(top) from the months when I first applied to become a Peace Corps Volunteer... spring 2007
(bottom) a month or so ago, one-third of the way into my Peace Corps service, winter 2008
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
ch-ch-ch-changes
Christmas. New Year's. Family from the States. Friends from Senegal. Back to work, continuing to figure out what that means, where I belong, and what I can make of it.
Looking back at 2008, the only word I can think to use is "amazing"- to see where I was when it started, and look at where I am now. I have spent the last ten months of my life on a continent that just a year ago I had only seen in my dreams. And who I am has irrevocably changed because of it.
I am witnessing my own transformation as it takes place within me. Slowly yet surely it progresses. I know that as this year begins, the way that I live it will be different than the way I lived last year, and the person I am now is not the same one who left Philadelphia so many months ago.
I know now that I personally will not ever be able to save the world. But I don't think that means it's useless to try. I think what each of us can do to help "save the world" is to do what we each can do best, and in our own ways contribute to the communal bettering of our planet. I think this world needs thinkers, and doers, and planners, and behind-the-scenes'ers. It needs communicators, sharers, artists and idea-men. But most of all it needs to keep thinking that we can. (Obama shout-out!) But seriously, that is the greatest conclusion that I've come to so far here: that people who think there are no options are not going to try and go anywhere. It's those who don't stop at today, who keep looking to tomorrow, who are going to wake up each day more hopeful than the last, with the determination to do something with that day.
I'm not trying to claim any great gained wisdom from a few months of living overseas in a developing country, but I'm just giving you my perspective, because that's why you're reading this in the first place, isn't it? My dad and sister's visit to me here between Christmas and New Year's really showed me just how different my take on things is now than what it was. Some things that would have bothered me a year ago I consider standard now, and my priorities have shifted. Much of who I am is of course fundamentally the same, but there are things about me now that I hope will never change back, even after my service here is over.
After I dropped off my family at the airport late on New Year's Eve, I got back to the regional house and soon tucked myself into bed. When I woke up later that day I sat down to write a letter to the sister I had just sent back to America. Here is part of it.
(written Jan. 1, 2 pm)
…
Maybe I’ll go rejoin my friends now. They’re still watching “The Office.” I know. It's addicting.
And it makes me look at my henna’ed hand, think of [my town, my host mom, my counterpart, my work partners,] the school, the market, the sept-places ... - and thank the heavens that that’s not me there in that office.
For all the times I complain here, for all the comforts I don’t have, for all the people who piss me off - what I’m doing here is actually LIVING.
This is LIFE.
I am ALIVE, and doing what I set out to do here: challenging myself to go further than I ever have before, growing, maturing, changing my perspective and discovering what I’m really made of. I look at this year stretched out ahead of me, and I am hopeful. I think I have what it takes to do this now, and I am excited. I am also becoming more forgiving of myself, and more accepting of small triumphs. Nine months is no small feat. There may be another year and a half before Peace Corps says my time is up here, but there are so many ways I see in which I have already succeeded in what I set out to do.
…
2009, here we come.
Looking back at 2008, the only word I can think to use is "amazing"- to see where I was when it started, and look at where I am now. I have spent the last ten months of my life on a continent that just a year ago I had only seen in my dreams. And who I am has irrevocably changed because of it.
I am witnessing my own transformation as it takes place within me. Slowly yet surely it progresses. I know that as this year begins, the way that I live it will be different than the way I lived last year, and the person I am now is not the same one who left Philadelphia so many months ago.
I know now that I personally will not ever be able to save the world. But I don't think that means it's useless to try. I think what each of us can do to help "save the world" is to do what we each can do best, and in our own ways contribute to the communal bettering of our planet. I think this world needs thinkers, and doers, and planners, and behind-the-scenes'ers. It needs communicators, sharers, artists and idea-men. But most of all it needs to keep thinking that we can. (Obama shout-out!) But seriously, that is the greatest conclusion that I've come to so far here: that people who think there are no options are not going to try and go anywhere. It's those who don't stop at today, who keep looking to tomorrow, who are going to wake up each day more hopeful than the last, with the determination to do something with that day.
I'm not trying to claim any great gained wisdom from a few months of living overseas in a developing country, but I'm just giving you my perspective, because that's why you're reading this in the first place, isn't it? My dad and sister's visit to me here between Christmas and New Year's really showed me just how different my take on things is now than what it was. Some things that would have bothered me a year ago I consider standard now, and my priorities have shifted. Much of who I am is of course fundamentally the same, but there are things about me now that I hope will never change back, even after my service here is over.
After I dropped off my family at the airport late on New Year's Eve, I got back to the regional house and soon tucked myself into bed. When I woke up later that day I sat down to write a letter to the sister I had just sent back to America. Here is part of it.
(written Jan. 1, 2 pm)
…
Maybe I’ll go rejoin my friends now. They’re still watching “The Office.” I know. It's addicting.
And it makes me look at my henna’ed hand, think of [my town, my host mom, my counterpart, my work partners,] the school, the market, the sept-places ... - and thank the heavens that that’s not me there in that office.
For all the times I complain here, for all the comforts I don’t have, for all the people who piss me off - what I’m doing here is actually LIVING.
This is LIFE.
I am ALIVE, and doing what I set out to do here: challenging myself to go further than I ever have before, growing, maturing, changing my perspective and discovering what I’m really made of. I look at this year stretched out ahead of me, and I am hopeful. I think I have what it takes to do this now, and I am excited. I am also becoming more forgiving of myself, and more accepting of small triumphs. Nine months is no small feat. There may be another year and a half before Peace Corps says my time is up here, but there are so many ways I see in which I have already succeeded in what I set out to do.
…
2009, here we come.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
new (old) photos
I realize I'm still behind on posting, since it's been almost a month since Christmas (I know!) but I did just get the chance to upload a bunch of photos that I had taken with my film camera, from April - August 2008, so they're up on my Flickr site now, check them out!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/offtoseetheworld/
I will try to get up to speed soon with the blogging, my apologies to family and friends who may be wondering where I've disappeared to. I'm still here, it's just that I'm busy! A good busy. So more soon, Inch'Allah.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/offtoseetheworld/
I will try to get up to speed soon with the blogging, my apologies to family and friends who may be wondering where I've disappeared to. I'm still here, it's just that I'm busy! A good busy. So more soon, Inch'Allah.
Friday, January 9, 2009
on the eve of a Western holiday
(This is a few weeks old, but my holidays were busy too, so forgive the lag time.)
December 24, 2008. 8:15 am
It’s a strange feeling to wake up this morning and not to smell pies baking, not to feel overwhelmed with excitement for the holiday season, and especially to know that there is not a chance in hell of seeing snow on the ground or of sitting down to breakfast with my mother and grandma, to watch them pick at pieces of Italian sweet bread and gently bicker about whether Mom’s silver is polished enough.
Instead I woke up to hear sheep “mehh”ing and birds twittering, the 70-degree air just cool enough to remind me of the States, but still about 40 degrees warmer than what I expect it’s like at home today. A rooster is crowing, and when I get up to go outside, the ground will still be covered in sand, sand, sand, as far as the eye can see.
It’s more than strange to be displaced in a foreign culture during a holiday such as this. The only other time I’ve been out of America for Christmas was the winter of ’02, when I went to Greece [during my study abroad year in France]. It was chilly and raining, but there were still signs of the season around - blinking lights strung up in restaurants, ferries not running on the 25th. I remember that cold auberge in Corinth, and looking down at the lights on the peninsula with Jake and Andrew. And the welcoming warmth of the hostel in Athens, where I called home to talk to Mom and everyone, as they told me it had snowed so much already that morning that Uncle Dave had to come over and get them in his truck. It would just happen that way, that the first time I’m away from home on Christmas we get a real snow for the holiday.
But here, there are no twinkling lights. There are no malls to go to, playing Christmas music on repeat. It is not even cold. There are no evergreens growing in this climate, and 95% of the population doesn’t even have an oven, in which to bake cookies. How very very different.
December 24, 2008. 8:15 am
It’s a strange feeling to wake up this morning and not to smell pies baking, not to feel overwhelmed with excitement for the holiday season, and especially to know that there is not a chance in hell of seeing snow on the ground or of sitting down to breakfast with my mother and grandma, to watch them pick at pieces of Italian sweet bread and gently bicker about whether Mom’s silver is polished enough.
Instead I woke up to hear sheep “mehh”ing and birds twittering, the 70-degree air just cool enough to remind me of the States, but still about 40 degrees warmer than what I expect it’s like at home today. A rooster is crowing, and when I get up to go outside, the ground will still be covered in sand, sand, sand, as far as the eye can see.
It’s more than strange to be displaced in a foreign culture during a holiday such as this. The only other time I’ve been out of America for Christmas was the winter of ’02, when I went to Greece [during my study abroad year in France]. It was chilly and raining, but there were still signs of the season around - blinking lights strung up in restaurants, ferries not running on the 25th. I remember that cold auberge in Corinth, and looking down at the lights on the peninsula with Jake and Andrew. And the welcoming warmth of the hostel in Athens, where I called home to talk to Mom and everyone, as they told me it had snowed so much already that morning that Uncle Dave had to come over and get them in his truck. It would just happen that way, that the first time I’m away from home on Christmas we get a real snow for the holiday.
But here, there are no twinkling lights. There are no malls to go to, playing Christmas music on repeat. It is not even cold. There are no evergreens growing in this climate, and 95% of the population doesn’t even have an oven, in which to bake cookies. How very very different.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
my heart in my mouth
From Sunday December 14th through Thursday the 18th, I was away from site to help at the Hopital Regional in Thies with the week-long Operation Smile mission to identify and offer free reparatory surgeries to people with cleft lips or cleft palates. If you haven’t heard about Operation Smile, check it out: http://www.operationsmile.org/
This was their first trip to Senegal, and they had sent out a message a few weeks prior to their arrival, via our Peace Corps Country Director, asking for PCV help in translating, since most of the doctors and Operation Smile team didn’t speak French, let alone any local languages. I went through the whole gamut of emotions that week, but my experience was overall a very positive one, and I was proud of the collaborative efforts that not only Peace Corps Volunteers put into working with the international Operation Smile team, but also TOSTAN and its American and Senegalese volunteers, as they also did a tremendous job coordinating. http://www.tostan.org/
journal excerpt from Sunday December 14
I think I’m still coming down from the high that today was for me. Today - was - amazing. From before 8 a.m. until past 10 pm today I was speaking in different languages from my own, and for about 8 hours of that time, what I said was actually important. I felt needed, and useful, and respected, and you know what? I don’t think that one person at the hospital today called me “Toubab.”
Today was hard. I felt my ego checked several times, my self-esteem crushed and kicked to the curb when people I was trying to translate for didn’t understand, and told me my Wolof was “leerul” (not clear) and I had to call in a more advanced (or native) Wolof speaker to help. I was humbled and given a different sense of perspective, and heartbroken to have to tell Soxna Mbaye’s mom that her daughter wouldn’t be able to get surgery because her deformity was so severe, and that there was a chance that a larger NGO, WorldCare, would be able to see her case and do something, but that chance was so small that I almost didn’t want to mention it. I came across differences in opinion when it came to translating - one photographer with Operation Smile was upset when I told her that I had told some patients that the constant pictures she was taking were for the doctors only, that they wouldn’t show them to anyone else. She told me the photos weren’t for the doctors, but for Operation Smile, to show potential sponsors to get more funding for projects. When I didn’t relay that to the patients and said to her that it was just as easy to tell them the pics were for the doctors, she said she thought I should “tell them the truth.” I just nodded “hmm” and went on to something else. I don’t think I did wrong by the patients by not telling them exactly what the pictures were for, and in my semi-educated-by-nine-months-of-living-in-Senegal opinion, Toubab truths are not always completely understood or appreciated by the Senegalese either, no matter what our intentions.
Tomorrow we’ll see. Surgeries tomorrow. 18 scheduled. I think we might have more PCVs than they need. Anyway I’m going. Despite how badly my phrases might come out, I’m hooked and I want another fix.
from Friday December 19
I haven’t written since Sunday because every day since then has been so full of living that I was too busy to do any recording. I just got back from Thies last night, just after 8, exhausted and feeling totally emotionally spent. On the Alham (rickety mini-bus) ride from Thies to Mbour the driver turned his radio onto ingratiatingly loud Baay Fall religious songs (if you can call them that), and it just broke the last fiber of patience I had left. Sitting there wedged between a ‘mama’ and three other people in my row, my heavy backpack on my lap and my satchel at my feet, I couldn’t stop the tears from flowing down my face. I had spent the week with my heart in my mouth, and though I know I did good, that last day really got to me, with the constant demands for food, water and especially toys, other non-related hospital patients asking me about their other random ailments, the (Senegalese) nurses’ demands for toys for their children, nieces, nephews, whatevers, and some patients’ families wanting still more drugs than the ones they were already given, and everyone just seeming to grab at me from every direction yelling “Ngone! Ngone, Ngone, may ma li! May ma li!!” (Ngone, give me this! Give me that!)
And when I got to the Thies garage all the hustlers were in my face, treating me like a tourist… and there I was again, back at square one.
I just felt like I gave so much of myself this week, and here were all these people still wanting more. Still not satisfied. Still ungrateful. It just made me so terribly sad. Mad, and then so deeply sad.
As the Alham rolled by the dry countryside, I tried to recall the faces I had helped to change. And slowly I was able to dry my tears, as I saw in my mind’s eye Fatiou Diop, and Mahawa Malick, Abdourakhmane and Cheikh, Majigeen and Fatou Diongue, Sidi Sow, and Soda Lo. Their lives will be forever different, and I was able to help make that change a little bit easier.
One of the best parts of the week was being able to tell mothers that their children were out of surgery, to see the relief on their faces and hear their thankful words in Post-Op. “May God reward you for your work,” said one, after I helped translate discharge instructions to a group of cleft lip repair patients.
But I think the best best part for me was making new friends. And seeing them through the whole process, from screening to Pre-Op to OR to Post-Op to discharge. And being told that a patient in Post-Op was asking for me by name -- there was my heart in my mouth again. Malick still needs another operation to complete his new partial nostril (his was a different kind of facial repair) but he seemed to be doing well just out a few hours post-op, and his handshake was balm for my open wounded heart, out in the open as it was for those who needed it, but easy prey for those who only wanted more. His sister seemed like an amazing person as well, and just about made me cry in front of the other patients and nurses as she was thanking me for being there. I told her across Malick’s cot that I wanted to “taq” her as a “xarit” - that is, to make her my friend - and she replied that she was my friend already, “parce que tu es gentille,” she said. Because you are kind.
Right there. Right after we found Malick’s clothes (they had been placed in a different recovery room) with my hand in Malick’s left, because his right was still weak from the IV. Right there, I felt alive, and hopeful. I felt like someone.
This was their first trip to Senegal, and they had sent out a message a few weeks prior to their arrival, via our Peace Corps Country Director, asking for PCV help in translating, since most of the doctors and Operation Smile team didn’t speak French, let alone any local languages. I went through the whole gamut of emotions that week, but my experience was overall a very positive one, and I was proud of the collaborative efforts that not only Peace Corps Volunteers put into working with the international Operation Smile team, but also TOSTAN and its American and Senegalese volunteers, as they also did a tremendous job coordinating. http://www.tostan.org/
journal excerpt from Sunday December 14
I think I’m still coming down from the high that today was for me. Today - was - amazing. From before 8 a.m. until past 10 pm today I was speaking in different languages from my own, and for about 8 hours of that time, what I said was actually important. I felt needed, and useful, and respected, and you know what? I don’t think that one person at the hospital today called me “Toubab.”
Today was hard. I felt my ego checked several times, my self-esteem crushed and kicked to the curb when people I was trying to translate for didn’t understand, and told me my Wolof was “leerul” (not clear) and I had to call in a more advanced (or native) Wolof speaker to help. I was humbled and given a different sense of perspective, and heartbroken to have to tell Soxna Mbaye’s mom that her daughter wouldn’t be able to get surgery because her deformity was so severe, and that there was a chance that a larger NGO, WorldCare, would be able to see her case and do something, but that chance was so small that I almost didn’t want to mention it. I came across differences in opinion when it came to translating - one photographer with Operation Smile was upset when I told her that I had told some patients that the constant pictures she was taking were for the doctors only, that they wouldn’t show them to anyone else. She told me the photos weren’t for the doctors, but for Operation Smile, to show potential sponsors to get more funding for projects. When I didn’t relay that to the patients and said to her that it was just as easy to tell them the pics were for the doctors, she said she thought I should “tell them the truth.” I just nodded “hmm” and went on to something else. I don’t think I did wrong by the patients by not telling them exactly what the pictures were for, and in my semi-educated-by-nine-months-of-living-in-Senegal opinion, Toubab truths are not always completely understood or appreciated by the Senegalese either, no matter what our intentions.
Tomorrow we’ll see. Surgeries tomorrow. 18 scheduled. I think we might have more PCVs than they need. Anyway I’m going. Despite how badly my phrases might come out, I’m hooked and I want another fix.
from Friday December 19
I haven’t written since Sunday because every day since then has been so full of living that I was too busy to do any recording. I just got back from Thies last night, just after 8, exhausted and feeling totally emotionally spent. On the Alham (rickety mini-bus) ride from Thies to Mbour the driver turned his radio onto ingratiatingly loud Baay Fall religious songs (if you can call them that), and it just broke the last fiber of patience I had left. Sitting there wedged between a ‘mama’ and three other people in my row, my heavy backpack on my lap and my satchel at my feet, I couldn’t stop the tears from flowing down my face. I had spent the week with my heart in my mouth, and though I know I did good, that last day really got to me, with the constant demands for food, water and especially toys, other non-related hospital patients asking me about their other random ailments, the (Senegalese) nurses’ demands for toys for their children, nieces, nephews, whatevers, and some patients’ families wanting still more drugs than the ones they were already given, and everyone just seeming to grab at me from every direction yelling “Ngone! Ngone, Ngone, may ma li! May ma li!!” (Ngone, give me this! Give me that!)
And when I got to the Thies garage all the hustlers were in my face, treating me like a tourist… and there I was again, back at square one.
I just felt like I gave so much of myself this week, and here were all these people still wanting more. Still not satisfied. Still ungrateful. It just made me so terribly sad. Mad, and then so deeply sad.
As the Alham rolled by the dry countryside, I tried to recall the faces I had helped to change. And slowly I was able to dry my tears, as I saw in my mind’s eye Fatiou Diop, and Mahawa Malick, Abdourakhmane and Cheikh, Majigeen and Fatou Diongue, Sidi Sow, and Soda Lo. Their lives will be forever different, and I was able to help make that change a little bit easier.
One of the best parts of the week was being able to tell mothers that their children were out of surgery, to see the relief on their faces and hear their thankful words in Post-Op. “May God reward you for your work,” said one, after I helped translate discharge instructions to a group of cleft lip repair patients.
But I think the best best part for me was making new friends. And seeing them through the whole process, from screening to Pre-Op to OR to Post-Op to discharge. And being told that a patient in Post-Op was asking for me by name -- there was my heart in my mouth again. Malick still needs another operation to complete his new partial nostril (his was a different kind of facial repair) but he seemed to be doing well just out a few hours post-op, and his handshake was balm for my open wounded heart, out in the open as it was for those who needed it, but easy prey for those who only wanted more. His sister seemed like an amazing person as well, and just about made me cry in front of the other patients and nurses as she was thanking me for being there. I told her across Malick’s cot that I wanted to “taq” her as a “xarit” - that is, to make her my friend - and she replied that she was my friend already, “parce que tu es gentille,” she said. Because you are kind.
Right there. Right after we found Malick’s clothes (they had been placed in a different recovery room) with my hand in Malick’s left, because his right was still weak from the IV. Right there, I felt alive, and hopeful. I felt like someone.
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