V6 - REFLECTIONS, By Daniel Serwon

Losing Yourself to Find Yourself: Challenges, Successes and Strategies
By Daniel Serwon

The other members of the second educa-tion group and I attended our in-service train-ing (IST) in mid-March.. On the first day of IST we sat in a large room where there were some profound quotations on the wall by Benja-min Franklin and some other famous teachers. One sign read: "To truly find yourself you need to loose yourself in the service of others. – Ghandi." Whoever wrote this one made a few errors that throughout the week were corrected by someone who cared enough to go and mark the change on it. But to me the greatest error is giving credit of this quote to Ghandi (I‘m sorry I mean Gandhi) rather than to Jesus. Jesus said, "Die to yourself and live for others, only then can you truly live." Gandhi was an amazing man and he deserves a lot of credit, but when he is quoting Jesus, then this fact needs to be ac-knowledged. I realize that the wording is a little different, but they spoke different languages (neither one of those being English), and I think we all know how things can get lost in translation. Yet for all I know, someone else said this before Jesus and therefore there is no reason not to credit Gandhi with his philosophy.

On that first day of IST we had three sessions on releasing our frustrations. We talked all day about successes and strategies that we had experienced in our daily lives as volunteers. PCV Allister Stanton described his fear of being attacked by wild animals (I feel for him because nature is scary, but I couldn‘t help but laugh at this idea). A considerable amount of us are worried that we will be poisoned. I especially liked something that A.J. Rikli said about how Rwandans are people and we need to treat them as equals. At the end of the day Andrew Udelsman jokingly said that his challenge was having to sit inside all day discussing challenges when the weather is so beautiful outside.

I absolutely sympathize with all of the challenges that we are facing living in a completely different culture. At the same time, however, I think that it is very important to recall how difficult our lives were in America. I find that we often develop the same mentality as many Rwandans: the belief that life in America is extremely easy. A lot of us are coming here straight out of university. College is of course a lot of fun for many people, but I don‘t know many who also consider it easy. After pre-service training a lot of us were saying how we wouldn‘t want to go through that again, but I don‘t think that attitude is any different for most graduating college students. All of the long nights cramming for finals or starting papers the night before they were due (or maybe the hour before they were due); the anxiety that test taking brings and the constant fear of failure; the competition that is waged to get the higher grade point average so that your resume can show that you are a little better than someone else. We also forget how difficult it was when we started college to make friends and to adjust to being away from home let alone the pressures that we put on ourselves to perform in our social lives. We are more willing to accept all of these problems as part of life than not being able to communicate with a stranger who is carrying a 100 pound bag of potatoes on her head on a dirt road and is staring at you as you walk by. And that is why this session was necessary.

If we are not coming right out of school, then we are coming from the "real world." If you had a job, I am sure that you had problems there. You may have hated your boss or what you were doing and Peace Corps was a valid reason to escape the corporate grind and do something that you always wanted to do. Out of all of the jobs that I have held in America, the only one that I enjoyed working for is the U.S. Census. I loved going around to people‘s houses telling them they needed to fill out that form. For me Peace Corps sounded like such an excit-ing adventure and every other career choice sounded boring.

The story I am about to tell is one I have been telling recently to people to justify why my life in Rwanda has been easier than when I was in America. I‘m definitely not saying that my life has been hard or bad because it has been good. I have had every opportunity available to me to succeed living in the upper middle class in an affluent neighborhood. Last year I got my taste of the ―real world‖ and honestly I am not in a rush to get back to it.

If you know me then you might be surprised when I tell you that I have been shy for most of my life and telling a story like this one has never been one of my strengths. Another thing is that this is my account and even though you may see things differently, I trust that you can respect who I am enough not to argue with me over things that I did experience, but to you may seem impossible. I have similar problems to the rest of the second education group that I complain about. My spirituality is how I am able not only to cope with them but also to understand them.

Before coming to Peace Corps, I was an American. I was lucky that my mother took it upon herself to continue to feed me even though I wasn‘t living at home, but other than that I had a very hard time. This started when I returned home from a vacation to Hawaii and found 90% of what I had in my apartment had been stolen. I had just gone from a lavish family vacation where we were blowing all of the mile-age and hotel points my dad had built up to be-ing as upset and pissed off as I have ever been.

The next week I was scammed into buying a sound system that was supposed to cost $1800 for $250 but was really worth about $100. So right after I lost most of the things that I had spent my money on I wasted more with the idea that I could get them back (I was hoping to sell the sound system on the internet to make some kind of profit). I soon after applied to the Peace Corps when I realized how selfish I was and how prideful I was of the things I had. But I was by no means done learning this lesson.

After graduating from college that May, I could not find a job as an engineer. I did, however, get a job working as an independent con-tractor for a man named Dan. Though I hated roofing, I liked working for Dan. This streak of good luck lasted for three weeks until Dan dropped a downspout that sliced into my thumb. This is when I found out for real that my health insurance was gone—and how much I use my thumb. When I returned to work three weeks later, I told Dan that I no longer had insurance so he fired me. The money that I made working for Dan held me off from July till September when I found a job working for another contractor, Rich who didn‘t care that I didn‘t have in-surance. I worked on and off for him for about six weeks. At the same time I had met Cara at a training to do volunteer mentoring who told me that they would hire me to tutor math at a high school not too far from my apartment. All that I had to do was receive child abuse clearance—which took three months—before starting to work. Lacking my own transportation, I was at the mercy of the Pittsburgh bus system (which even though you have more room on these bus-ses, they are surprisingly less reliable and a lot harder to catch than Rwandan buses. I haven‘t had to wait in the freezing cold for three hours to catch a bus out of my village, although I have never felt like I was going to die on a Pittsburgh bus like I have here, but I have been afraid that I would be mugged or pick pocketed even though it never happened) and the kindness of friends and roommates.

I felt like such a loser when I couldn‘t pay the rent because my tutoring job didn‘t pay me for two and a half months. I remember when my bank account hit zero was when I was paying for my vaccinations to get medically cleared to join the Peace Corps. I went into the bathroom of the clinic and cried. Then I walked to the office of my friend Greg and prayed and cried some more. My life was so filled with un-certainty. I was counting on the Peace Corps to accept me, but everything they sent me just made me more uncertain that I would ever get my invitation.

The following Sunday I went to the church where I attended Bible study. I was sit-ting in the pew with about $27 in my pocket and negative two on my credit card and $25,000 in loan debt and no income to speak about. And I felt God speak to me. He told me to put the money in my pocket into the offer-ing. I then convinced myself that I shouldn‘t do that. So God told me to go home to my par-ents‘ house and break my piggy bank that I had completely forgotten about. I finally got over my pride and counted the coins inside. There was nearly 600 dollars in it that I had been col-lecting since I was in elementary school, so I could settle at least most of my debt with my friends all in quarters, nickels and dimes. Once I was finally paid by the tutoring organization, I didn‘t just sit on it like I had done for all of the other jobs I have ever had. I tithed immediately because I felt bad that I hadn‘t given when God told me to. I also called up friends that I hadn‘t seen in a while to get lunch with them and tell them I had gotten my Peace Corps invitation. The next thing I knew I had gotten that job working for the census, which paid well. I only worked for them for seven weeks but that was enough for me to ride on until I left for Rwanda.

I was living in fear and I hated it. I imagine that this is a lot like what many Rwandans go through. I had a lot of people who bailed me out of my misery by either taking my word that I would pay them back or by giving me handouts out of the goodness of their hearts. These handouts include the time given by amazing friends and of course my family, who continued to buy me food.

I remember a conversation that I had with Matt, who was my roommate through all of this, right before leaving for Rwanda. He said to me that he knew how hard this time was for me, but he hoped that I would remember all of the fun we had together, and while I was unemployed he could always count on me to be home to hang out or talk to. He more than anyone had noticed a change in my behavior and maturity. It was then that I realized what Jesus meant when he said that you cannot serve two masters and to not worry about tomorrow. This is why I think that I like it when Rwandans say be patient to each other. I know that God put me through this period of suffering so that I could become more of the person he wants me to be. Difficult periods are parts of life, and all we can do is be patient because for everything there is a season. Life is good, but it is also hard wherever you are.

I have found what Gandhi said and Jesus before him to be very true. If you can lose yourself, then you will find yourself. I don‘t know what else Gandhi may have said about this, but Jesus goes on to say that that we need to "die to ourselves daily," and to "bear your cross daily." I know that for much of my audience I am getting too spiritual, but Jesus‘ words serve as an important reminder to me: no matter how much of a better person I think I am, I still need to con-stantly be serving others. Serving others will always have its challenges and successes. I really hope that I am not coming off as I think I am better because I have suffered, because I really don‘t consider myself to be better than anyone. If any-thing, I consider myself extremely lucky to be able to experience Peace Corps with so many other amazing people. Again, I really liked A.J.‘s strategy of treating everyone as equals, but I would like to take that idea a step further. I would like to challenge you to treat those you are serving as superiors. I know how difficult and even ridiculous that may sound, and I am always failing to do so myself, but that is exactly what Gandhi and Jesus are telling us to do. That is how we truly live.