The Toughest Job You'll Ever Love (Gina's Post)

 So yeah, it’s a cliché probably dating back from 1960’s recruitment campaigns, but when people ask me how I feel going home to the American workforce I think it sums up my Peace Corps experience in a nutshell.  Don’t get me wrong . . . I loved so much about the six years I had as an occupational therapist at various clinics, hospitals and nursing homes before I went into Peace Corps and I have every intention of going back for the sheer love of helping people better their lives.  But, there was something about the push for productivity, the endless learning of new computer programs, the ever-changing insurance reimbursement policies, cryptic billing codes and the unexpected late hours to catch up on paperwork that somehow turned even the simplest tasks in our world of medicine into a headache that causes an entire nation to doubt the efficiency of a modern but far too complicated medical system.

Don’t get me wrong . . . Zambia’s state of medicine is nothing to write home about . .  . in fact I’ve seen more preventable deaths here than I’ve seen in my entire life in the American medical system.  But being able to work at the grassroots level to help create changes within a community has been profoundly rewarding.  Whether it be helping a family adopt a simple hand-washing station by their pit latrine or weighing a baby who just crossed the threshold from malnourished to normal or personally witnessing a newborn baby being resuscitated at the clinic using a bag valve mask where a year prior she would have been born (and most likely died) in a mud hut has by leaps and bounds re-affirmed my confidence the ability to make a change on the most basic level.

So yeah, if I was scared to leave my cushy job with benefits and labor laws for the unknowns of the African bush, I’m even more scared to return to a world of computer screens, fluorescent lights, lawsuits, ultra-strict germ control and federal regulations complicated enough to have to take a yearly test.  Gone will be the days of giving informal health talks to a group of people sitting on reed mats in an outdoor shelter or cycling 15 kilometers crossing a washed-out bush bridge to reach a village that is unreachable by road, only to be greeted by a crowd of mothers eager to have their children weighed and vaccinated.  Gone will be the attitude that we start a program when the people get there.  Gone will be the humble gesture of making the health providers a lunch of beans and nshima even though it means the family will eat a little less that night.  Gone will be the self-directed work and supervisory visits by the big boss once a year . . . if at all and the straightforward tracking using pen and paper.

So as I prepare to trade in my Chaco sandals and biking capris covered in a chitenge cloth for “casual dress” attire and a Smartphone, I’m hoping that in some little way I can bring a piece of the toughest but best job ever back to the American workplace.