Ford and the
Vogon, for helping me recognize a universal (literally…) situation. I guess we
could all do with a swift reminder not to focus on the minutes, those little,
negative experiences, and that it’s the hours that really count. Overcoming, or
even just coming to terms with, the mindless tedium takes both time and
constant vigilance.*** If I’ve done nothing else with these two years, at least
I’ll know that I will have tackled some of the most interesting and unique
challenges that can be presented to anyone. And even if I get back to the U.S.
and someone is not interested to hear beyond a 30 second elevator summary of
what I “did in Africa,” at least I’ll take comfort in knowing that I might meet
another Vogon-type who knows exactly where I’m coming from.
And, I kid you not, readers, the
cell service came back on just as I’m finishing this up. I swear, this is not
just a literary trick to bring everything full circle. You should know that I
promptly put my phone back on airplane mode because I can immediately notice my
addict-like compulsions to answer new Whatsapp messages. Must. Not. Be.
Distracted. Ding. Ding. Ding. Now that I have internet access again, it’s not
like I’m not gonna stop reading dumb internet posts or constantly messaging my
friends, but, given these golden nuggets of literature I’ve recently
discovered, I might think twice and pick
up my Kindle instead.
*Another quite relevant quotation of the day came from
this audiobook, in which David Sedaris talks about his life recently after he
moved to France. Just substitute “New York” for “South Africa” and “entire
month” with “entire year” and boom, it’s me. He says, “Back in New York, I took
advantage of my status as a native speaker. I ran my mouth to shop clerks and I
listened in on conversations, realizing I’d gone an entire month without anyone
hearing anyone complain that they were stressed out.”
** I recently finished the book Thinking, Fast and Slow by
Daniel Kahneman, in which the author goes into almost painful detail about how,
for example, the loss of $50 is a much more intense feeling than winning $100.
In other words, the absolute value of the pain of even a small negative
experience is greater than the value of the joy of a positive experience. This
is to say that the negative instances in your life, however small or
infrequent, tend to color your perception of your life much more than even
large or frequent positive experiences. How sad. You remember the one time you
struggled to communicate something in Sesotho to your village shopkeeper, but
forget the dozens of other successful conversations you had with many people
that same week.
***RIP Alan Rickman. Yes, I know it was Moody who said
this, but it reminds me of HP, which reminds me of Snape’s death. Sniff.
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