Twenty-Six

This is an article I wrote for the volunteer magazine here:

I’ve got a lot of experience in all sorts of things. In kindergarten I had a brief stint in building log cabins and Stonehenge type structures for 4 inch tall people. I earned several awards for my work including a Gold Star and the prestigious Smiley Face. In elementary school I was an artist, specializing mainly in portraits of Ninja Turtles. My pieces were shown on refrigerators throughout the suburbs. A lot of housewives predicted big things for my future in the arts but an addiction to Rice Krispie Treats ended my career prematurely. By Middle School I was a cardboard rocket scientist. After two years and zero successful moon landings (or friends) I quit.

In high school I was an athlete playing in front of tens of people. But I buckled under the pressure and my career ended at the age of 18. (Ah, those were the glory days.) In college I got into the hard sciences. I did some really important work in looking at other scientists’ work and trying to rewrite it without looking at it, in under 50 minutes. I came out with a hangover and a lot of pieces of paper with numbers between 0 and 100 written on them. In graduate school I decided that the hard sciences didn’t have enough practical application for me so I switched to Environmental Engineering. I saved a lot of theoretical trees and water and gave some really revolutionary talks on what everybody else was doing wrong.

Finally I came to the Peace Corps. There was a community where the water was in one place but the houses were in another place. We put pipes in the ground and the water ran through them and arrived at the houses. The people were happy.

It’s not to say that I didn’t have fun or enjoy what I did before I got to the Peace Corps. But no matter what hobby or subject of study I happened to be trying out that month I could never convince myself that any of them really mattered. As soon as I got to a point where I had a relative grasp on something I got bored and moved onto the next one. As Americans we seem to have a need to “find our calling.” “I was meant to be an actor.” “I was meant to be a doctor.” “I was meant to pierce my nipples and hang heavy weights from them in front of an audience.” But that’s kind of bullshit, right? Biologically speaking you were born to eat, drink, breath, poop, and reproduce. And I’ll concede that companionship is a necessity as well. So in building this water system I was fulfilling one of the basic needs of human life and it made sense to me. I have come to the end of the project and I would still like to build more water systems. I don’t want to research the effect of water availability on peoples’ ability to solve the Rubik’s cube. I just want to bury tubes in the ground and put water in them. Or build stoves that take harmful smoke out of people’s kitchens, allowing them to breathe. Or make water filters that remove harmful bacteria from people’s water so that they poop the way biology intended. Or teaching Sex-Ed classes to allow teenage girls to choose when they want to reproduce. So then Duncan extended forever in the Peace Corps and lived a simple but fulfilling life. Well no.

I’m sure Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie will attest to the fact that it’s hard for an overprivileged white kid to live the Simple Life. No matter how much I like my work I still feel the need to leave my house each weekend and head for civilization and Americans, like a dolphin coming up for air and then doing a sweet flip and making a giant splash, soaking an obese lady wearing a visor and a fanny pack. I use technology (internet, television, Ipod, Furbies) and eat American fast food. I complain to other Americans about the lack of manners and politeness and honesty among these simple people. And no matter how much I like simple answers to simple questions I continue to complicate my mind with books and brain pushups. So I want all of these things. None of which is a basic need. None of which was born of simplicity. They were born of science and imperialism and entrepreneurism and religion and law.

So I find myself stuck between two worlds in an overpopulated place called hypocrisy. I want the comfort and familiarity of America but the work and freedom of the Peace Corps.

So I need to find a compromise. Equally rewarding and necessary work must exist in the United States. We, as Americans, have the same basic needs as anybody from the third world. We’re just disconnected from our basic needs. Our world begins when the food reaches the table and ends when we flush the toilet. I’d like to do something that expands that view to include the before and after. I want to let people know where their food and water comes from before it enters their mouth. Let them know where their poop goes after it leaves their body. And I realize what I’m describing is not a job, it’s an environmental studies textbook. Except that to understand an environmental studies textbook theoretically is one thing, but to understand it in the context of your life is another thing. And living in my campo has forced me to face the reality of how drastic the effects (human, animal, and ecological) of an “American lifestyle” are compared to that of the Third World. So I don’t want to fall right back into my previous life and forget everything I’ve learned here.

Instead I could push for a return to simplicity while living among the complexity of the United States; a simple/complex system that combines the best of the Dominican campo (local food, decentralized waste management, rainwater catchment, hanging out) with the immense amount of information and technology in the United States (urban farming, biogas digesters, conservation practices, etc., etc., etc., etc., etc.). I will call it simplexity (Yes, I’m sure I’m not the first one to coin this term). So it’s not a regression to pre-industrialized USA. It’s more like packing up the really good things of the First World and taking them with us as we backtrack our steps to meet the Third World somewhere in the middle (the Second World?) to have an organic beer and shoot the shit. Oh yeah, and, ideally, I would just like to do this four days a week in a non-competitive atmosphere with decent benefits.

Moral of the Story: Please send all job offers to dpeabody@mail.usf.edu accompanied by a 500 word essay explaining why you want a semi-intelligent, sporadically motivated, beer-loving, manboy in your workplace. Or just write “Free Cookies!!”