O-o-on and O-o-off

I've been writing a lot about the difficulties and realities of being a volunteer. What sort of difficulties a PCV might face, how one might want to deal with those difficulties, and then how I've been dealing with them (good or bad). They've all gone into different pieces of writing, some meant to be blogged, some for my journal, some in letters and emails to friends.

Perspective is a concept used a lot, as is numbness and anxiety. Restraint, too.

Today was a good culmination/example of these sorts of issues. I just sorta felt like one big shrug.

I wanted to have a massive inventorying day with our library, to have that good ol sense of library there. We didn't have enough current to power the library to use the computers to do it. As it was, my comrade, Jess, asked what the point was about the inventory list, and, besides the argument that it's just a thing a library should do, I didn't have a good enough reason, knowing that the sense of a library is so much more than that, and we don't have it here.

The librarians came in 15 and 30 minutes late to work; when I reproached them about it, their reasonings were their distance from the job and lack of a watch.

I was asked to print out some copies of a document. The jump drive wouldn't load on the computer for some reason, to be able to save it and carry it to the only computer that is hooked up to the printer, so we had to open email on that one computer, but then the settings were in Portuguese and we had to change them, and then the computer went into hibernation because it wasn't charged and then when we finally got the document up, we had to work it out to print on both pages and... this ended up taking the better part of an hour.

After a week off for Independence Day festivities, we brought back grade 2 to the library for a half hour after they get out of school for some last-minute tutoring for their national exam starting this week. They have to be able to read sentences from past book passages and sound out 3 and 4 letter simple words. When asked to identify words beginning with 's', most of the students will randomly point to 'went' or 'when'. When asked to find a 5-letter word in the sentence, most of the students will point to a 7-letter word. When asked to sound out p-o-t, (puh, auh, tuh) most kids will go p-o-t, pat.

Every small issue faced today, has profound sub-issues behind them, ones that seem too monumental to solve. Work ethic, team work, discipline, literacy....

These issues cannot be solved in one day, one month, one year, and it can't be done by one person, either. So I have to let it go. I have to not let it get to me too much, but I have to let it bother me enough to search for manageable solutions.

In order to function, you have to turn parts of yourself off. But turning parts of yourself off runs the risk of turning the WRONG parts off. Does that make sense?

I had a great, long chat with Dad yesterday. He stressed focusing on 'today' and letting the rest fall into place. Which is a good, life-saving method. Today, I read two stories to children, I had them compete to spell out different words, I taught them two different words - elevator and memorise. I tried. And that's important.

I just wonder, at what point does it become damaging to focus only on the today? At what point can one look at those monumental issues and try to tackle them? Maybe it's something that someone else, but not myself, will be able to address. Maybe my best way to help is with the daily, smaller efforts.

Well, in the mean time, while I'm still figuring it out, I'll keep reading to those kids. I'll keep singing "He's God the Whole World in His Hands" and "I've Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts" to my librarians to keep spirits light, I'll do little dances of frustration instead of tantrums of frustration. I'll shrug my shoulders, sigh a little, and relent: "Oh, Guyana."

Which, really, has come to mean: "Oh, life." "C'est la vie." "It happens." "Que ser'a, ser'a."