One of those "I'm out here" moments

So as all my dedicated readers know I have recently returned to my village after two weeks of training with the peace corps for work on our secondary projects at site. Our second week of training we were joined by our professional counterparts from village which are normally another teacher at the high school we work at and together we learn about possible secondary projects and then have to opportunity to brainstorm an idea that seems suitable for our site in particular and then draft how to go about doing it. In our meeting we drafted a plan to create a school run garden to improve the diet of the students and work against food insecurity in the village, but that wasn't my "I'm out here" moment.  That happened about a week after returning to site. Its 6:00 pm so the sun has set and me and my professional counterpart are at my community counterparts bar sitting around an unstable little table built from roof tin and sitting in handmade reclining chairs built from sticks and string and we're sitting there drinking a lukewarm beer and explaining our plans to involve the village in our project in two different languages by the light of a single solar bulb. Halfway through this conversation I couldn't help but think "Ryan, how the hell did you get here?" I'm in a small rural village in Burkina Faso where everyone now knows me, people stop on the road to shake my hand, students swing by the house to greet me or ask if they can bring me water, and I'm out in the pitch black conducting meetings on how to improve the quality of life in the village. It takes time for these kinds of moments to sink in,  but it's moments like these that remind me that this is probably the most bizarre job that I will ever have the opportunity of working.
Go Hawks
Written 12/20/14