Career Choice

Those of you who know me know that I have been facing an existential crisis; namely, that I don’t know what I want to do when I grow up (or get out of the peace corps). This all came to a head when a fellow peace corps volunteer’s mother asked me what I was going to do with my life when I got home. I replied that if I couldn’t hack the foreign service exam, I would fall back on my undergrad degree (social work) and steal people’s children. “You hach ‘em, we snach ‘em”—right? Actually, it’s very easy. You just go according to a form from the state child protection department and assess various measurements of child welfare—is there a fridge? No. Is there food in the fridge? Ummm.. no. Is there power or running water? What are those? Are there dangerous, sharp, overly hot, or other harmful objects within easy reach of the child(ren)? Of course! Is there human and/ or animal feces or urine in the living environment? What do you want, the chickens running around, the goats, or the open latrine?
So far, using this technique, I’ve managed to collect all of the children in town… if their parents don’t have the gumption to get refrigerators, they don’t deserve to keep their kids! (Of course, I don’t have a fridge or running water either : ). The biggest problem, of course, with social workers, is that parents might get a bit upset. Here in Uganda, they only have machetes, but in the US, they have guns. Since Sarah Palin didn’t make it to the white house, social workers have pretty lousy chances of being able to properly arm themselves in such situations, effectively ending my prospects as a future child snatcher.
Seeing my options grow slim, I thought about my home, in the Detroit area of Michigan. I asked myself, what are they making these days? It’s not cars; (it is a bit of weed), and it is a lot of --- babies! Sure! I should be a surrogate mother! There are plenty of sterile parents (with turkey basters ?) and rich doctors that could use a young, healthy (albeit slightly malarial) young woman to have their children. Furthermore, what pain of pregnancy have we peace corps volunteers not experienced in Uganda? Weight gain? Check. Strange things moving in our innards? Check. Morning, afternoon, and night sicknesses? Check, check, check! Besides, that wouldn’t require any real work—heck, I could even take classes during! Then, I would just pop that kid out, give it away, and move on!
So, while I was deciding to have babies and leave others to care for them for a living, it dawned on me. This is exactly what all the girls in my life skills class are planning to do. Hmmmm…… maybe they’re right after all!