Down the Rabbit Hole

One of my favorite things about writing is its power to take my jumbled mind and order it into some sort of meaning, even if that meaning is really only valuable for myself.  People keep blogs during their services for a multitude of reasons.  Sometimes they're for staying connected back home, sometimes for educating Americans about the developing world, and sometimes just for personal reflection.  I suspect every blog touches each of these from time to time: today, if you will allow, I'll be diving headfirst into the latter of the three.  I am at a loss for words so that seams like the perfect place to start talking.  

What is the real world? Yep I get right to the tough questions.  How bout we just let that one simmer for a while and we'll get back to it.  

For the past year I have lived and worked in Senegal attempting to help my village with small scale sustainable development projects to improve food security, access to clean water, and sanitation.  Or at least that's what the development rhetoric says.  In a less euphemistic sense I have struggled to learn a native language, while adapting to a very foreign culture and trying to find appropriate solutions to serious problems without reducing my village's capacity for independence and individual initiative all while also balancing my family at home and a long distance relationship and trying to keep up the motivation to get out of bed every morning.  It's been a tough year.  It's difficult to see all of these complexities from the idyllic Peace Corps posters and advertisements but they're there.  Nothing is ever as it seems.  I think the most important thing that I've taken away from this experience so far is a very healthy respect for the complexities of the world.  I suppose that's pretty important in our modern world of simplistic categorical politics.  My feelings about Senegal and her people are so very complex as well.  In some ways Senegalese are absolutely amazing, incredible, generous people, and then someone tells me that I'm bad because I won't give them money, or build them a house or buy them fertilizer, or I watch them rip up their childrens' mosquito nets to use in the garden and I just want to give up.  

There are deep-rooted cultural and situational reasons for many of the things that drive Peace Corps Volunteers crazy and when you look at it from this birds eye view there isn't much reason to get angry.  When your brother has a seizure though because your host dad would rather buy tea then medicine it gets pretty personal.  I have been trying to organize a latrine project in my village for a very long time, its one of the first things they asked me to do.  I put it on hold though because my counterpart was trying to extort me for very elaborate and expensive latrines, which Peace Corps will not build.  Then I listened to a TED talk by Bill Clinton where he listed off standard statistics about the billions of people without access to sanitation and I suddenly felt silly that I was angry because my village wanted nice bathrooms.  Peace Corps Volunteers can seem really harsh when we talk about our villages, but that's often because people don't understand what we're here to do.  We are not placed in our villages to give them a bunch of free stuff, we're there to try to find ways that they can get what they need on their own.  Santa Claus development work simply isn't effective.  There's a fine balance between giving and teaching and too far in either direction doesn't work.  

Yes it’s been a hard year, which is why on August 4th I went on VACATION!!!  I met up with my family and girlfriend in the French Alps for two and a half weeks of quality relaxation in the first world.  Things immediately got off to a rocky start.  I come from a very intellectual family and thus every problem I brought up was met with theories, justifications, or possible solutions when all I really wanted was to vent.  I being a passionate person lost my temper.  We made up of course and the vast majority of the trip was lovely, but it was telling that even with my family I felt a disconnect between what I do in Senegal and their understanding of third world dynamics.  Development work is so complex.  You could study it for twenty years and know all the data and case studies, but until you're on the ground working and feeling those complexities, it's impossible to fully comprehend them. 

Lordy this has become such a whiny post.  Back to vacation.  Oh my god Europe is nice!  I had forgotten what it was like to walk through a city without garbage, where cars stop for you, and people don't call you "white guy" and where the food is as delicious as it is varied.  The first world feels like such a fairy tale compared to Senegal.  Well now has it boiled over or are we still just simmering?  Yes it's time for that question again.  What is the real world?  I honestly can't tell you.  Some would say the first world is an artificial construct built on intrinsic inequality and abuse of cheap third world labor.  That however would be just as false as saying the real world is the poor starving children of the bottom billion who live on less than a dollar a day.  I was flabbergasted by the amount of money we spent in Europe, and we weren't extravagant.  I went from a village where a $3 chicken is a treat eaten only once or twice a year to a land where people can spend upwards of $100 for just one bottle of wine.  How can these realities both exist on the same planet?  What is the moral implication of that?  In any case denying either is both unhelpful and absurd.  There is massive inequality in our world, that can’t be denied, but the only thing that seems to help bring people up is an intrinsic desire to improve ones life.  Shouldn't we thus then be able to enjoy the fruits of our labors since that motivates others to work harder as well?  Yes and no.  We have to be able to enjoy our success, that's what any person would do if given the opportunity, but we need to recognize that we are not intrinsically entitled to that success.  Each of us for better or for worse is the product of billions of little accidents that placed us in a position to either take advantage of opportunities or be constantly pushed to the side.  

So what to do?  I wish I knew.  Buddhists would say observe rather than judge or deny, so lets observe these conflicting truths about the world and hold them in our brains and hearts the next time we go to a voting booth or pass a homeless person, or buy a fancy car, or donate money to a charity.  The first world is not as fake as some might say, and the third world not as true and noble.  Both are real and more complex than any one person can comprehend.  I feel like Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole, only I’m not sure which side is wonderland. Who would have ever thought a nice vacation could make me even more confused about my life here.  Such is life.  Time to dive back into the work. 

Cheers!

Garrison