U2- “So Cruel”
I wish this post to be my real first post of the “This Simple American Life blog”. I wanted the first post to address the issue of why I want to do JVC, and what I hope to get out of my experience, and I realize that the blogpost under this one did not adequately accomplish that goal. It was long, airy, and didn’t say anything, and I don’t want that out of this blog. So, without further ado, this will be the real first post of the new blog, and I want welcome you all to the This Simple American Life Blog and thank you for reading it
Why JVC?
First off to answer this question I need to answer the question What JVC?
To answer this question I first want to say that the Jesuit Volunteer Corps (JVC) terrifies me. But, however not all things that terrify you are necessarily bad things, and, in this case I believe that it will be quite good. This program terrifies me because I have absolutely no idea what to expect for this upcoming year as I write this blog now in the summer a month away. This is terrifying for me because for most of my adult life I have been an excessive planner who likes to know about everything that goes on at all times and be completely in control of my life. I have felt great comfort operating my life in this way because it has always given me the opportunity to plan for any outcome. Consequently, I feel that much of this comfort comes from a web of support through familiarity and friends that I constructed in the four years I lived in Washington, DC. One of the things that I have struggled with the most this summer has been the gradual unraveling of this web of familiarity, as friends move on to their own jobs in Washington, DC and other cities, and I have felt burn of holding on too tightly to the college life and yearning for the times of a year ago or more. However, I know that this is no longer possible, and the prospect of moving to a relatively unfamiliar city for a completely unfamiliar program with people I have never met is a little scary.
I know that I will be working as a program coordinator for the YMCA of Southwest Illinois working on an after-school program at Cahokia High School in Cahokia, Illinois in the St. Louis area. I know that this program will have me involved in all aspects of the program designed for academic, social, and recreational youth development; from helping create new activities for students and recruiting participants and retaining participation, to assessing students’ needs and tracking their progress, to interacting with students, teachers, parents, and other volunteers. I will have my hands in all parts of this youth program. I know that I will be living under the JVC principles of a "simple lifestyle integrated with deepening participants' faith, strengthening their sense of community, and learning about and working towards social justice" and living in a house with other JVC volunteers who will be working in their respective fields at other organizations. I know that my experience starts on August 8 at orientation, and I will find out more and meet other volunteers in the JVC Midwest region at that orientation. At this time that is all I know, and as someone who likes to know what is going on and not have things be spontaneous, this is a little terrifying. Yet, this is not the first time I have ever gone into a major experience knowing less than more, and the other time this has happened it completely changed my life for the better.
To those of you who read my “An American Abroad” blog about my experiences studying and living in Nairobi, Kenya, I want to thank you for reading it I hope you will be able to see that this year is a result from that experience.
Before studying in Kenya, I had absolutely no idea what to expect or how to prepare for that experience. I lived with people I had never met before our pre-departure meetings and did not know well, was going to a place very different than I had ever lived or experienced before, and this, it is safe to say, pushed me far out of my comfort zone. I must admit that amidst all of these elements and stripped away from everything I knew before, I felt freer than I have ever felt before. I felt that when I was a continent and a lifestyle away from everything that I had lived and everyone that I knew, I was able to become more in touch with myself, and to live and experience things my way, and this provided me with a great brief opportunity for personal and professional discovery and the freedom to experience even a small amount of growth.
I faced some challenging situations that caused me to deepen my understanding of myself. I got to experience life as a minority, to live my life knowing that I could never fit in no matter how hard I tried, and how well I attempted to speak the language. I had the chance to live and feel like I represented something that was greater than me, to both uphold and prove wrong the stereotypes of being a foreigner, an American, a mzungu (white foreigner). I went through the transition periods of feeling like a tourist at the beginning and being ok with that, to being angry at being classified as a tourist further along and trying to prove that I wasn’t (and most likely failing and embarrassing myself somewhat), to accepting their view but knowing I wasn’t a temporary tourist, and proving the Kenyans wrong that I could speak and understand some of the language, culture, etc and surprise them in a positive way for both me and Americans. At that point, I felt more accepted and to a point where I had pushed my boundaries to a new comfort level.
Looking back on this challenge, I’m grateful that I more-or-less got to undergo this experience on my own, formulate my own views, and not be handheld through the whole process. Perhaps semi-contradictory, I also am grateful that I had a group studying and living with me who were abroad for the same reasons and experiences. I am glad that I did not know these friends and classmates before trip, and got to live and experience these challenges with them. Some of my favorite memories were hanging out on the balconies of our apartments and talking about our days, talking through the frustrations of the bureaucracies that slowed down the development of Kenya, the politics and political system, and the challenges we faced because we were mzungu and how to overcome this. It was great to talk through these experiences, laugh, and learn from these friends of mine, and create a new support net and growth together. When I meet with and hang out with these friends now, we have great times catching up and I feel a real connection to them after that trip.
On a professional level, my study abroad trip opened my eyes to the possibilities of working within the field of youth development and specifically within the areas of recreational activities for youth development. I developed this passion through my internship with Sarakasi Trust—I felt at ease with what I was doing, and not only bought into and felt like I began to understand not only the “what I was doing”, but the underlying themes of why it was important. This made it easier to push my level of comfort at work as I felt like I began to understand the mission, and to contribute to the process of why these programs were important: through experiences such as doing cartwheels and handstands as a volunteer student for acrobats learning how to teach acrobats, and participating in sketch-comedy and general education for sick and abandoned children at Nairobi Hospitals. (for more on Sarakasi Trust, read Sarakasi Trust, Sarakasi Trust Revisited, or this post about the Hospital Project).
So this brings me to what my expectations are with JVC. I felt like I benefited from my experience being pushed out of my comfort zone in Nairobi. I expect a similar experience working in a “community in transition” in Cahokia, Illinois. I know that this is going to be very different than the upper-Northwest Washington, DC life that I have lived for the last four years, and I’m looking forward to learning to live a new lifestyle and about new people in a new area. I’m also looking forward to meeting, talking to, living with, hanging out with, and learning from other Jesuit Volunteers who I believe have similar goals and aspirations as I, and hopefully similar reasons for joining. I grew close to my friends from my study abroad Kenya experience, and hope that through JVC I can have a similar experience with friends on a more professional-oriented level now, as we have all graduated from college and are in a transition time in our lives from that college setting and environment (that I loved so much) to a real world life/work setting. The third, and most important thing that I expect/ hope that this JVC opportunity will do for me is to help me find out if youth development is the path that I want to work for in life, and help show me what could possibly lie ahead for me if it is. Working at Sarakasi Trust changed my life in that regard, and I believe that getting to be apart of the entire aspect of a youth development project will give me the opportunity to begin to learn and understand how to work in this field, rather than just sporadically participating on small parts of individual projects. I hope that JVC can help provide me some answers and help to shed some clarity on these expectations, and I would like to invite you all along on this journey with me as I learn throughout the program.
I also wish to invite you to donate to the JVC cause. I am required to raise $500 before I start my journey on August 8, and if you feel it in your heart to donate any amount of money to this cause that I believe in so much that is giving me this opportunity, please visit my personal fundraising page .
Thank you very much for all your love and support.
“Hope is not resignation; it is a commitment to continue to struggle even when things seem to warrant surrender, when hope flares, it allows human beings to overcome monstrous difficulties. It allows people to defy common sense and confound strategists. Hope experienced in the extreme, like faith and love, is miraculous.”
