I thought I’d write a quick post about what I am doing, starting at the end of February, for the next couple of years, because I haven’t really talked about it with a number of people I know.
I’ll be volunteering with a government agency that shall remain nameless (to avoid having it come up in Google searches). It’s not hard to guess. It was started by JFK and involves a two-year period of service in a poor country. It’s quite clear what its goals are vis-a-vis facilitating American interests abroad and all that, no huge surprises there.
One might wonder why I am doing it, then, if I lack any illusions about it. It basically comes down to what I wrote in an earlier post on this blog, “I want to live in another country again, for a long time.” Not to travel, but to live — and not go broke doing it. I want to have my garden, in a wetter, warmer clime, and grow bananas, sweet potato, cassava, coconuts, cacao, coffee, mangos, taro, etc. I want to get really good with a machete. I want to get extremely good at Spanish. And, yes, I want to be getting to know farmers and understanding their world, and their challenges, in a completely different context than what I am familiar with. I want to make some new friends.
Did I mention I am going to the Dominican Republic?
I could go on and on with various rationalizations for doing it (responding to imagined righteous indignation by imagined liberal anti-imperialists), but its really unnecessary. I’m lucky enough to be able to act on a purely egoistic basis. This was the only way to do what I want to do without going broke, and being covered medically, and suchlike. And I find it to be pretty harmless, honestly, a kind of relic of the cold war, boutique government organization that will probably be budget-cut to bits in the next several years.
Everyone I know is more than welcome to come visit us out there.
I think with this post I am closing this blog. I will start a new one for this next phase of my life. I’ll let you know when that happens.
