Tuesday afternoon I left Macas on a plane bound for Quito, and Thursday morning I touched down in Memphis. I am currently at home in good old Thaxton, Mississippi. Not for an impromptu visit, but for the forseeable future, at least until Global finds me another job (this would be the 'What?!' part). This definitely isn't what I had planned, and it definitely isn't ideal for me or Global either one. But I've learned the hard way that life isn't always about what you had planned working out, and it usually isn't about what's convenient or easy either. It's about doing your best with the cards you're dealt, and then if you eventually have to fold, doing it with maturity and grace and trust in God.
Most of you know, especially if you go to church with my family, that I've been having trouble in Macas pretty much since I got there. And instead of everything getting better after me being there a week, then a month, then six weeks, things were getting worse despite my best efforts to make it otherwise. So, even though it's almost impossible to try and condense the past month and a half of my life into a neat little blog, I'll try to explain all my reasons for coming home, what's been going on lately in my life, and why I'm seeking another job.
First off, my Spanish. On the job/life description for going to Macas, it says that 'a mastery of Spanish is not needed' for the job I took. I voiced my concerns to the missionaries I would be serving under about my low Spanish skill this summer, back in the thinking/praying phase way before ever signing up to go, and was assured that since I would be teaching English I wouldn't use much Spanish anyway, and anything else I needed I would pick up in a month or so. That turned out to be very, very, very wrong.
For one, yes I was teaching English and was supposed to use English in the classroom. But there's a lot of time that I am not in the classroom. I still have to talk to other teachers, buy groceries, ride in taxis, eat in restaurants, all the things you do at home. Except that in Macas English speakers are very rare. I can probably count on my hands the people I met that could talk with me in English. And that's in six weeks of going out in town every single day.
Also, just because I teach English doesn't mean my students are going to understand it. My kids were 2 to 5 years old. Some didn't have Spanish down that well yet, and most of my younger students weren't even verbal at all in class. So naturally they didn't understand me when I said 'sit down' or 'be quiet' or anything else. And in turn, I couldn't understand if they had a question or if they wanted to tell me anything. My fellow teachers were also all non-English speakers, so I could only communicate with them via guestures or the very few phrases that I knew or looked up before class.
The Spanish barrier makes even church a hardship. In Macas, our church was totally in Spanish. So sitting through two hours of someone talking, singing, praying in Spanish turns church into not a want to, but an 'ugh, I just have to get through this'. And that's no attitude I ever want to have regarding church. Laura and I have been listening to podcasts of sermons or devotions on Sundays, just to feel like we actually were getting some spiritual feeding, and we did have a small Bible study on Monday nights at one of the other volunteers' houses, but even so I've never felt so spiritually unconnected. Coming from an enormously rich church environment: Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night services, amazing Sunday school class, worship that involves your mind mentally and spiritually, church family in the most literal sense...church in Macas was so different.
That all was this huge struggle for me. The main part of what I was down there for, what I wanted to do in my volunteering there, was to make relationships and be able to show God's love through my getting to know them. I've always believed that your actions outside of the realm of church, your helping someone out and just showing your love, have more of an effect of spreading God's love than trying to preach or witness to some stranger would. Having this brick wall of a language barrier made it basically impossible to do that, and that made it really hard for me to think that I was accomplishing anything close to what God had wanted me to do. Most days it felt like I was working in Macas only for me, trying to fix my problems and to make myself into someone else just because that was who they needed.
The second main part of my problem was that my job was to teach English, and I am not a teacher. I was completely honest with my supervisors before I ever signed up to come that I am not a teacher, have never taken a single class on how to teach, had no experience in teaching whatsoever. Beyond babysitting, taking speech class, and speaking very good English, I had nothing. They assured me that was fine. They said they would give me the easiest level, preschool. I wouldn't have to worry about planning out lessons or any of the formal teachery paperwork, since my supervisor's wife was currently working on the preschool curriculum. I would have an assistant in every class to help me out. The wife of my supervisor had been teaching the preschool English classes for the last several years, so she felt it would be really easy for me to pick up, and if I had a problem she was still going to be working in the office and could help me out. The rest, they said, they would tell me when I got to Macas, since it would be a breeze to learn.
The day after I arrived in Macas, I went to my supervisors' house to look over my material. There was a literal suitcase full of books and manuals and flashcards, plus a jump drive full of files for my computer. And more in the preschool office. I'm instantly overwhelmed. Why do I need all this material, all these books and files, if the lessons are already planned out? What do I even DO with all this stuff? Well, surprise number one, the lessons aren't planned out. By that they meant that they know what units the kids will have in the year, and when. As in 'Unit 1 will be focusing on Back to School, and it's from September to the first of October'. After that, it's up to me.
I had to prepare three separate lessons, one for each of my three levels. I had a class of 2 and 3 year olds, two classes of 4 year olds, and two classes of 5 year olds. Each class required me to use several different books to pull information and visuals and activities from to make up a lesson, plus each week they were supposed to have phonics lessons, an English bible story, crafts, songs, all that jazz.
From the beginning I was totally overwhelmed, drowning in the complexity of a job I had no idea how to do. I'm a smart lady, I know this, but I still need to be taught to do a job just like anyone else. There's a reason teachers go to college for years. My supervisor's wife was having to sub for a sick teacher at the main school, so for two weeks it was just me and my 'assistants', who spoke no English and therefore were no help to me whatsoever - through no fault of their own. I had no idea how to fill thirty minutes of class, how to make a lesson out, how to keep twenty kids sitting down and quiet and paying attention while I was teaching. In short, a horrible two weeks. I was doing great if I made it through ten minutes of a class without my students holding a riot.
After those two weeks, I asked my supervisors to meet with me. I told them straight that I was having problems. Big problems. Their solution for the teaching struggles was for me to watch my supervisor, who taught these classes the last few years, for a week and then start back teaching the next week once I got the hang of things. Well, that Monday, my supervisor taught and I watched like I thought I was supposed to do. Afterwards, she told me that she was disappointed that I wasn't more active in the teaching, that I just stood there watching. The next day I went back to teaching on my own, still as clueless as ever.
That Friday, I confronted her. I was so frustrated I almost cried (my tear ducts are wired to my frustrated/angry hormones, so annoying). I told her I absolutely couldn't teach without a whole lot of major help, not just a small idea or a little question answered here or there. I had to be trained properly, or there was no reason for me to be there except to babysit.
I had been in Macas a month. Almost every night I was calling home in tears because I felt so lost. I started having constant stress headaches, and got to where I couldn't sleep at night because I was stressing so bad over what would happen the next day at school. I have always been told 'just do your best, and that's all we ask for', but there I felt like I was doing my best and then some, and then I was being told it wasn't good enough. I had told them up front what I could and couldn't do, and then they were expecting a miracle, a fully trained and qualified preschool ESL teacher.
In addition to the stress of teaching, I was also being given extra projects to do. My limited Spanish meant that I wasn't going to be as much use to them as they thought. I couldn't help teach music; the books were all in Spanish, and I know less about teaching music to little kids than I do English. I couldn't help with church praise band like they kept pushing me to do, because for one I didn't speak Spanish and two I don't know how to play keyboard for a band, much less one whose songs I don't know/can't understand and who does everything without music, ear only.
Up front, I was told that I would be doing tutoring two afternoons a week, but that wasn't supposed to start until about a month after school started to give the teachers time to get grades in. I don't mind the occasional little afternoon project, but when my supervisors say project, they really mean something like 'extra job that might take you a few days to do'. Underexaggeration is big in Ecuador, I've learned. My last project, making/typing up about 100 spelling worksheets for another teacher, took three weeks to finish and that was with me working on them in the evenings at home in addition to school hours.
Needless to say, the situation in Macas was nothing like what I was told this summer it would be. I understand that you can't prepare a volunteer for everything, but I also think that when someone is coming to give you their time for a year, in a foreign country and culture, you need to be totally and blatantly honest about what their situation is going to be. Understating is not going to help anything.
I spent the last six weeks stressing out about school, worrying about how I was ever going to learn how to do my job, how I was ever going to learn the Spanish, beating myself up so much about not being good enough. Every day that's all I thought about, all I focused on from waking up to laying down at night. I worried and stressed so much I didn't have any room left over to even think about God some days, except to just pray for something to give, some help to appear, for me to become what I thought needed to be. I've never been so consistantly depressed about anything ever in my life like I was. I hated setting my alarm clock at night, just because I knew the next day would be one more day of stress and frustrations. I didn't feel like I was doing any volunteer work whatsoever. When I signed up to volunteer I signed up to be a help, to make a difference, and to have an amazing year doing it. All I felt I was was a big handicap to them. I wasn't equipped to do any job I went down there to do, and couldn't get to there by myself. Everyone kept telling me that my teaching didn't matter so much as just the fact that I came down and the relationships I was making, except I wasn't able to make them. I honestly had never felt so strongly that I was nowhere close to doing what God had planned for me.
So, I prayed. A lot. My parents and I talked. A lot. And I talked to Global. We decided that the best thing for me to do would be to find a new place to finish out my volunteer time. The last thing Global wanted was for me to have a bad nine months worth of volunteer experience, and to miss what God had wanted me to do with the whole thing, and I kind of agree. No news yet as to what country they're thinking of sending me to, but most likely it will be in Central America. I'll know in the next few weeks. So...that's the end of my story. I'll be in Mississippi until they find me a job that my talents are a better fit for. And yes, it's very disappointing that the first part of my volunteer experience was such a complete and utter disaster, especially for someone like me who's a perfectionist and needing to do things to the finish and do them right. I'm having to work really hard on accepting that this isn't a 'me' problem, but a 'circumstances beyond my control' problem. However, I think I've made the right choice.
This quote pretty much sums up my 'live-by' verse for the moment: You may make your plans, but the Lord determines your steps. Proverbs 16:9...pretty relevant today.
Alyssa, sorry it didn't work out, but just to let you know: when I came to Ecuador 25 years ago as a three-month volunteer, I went through a similar experience. I came down as a "Nutritionist" to work in a mission hospital only to find that my Spanish wasn't good enough to give classes, nor was I familiar with the food here, and my supervisor expected a lot more of me than I could have possibly done. I ended up working in the computer department on their mailing lists. So don't take your experience as a "failure." Look at it as another step in following Christ. All part of the process in which God knows what He's doing. Hope to see you again sometime! Alan Gordon
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