How do you define success?

Before I arrived in Sandrandahy, I thought I would be an ideal Peace Corps volunteer. I imagined that my work experience, love of travel and independent nature would allow me to adapt easily to helping start and expand small businesses in my town in Madagascar. I am five months into my service and I realize that these traits could not be more unnecessary. And, sadly, I lack the very traits that do make a successful volunteer.

The happiest and most productive volunteers are naturally curious, creative and have a very high energy level. (A sense of humor is also mandatory, but I feel that I actually do have this trait. You have to laugh otherwise you would cry every time you step into an especially rank outhouse [and that’s saying a lot because none of them are pretty], or when you wait for half a day inside a stuffy and smelly taxi-brousse that made you rush to load, saying they were leaving vetivety, or when you hear for the fourth time in one day that you are incredibly, unbelievably fat. “Especially your face. It is expanding like a balloon.”)

I can laugh at these things. I can laugh off the one strange thing that will inevitably occur everyday. I can laugh at myself, and I do throughout each day. But I realized recently that I am actually a fairly private person. I don’t particularly enjoy answering the same personal questions everyday, and I don’t enjoy stopping in to eat mounds of rice at everyone’s house who invites me in just because I happen to be walking by, and I am not naturally inclined to stop what I’m doing whenever someone comes over to my house.

And the fact that I worked in economic development and marketing, that I enjoy all the aspects of business, that I love to travel and explore, and prefer to live on my own…these traits actually hinder my success here. For example, I am thrilled that Philbertine will now wait for a brousse at the station rather than by her house where they inevitably pass by already full, and I’m pleased that Prisca wants to package her scarves in my recycled ziplock bags rather than stacking them in the open air for months. Not exactly the business lessons I learned from either AED or CB, and it would be easy to be discouraged if I believed I would instead be helping them write a business plan to open a boutique, helping them to rent or buy a building, and then assisting with marketing ideas (but, God, wouldn’t that be great?).

And my love of travel has been stifled while at site. People hate it that I walk around by myself in the middle of the day. I feel very sneaky if I walk around even for just an hour, and there is no way that one of my walkabouts can ever escape the knowledge of people in my town because I always meet up with people who then tell other people who then tell my counterpart, etc, and then they get mad at me and I feel guilty. The other day I was walking along the paved, very busy road in the middle of the day and met up with an old woman who was carrying stacks of wood on her head, probably ten feet in length. She was barefoot and balancing the wood without needing her hands, walking upright with perfect posture. I walked and talked with her for about a kilometer. She stopped at one of the coffee and bread shacks at the side of the road, and proceeded to tell the vendor that I was incredible strong (Walking uphill! For no reason but for sport!), and brave (Alone! No friends!). Nevermind that she was also walking, with ten pounds of wood on her head and had probably started off at the crack of dawn. (When I arrived back home I got the standard, “Where oh, where exactly, were you? Alone? No friends?”)

And the fact that I am independent by nature was also a hindrance to my life here. It’s helpful to be independent because there is a lot of alone time, but priding myself on not needing anyone is a detriment. There is no way I could have survived here without depending on people. Too much time in one’s head will make you go crazy and will make you hate yourself. So I have had a revelation. I may be shy and introverted, business-driven and self-sufficient in the States. But here, I can not be that way. I have to foster the curiosity, energy and creativeness that I have seen in other volunteers. So I go see Prisca multiple times in one day. I go to her house for no reason, when I am bored and wanting to pass some time. We tell jokes and she tells me things about her husband’s family that bug her, and we eat a lot of meals together. It is a friendship that I wouldn’t have in the States because I would be too busy to just hang out every day, and feel too self-conscious about taking up so much of someone’s time. Here, that is just how things are done.

I have always prided myself on being independent, and I was proud of myself for moving to cities where I didn’t know anyone and making a life for myself in Albuquerque and then Denver. But then that moving around doesn’t foster the type of friendship that I have always needed. And I have found that here, in this little town in the highlands of Madagascar. And once you have friends, it’s a lot easier to be energetic and curious because you are a happier person by default. And you realize that being too independent can lead to a whole lot of loneliness if you’re not careful.