Time and Space

One of the many challenges of being in Peace Corps is that you don’t have your own space. You don’t realize it until you don’t have it, but a lot of what we do on a daily basis involves that space. When you own or rent a house or an apartment, which you are making your home for however long, you have that space to inhabit. You paint, decorate and redecorate, rearrange the furniture, plant flowers, mow the grass, buy stuff, have friends over for dinner or to watch the football game, have a pet, work on your hobbies, watch TV at night. When you don’t do any of those things, it leaves a lot of time to fill.

It differs for each volunteer – a few have their own apartments or houses – but most of us are in someone else’s home, and for every volunteer it’s always temporary. You know you’ll be going back with the two suitcases you came with and little else. In my case, I have a room in the house of a wonderful and kind family, but it’s not my space, and there’s only 290 square feet of it. That means that I have a lot of time and very little space.