[Background: I'm a somewhat new Peace Corps Volunteer in Senegal. My job is in Environmental Education. I was never going to be a shiny volunteer who believed I could change the world--I came here to learn, mainly, and then to work, if possible. This is cross-posted from my Peace Corps blog.]
I've been feeling so disillusioned already about what exactly it is that I'm doing here. And what exactly it is that Peace Corps is doing here (as in Senegal, and as in, in general). And what exactly can be done about issues of "international development."
Here's something cynical that I've been thinking for a long time: it seems to me that most of international development in the largest sense of the concept, is a lot of patting ourselves on the back for jobs well done without ever actually changing much.
Hear me out.