Challenging Transiency

“‘It’s been too long,’ she whispers behind them.  ‘Why do we do that to ourselves?  Why do we stay away so long from the places that make us whole?'”

I had a moment the other day.  As I was doing interviews with the girls from the scholarship program I discussed in my last post, I was interacting with different people and going into compounds that I don’t usually go in to.  The English teacher from the local middle school, Madame Diatta, came along to help me find the girls’ houses and to help me explain anything if there was confusion.  As we were sitting with parents and greeting/talking before the interview, Madame Diatta would usually make sure the parents were familiar with Peace Corps and what I was doing there.  At one house, we were sitting with the girl’s father and Madame Diatta asked him if he knew about Peace Corps.  He was familiar with it, and started thanking me:

“It’s not easy to leave behind everything and come to a new place.  But you came here, you live with a family, with the people.  You learn the language and the culture.  If everyone did what you are doing and made an effort to understand other people, there would be no war and only peace in the world”

I was so touched by his words.  As you’ve probably been able to glean if you read my posts regularly, life in the Peace Corps is a roller coaster.  There’s good days, bad days, highs, lows.  Life here can seem impossibly difficult at times and laid back and totally manageable at others.  It’s not often that I receive this type of praise from people, and it definitely made it one of those ‘it’s all worth it’ moments.  Even though I don’t think I quite deserve the credit this man was giving me, it is nice to feel such appreciation and recognition.

I myself have some pretty big questions about what we/I am doing here as a Peace Corps volunteer.  Peace Corps is ostensibly a sustainable development organization.  But how capable are we of doing real development work and how sustainable is it?  These questions, like most questions I have found myself asking in Senegal, have no easy answers.

Every six months, there’s a turnover of volunteers — a new stage (sometimes it’s easier to use French words) comes in to replace the volunteers that are completing their service.  Since I’ve been here for about 16 months now, I’ve witnessed three of these transitions.  I’ve seen the goodbyes and the hellos.  One thing that has struck me is that  Senegalese people overwhelmingly think that two years is too short.  When my site-mate (the other volunteer who lives in the same town as me) came to say her final goodbyes to my host family, my host mom expressed this.  She lamented that as soon as we get really integrated, as soon as we really learn the language, as soon as we all get used to and understand each other — the two years are up.  Its time for us to go home — only to be replaced by a new volunteer that has very limited lingual and cultural knowledge.

This is the nature of Peace Corps Senegal and perhaps Peace Corps in general.  Two years away from home seems like a long time for us as Americans.  Most of us have big plans for grad school, starting our careers, maybe even starting families.  Two years is a long time to be away from all of that.  But it’s not very long here when you’re considering the long process of language learning and cultural integration.  With the slow pace of life and work in Senegal, it’s hard to get much done in two years, especially when the first year or so is spent learning language and getting comfortable in your community. 

This is a fairly easy thing to explain away to Senegalese people.  When people in my community start asking me if I’ll stay an extra year, if I really need to go home next year, I tell them that my mom would miss me too much if I didn’t go home.  I haven’t met anyone yet who hasn’t accepted that as a legitimate reason.

But just because they understand doesn’t necessarily make it easier.  I was hanging out with my friend Thiane the other day, whose family has had several volunteers.  They don’t currently have one, because their last volunteer left early after struggling with the death of her host father (Thiane’s father).  I was asking her if she wanted another volunteer in her family.  She told me that she likes having volunteers, but she also doesn’t like it.  “I like hanging out with them and getting to know them, but in the end they always leave.  When I think about you leaving someday it makes my heart sad.  Sometimes I think it might be easier to not get to know someone that will just leave after two years.”

I can’t blame her for that.  While I have a stock response that will get Senegalese people off my back, it’s hard for me to explain this away on a deeper level.  When I was living in San Diego and working at farmer’s markets a couple of years ago, I had this one customer who would often sit and chat with me a while at my stand.  She was involved in social justice activism on several levels in the community.  She had traveled extensively, but not in recent years.  She had come to the conclusion that if you really want to make a difference, if you really want to change things, you have to choose a place and stay put.  You have to be a well-rooted member of a community with long term investment in the future of that community if you want to effect meaningful change.

This idea really stuck with me.  The transient nature of my as well as my fellow Millenials’ lives is something I struggle with.  I grew up one place, went to college another place, lived another couple of places after that, and now am living here in Senegal.  In all of these places I’ve built lives and relationships — only to leave them behind after a couple of years.  Keeping in touch is hard, and while I’m grateful for the opportunity to have lived and known different places, I can’t help but feel stretched.  How do I make sense of all of these different lives I’ve lead?  How do I not forget the lessons I’ve learned and the relationships I’ve forged?  And where do I go from here?

Again, no easy answers.  A question that I get all the time here is, when I go home to the States, will I come back?  I tell people that yes, I would like to come back.  If I have a job and make enough money.  It’s hard for people to understand why the majority of volunteers never come back.  After spending so much time here and building such strong connections, how could one leave and never return? Or, even worse, not even pick up the phone and call?

I can see how it happens though.  I think it’s pretty easy to get swept back up into American life, and pretty difficult to remember everything else.  Its something I talk about a lot with my fellow volunteers.  We feel as if we’ve learned so much here, but are afraid that it might be lost once we go home.  For example, I’ve become an infinitely more patient person here.  Sometimes I’ll wait hours for something — a car to fill up, a person to meet with me, the electricity to come back, you name it — and it doesn’t really bother me.  But when I return to the land of reliability and people having real expectations about things happening at certain times… Will I be able to hold on to this perspective that I have?

I can’t help but feel slightly jealous of my Senegalese friends and family.  Most of them were born in this town, grew up here, and will stay here for the rest of their lives.  They know everyone and together they form a tight-knit community.  It’s a simple life where almost everyone you’ve ever known or been close to is probably no more than a five minute walk away.  This is something that I will never have.  While I am beyond grateful for the fortunate life circumstances and opportunities I’ve had and wouldn’t trade it for anything — it would still be nice to have everyone I love in one place.

But since that’s not possible, I’ll just have to hold them all in my suitcase heart.  And try my best to remember all the people and places I’ve been, and the lessons I’ve learned along the way.

Supporting Girls Education in Senegal

While it’s obvious from my last post that I’ve come to love my home in Senegal very much, I still come from a very different culture a world away, and there are several cultural differences that really get to me.  First and foremost is the patriarchy that is deeply embedded in this society.

Women in Senegal truly are second-class citizens.  As a Western woman, I personally have a more ambiguous gender role in my community.  I dress differently, act differently, and often I’m treated more like a man than a woman.  But my toubab-ness does not shield me from all of the sexism.  Nor does it shield me from observing the discrimination Senegalese women face.

Ramadan is in full swing now, but right before it started was prime wedding season.  There was a wedding happening almost every day in my neighborhood when I got back from vacation.  Senegalese weddings are characterized by ear-damagingly loud music that goes on more or less all day, so they’re not hard to miss.  I asked my friend Thiane why there were so many weddings at that time.  She said that with Ramadan so close, men want to get married so they’ll have a woman to cook them monie. 

Monie is a millet-based porridge that is often eaten for breakfast or dinner in Senegal.  The process to make it is tedious, labor and time intensive.  I’ve found that in small villages it’s common for women to make it for their families since the families in villages are often very large and there’s usually nowhere to buy it — but in cities/towns you can buy it easily and cheaply from women that sell it on the street.  However, many more women make it as a special occasion kind of thing during Ramadan for the “break-fast” meal that happens at sunset. 

I laughed at Thiane’s offhand comment about the monie, but when I looked at her I realized she was serious.  Obviously, I find this idea offensive.  But to her it’s a pretty run-of-the-mill concept.

Needless to say, life is hard for women and girls in Senegal.  They are expected to do all the cooking, cleaning, and housework — without running water, electricity, appliances, or even a kitchen.  This often takes all day.  They cook over wood fires, each meal taking several hours to prepare, they wash laundry and dishes by hand, pulling all the water for these activities and more from the well, etc, etc. 

There are many cultural nuances that constantly enforce this patriarchy.  When women greet men they are supposed to do a little curtsy.  Men are always given the chairs (if there are any chairs to be had) in a social situation while women will always give up their seats to sit on the ground.  Men are served food and tea first, always.  In public transportation they usually get priority in seating (though I’ve caused a few scenes fighting for my rightful seat).  If these cultural signals weren’t enough, I’ve had several Senegalese men tell me outright that women are inherently inferior to men. 

I could tell a million anecdotes about how hard life is in Senegal for women and girls.  But I’ll get to the point.  There is a Peace Corps Senegal wide scholarship program that every year, pays the inscription fees and buys school supplies for 9 girls at every participating middle school.  The idea behind this program is to try to keep girls in school.  If everything is paid for, parents can’t use lack of money as an excuse for why their daughters have dropped out. 

Being a female student in Senegal is challenging.  Even girls that go to school are still expected to help out with all of this work when they get home.  Only about half as many girls in Senegal make it to high school as boys do (and an even smaller fraction make it to university).  Juggling house work and studies is difficult.  Often families will marry off their daughters at a young age for the dowry money, not even giving them the chance to try their hand at an education.  Marriages of 12 and 13 year olds are not uncommon here.

I am doing this scholarship program for three different schools in my area — the two middle schools in my town, and one middle school in a village nearby that has no volunteer but does have motivated teachers that wanted to help me make it happen.

There are three parts of the application process.  The teachers write recommendations for the girls they think deserve/need the scholarship, the girls write an essay about challenges facing them in the education system, and then I go around to all of their homes to meet with their families and interview the girls.  I’ve been doing the interview portion this week, and it’s been fun but also trying.  When asked why they want to stay in school, the girls often answer with something as simple as “I want to study until I have something” or “I don’t want to have nothing in life.”  These are such simple desires that are unfortunately so difficult to obtain in their situations.  As I write down their answers to the questions with my nice American pen, and place the papers in my sturdy American folder, and take their pictures with my fancy American camera, I can’t help but feel self-conscious. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: it’s hard to be so blatantly faced with the injustices of the world.

So, please help support these girls, and help give them a chance to stay in school.  See the link below for the website.  Any amount is appreciated and goes a long way.  Thanks for your help.

https://beta.peacecorps.gov/donate/projects-funds/

Click “Give to the Global Fund”

Choose an amount, or enter your own (USD)

Enter your personal information

Under “Please use this box if you want to send a message of encouragement to this project’s volunteer” please enter “PC Senegal MSS Fund”

Here are the pictures of 26 of the 27 girls who will be getting the scholarship (1 is not pictured):