Death to Mediocrity

In Uganda, there are two seasons; hot dry dusty sunshine and pouring, flooding, drenching, daily rain(I am presently scorching under the former). There are about two choices of ketchup: terrible and sweet and poorly packaged tomato sauce, and Heinz ketchup, glass bottle and all. There are two types of roof; grass thatched and corrugated iron. There are two types of schools, the small, largely poor performing rural and public schools, and the "cream" schools, of the rich elite. There are two socioeconomic classes: the poor (largely peasant) hand to mouth people and the very rich ruling class. There is very little in between. There is very little halfway; little mediocre.
Despite its issues, I credit Peace Corps for one thing in my life and the lives of several other volunteers: death to mediocrity. I often think: what does Peace Corps do to us? I think it takes out the comfortable but bone drying “living to get by.” There is no Sam’s club brand. No one (no one that lasts their whole service, that is) can stay on the couch watching TV. No one can ignore themselves, the realities of life, or the role of their existence in it. No wonder so many Peace Corps volunteers become professors, doctors, lawyers, diplomats. No wonder so many former PCVs make great impacts on their communities—becoming teachers that teach ecologically friendly living, becoming health practitioners that emphasize community oriented health, becoming citizens that challenge their leaders’ foreign policy choices.
I also think that we realize we are capable of anything. Some things may be hard but none are impossible. Besides, compared to the difficult things we have all gone through here (packing all of your worldly goods on two seats of a minibus, for example, or making a cooking stove out of mud and bricks, or learning an obscure ethnic language, bathing in one cup of water-- and getting clean!) other stuff just doesn’t seem very intimidating. Secondly, when you see people that really work—people that make bricks by hand, people that depend on their two acres of land for EVERYTHING, or children that raise their siblings, you feel like a wimp for wanting a comfortable life. After all, when I think about the fact that I have lived for two years without many of life’s comforts—no fridge or heating or AC, having hordes of rats in my ceiling, washing by hand, ironing with charcoal, peeing in the dark in a hole, and just having very little that is soft around, I realize that comfort is largely overrated. It is definitely not important enough to make it a life goal.