Excited does not even begin to describe how I am feeling about leaving for Peru in 4hrs. It is the best word to describe how I feel, but completely inadequate in terms of actually reflecting the complex mix of emotions I'm experiencing. Another appropriate word would be disbelief. As ready as I think I am, and despite knowing I've wanted to leave on this trip for more than 7 months, the fact that it is actually happening, and actually happening RIGHT NOW, is mind-blowing. I really am not sure it will be real until the plane takes off.
For those of you who may not know, I will be spending roughly 3 months in Peru. I leave today, and am spending the next week traveling before I start my placement. Then, on Monday May 9th, I will be starting a volunteer internship with the mircofinance branch of an organization called Edaprospo in Lima. I will be done work on July 29th, and coming home on August 2nd.
I'm incredibly excited about this placement mainly because I know that in 3 months, I will be a different person than I am now. That is both a terrifying and inspiring thought. I know that a destabilizing experience like this placement will challenge me, and that challenge is exactly what I'm looking for. Being in Peru will be an incredible opportunity to learn and grow, and I hope to come out of this summer with a more mature perspective on travel, microfinance, and development.
Speaking of microfinance, this placement should be really engaging because working with Edaprospo will provide a unique and exciting perspective on microfinance. To be honest, I'm not entirely sure what I think of microfinance, and I'm hoping that this placement will help me sort out my opinions (or at least make any internal debate more well-informed). Right now, I think that microfinance is promoted as an all-encompassing solution capable of overcoming structural disadvantages and "lifting" individuals out of poverty, when in reality I feel as though it is mostly a stop-gap measure which may or may not help individuals scrape by. Working within a microfinance organization will be an incredible chance to engage with these issues on a more concrete level in order to understand what motivates microfinance and what impact it has.
As I mentioned above, I will be traveling for the first week, which is going to be an incredible experience, but is also something I'm conflicted about. The thought that I will be seeing Machu Picchu in less than a week is so exciting that it takes my breath away, and I can't imagine what actually experiencing a lot of these places will feel like (updates to come on this in the weeks to follow). However, something that I've said before and will probably say again is that I'm really uncomfortable with the fact that the vast majority Edaprospo's clients and others in Peru will never have had the chance to visit Machu Picchu and experience their own country the same way I have. There's something extremely wrong with that, and despite the fact that my own logic is telling me that it would be a shame to visit Peru without going to see all of these sites, it is important to recognize that this is only possible from a position of privilege.
Reflecting on the entire experience, visiting Machu Picchu is really a microcosm of the whole trip in this sense. Engaging in a volunteer internship abroad is an extreme way of exercising privilege, and I have to be careful to do so responsibly. I've personally justified what I will be doing based on the fact that it will be a learning experience for me, but I need to work hard while I'm there to give as much of myself as possible to Edaprospo, as well as use whatever it is that I learn from this summer to move forward in a constructive way.
Overall, it is going to be an incredible trip, and I hope that in 3 months from now when I look back at this post, I will have had an incredibly challenging, exhilarating and amazing summer.
