I am not going to apologize for my last entry, as much as it was harsh and written during a long moment of anger. I started this blog to share with people outside of this experience what it is that I am really living in this country. Over the last two years I have lived through many moments that I have chosen not to record here, trying to keep in mind a sense of equilibrium in what I convey. This being said, it seems to me that some readers would still only like to hear about my successes, the bright side of being a Peace Corps volunteer, the days I get to say, “Yes, this is why I came!”
But this experience is not all sunshine, rainbows and happy smiling children. Peace Corps service would not be something so many call “life-changing” if it were not for the low points, the times when nothing seems to go right, when everything you try looks like a failure and your own neighbors are laughing at your face before you even get out of your front door in the morning.
I did not write my last post in a ploy for pity, but simply in an effort to express a reality. My reality. This is, after all, my perception of my own experience.
But if we are talking about impartiality and giving equal weight to both extremes of a sliding scale, I urge you to remember that no two Peace Corps services are alike, even within the same country, even within the same work sector. I have a friend who lives only 45 kilometers away in a 300-person village without electricity. His experience has been vastly different than mine, yet we are both Environmental Education Peace Corps volunteers serving in Senegal. see Chris' blog Most volunteers in Senegal serve in small villages, but another one of my best friends lives in the capital of 3 million, see Jared’s blog and yet another in a city of 120,000. Each one of them has their own experience, their own story to tell, their own perception of what constitutes a success.
Now think about the number of countries in which Peace Corps volunteers are serving around the world, multiplied by the number of volunteers in those countries, and you will come up with the number of different experiences that still all qualify as “the Peace Corps experience”.
Mine is only one small page in the encyclopedia that’s still being written.
Every day I have failures. Some days I have successes too. And I admit that the closer I get to finishing my service the harder it becomes to focus on the successes, as much as I know how important it will be to me to leave here on a positive note.
When I do take a minute to think about where I have succeeded, I can see that most of my successes have been personal ones, not great work achievements. I can’t say for certain that because of my presence here over the last two years I’ve changed anyone’s life in this town. It’s only when I look at myself that I can see real evidence of change.
Friday, April 2, 2010
Thursday, March 4, 2010
I feel for you, Angelina
I’ve had it with this superstardom business.
Being the biggest fish in this cramped pond. Feeling like Miss America on parade on a good day, or on a bad one, a Ripley’s Believe It or Not attraction.
Having everyone know my name, everyone always wanting to talk to me, wanting a piece of me. Having my every move scrutinized, commented upon, and more often than not, laughed at. It is not exaggerating to say that of the Senegalese I interact with here, in general, men are desirous of me, women are critical of me, children laugh at me and most babies cry if I so much as look at them.
Put this way, you can see how it becomes difficult to feel accepted into a community when at any one time I am simultaneously being rejected by three-quarters of the society, and the other one quarter doesn’t actually take me seriously.
You’d think maybe I would feel better about my integration after almost 2 years here, after being in constant contact with locals and even living with a Senegalese family. After learning the local language (and becoming better than conversational), learning local customs and adjusting to the heat, wind, and frequent cuts in power and water. And yet, as I look ahead to returning to the States in a few short months, I have come to realize that as much as I have done to integrate into this country, there is still only so much respect that can be gained here by a single, young, white female.
I knew relatively early on in this venture that my youth would not be something working in my favor in this culture that reveres age as equal to wisdom, but I underestimated how much my femininity would make my time here not only difficult but fraught with daily battles. In this male-dominated country, in my work I have to constantly be on edge. How to work with men without anyone getting the wrong idea? To do my job it is necessary for me to approach men outside of my host family, to talk to them, telephone them, interact with them; all things that would make a young Senegalese woman seem audacious, bold, risqué. Yet the majority of motivated teachers are men, as well as school directors, city hall workers, national park agents… essentially every important post in town is occupied by a man. Add in the unfavorable media portrayal of Western women as sex-crazed and easy... and every single day I work here I get hit on, stared at, ogled, teased, pestered and generally abused, when all I want to do is my job.
The added factor of being white, “Toubab”, has not added to my credibility with most of the population, especially in my own site, since it is a fairly touristy city that sees a good number of white people but who never spend more than a day in town, meaning that tourists (99% white, of Western European origin) have gotten a bad reputation as people who simply use the town, never give back, and never stick around long enough for the locals to get to know them as real people. Anyone else who comes into town and happens to be white gets subjected to the same treatment as a tourist. So considering the size of town, (around 40,000) it is impossible for everyone coming and going to know that I am not, in fact, a tourist. Every day I cross someone new who thinks I am just a money-spending foreigner come on holiday to “see some local flavor”. Oh, and I forgot to mention the small percentage of white female tourists who come to do more than just “see” the local flavor, if you get what I mean. The locals’ common knowledge of that practice also doesn’t help my reputation with the 90% of my city’s population who doesn’t know me.
So, despite all the months I have spent here, I can count on any given day going out into this town where I live and being treated like a foolish youth, a circus clown, a sex object or a whore.
It’s a bit hard to find stability in that.
And yet people here wonder why I am less than enthusiastic when they suggest I stay another two years.
Being the biggest fish in this cramped pond. Feeling like Miss America on parade on a good day, or on a bad one, a Ripley’s Believe It or Not attraction.
Having everyone know my name, everyone always wanting to talk to me, wanting a piece of me. Having my every move scrutinized, commented upon, and more often than not, laughed at. It is not exaggerating to say that of the Senegalese I interact with here, in general, men are desirous of me, women are critical of me, children laugh at me and most babies cry if I so much as look at them.
Put this way, you can see how it becomes difficult to feel accepted into a community when at any one time I am simultaneously being rejected by three-quarters of the society, and the other one quarter doesn’t actually take me seriously.
You’d think maybe I would feel better about my integration after almost 2 years here, after being in constant contact with locals and even living with a Senegalese family. After learning the local language (and becoming better than conversational), learning local customs and adjusting to the heat, wind, and frequent cuts in power and water. And yet, as I look ahead to returning to the States in a few short months, I have come to realize that as much as I have done to integrate into this country, there is still only so much respect that can be gained here by a single, young, white female.
I knew relatively early on in this venture that my youth would not be something working in my favor in this culture that reveres age as equal to wisdom, but I underestimated how much my femininity would make my time here not only difficult but fraught with daily battles. In this male-dominated country, in my work I have to constantly be on edge. How to work with men without anyone getting the wrong idea? To do my job it is necessary for me to approach men outside of my host family, to talk to them, telephone them, interact with them; all things that would make a young Senegalese woman seem audacious, bold, risqué. Yet the majority of motivated teachers are men, as well as school directors, city hall workers, national park agents… essentially every important post in town is occupied by a man. Add in the unfavorable media portrayal of Western women as sex-crazed and easy... and every single day I work here I get hit on, stared at, ogled, teased, pestered and generally abused, when all I want to do is my job.
The added factor of being white, “Toubab”, has not added to my credibility with most of the population, especially in my own site, since it is a fairly touristy city that sees a good number of white people but who never spend more than a day in town, meaning that tourists (99% white, of Western European origin) have gotten a bad reputation as people who simply use the town, never give back, and never stick around long enough for the locals to get to know them as real people. Anyone else who comes into town and happens to be white gets subjected to the same treatment as a tourist. So considering the size of town, (around 40,000) it is impossible for everyone coming and going to know that I am not, in fact, a tourist. Every day I cross someone new who thinks I am just a money-spending foreigner come on holiday to “see some local flavor”. Oh, and I forgot to mention the small percentage of white female tourists who come to do more than just “see” the local flavor, if you get what I mean. The locals’ common knowledge of that practice also doesn’t help my reputation with the 90% of my city’s population who doesn’t know me.
So, despite all the months I have spent here, I can count on any given day going out into this town where I live and being treated like a foolish youth, a circus clown, a sex object or a whore.
It’s a bit hard to find stability in that.
And yet people here wonder why I am less than enthusiastic when they suggest I stay another two years.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
entering the home stretch
“Ngoné Ndiaye! Gej naa la gis!
Mais yow foo nekkoon? Xanaa nekkofiiwoon? Defee naa ne danga dellu dekk bi té taggatoo ma!”
[Ngoné Ndiaye! It’s been such a long time since I’ve seen you! Where have you been? Were you not here? I thought maybe you went back to your country and didn’t say goodbye!]
I know, it’s been a long time.
That’s what you get when you leave site for over two weeks. It’s the longest I’d been away since last summer, when I went to the States for 3 weeks. Usually I only leave town for a few days at a time, go to the capital, visit friends. But I had good reasons to be away so long this time.
I’d planned to be gone for at least ten days, with my original training group’s 3-day COS conference in Dakar, then 2 days of All-Volunteer conference, 3 days of WAIST, with a day to get in and a day to leisurely come back to site. And then a week and a half before all that started, I ended up falling victim to what was diagnosed as carbon monoxide poisoning, and spent an extra 5 days in Dakar recovering at the PC office Med hut, before all the rest of my planned activities… (I’m pretty much better now)
And once WAIST was over I took two more days to get some things done at our PC office, and finally came back on Thursday to Joal (my site), my dusty room, and my happy host family.
[Sorry for the acronyms: COS = Close of Service
WAIST = West Africa Invitational Softball Tournament
PC = you should know by now = Peace Corps]
[for more details on our COS conference and WAIST,
check out my friend Bethany's blog ]
Two weeks is a long time to be away, and I had let myself get pretty disconnected.
Dakar, the capital, is still Senegal, but parts of it are very Western. Spending almost a week in the Peace Corps office, three days being put up in a posh hotel for COS conference (thank you, US tax dollars) and then another five days at an American-Senegalese couple’s place in US Embassy housing (thanks to the great homestay program instituted by our PC country director)… well, it honestly felt more like America than Senegal.
I suppose I needed that.
Though I have taken mini-breaks every now and then since last summer’s big “vacation”, I was feeling run down, tired, and pretty much just ready to get the heck outta here. I spent most of January feeling like I was just treading water, being physically present but mentally distant, defining in essence the ubiquitous Wolof phrase, “Maangiy fii rekk” - I am here only. I found myself at a loss for work, after the busy-ness of the past few months, yet not so eager to start anything new. Then just after New Year’s I was presented with a proposition by my supervisor to consider extending my service for another year, to be the Environmental Ed program assistant, based in Dakar.
And as run down and fed up as I felt, I almost decided to say yes.
Until I made a spur of the moment visit to a PCV friend in Thiès and realized that staying another year here would be exactly the opposite of what I want.
It’s not that this is such a terrible place - don’t get me wrong. But two years is enough.
My brain was telling me logically that I should do it, that a third year here would indeed be a good job opportunity, a potential for more growth, and so on and so on. I would have gotten a month-long paid leave to go home before starting the third year, and once back in Senegal, a nice set-up with my own apartment in Dakar, more administrative duties, more freedom and a continued PC-paid living allowance and health benefits.
But after all but making the decision to stay, I realized that it was not what I wanted.
And as one of my goals for my Peace Corps service was to stop doing things just because I think I “should”, and only do things that I really “want” to do, once I had let myself be honest and admit that what I really wanted was to go home, I felt a huge burden lifted, and knew I had made the right decision.
January was tough in many ways, but mostly in battling my own thoughts. I got up every day and went to City Hall, met with my counterpart and work partners, listened much, talked a little. But I can’t say I accomplished anything great. I managed to organize one meeting of the CCEE - Comité Communal d’Education Environnementale. But since that meeting we haven’t had another, I’ve been away, more than a month has gone by and we haven’t done anything we talked about doing during that January meeting. And now it’s almost March, and I am looking at the home stretch: finishing my service, figuring out how to give some closure to my time here, passing on projects and allowing myself to accept that it’s OK that there are things I didn’t do.
I sat down in my little corner office at City Hall yesterday (yes, technically I have an office, though it’s not where I spend most of my time) and looked at my calendar. Before we left COS conference we were supposed to choose a COS date, let the administration know when we would be closing up shop. The official COS date for my training group is May 8 - that is the date around which most of us will be leaving country. We swore in officially as volunteers on May 9, 2008, so two years after that we will have completed our allotted time. We are allowed to leave up to 30 days before or 30 days after that date, with a few exceptions, so considering when I want to be here at site for the week or so site visit in April of my incoming replacement, plus time to finish up, say goodbyes, etc, I chose May 20 as my COS date. That doesn’t mean I will be necessarily flying back to the States that day, but unless anything changes in the meantime, it will be my last official day as a PCV.
May 20. I looked at my calendar, then at my packet of COS’ing information, calculating days and timing of closing-out medical appointments, reports that will need to be written, books to be returned, goodbyes to be said. I’ll probably leave Joal a good ten days before my COS date, to get everything done in Dakar that will need to be done before I can leave. I looked back at my calendar, counting the weeks. Counting the days. Eleven weeks at site. Take out Sundays, a Saturday here and there… that leaves about 60 working days. Sixty days.
After so much time, just two more months.
Mais yow foo nekkoon? Xanaa nekkofiiwoon? Defee naa ne danga dellu dekk bi té taggatoo ma!”
[Ngoné Ndiaye! It’s been such a long time since I’ve seen you! Where have you been? Were you not here? I thought maybe you went back to your country and didn’t say goodbye!]
I know, it’s been a long time.
That’s what you get when you leave site for over two weeks. It’s the longest I’d been away since last summer, when I went to the States for 3 weeks. Usually I only leave town for a few days at a time, go to the capital, visit friends. But I had good reasons to be away so long this time.
I’d planned to be gone for at least ten days, with my original training group’s 3-day COS conference in Dakar, then 2 days of All-Volunteer conference, 3 days of WAIST, with a day to get in and a day to leisurely come back to site. And then a week and a half before all that started, I ended up falling victim to what was diagnosed as carbon monoxide poisoning, and spent an extra 5 days in Dakar recovering at the PC office Med hut, before all the rest of my planned activities… (I’m pretty much better now)
And once WAIST was over I took two more days to get some things done at our PC office, and finally came back on Thursday to Joal (my site), my dusty room, and my happy host family.
[Sorry for the acronyms: COS = Close of Service
WAIST = West Africa Invitational Softball Tournament
PC = you should know by now = Peace Corps]
[for more details on our COS conference and WAIST,
check out my friend Bethany's blog ]
Two weeks is a long time to be away, and I had let myself get pretty disconnected.
Dakar, the capital, is still Senegal, but parts of it are very Western. Spending almost a week in the Peace Corps office, three days being put up in a posh hotel for COS conference (thank you, US tax dollars) and then another five days at an American-Senegalese couple’s place in US Embassy housing (thanks to the great homestay program instituted by our PC country director)… well, it honestly felt more like America than Senegal.
I suppose I needed that.
Though I have taken mini-breaks every now and then since last summer’s big “vacation”, I was feeling run down, tired, and pretty much just ready to get the heck outta here. I spent most of January feeling like I was just treading water, being physically present but mentally distant, defining in essence the ubiquitous Wolof phrase, “Maangiy fii rekk” - I am here only. I found myself at a loss for work, after the busy-ness of the past few months, yet not so eager to start anything new. Then just after New Year’s I was presented with a proposition by my supervisor to consider extending my service for another year, to be the Environmental Ed program assistant, based in Dakar.
And as run down and fed up as I felt, I almost decided to say yes.
Until I made a spur of the moment visit to a PCV friend in Thiès and realized that staying another year here would be exactly the opposite of what I want.
It’s not that this is such a terrible place - don’t get me wrong. But two years is enough.
My brain was telling me logically that I should do it, that a third year here would indeed be a good job opportunity, a potential for more growth, and so on and so on. I would have gotten a month-long paid leave to go home before starting the third year, and once back in Senegal, a nice set-up with my own apartment in Dakar, more administrative duties, more freedom and a continued PC-paid living allowance and health benefits.
But after all but making the decision to stay, I realized that it was not what I wanted.
And as one of my goals for my Peace Corps service was to stop doing things just because I think I “should”, and only do things that I really “want” to do, once I had let myself be honest and admit that what I really wanted was to go home, I felt a huge burden lifted, and knew I had made the right decision.
January was tough in many ways, but mostly in battling my own thoughts. I got up every day and went to City Hall, met with my counterpart and work partners, listened much, talked a little. But I can’t say I accomplished anything great. I managed to organize one meeting of the CCEE - Comité Communal d’Education Environnementale. But since that meeting we haven’t had another, I’ve been away, more than a month has gone by and we haven’t done anything we talked about doing during that January meeting. And now it’s almost March, and I am looking at the home stretch: finishing my service, figuring out how to give some closure to my time here, passing on projects and allowing myself to accept that it’s OK that there are things I didn’t do.
I sat down in my little corner office at City Hall yesterday (yes, technically I have an office, though it’s not where I spend most of my time) and looked at my calendar. Before we left COS conference we were supposed to choose a COS date, let the administration know when we would be closing up shop. The official COS date for my training group is May 8 - that is the date around which most of us will be leaving country. We swore in officially as volunteers on May 9, 2008, so two years after that we will have completed our allotted time. We are allowed to leave up to 30 days before or 30 days after that date, with a few exceptions, so considering when I want to be here at site for the week or so site visit in April of my incoming replacement, plus time to finish up, say goodbyes, etc, I chose May 20 as my COS date. That doesn’t mean I will be necessarily flying back to the States that day, but unless anything changes in the meantime, it will be my last official day as a PCV.
May 20. I looked at my calendar, then at my packet of COS’ing information, calculating days and timing of closing-out medical appointments, reports that will need to be written, books to be returned, goodbyes to be said. I’ll probably leave Joal a good ten days before my COS date, to get everything done in Dakar that will need to be done before I can leave. I looked back at my calendar, counting the weeks. Counting the days. Eleven weeks at site. Take out Sundays, a Saturday here and there… that leaves about 60 working days. Sixty days.
After so much time, just two more months.
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