“Why am I here?” is a question the runs through my head more often than I care to admit and my answer to this important question for the last several weeks has been only an empty abyss.  My reasons for joining the Peace Corps seemed so clear; to live and breath another culture, to help others; to spread a little person-to-person diplomacy; to just plain have an adventure. Now as I look towards my 6 month mark of being overseas and my 3 month mark as a true volunteer I ponder this question, “Why am I here?”

Each volunteer faces his/her own challenges in the first several months of service.  One of my challenges has been and continues to be that come April 1 the branch organization to which I was assigned will close. (Other branches around Azerbaijan and the headquarters in Baku will remain open.)  With the support of Peace Corps, I have decided to remain in my assigned community instead of moving to another community with my assigned organization.  However, staying in this community brings a very different challenge of finding a new organization in which to work.  Luckily I have options.  I have found places to work or people to work with, but it’s difficult to fully explain my purpose here and what I am actually capable of doing.  I had one woman during the course of a dinner offer to “pay me under the table” for teaching English classes when she discovered I was a volunteer who receives only a modest living allowance and then later on ask me if I knew anyone with $50k to invest in a newly built factory. 

In case you are wondering, I, of course, flatly refused the “under the table” option in as many words, languages, and gestures as I could muster. 

Ultimately, I realize the emptiness I feel stems more from my concern of being a good volunteer and wanting to make some difference here and not knowing yet what that difference will be. In reality the question I am asking myself to which I have no answer is, “What is my purpose here?”  I must work for this purpose, find it, mine it, chip away at it, step-by-step, day-by-day...

I know why I am here.  I am here, no matter how difficult it seems at this very moment, to live and breath another culture, to help others; to spread a little person-to-person diplomacy; to just plain have an adventure.  The problem is that sometimes those clear reasons seem so distant from the day to day harsh realities of living and working in another culture.