Married in the Peace Corps

The most common question I receive from PCVs and non-PCV alike is “What’s it like being a married volunteer?” It isn’t that I don’t like answering the same question over and over again (for instance, the daily ritual of taxi drivers asking me if I’m married, if my husband is Ecuadorian, if we have kids yet, etc. has gotten old, but I’m used to it) but I figured I’d address everyone, since it seems to be such a popular question. World-wide, approximately 10% of Peace Corps Volunteers are married, and I think the percentage in Ecuador is even smaller, so hopefully this addresses the most salient points. I’d love to hear from other married volunteers out there, to see if their experiences have been different.



Generally, being a married volunteer is pretty awesome. It comes with all kinds of perks and benefits that make life here in Ecuador that much sweeter. Probably the most apparent is the loneliness factor. Showing up with your very own spouse means no waiting until Halloween in Cuenca/Thanksgiving in Macas/New Years in Puerto Lopez to find a warm body, no venturing into the tricky intercultural exchange that is trying to maintain a relationship with that cute Ecuadorian who lives in your site, no need for visiting the dubious section of the DVD stores, and no pestering from community members to make a trip to that sketchy building on the outside of town.

As a woman, already being married has had several perks here in Ecuador. Of course there is the nifty benefit of giving me a simple and easily-understood reason for turning away potential suitors without (much) harassment. (It helps in this instance to have [as I do] a particularly large husband who can look menacing if need be.) But it also provides me an excellent talking point with men and women alike. Since the third question I’m always asked is “Do you have kids?” I am able to either a) give an impromptu charla on reproductive health and how it is ok to wait on having children and plan your family, or b) garner pity/sympathy when I respond with an Un día, Sí Dios quiere.



More importantly, though, serving with my husband has the enormous benefit of having someone to talk to at the end of the day – and saving me on saldo. When I hit the bottom of the U-curve and lose patience with my co-workers or just have an overwhelming bout of homesickness, I don’t need to spend away my monthly allowance on Porta recargas – I can just head home and vent, unfettered by the concern of running out of minutes and being cut off mid-gripe. (In full disclosure, I’m just kidding about the saldo thing. Serving with a spouse is far more elaborate and meaningful than just having someone to complain to at the end of the day. Plus, I’m an ECC and never use up all my saldo.)

In all seriousness, it has been immeasurably helpful to have someone there to listen and commiserate at the end of a bad day or week. Or month. So helpful, in fact, I occasionally wonder to myself if I would have even made it a whole two years here without his support. I have infinite respect for single volunteers, for their perseverance and ability to cope with a crushing loneliness that it is hard to imagine. No joke.



It isn’t always all it is cracked up to be, however. There are a few drawbacks that I’ve found, reasons why it is (occasionally) more difficult to be a married PCV. Primarily, integration is undeniably more challenging. Since I have a husband to go home to, no kindly older woman is offering to cook me dinner or invite me over to chat, just because. It is assumed that I go home and make my man a nice hearty meal and clean our home. Yeah, for the most part, that is what happens (ok, I don’t actually do all that much of the cleaning), but it doesn’t change the fact that time that would be spent at the end of the work day with community members or co-workers (if I were a single PCV) is actually spent in my apartment, perusing our cook book -Buen Provecho, discussing our future (in English), watching movies (in English), or gossiping about our neighbors/officemates/fellow PCVs (in English).

This leads to the other major drawback of being a married couple in Peace Corps: stunted Spanish-speaking prowess. While you are out there learning slang with the jovenes or the language of amor with your cross-cultural love interest, we’re slipping behind, stagnant in all but work-related vocabulary. I feel comfortable with my ability to discuss Geographic Information Systems and national park management at length, but throw me a ¡que huevado! or a text message that looks like a monkey got a hold of the cell phone, and I’m left scratching my head. I suppose in the long run, not knowing the intricacies of Ecuadorian slang will probably have little bearing on my ability to successfully conduct myself as a bilingual human being, but for now I feel dolefully inadequate and would appreciate it if my fellow volunteers could provide me with subtitles when hurling what I can only assume are expletives at the other “cool” volunteers.

In the could-go-either-way column, being a married PCV means I see a whole lot more of my husband than I ever did in the US. While working 40-60 hour-a-week jobs and commuting an hour to and from our offices ever day (in opposite directions), we didn’t get a whole lot of time to see one another. Throw in a 2-3 day business trip every month and I’m spending more time with my co-workers than with my significant other. By contrast, we now work in the same office and our daily commute is shared. I actually worked out the math on this, and by calculating hours of face time here versus hours of face time back in the US, I found that each year of being in Peace Corps is the face time equivalent of 3.1 years of time back home. So instead of feeling like we’ve been married for 3.5 years at the end of our service, it will actually feel more like 8 years – face time-wise.

The reason that this is in the could-go-either-way column is because on the one hand it means that I actually get to see my husband. It has been incredible to be able to share our experience and strengthen our relationship. And in a way, I feel that couples who never do something as intense as Peace Corps may take 20 years get to the emotional levels that we have achieved being here (in the same way that people who have never been PCVs will not understand each of our individual plights). On the other hand, I miss missing him. I had really gotten to enjoy his monthly business trips and the subsequent solitude, followed by joyful anticipation of his return. But ultimately I suppose we’ll have plenty of opportunities for business trips again in the future, so I embrace the final few months of 24/7 togetherness that we have left.



The bottom line for me is that serving as a married PCV, I got to bring my best friend along with me, to share in all the ups and downs that come with our lives here. Maybe I didn’t write down as many memories as I should have because he was already there to discuss; maybe I could have formed closer friendships with my co-workers and neighbors. But being one of the married PCVs is great for the same reason that being married is great: your partner is an unwavering witness to your life. And I wouldn’t have done it any other way.

Olvidarse

Someone famous once said that you should always begin (or was it end?) your writings with a quote. Come to think of it, I believe it was Ed Norton’s character from American History X -- or maybe it was his kid brother? Anyway, doesn’t matter. I’m really more of a paraphraser, myself.

I’m going to come right out and say it: I have a mind like a colander. Seriously, I have a horrible memory. It’s genetic. Names, dates, faces – you name it. Well, actually, that’s the thing: If you name it, it will probably ring a bell and I will be able to conjure something up. But coming up with something out of thin air – forget about it. Seriously, I mean I probably did.

I have always been jealous of those folks who remember everything, the photographic memory types. It seems infinitely unfair that people like my friend Joey can remember details from the conversation we had the night we met in the dorms freshman year, and I can’t even remember his mom’s name (sorry Joey’s mom!). Now Joey is Dr. Joey, MD and I, well, I am Laurel, PCV. (Tangentially, it has been increasingly weird as more of my friends have become doctors and lawyers and other professionals. I know it has been years since I saw them drunk at a party or passed out on their couch the morning after, but it still seems to me that at least doctors should have been goody two-shoes in college.)

I don't want to forget

So remembering things has never been my strong suit, but usually I can get by with logic and my finely honed BS-ing abilities. I make lots of lists to keep myself sane, but sometimes I forget to check the lists. There is a good chance I’ll ask you where you’re from several times before I think too much time has passed in our relationship and I can’t ask anymore without looking like a total jerk, and then resign myself to assuming you are from wherever you appear to be from (which also makes me look like a jerk). Occasionally I try using mnemonic devices, but if I forget the device I devised I feel doubly silly. I can never remember song lyrics unless they are from albums that I memorized in middle or high school.

For forgetful people like me and my mom, the internet is a game changer. When my mom was in Catholic school as a child, she figured God was the only one who could answer all her questions. Now the all-powerful search engine outpaces the divine. In my case, living in Ecuador and not having constant, 24/7/365 internet access means that I no longer have my crutch, The Google, to rely on when my memory fails. Which is tough when I feel the need to look up important things, like how long to boil hard boiled eggs and who the actor was that played so-and-so on West Wing.



I’m not a total ditz. I’ve got my stuff together. I like to think I’ve done alright for myself despite my mediocre memory. Ok so maybe I can’t remember birthdays or movie titles or the end of my sentence, but I can do other stuff, like

It isn’t all jokes though, if I may be serious for a moment. When my parents came to visit us in Tena, my mom was driving me, and especially my husband, absolutely nuts by taking pictures every two minutes. She’s taking pictures of the hostel room and the dog outside and the kids on our street and us getting into the cab and her lunch and my lunch and this river and the other river and the monkey and the bird and so on and so on until my sweet husband (who had been graciously biting his tongue) rolls his eyes and I decide to say something. Do you have to take pictures of EVERYTHING, Mom? And then she breaks my heart. She has to take pictures, she says, because otherwise she will forget. I realize I should be taking more pictures, too. Our lives here feel so vivid and our memories so clear -- how could I possibly forget? -- but they won’t always be. It will be over before we know it.

Maybe you aren’t as forgetful as I am or maybe you have been better about keeping track of the daily crazy that is just being here. Maybe you think it isn’t all that important. For me it is. So do me a favor, or two. Give me the benefit of the doubt when I can’t remember what city you are from or ask you three times what the plan is for the evening. But also, take pictures and notes about our time here. Maybe you won’t need them, but I could use the reminder.



My sweet husband reminded me that it would be nice to end this with a quote, since I espoused the virtues of citing a smarter person back up there in the beginning. I consulted The Google and it turns out the actual quote from the movie wasn’t all that great. Nevertheless, I will leave you with this, my parting thoughts:

"I'm a writer obsessed with remembering, with remembering the past of America above all and above all that of Latin America, intimate land condemned to amnesia." -Eduardo Galeano

Con cariño,
Laurel