Wait, what am I doing here?

I haven’t written in a long time, I know, I’m sorry. I have a million ideas for posts building up in my head, but for starters, I wanted to update everyone on what I have been up to recently.

Now, Peace Corps has three goals that summarize the mission of the organization and the work of volunteers all over the world. Impressively, these goals have remained unchanged for the entirety of Peace Corps’ existence, which speaks to the purity and long-term utility of the goals. They are:

1. To help the people of interested countries in meeting their needs for trained men and women

2. To help promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served 

3. To help promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans

I am going to have to be a bit more organized in order to write a blog of my work towards goal number one. This is what is typically considered the ‘work’ portion of my service, in the most literal American sense. I talked a little bit about the hearth project I did in my last post, but I promise a more extensive account will be coming soon.

Apologies and excuses aside, I wanted to write a bit about the work I have been doing towards goals two and three recently. The cultural and diplomatic exchange that is embodied in these goals often gets overlooked. We are Americans, and work with billable hours and quantifiable outputs is typically the only currency of productiveness that we accept. Even within Peace Corps we have to twist to turn our experiences into numbers so that Washington can understand our value and work as volunteers. (If this sounds a bit ridiculous to you, it should. If it doesn't, please read my last post and let me know how to best express that in numbers.)  

My service thus far has gone a long way to change my views on this, to say the least. A large portion of my job is earning the trust and support of my community, which is completely necessary and sounds great, but in reality it translates to a lot of sitting, a lot of drinking tea, a lot of simple conversations. At first, like most any American, this drove me crazy. Where was my desk? My checklist for the day? My papers, my completed reports and activities? What was I doing? But then, slowly, I learned the value of sitting with my family by the fire, of holding babies, and making fun of the middle school boys with the middle school girls. I've embraced goals two and three whole-heartedly recently, and I've had an amazing time doing it. I've accepted at this point in my service (almost a year in!) the truth that my village will give me far more than I will give them.

I still hope, however, that even if my more tangible projects fail I will have been a  positive representation of America and Americans. With foreign wars, cultural ignorance and misguided giving, there are a lot of things going against the American image these days. Every country immediately surrounding Senegal has been closed to Peace Corps volunteers because it is no longer safe for Americans to be there. My village is in a corner of Senegal bordered by Mauritania and Mali, and when groups from those countries come to Senegal looking for supporters, I want people in my area to remember me. I want them not to remember me for a well I built or money I gave for scholarships, but for kindness and for the fact that I cared to get to know them and learn their ways. And I want to help people back home learn a bit of what I have been so fortunate to learn so far. I am already a changed person because of this country and my work here, and I want to share as much as I possibly can of the wonderful or even the awful parts of my service and my experiences here. Thus, the cultural exchange portion of my service will probably be the most important thing I do here. Whenever I feel alone, or like I'm not getting through to people, or projects are moving slowly or not at all, when I ask myself "wait, what am I doing here?" this is the answer. 

The things I do each day and each week are small. They don't seem like much and to the busy people reading this they probably seem even smaller. But everything I do adds up to the person I am and the person my village gets to know. This week to help promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans and to help promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served I:

Learned how to draw water from the well

 Got way better at balancing water on my head

Learned a complicated sewing stitch from my aunt

Finished sewing a mobula, which is used to carry a baby on your back, and I am sending it to my cousins in America for their new baby. I don't exactly expect them to use it that way, but it totally still counts as cultural exchange. 

In addition, I do have to also report that I went on a rather heavenly vacation in St. John in the USVI with my family for Christmas. To bring bits of Senegal to them, I gave my family Senegalese gifts for Christmas- Pulaar knives carried by herders (called gaynaakos) for the boys, a purse woven by artisans in St Louis for my sister, a skirt-scarf for my mother, a blanket for my grandparents. In addition, I had American-style clothes made out of Senegalese fabric (in this case, it was actually from Cote d'Ivoire) for the whole family

And then I made one of my favorite traditional meals for my family, maafe gerte (with way more meat than I would ever get in village)

Which my family enthusiastically ate with their hands, kneeling on the ground. 

It was a pretty great success of cultural exchange. I hope you all enjoyed this quick update on some things I've been doing and why it matters. If you have any ideas on how else I can accomplish goals two and three or you want to participate with me somehow, let me know!