lollipops

One month. I have been at my site for one month. One month of countless sneezes and endless wheezes. One month of kanionet hiking and stair climbing. One month of asserting independence and proving strength. One month of work. One month of chats with my favorite people. One month of... what exactly is it that I'm supposed to be doing here?

And we're back with the pictures that mean nothing to the words next to them, but are merely here for the sake of picture to word ratio.

A little over a year ago, I submitted an application for the Peace Corps because I wanted to do something with my time and my life that made a difference. I chose to apply to Community and Organizational Development because I wanted to use the skills that I had learned in college and grad school to make an impact in communities. I chose to do this work because I wanted to experience the world, and I wanted to make my mark on it.

To be blunt, I don't know what I'm doing. I was given an assignment five weeks ago to a bashkia to work in tourism development, but that's really all I knew. So I showed up to work on April 8th, met my coworkers, then I sat at my desk and waited. It took a week for me to find a way to be useful in the office. Luckily, that spark has lit a bit of a fire for me in my position, but the reality is that it was completely random. If I hadn't been sitting at my desk when people from the Trans Atlantic Pipeline stopped by to talk about updating the town sign, I may still be waiting for something to contribute.

So in Albania on Ditën e Verës, you get a red and white string bracelet. You're supposed to wear it until you see a swallow, then take it off and throw it in the bushes so that the birds can use it for their nests. So, here's my bracelet that my host mom literally bit off my arm because it was tied so tight, and it was imperative that we leave it for the birds at that very moment.

My life outside of the office is becoming busier by the day. Week one began my friendship with a local teacher who was studying for her recent English language exam. She seeked me out to simply practice speaking, but soon, I realized that, though I am no English teacher, I could help her to be more strategic in her test taking. We met every day until her tests to study, to practice strategies, and to eat incredible food from her garden.

Week three, one of my absolute favorite people in my site asked me to help her with her English for her upcoming college entrance exam. We worked in every single free second until she got on the bus to take her exam. The thing is that she is brilliant, but she second guesses herself. So that was my task, to make her trust herself.

Throwback to when I backpacked through Europe and took a side trip to Bayeaux, France to see the poppies on the advice of my mother and ended up stranded in the middle of nowhere.

At my lowest point this last month, I was sitting down with my program director and she reminded me that I am a volunteer for the city, not just my office. While I have seemingly and incredibly luckily found my niche in my office, my time in the city is what has made this last month so incredibly worth it. There is always a lingering question of what am I doing here and does what I am doing here matter?

Last week I got that answer, and it had nothing to do with my assignment. Have you ever seen the TEDx by Drew Dudly called, "Leading with Lollipops"? I saw this video for the first time nearly 6 years ago now, but it has really hit home for me in this past month here at my site. At a time in life where I have largely felt like a bee flitting around from place to place doing something, but also seemingly nothing, two moments stick out to me.

Moment number one happened a week ago. I was running down to the pazar on Saturday morning to get some bananas when I got a call from Iva. She had finished her exam and she wanted to walk me through every bit of it and tell me how she used all of the skills we had been working on for the past weeks. So here I am, welling up in the middle of the road like a crazy proud soccer mom.

Moment number two happened on Friday. I got up at 7 am to meet with Orena to make sure all of her paperwork was in order before she got on the bus to go to her college entrance exam. We sat and talked through her nerves until it was time to go to the bus. I walked with her to the bus station, and she turned to me and gave me a huge hug and said, "Thank you for believing in me". She boarded the bus, and it pulled away. I took the long route back to work to allow my face some time to recover from the tears.

There is no world, there is only six billion understandings of it, and if you change just one person's understanding of it, one person's understanding of what they're capable of, one person's understanding of how much people care about them, one person's understanding of how powerful an agent for change they can be in this world, you've changed the whole thing. -Leading with Lollipops, Drew Dudley

Caves.

Those two moments, that phone call and that hug, roughly added up to a total of 8 minutes and 17 seconds. Just 8 minutes and 17 seconds in this past month of being here at my site where I felt like I was making a difference. But those 8 minutes and 17 seconds made every second worth it. "In that moment I knew that I shouldn't quit, I knew that I was where I was supposed to be, and I knew that I was home" (Drew Dudley, Leading with Lollipops).