Namibia N O W ~: “We must be fearless in our analysis and our action..."

As I am now officially a returned Peace Corps Volunteer (RPCV), this will (sadly) be my last blog post. And…I just want to share my simple gratitude. Thank you to the Peace Corps staff at headquarters in Washington DC. Thank you to the AMAZING Peace Corps Namibia team in Windhoek. They say your country staff in Peace Corps makes or breaks your experience. Peace Corps Namibia – you MADE our experience great and truly exhibited the greatest support possible. You are incredible and I am very grateful for your time and dedication. To all of the friends and family who were there when I need you most and who encouraged me even on the worst days – thank you. I am forever grateful, and forever changed, by my experience in the Peace Corps. Looking forward, I pray for the grace to fully integrate the many lessons that I have learned in the Peace Corps back into my life here in the U.S. I pray for my heart to be open to more, continuous learning and for the perseverance necessary to allow my Peace Corps experience to inform my current and future work and projects.

I pray and hope for my village in Namibia to continue to be transformed. In the short time that I lived there, I saw the village continue to develop and better itself. I was heartened to read an article about local activists lobbying for the settlement to become a constituency, which would allow residents more power over the fate of the village.

I will conclude with a quote from the book Do It Anyway: The New Generation of Activists by Courtney E. Martin. I came across the book during my service and it not only inspired me, I think it truly speaks to the spirit of the Peace Corps.

“We must be fearless in our analysis and our action. We must accept that we will fail and try anyway, try to fail always more exquisitely, more honestly, more effectively. We must wake up in the morning naively believing in the power of our own dreams and the potential of our own gifts, and go to bed exhausted and determined to do it all over again -- with maybe just a bit of a different tactic, a little less ego, a little more help.

What else are you going to do? Give up?

Of course you’re not. You’re not going to do that, because you are part of a long line of people who didn’t do that, because you live in a country that was actually founded on the assumption that you would be audacious and rebellious and inexhaustible in your pursuit of a more perfect union. You’re not going to settle, because you’ve seen how that kills people, how resigning and consuming and forgetting are surefire ways to deaden a soul. You’re not going to give up, because it would be terribly boring. You’re not going to give up, because you owe the world, this nation, yourself, bravery in the face of suffering, vision in the face of stagnancy, and blood, sweat and tears in the face of injustice….

We must strive to make the world better anyway. We must struggle to make our friendships, our families, our neighborhoods, our cities, and our nation more dignified, knowing that it might not work and struggling anyway. We must dedicate ourselves each and every morning to being the most kind, thoughtful, courageous human beings who ever walked the earth, and know that it still won’t be enough.

We must do it anyway.”

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To the many of you still serving, to those of you considering joining the Peace Corps, and to everyone everywhere who tries so hard every day to make the world a better place – thank you.