Matu Hakaene: Digging in the dirt

When I first told my mom about my Peace Corps assignment she shared with me an interesting tidbit about the history of Peace Corps. When Peace Corps first began back in the 60's, apparently they ran a series of advertisements showing volunteers "digging in the dirt." There are some people from that generation who still associate Peace Corps service with said activity. Of course Peace Corps has evolved with time and volunteers now serve all over the world in a variety of capacities such as Education, Community Health, Small-Enterprise Development, and Youth Development to name a few. But I think the sentiment is still the same. Peace Corps is very much about working at the grass-roots level of development; volunteers live in their communities, and work one on one with their communities to illicit positive growth.

At any rate, she had a good time teasing me about it.

Recently, The Red Cross community garden benefiting the Orphans and Vulnerable Children of Opuwo had about 50 trees donated. In order to help get them all in the ground, I volunteered to assist in the "soil preparation" which basically involved Ed, Tate Haibundi, and I spending days digging a bunch of huge holes (at least one arm wide by one arm deep), and then mixing countless wheelbarrows full of manure and sand in with the soil. More than once I was struck by the irony of the activity--after all of my lofty explanations about Peace Corps development approaches, here I was in Africa digging in the dirt. Life is funny like that. So it turns out that the stereotype is sometimes right mom. Hope you have a good laugh :)