friggin quiet! Aaahhh! To be young and in love in Paris! No!? Just kidding. Been back to the states for about 5 days now and I'm just a gaga with overwhelming whelmingness.

Alright, for the non-posting hiatus many of you have expereinced during the last couple of months I apologize. The reasons for my lack of posting are both multifarious and nebulous. The last two months of my life have been wrife with stress, guns and cigrettes. Alright, there really wasn't any guns, but stress and cigarettes have been clutch.

I've been reviewing the year and the amount of work I've done has been superhuman so far as I've been concerned. I've been bogged down with bull*#$% and blunderbusses. But I'm on the rebound.

I've actually been having a hell of time. The stress of Tonga was killing me. I've never felt so unable to do anything about my situation before and I have a hard time dealing with it. I'm an IT volunteer here in the kingdom and I've been busting my hump all year long to get my kids ready for New Zealand and getting them to move forward and learn more english and IT stuff that they actually need to know and all of that stuff, but I ended up teaching like 17 classes last year, 15 of them different subjects with no textbooks and/or minimal support to students that primarily speak a different language in a collegiate program that is on the brink of success/failure and I frazzled myself. Burnt to a crisp on work no love. Actually, let me set up the situation. Before I jog on down rant lane...

One of the primary reasons that I joined the Peace Corps was to initaite change. I know that's a hard cookie to eat for some people but I am of the ilk that if you change nothing than nothing changes. Now, I'm not looking to reinvent the wheel or bring spaceship mechanics to Tonga or even to raise the income so they can buy Escalades or anything of that sort, I'm just trying to do my best to promote goal number one of the three peace corps goals:

• To help the people of interested countries and areas in meeting their needs for trained workers;


• To help promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served;


• To help promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans.

Now, perhaps I'm a bit of dreamer and idealist and my imperialist capitalist ways are too embeded within me to actually evoke my deep seated beliefs in change, self-empowerment and the right to choose coke over pepsi, but I joined the peace corps for goal numero uno, taha pe, because that is what I believe, and more importantly, that is who I am. I feel that personally, I have committed so much of myself during this last year in trying to implement goal one that I have pushed too hard, worked too much and stressed too out that I just about scorched myself, but I was willing to make that sacrifice, to push that mile, because I believe that what I am doing is working, that the energy and the emotion that I have invested in my task at hand has energized my students and put the future of our program on a more solid footing. I am doing what I believe is the right thing. I am making a positive contribution in something that is sustainable and I am pretty sure, will long last beyond my service. Sustainability is a word that is thrown around a lot, spoken of in hushed tones at potlucks and conversed about over warm-doppleganger-ikales the world over, but something that is often out of reach or fundamentally unattainable. While I cannot gain sustainability of my program, as my service isn't over and I don't have the ability to look back and see the results for myself, under the current Tongan leadership of the program and the effort and skill of the limited teaching staff we do have, I am pretty confident that this is a program that will still be here.

Now, obviously, there are three goals to the Peace Corps and not one, so why don't I spend some more effort on numbers two and three? Well, rhetorical question, that is a very good point, why don't I? The truth be told learning culture is secondary to my primary task of training, and while I can't actually perform number one correctly without performing number two,

Before I proceed, please understand that each peace corps volunteers opinion of their service differs drastically amongst volunteers and that this is, of course, just one opinion that no other human or stem-cell in the entire world shares. In fact, this is a lie; A big fiction created in my head to justify why I purchased the last 98 degrees album. It is my opinion only and not meant to slander, discombulate, hurt, discredit, love or even purchase a cup of coffee for anyone. However, the Peace Corps is not a one man show. It is a huge organziation with levels upon tiers and tiers upon regions and regions upon beuracracy. So, I've complained about my workload and established my primary motivation for my dedication to my job and now onto my OPINIONS on how things are different and more difficult for me as a result of the organization.

Alright, so recently we had some people from Washington stop by and interview each of the volunteers to see what was working, what wasn't...

Update 5 months later... Wow! I don't feel like reading this now, but I'm going to post it anyway. What the hell. Whose got the looks? Whose got the brains? Whose got the everything? 1 comments - Post a Comment

• This is a posted Comment. Now, everything should be working so far as I can tell.
  
  Jim is a monkey masta! Blamm-diggity!
  
  Padow!
  # posted by Jim Jawn : 7/20/2005 1:49 PM