There are few moments that give you as much satisfaction as watching a light bulb switch on in someone’s life, especially if you are the teacher or the catalyst. Today was a great victory for a Peace Corps volunteer.

The day began like every other day. I woke up, drew water out of my water catchment tank, did my morning ritual of brushing my teeth, washing my face, and playing a game of Monopoly on my iPod, then I headed out. Someone was supposed to visit me in the morning to have a conversation in English, but she didn’t show so I thought my whole day was going to be like this. Days “like this” are usually really slow and miserable and are usually caused by people not showing up to their appointments or on time to meetings. You wonder to yourself why you joined the Peace Corps and stretch as far as you can to find something to fill the emptiness and the realization that you are alone in this community of people, some of whom still think you are a tourist (which is preposterous because at least for me, I could think of at least 20,000,000,000 other places that I’d rather be on vacation to). But you go on nevertheless, knowing that the emotions that the circumstances place you in get shorter and shorter and you find an yourself getting closer to an equilibrium that would make Barack Obama look nervous on any given Sunday (if you didn’t get that, one of the words that people would describe President Obama as was calm and cool throughout the entire election process). So that’s what I did, I just went about my day as if I was going to have a good day, and guess what, I did.

Here’s what happened.

First, I ate lunch at my old host family’s house. It was the usual rice and beans, but I am ok with it. Any food is good food to me now and I almost lost my need to “optimize” everything about my life. For example, I wouldn’t eat anything but organic because I thought it would optimize my health. After all, outside of genetics 60% of your health is diet whereas only 40% is exercise. I wrestled with the kids before lunch so it really built up an appetite and when it came time to eat, I whipped out my ‘geem’ (Korean dried seaweed – sounds terrible, but its absolutely fabulous) and told them all to try it. The dad liked it, the mom preferred not to eat more than a square inch worth of it, and the kids ate it simply because I did – even though they didn’t like it. It was really funny watching the youngest one Kevin try to put rice in it and eat it because the rice isn’t sticky and every time he took a bite, it would fall out the other end.

After lunch, I left because of how hot it was inside the house. I can’t believe how hot the days are here. It’s quite unbearable. I think the temperature goes up to 95 degrees with 100% humidity. It feels like a constant sauna and I think I sweat more when I’m just sitting still because when I walk, the light breeze cools me off slightly.

As I contemplated going to rest beneath a tree, I decided to walk over to Rufino’s house. He’s one of my favorite people here. He’s always buying me soda and asking me vulger questions and teaching me Spanish in a vulgar way. His pride and joy was teaching me the word ‘meter,’ which means to insert or to put in. I swear I wasn’t thinking what he was trying to say until he raised his eyebrows and pointed to a girl across the street while he kept on saying it. Nonetheless, I haven’t forgotten the word and have actually used it many times.

As I arrived, they were all sitting under the rancho, a hut type of deal without walls. It’s made of four wooden posts that hold up a thatched roof made from palm leaves. One of the people present was Yasbeth, Rufino’s daughter, and one of my prize pupils in my leadership class. She asked me how I was doing and then went on a rant about how much the leadership class I gave helped her. She just came back from a two week training seminar and most of the things they covered were things that she learned from my course. Of course being proud that I had done something of some relevance, I kept asking her to elaborate on how my seminar helped her and in the end, she said that she was leaps and bounds ahead of the rest of the class. Then she asked me when I was going to give the next class and if I could give it sooner than later. I told her that I would think about it and that it required full participation from the couples because it was a course on relationships and marriage. She asked me if her boyfriend didn’t want to attend, if she could attend alone. I said she could, but she would be on a different level than her man after the course in what she wanted in regards to intimacy. She said that she would convince her boyfriend to participate.

After feeling good about myself, I went off on my jog. I’ve been running everyday now for about a week and it feels good. I can now run 25 minutes straight without needing a break, although today, I only made it to minute 18. The sun was way to hot and there wasn’t enough breeze for me to take in through my pores. So I called it quits and decided to head back, but stopped at my friend Rufina’s house (no, she isn’t related to Rufino). I called one of her sons over to get me some coconuts, so we walked the three minutes to the batch to cut some down. I drank 5 and my belly was beyond full.

On the way there and back, there is a log bridge that we have to cross, no more than 7 feet. On the way back after guzzling down the coconut juice, as I was crossing the bridge, the wood collapsed and I fell into the cow poop path. There is a ditch about 6 feet deep into a path where cows sometimes pass and there was a ton of cow poop in the ditch at this time. Fortunately for me, my shoes and clothes broke the fall so I didn’t have to worry about getting any of it in my mouth – unlike last time when I kicked some into my mouth accidentally and couldn’t stop spitting for hours. The three others that were with me laughed as they find this sort of thing funny and I laughed with them. When we got back to the house, I told them what happened and they told me I was fat. I was befuddled, but smiled nonetheless.

As I washed myself off, I got settled into a hammock while we talked future plans. Now, if you think that the first conversation I had today made me proud, wait until you hear this one. Rufina is the head of my women’s bread baking business – in a nutshell, she is the engine that keeps it going. After all, we are here to create sustainable projects and after having a conversation with the Korean American guy, Sam Yoon, running for Mayor in Boston, the one thing we are really here to do as Community Economic Development Consultants is to organize the people and create organizations in which they can work. So that’s what I did. I met with several women and ended up with 5 at the end with Rufina as the engine. We persisted with the bread baking business starting with 30 pieces of bread and growing to 300 per production day. From there we increased production days, and now we are going into the chicken raising business. We got 300 chickens from the government as well as 12 bags of feed for the chickens to grow and from what I understand; it takes about 3 months for a chicken to grow to satisfaction. From there, we can sell each one for $5-6. We still have to calculate how much feed costs are, but after these next couple of months, we should have a pretty clear estimate of how much of the profits we will need to reinvest into the business. That’s cool, but here’s the really cool part: the women I worked with decided all on their own to donate half (that’s 150 chicks) to another group of women who got inspired by their bread baking results. So now, we have two women groups working in conjunction with one another – where one is doing both the bread baking and raising chickens, and the other is raising chickens. But that’s not all, they then went out and decided that since all of this started with the help of other people (mainly me and Rufina), they will donate $20 each to another micro enterprise at the end of the year so that they can give someone else a hand up as they were given. It’s like Pay it Forward! Now someone tell me that this ain’t cool. This is why I joined the Peace Corps baby!

Now, if people who are living off of nearly nothing and are accustomed to feeding a family of 9 on $50 a month are willing to give $20 of their earnings at the end of each year to another group of financially struggling people, why can’t we as Americans who have such lavish spending habits cut down a little and give a little more? I think we can.

One life. Enjoying how I’m making it count.