The Activist

There's a great Romanian movie called "Amintiri din Epoca de Aur." It consists of 4 different short stories about Romania's "golden age," the time before 1989 when CeauÅŸescu was in power and Romania was communist. It's so-called because this is how the old communists refer to that time period. I highly recommend it, for reasons which will soon become clear to you, my dear readers.

The tale "The Activist" opens with a large Party assembly where the speaker is bemoaning the fact that the illiteracy rate in the country is so high--this is something that he adamantly feels must be corrected. The next speaker, his subordinate, follows up with an appropriate ad-lib to save his skin: he states that it will be his goal to completely eradicate illiteracy, with the help of party activists, in the next year. As the tenor of his speech reaches its crescendo, the camera slowly pans over the audience to a relatively young academic type, who one can tell is passionately in agreement with the speaker. He is the first to stand and applaud, and there's a glimmer in his eyes. That glimmer has a name, and it's Idealism. The man is our Activist hero, and he vows that he will go to work in the trenches, and do everything he can do to stamp out illiteracy and thus improve the lives of his comrades. For those of you in the Peace Corps, this is pretty similar to Staging.

Next scene. Our hero is in the passenger seat of a Jeep, traveling over rocky terrain, in the middle of nowhere. He's headed to a rural town that had reported an illiteracy rate of 10%, with the goal of teaching them all how to read. The driver suddenly stops, and points out that the road has been washed away by a stream--but it's ok, the town is "over that way. Good luck!" Out from the Jeep steps our protagonist, and 5 seconds later the Jeep has turned around and burned rubber on his way home. 

So now our Activist is in the middle of nowhere, has no idea where he is or where he's going, and doesn't even have a map or some way to get in contact with the rural village he's trying to reach. If any of you have served in the PC, I don't even need to explain the parallels here.

I don't want to spoil the story for those of you who haven't seen it, so I'll be deliberately opaque in the rest of my description. He lasts two weeks, dealing with extreme apathy from curious and respectful people who think he's insane for trying to teach adults how to read. Finally he calls it quits and goes home. The next year, sick of all the young activists dropping in on them, the town reported a literacy rate of 99%. Problem solved.

Suffice it to say that most Peace Corps volunteers will identify with this story. The idea of community leaders asking for help, but the community itself not recognizing that it has a problem. And who's to say they do? Those adults made it this far without reading, why should they bother learning?

The lesson I've gleaned from this is: pick your battles carefully, and learn to laugh at yourself. It's the Fourth Goal, after all.

P.S. These are the Three Goals of PC. The Fourth Goal, for those of you who don't know, is to amuse Ecuadorians as much as possible. Since my Spanish is pretty decent, I'm not at good at the Fourth Goal as most volunteers--but I definitely have my moments, like when I tell students not to have sex with trash on the floor. Extra points for whoever figures out what I said in Spanish, taking into account regional dialects.