Ok now that we’ve all started drinking lets start
reading! Thank god that’s not how
my first grade teacher introduced reading to us. Right, way back in PST our doctors made us write a little
letter to ourselves to be opened in times of stress in order to have a little
perspective. Mine has been nailed to my wall for two years, until I brought it
to Dakar and opened it right now!
What was inside you may ask?
Why would I tell you that?
I need to keep up the suspense. This is for your entertainment so trust
me.
Five days ago I left my little village of Dassilame Serere
for good. It was a moment that I had
been looking forward to for a long time if I’m going to be honest. So long in fact that I somehow
completely forgot that it would be the most difficult thing I had to do in my
entire service. Three days before
that I had the pleasure of showing my replacement around village for something
we like to call VV, another exciting Peace Corps acronym. It just stands for Volunteer Visit so
not actually very exciting. The
trip unlike the acronym was great though.
Elise, my replacement, came out for three days to see the village, check
out my projects, meet to important folk, and generally get acquainted before
she had to come for good. It was a
lot of fun and a great way for me to pass on the kind of information I would
have loved to have when I first got there. The day before I left we had a big village party where a
bunch of my PCV friends and village friends all came to celebrate me :-). We killed a turkey and made some of the
best Senegalese food I’ve had in my entire service. Why was it good?
Well because I bought extra MSG filled seasoning of course… yeah true
fact… Don’t judge you first world
hipsters, it was good. After lunch
I called everyone together and told them how much I appreciated everything they
did for me, how much I respected them and their work and village, and how sad I
was to be leaving. They reciprocated with such wonderful complements as you
work like a black person, and you know all of Serere. Neither of which are true but it was nice of them to say.
That night I sent Elise and the other volunteers back to
Toubacouta so that I could pack and have time with my family. People kept coming by to say goodbye
and that’s when it hit me. This is
going to be really fucking hard tomorrow.
Ding ding ding. Correct
answer. It royally sucked. I got up grabbed my bags and walked to
the road with my family. A bunch
of other people came out and everyone I saw made me tear up. I couldn’t look at people. They knew exactly what was going on
which made them start to cry and then I was just a mess. For all of my questioning and wondering
I finally got it, what I had here was real. I really did love my village and my family and friends and
it hurt just as much to leave them as to leave my American friends and
family. It was harder by far then anything
else in my service. Who would have
thought?
From there I went directly to Dakar. In Kaolack my 7-place driver turned out
to be Serere… then he turned out to have family in the same household I lived
in during PST. Small world. Even smaller when I met another Serere
a few days later who went to primary school in my village. That’s the kind of stuff I’m going to
miss. The random in depth
conversations with strangers where you inevitably find some way that your lives
connect. It’s nice. I think a lot of people get bitter and
jaded here, myself included at some points, but at the end of the day I love
Senegal, her people and her culture.
It certainly has problems but no country is perfect.
I feel like my head has come up above water again. When we’re working in village its hard
to see the big picture, its often hard to see beyond the mysterious animal bits
in the lunch bowl. Overall though
we’re moving forward. I had a
great conversation with my APCD, my boss, about long-term vision in Peace Corps
and I think that gave me a better perspective on why he does some things he
does. PCV’s can get pretty
self-righteous about the things we think we know, or deserve, or require and
how the institution above us is messing it all up. They’re imperfect just like us. Not that I wasn’t always right, cause I was, you know now
I’m just right with humility… is that a thing… Maybe not humility but a healthy
dose of respect even through difference.
I’ve spent the last five days since leaving village filling
out mountains of paperwork, thank you Washington, going through medical tests,
and writing reports about all of my work.
Looking at my service on paper suddenly all of the questioning and
uncertainty kinda goes away. On
paper it looks pretty damn good.
That makes me proud even though I know it’s more complicated. If nothing else I know that I
tried. I’ve come to the
realization that even though I wanted to do more or be better I probably did as
much as I could do while staying sane enough to finish my service. That’s enough I suppose. When I finished all of the paperwork I
thought I would feel relieved and content but I suddenly started to feel empty. I thrive on structure and the structure
had just been taken away. I
honestly didn’t know what to do with myself.
Change is hard.
I know its necessary but it’s still hard. My life, which has been so constrained in so many ways, is
now full of possibilities again and that terrifies as much as it excites
me. Peace Corps is hard but hard
in different ways then American life is hard. I have to worry about getting a job now, and making money,
and moving forward in a career, and planning a wedding, and explaining this
experience to people who know nothing about anything. Village life is so much simpler. I don’t know where I’m going with all this. I guess I’m in a weird place. I’m in freefall again and I’m not sure
when or where I’m going to land.
So what was in the letter? Honestly it was a little disappointing. We talk about how
much we grow during Peace Corps, but there’s also so much of us that stays the
same. I still have so many of the
same insecurities and hopes and I’m still very vague and unsure about weather
or not I succeeded in my one main goal, “to help my village”. I like to think that I helped them in
some way, but who knows in the long run.
We plant trees under which we will never sit, or that will never mature
at all because they were eaten by goats.
It’s really a crapshoot.
Like all of life. I’m the
same person as I was, but with a whole lot broader perspective. I think that’s probably what it
is.
Everything is so ambiguous. Luckily Peace Corps has taught me to be ok with that. The world is shades of grey, and
conflicting truths, and necessary opposites, and inherent connections. That used to frustrate me, but now I
think thank god there’s more to figure out. The world would be so boring if it was simple. That and
other fortune cookie tidbits brought to you by the Mostly Harmless blog. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading my random
attempts to try to order this experience into something coherent and
meaningful. It’s been grand. It really has. I leave you with the words of someone
far more elegant then I:
"I had as yet no notion that life every now and then becomes literature-not for long, of course, but long enough to be what we best remember, and often enough so that what we eventually come to mean by life are those moments when life, instead of going sideways, backwards, forward, or nowhere at all, lines out straight, tense and inevitable, with a complication, climax, and, given some luck, a purgation, as if life had been made and not happened.
- Norman Maclean
Thanks for the memories Senegal. You’ve made my life richer and grander. I’ll never forget you.
Cheers,
Garrison
