The Elevator Speech

When you are preparing to return home stateside from Peace Corps, staff often recommend you create an "elevator speech". They tell you to think about what you'll say when you get the inevitable question, "How was Peace Corps?" or "What was it like?" or even more frustrating, "How do you feel?" I dread THE question. We all do.

We dread it because it's impossible to answer... My answer could fill a book, and even then I wouldn't feel purged of the complex tangle of emotions that has been the last two years of my life. So instead of giving voice to the truths we witnessed and SO desire to tell the world (and not just for our own relief, but out of a deep sense of obligation to the people we have loved and left behind).... Instead of eloquently expressing the things we desperately NEED to say to the world, it all comes spilling out in a tangle of unintelligible words. More than once when asked, "Wow! Peace Corps! What was it like?" I found myself responding, "It was... Well... Everything. It has been everything to me." It's a frustrating cop-out answer. It says nothing and yet is still the honest truth. It is impossible to find the words to describe an experience like Peace Corps, within the brevity of an average conversation. So Peace Corps staff tell us to make an elevator speech. 

I've thought about this a lot... I can show pictures and videos, or tell stories to describe the reality of poverty or the beauty of this country. And I will do all of those things. What is more difficult is to describe how Peace Corps has affected and changed ME. How do I describe what it was like? So this is what I've come up with...

Living in Lesotho is like having your outer layer of skin removed. At first you feel exposed to the elements. Vulnerable. You need others. You NEED them because that protective layer -that shield that you always took for granted in the safety and security of your own culture- is gone. And once that outer layer of skin is peeled off, you feel everything more potently. Being vulnerable does that. It makes every sensation more powerful. You feel overwhelming joy and extreme grief. Hope for humanity, and disgust at human nature. You laugh with wild abandon, and find yourself appreciating the smallest things- a sunrise or the way a child's hand holding yours can bring incredible comfort. You find a part of yourself that you didn't know existed, and it scares and startles you whenever it surfaces- someone pokes your raw exposed skin and you lash out in extreme animalistic anger because you feel violently threatened. You walk around grateful for everything- the breath in your body as you climb a mountain or the opportunity to sit on a dirt floor with strangers. You feel connected to your own humanity in a way you've never known before- all because your life and the lives of other people feel more real and fragile, without that single layer of skin. Your flesh is exposed- and you are, too. 

That is Lesotho for me. The overwhelming emotions... I am exposed and raw. In Lesotho, there's no protective layer between me and the world. I feel everything more potently. It's an exposure that has irreparably changed me for the better.

With Love from Lesotho... Mary E.