Parable for Trainees

When you first arrive in country you are sent in smaller groups to stay with a volunteer for a few days to experience village life. I remembered this visit as my favorite part of training, even though you are belittled by the title “Peace Corps Trainee.” Everything is surreal and everybody is just as excited as you are.
Everybody except the host.
Which was me this time. It was interesting being on the other side. The trainees asked so many questions fast fast. I didn’t even have time to pretend I knew the answers. One topic addressed the amount of down time aka free time aka party time in the village. With cancelled meetings and seasonal fieldwork volunteers are forced to improve or invent skills. Mine aren’t really creative: guitar, reading, slingshot. Perhaps in an effort to compliment my time-consuming, mind-numbing, activities, these trainees assumed that my intelligence increased during this time of reading. Ive read 76 books so far! Alas, they didn’t know me before. I recall at one point feeling fairly intelligent. Somewhere between copying A-work algebra in high school and writing a college senior thesis on the misrepresentation of altruism in development organizations.
Sure, I read a lot. But with nobody around to discuss the issue, I typically agree with myself. Consequently my verbal communication has declined. Almost to the point of stuttering.
The trainees were still waiting for my reply on the quest to fill down time with enlightenment. So I told them a parable.
One day in Livingstone I had just finished a successful planning meeting with an NGO for mobile VCT. To celebrate I neglected the bars and ice cream, headed instead straight to the Livingstone Museum to further my intelligence high.
The first exhibit was a bit of a drag. Bones and Rocks. Tiny placards informed me how the variously pointed rocks were used for cutting skins. Im just not one to get excited about an old rock. Especially when I live in a village that isn’t very far removed from stone tools. And this theme, of exhibits mirroring current village life, continued. Because while my Tonga family may have adapted Western clothes, Western technology is (for the most part) an ocean away.
It was then that I reached a room with an entrance sign declaring “Welcome to Our Village.” A short description designated the room as an honest representation of a local village. I entered tentatively, ready to compare it to my beloved Dimbwe.
When I entered the room I was shocked. Its not everyday you see your house, your kitchen, your yard in a museum. The manikins performed average tasks such as fetching water, pounding ground nuts and sifting mealie meal. The entire room even had a dirt floor.
That’s when I noticed the woman in the corner aiding her small child in urination. This was no manikin. This was real life human relief on a dirt floor, inside a museum building, on the corner of a city street. Im not sure what the appropriate response shouldve been but I simply smiled and moved on. It was an authentic representation afterall.
The trainees stared, looking a bit perplexed.
And so I revealed the moral of the parable:
No matter how intelligent you are, you still have to drop trousers to take a piss.