The boys wanted to get in on the fun too!
(soccer player)
Sunday, October 26, 2014
International Day of the Girl
The International Day of the Girl was October 11th and to celebrate, SeneGAD (Senegal's Gender and Development Committee) decided to do a country-wide discussion and photo project. In our sites, we asked girls to fill in the sentence "I am..." and we talked to the girls about all the positive attributes they had. I cannot tell you how much fun I had with this. They immediately latched onto the concept and we had a great discussion about who they felt they were, what they wanted for themselves, and how to toppitaade hoore ma or "take care of yourself/your life." The discussion was for them, but their amazing answers are written in English for you all. Enjoy!
Thursday, October 9, 2014
So You Want to be a Peace Corps Volunteer...
I've been wanting to write this post for quite some time. I have hesitated, because how could I know what it takes to be a Peace Corps volunteer? Just because I am one doesn't mean I am necessarily a good one. Maybe I'm doing it all wrong, who knows. At a year and 7 months, I still question every day what it means to be here and what my purpose is here. However, I have seen a lot of volunteers come and go at this point. Happy volunteers, angry volunteers, productive volunteers, lazy volunteers, disillusioned volunteers, and most people who were a combination of all of the above at any given moment. I've gone through all of these phases as well. I feel qualified at this point to give advice.
Many people may disagree with me on what you need to be good at this job and I would appreciate comments if you have constructive additions. Keep in mind that this is influenced by my country's program, my sector (health), and my region. I think this is an especially poignant time to write this post, as it was the time I considered Peace Corps service, starting my senior year in college. If you are reading this and thinking about applying, I hope it helps.
Forget everything you thought you knew
This is the first rule of joining Peace Corps. I don't care if you were a CEO for 10 years, if you were the smartest kid in your graduating class, if your uncle is the president of UNICEF, or if you started your own NGO in Uganda at 15, this is different. When you arrive here, you are a baby. You know nothing. You can look back to your previous experiences and use them here, sure, but the less preconceived notions you have about your service the better. Some of the volunteers I've known who had the most difficult time with their service were the ones who had dreamed about it since they were 10 and had all sorts of ideas about what Peace Corps was supposed to be. No matter how much you (think) you know about Peace Corps or about volunteering, you don't know it. No matter how much you (think) you know about your country of service, you don't know it. You have to take time to experience it in order to know this place, this thing, and even then you won't know everything. Embrace the fact that you don't know and surrender yourself to learning only.
Get used to being out of your comfort zone
Whether you hate being onstage, you can't handle bugs, you hate kids, you don't take well to boredom, or you feel the need to have direction or clarity or answers, something in your daily Peace Corps life will be a constant challenge. Some things will be more on the discomfort side of things, like being dirty or having bed bugs or getting constant staph infections. For me, these were the easiest things to get over but for others they were daily plagues that bothered them their entire service. Other things will push you mentally, and I think these are the harder things to deal with. I hate being in front of people and talking, and while my job is really to act as the behind-the-scenes motivator of my counterparts, just being different put me 'on a stage' in an uncomfortable way. I have spent 19 months forcing myself to be in the limelight, where my village needed me, far outside my comfort zone. It is incredibly exhausting to live this way. For you the "out of comfort zone" experience may be the persistent doubts that haunt every PCV. It may be homesickness. It may be lack of support from Peace Corps staff, PCVs, your host community, or all three. There will be something in your service that plagues you. Be prepared for this. It will be difficult, it will hurt, but as long as you are prepared and grow to be resilient, you will be okay.
Embrace the cultural exchange
I am going to flat-out say it: if you want to join Peace Corps to do American-style productive work, don't. Just don't. You will be disappointed. Yes, I have had inspiring moments. Yes, I think I have made at least some difference in my community. But securing lasting change is something that takes time, far more time than the two years you have here. The only impact I can be totally sure of is that my community has met a kind American who made an effort to know them and their culture. All other work you do may succeed or may fail, but you will not know going in whether will be successful and you may not know even when you leave. If that is not enough for you, if you will feel defeated if cultural exchange is the only product of your service, do not join.
Learn how to be happy
This job is not easy, and sometimes long stretches of it can be very difficult. The best thing you can do for yourself is to make the decision to be happy. It is absolutely a conscious decision. This includes having a sense of humor about things, making the best of situations, and enjoying the little things while not sweating the small stuff. You will get better at this as you go along. Car breakdowns will be a chance for a nice conversation with your fellow passengers instead of ruining your day. Constant sweat will be you releasing toxins. Sunrises and sunsets and stars will mean more to you than ever, and screaming voices will roll off you more than ever. But it is a choice to go in this direction, to learn in this way. Not everyone makes this choice, not everyone realizes it is a choice or is capable of making it. If you can do it, if you can make every day beautiful in some way, it is one of the greatest skills you will learn here.
At one point, this post in my mind had a list of things that you should be- outgoing, personable, decent with languages, etc. But I don't think I believe in that anymore. I believe successful (however you gauge that) Peace Corps volunteers come in all shapes and sizes, with all backgrounds, skill sets, and reasons for being here. As much as the Peace Corps volunteer can be stereotyped, everyone here is totally unique and even those that are similar will fare differently in their PC experience. If you are totally prepared to forget everything you thought you knew, get used to being out of your comfort zone, embrace the cultural exchange, and learn how to be happy, you will be okay as a Peace Corps Volunteer. It can be a lot harder than it sounds, but it is totally worth it.
Many people may disagree with me on what you need to be good at this job and I would appreciate comments if you have constructive additions. Keep in mind that this is influenced by my country's program, my sector (health), and my region. I think this is an especially poignant time to write this post, as it was the time I considered Peace Corps service, starting my senior year in college. If you are reading this and thinking about applying, I hope it helps.
Forget everything you thought you knew
This is the first rule of joining Peace Corps. I don't care if you were a CEO for 10 years, if you were the smartest kid in your graduating class, if your uncle is the president of UNICEF, or if you started your own NGO in Uganda at 15, this is different. When you arrive here, you are a baby. You know nothing. You can look back to your previous experiences and use them here, sure, but the less preconceived notions you have about your service the better. Some of the volunteers I've known who had the most difficult time with their service were the ones who had dreamed about it since they were 10 and had all sorts of ideas about what Peace Corps was supposed to be. No matter how much you (think) you know about Peace Corps or about volunteering, you don't know it. No matter how much you (think) you know about your country of service, you don't know it. You have to take time to experience it in order to know this place, this thing, and even then you won't know everything. Embrace the fact that you don't know and surrender yourself to learning only.
Get used to being out of your comfort zone
Whether you hate being onstage, you can't handle bugs, you hate kids, you don't take well to boredom, or you feel the need to have direction or clarity or answers, something in your daily Peace Corps life will be a constant challenge. Some things will be more on the discomfort side of things, like being dirty or having bed bugs or getting constant staph infections. For me, these were the easiest things to get over but for others they were daily plagues that bothered them their entire service. Other things will push you mentally, and I think these are the harder things to deal with. I hate being in front of people and talking, and while my job is really to act as the behind-the-scenes motivator of my counterparts, just being different put me 'on a stage' in an uncomfortable way. I have spent 19 months forcing myself to be in the limelight, where my village needed me, far outside my comfort zone. It is incredibly exhausting to live this way. For you the "out of comfort zone" experience may be the persistent doubts that haunt every PCV. It may be homesickness. It may be lack of support from Peace Corps staff, PCVs, your host community, or all three. There will be something in your service that plagues you. Be prepared for this. It will be difficult, it will hurt, but as long as you are prepared and grow to be resilient, you will be okay.
Embrace the cultural exchange
I am going to flat-out say it: if you want to join Peace Corps to do American-style productive work, don't. Just don't. You will be disappointed. Yes, I have had inspiring moments. Yes, I think I have made at least some difference in my community. But securing lasting change is something that takes time, far more time than the two years you have here. The only impact I can be totally sure of is that my community has met a kind American who made an effort to know them and their culture. All other work you do may succeed or may fail, but you will not know going in whether will be successful and you may not know even when you leave. If that is not enough for you, if you will feel defeated if cultural exchange is the only product of your service, do not join.
Learn how to be happy
This job is not easy, and sometimes long stretches of it can be very difficult. The best thing you can do for yourself is to make the decision to be happy. It is absolutely a conscious decision. This includes having a sense of humor about things, making the best of situations, and enjoying the little things while not sweating the small stuff. You will get better at this as you go along. Car breakdowns will be a chance for a nice conversation with your fellow passengers instead of ruining your day. Constant sweat will be you releasing toxins. Sunrises and sunsets and stars will mean more to you than ever, and screaming voices will roll off you more than ever. But it is a choice to go in this direction, to learn in this way. Not everyone makes this choice, not everyone realizes it is a choice or is capable of making it. If you can do it, if you can make every day beautiful in some way, it is one of the greatest skills you will learn here.
At one point, this post in my mind had a list of things that you should be- outgoing, personable, decent with languages, etc. But I don't think I believe in that anymore. I believe successful (however you gauge that) Peace Corps volunteers come in all shapes and sizes, with all backgrounds, skill sets, and reasons for being here. As much as the Peace Corps volunteer can be stereotyped, everyone here is totally unique and even those that are similar will fare differently in their PC experience. If you are totally prepared to forget everything you thought you knew, get used to being out of your comfort zone, embrace the cultural exchange, and learn how to be happy, you will be okay as a Peace Corps Volunteer. It can be a lot harder than it sounds, but it is totally worth it.
Brief Update
Hello Everyone! I feel like if I don't post a small update now I'm bound to get way too far behind in what I am up to, so here it is:
As I mentioned in my last post, I went to America on vacation for the entirety of Ramadan. When I got back to Senegal I was planning on going to Katote right in time for the end of Ramadan celebration, called "Julde Korka" in Pulaar. My plans were tight though, and ended up falling apart. I had only one day where I could have made it back to Matam and there were inexplicably no cars running that day. I was so upset to miss this holiday with my family, but sometimes you have to just accept what the transportation gods give you.
The reason my plans were so tight was because I was asked to be a trainer for the IST or "in service training" for the most recent health stage at Peace Corps' training center in Thies. New health volunteers, coupled with a handful of CED (Community Economic Development) volunteers, come to Senegal in March then finish their PST (Pre-Service Training) in May and are sworn in as full volunteers (the same schedule as I had). Their second training is 2 weeks in August dedicated to more technical first-goal work. It was this that I was asked to help with. Typically volunteers that have completed their 2 year service extend to be PCVLs (Peace Corps Volunteer Leaders- getting sick of the acronyms yet?) and they guide new stages through the training progression. Their jobs are to organize all of the sessions, keep records from past years and for present years, organize the logistics of sessions, bring in guest trainers, preview all sessions, monitor sessions as they are happening, and monitor the overall flow and content of the training, especially putting in a volunteer's perspective. They work with the APCD (Associate Peace Corps Director) and the PTAs (I don't even know what these stand for at this point) as well as the the Director of Programming and Training to put together the training series. The only problem here is that no one from the last group of health volunteers extended their service to stay on as PCVL. APCDs and PTAs are undoubtedly involved with a great deal of training, but with our propensity to organize and our connection to the volunteer experience, much of the work, especially day-to-day as the training happens, is in the hands of the PCVL. For this training, I was "acting PCVL" taking on the duties of a PCVL temporarily. The responsibilities may not sound like all that much, but it kept me working from 7am to 11pm or 1am for 16 days straight. It was a blast. I loved being able to talk to the new volunteers, sharing my experiences and being invigorated through their optimism. I loved speaking English and feeling proficient at something for once. I have always loved the training center, which has been cultivated beautifully by the Agricultural PCVLs and their counterparts and feels like such a beautiful marriage of Senegalese and American culture to me. It was also a nice transition from vacation for me. I went from all the comforts of America to a few days in Dakar, where we have hot showers and most any food you could want, to the training center, which sometimes has warm showers and the best and healthiest Senegalese food. Then I was ready to go back to site, with my bucket showers and rice bowls.
From the Thies training center I went back to my Senegalese home and started on my Malaria tourney with Anna. I'll report on that fully when we're all done. We worked on the first phase for the entire month of September and will do our follow-up in November.
At the end of September I had the fortune of attending our second ever Northern Summit, a two-day event that brought together volunteers from the northernmost 3 regions of Senegal- Matam, St Louis and Louga. The culture and climate of this area is often drastically different than that of the south, where most of our volunteers are placed. The general training we get from Peace Corps can often be south-leaning because of this, or simply not specific enough to our northern needs. The summit sought to address this, encourage information sharing, and highlight the current work of volunteers in the area. It was a great success and I think everyone got a lot out of it. It didn't hurt that it was at a beautiful campement in St Louis.
After that, there was a three day transportation strike (transportation will be the end of me here) and the SeneGAD meeting I had planned to be in Dakar had to be pushed back and condensed. As always it was wonderful to see my fellow board members and the regional representatives, they really are a great group. We only have about 5 months left on the board and have a lot we want to get done before then! Keep your eyes out for a new website, hopefully at the new address of senegad.com, and an exciting International Day of the Girl social media campaign we will be running for the month of October.
In between the Northern Summit and SeneGAD meeting, I applied for a WorldConnect grant for the revitalization of my Health Hut, something I have been working on my entire service. Everything I have been doing up until now has been organizational and based on capacity building, and then in June I wrote a grant for some structural help for my Health Hut, including a shade structure, a wall and paints for murals. The funding source I applied for in June wasn't right for my grant type, but then WorldConnect opened up funding again and I reapplied to their program, staying up half the night for two nights to complete the lengthy application. Cross your fingers that I get the grant!
We also got to slip out to the beach for a day to celebrate Hannah's birthday, a wonderful break from the non-stop work I had been doing since I stepped back into the country.
I headed back to site right in time for Tabaski, the biggest celebration of the year. I can't wait to post about the festivities and give you all the recipe for the Tabaski lunch meal.
Okay, that wasn't exactly brief, sorry.
America the Beautiful
This is a very late post and will have to be a quick one, but I wanted to just thank everyone I got to see and everyone I talked to while I was home. I spent all of Ramadan (end of May to end of June) at home going to New York City, Boston, Sudbury, St Louis, Rochester NY, and Long Beach Island NJ. Some volunteers have a hard time going back to America. The transition can be jarring, the abundance or lifestyle of Americans can be overwhelming. Sometimes people in America can be insensitive to your experience or even rude about the people and places that have become so dear to you. I am so thankful to have kind, sensitive, supportive, intelligent friends and family who have truly taken the time to read what I write here, follow my experience on Facebook, do their own research on Senegal, and ask me great, kind questions. They also listened to my culture shock as I came home ("the streets of Brooklyn are so clean! Oh my goodness, your air conditioning is so fancy!"), went on all the excursions I was set on doing (special thank you to Sarah, my constant partner in crime), were patient through my rambling stories, and took time out of their busy lives to be with me. I truly appreciate the community I have at home, and the love and support I felt from everyone while I was there was overwhelming. It was incredibly hard to leave. This time next year I will be home though, so I needed to come back and make the most of the year (or less) that I have left.
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