I think people in the US tend to associate being a Peace Corps volunteer with going to Africa and building bridges and schools and whatnot for starving children. Truth be told, however, most of the Peace Corps volunteers I've met aren't people that I'd trust to build a picnic table, much less a bridge (no offense guys). The current fad in international development is something called sustainable development, which means we shy away from projects that require us to actually DO anything (like build things) and focus more on “building capacity,” which usually means trying to teach people how to do things. The idea is that while one-time development projects like a bridge will eventually fall apart, a successful sustainable project will live on forever. It's a nice idea and, of course, it often doesn't pan out in practice as frequently the lasting lessons a volunteer leaves with his village aren't exactly the ones he was trying to teach. In Tautu, for example, a major lesson that my villagers took away from previous volunteers is how to make bootleg liquor with sugar water and bread yeast, which is an accomplishment I don't think makes it onto the Powerpoint slides at the Peace Corps congressional budgetary hearings. Still, most people tend to think of Peace Corps as being all about the do-gooding. However, saving the world by teaching math to underprivileged kids (actually, if I'm really going to come clean on this one, I think most of the major contributions I've made as a volunteer involve unjamming the photocopier at the school), which is the part of the job one usually talks up at the bar, is only a component of what Peace Corps is about. Being a US government funded institution, part of what Peace Corps tries to do is build understanding and goodwill towards Americans and the US in obscure and sometimes pissed-off corners of the world (Latin America, for example). So, part of what the government is paying me to do is to buy people drinks and talk about how awesome America is. This is a part of my job that I take very seriously. Especially the drinks part.
In Vanuatu we catch a pretty huge break on this one, as pretty much everyone here already thinks the US is the really damn cool. Unlike, say, people in Chile, who seem to like nothing better than to remind us of how the CIA totally screwed up their country, most Ni-Vans have only ever had positive dealings with Americans. Older Ni-Vans remember American soldiers defending the country from Japanese occupation (of course, no one has the heart to break it to them that, really, no one was all that keen on occupying Vanuatu in the first place) and a majority of Ni-Vans can remember at least one occasion where a Peace Corps volunteer bought them a shell of kava. To top it all off, most of the obnoxious tourists come from Australia or New Zealand, so they draw most of the heat on that front. So really, all us Peace Corps Vanuatu volunteers need to do in order to build goodwill towards the US is not be total assholes. Actually, I often find myself having to downplay the awesomeness of America to keep stories from spiraling out of control. I've had the following conversation a number of times.
Ni-Van: So... America is really awesome, huh?
Me: Umm, yeah, I mean, we try.
Ni-Van: Best country in the world.
Me: Well, I guess, well, actually, it depends on how you...
Ni-Van: There isn't another country that's better than you guys at anything.
Me: Umm... I don't know about that, for example, I think the Germans have better beer and...
Ni-Van: Man! The US!
Me: ....yeah, we are pretty sweet.
Of course, much of what Ni-Vans know about the US comes either from movies or what Peace Corps volunteers have told them. The problem with this is that both movies and volunteers are prone to making things up for the sake of entertainment. Thus, a lot of Ni-Vans tend to picture the US as a sort of mystic wonderland full of all sorts of fantastical people and creatures. A place where cowboys battle dinosaur-riding Indians and Rambo is always close at hand in case something needs to be blown up. Basically, anything cool that Vanuatu doesn't have is pictured as existing in the States. As a volunteer, I must choose between trying to dispel misconceptions (ie. Explaining that Rambo isn't a real person) and compounding misconceptions for my own amusement (ie. Explaining that Rambo is my next door neighbor). Of course, it's usually far easier to just roll with whatever ridiculous fact some person in your village believes about the US than to try and set things straight. Like, I'm not sure who came to Malekula before me to spread this rumor, but people are dead set on the fact that we still have dinosaurs in the US, to the point where they will argue very forcefully with me about it, as if I'm lying to cover something up and at some point I'll break down and be like “OK, you got me. I was trying to keep this on the DL but, yeah, we've got dinosaurs. Actually, I used to fly a pterodactyl to school every day before it ran away and got sucked into the intake of a 747.” McKenzie actually once had a really heated argument with someone in her village about the existence of dinosaurs who at one point noticed a map she had hanging on her house of the US with stylized cartoons of each state's major attractions and, wouldn't you know, Dinosaur State Park was marked with a few cartoon dinosaurs. This led to an attempted explanation of the fact that there actually are dinosaur FOSSILS, just not any living dinosaurs, which I'm sure the villager just took as further evidence that something fishy is afoot. One of my favorites was a day when I was waiting at the airport and a guy walked up to me and told me that he'd just heard that Harry Potter had died and asked whether or not it was true. My first reaction was to chastise him for giving away the ending of the last book, which I hadn't read yet, but then I realized that the chances of him having read it were unbelievably slim. My next reaction was a decent into confusion and an eventual explanation that, seeing as Harry Potter isn't really real, he can't really die, which was probably taken to mean that not only is there a teenage boy able to fly around on broomsticks in the US, but he's also immortal.
Early on I make the mistake/brilliant move of explaining to everyone that, seeing as I live in Texas, I'm from the same State in the US as Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris is idolized in Vanuatu almost as much as Rambo is, which is impressive considering that Chuck Norris is actually a real person. Thus, Duncan likes to introduce me to people as his son from the US who comes from the “same place straight” as Chuck Norris. At first I tried to explain to everyone that, seeing as Texas is a really big place, just because the two of us were from there didn't mean that I'd ever been in the same room as him, or even the same city. Now, however, I've grown tired of wasting my breath trying to explain that I'm not nearly as awesome as they think I am and instead just try my best to look quietly imposing as if at any moment I might break into some spontaneous ass-kicking taught to me by my good buddy Chuck Norris. And there are always those moments of temptation. Those nights when someone settles into a seat next to me and the nakamal and, without even so much as a “hello” breaks out and says “Dan, yu save.... Chuck Norris?” (Dan, do you know Chuck Norris?), when I know that I should be a good volunteer and patiently explain the fact that the US is not like Vanuatu and that not everyone knows each other and that actually the only times I've ever seen Chuck Norris were on TV, just like them, but there they are, the words forming in my head, just waiting for the green light from my conscience to be vocalized: “Yeah! Chuck Norris! Of course! He's actually my cousin. We used to go dinosaur hunting together all the time when we were little.”
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment