So What AM I Doing Here???

A cold bucket bath – bargaining with a taxi driver – pit latrines – walking 200 yards to GET to the pit latrine – eating Fufu with Okra stew with my fingers out of a communal bowl with 3 other people – seeing women carrying heavy loads of firewood, water, goods for sale, and so many other things on their head – going weeks without seeing another white person – seeing the most beautiful colors in what was unfamiliar clothing – actually seeing the Milky Way clearly along with a zillion stars – knowing that EVERY day will be 100 degrees and there is no A/C – watching baby goats play in the most joyful way – being greeted by just about EVERYBODY when you walk down the street – never hearing an airplane, helicopter, or train – living without DVD’s, TV, movies, bowling, golf, or fast food – walking in a stately procession with 20 Chiefs enroute to the weekly Chiefs’ meeting.

These are just a few of Life’s events that started out 2 years ago as “experiences”, as in, “Now THAT was an experience!” Then all those individual experiences began to blend into a grand adventure. Before I knew it, that adventure had become simply my life. Now, and I say this with some sadness, it has all become part of the routine of my day. Which is not to say that I don’t still appreciate the joy and the beauty that I see around me OR that I don’t mutter under my breath at times about the uncomfortable things, but it’s no longer the same as it was when I first experienced these things.

Think of it as dating. Remember the glorious excitement and wonderful discoveries at the beginning? You may still love the person after 5 years or 50 years. In fact, the love may be much deeper and more significant than it ever was when you were in the early days. But the feeling can never be the same in the sense of the discovery of newness. What was once strange and/or exotic or simply unknown and is now known cannot become unknown again, no matter how wonderful (or awful) it may be.

This is what truly sets Peace Corps apart from most, if not all, of the other organizations working to help developing countries. You can’t understand a culture during a two week vacation or even a 3-6 month working assignment. And you don’t get to really get the pulse of a village by living in a condo in the big city and visiting the site in an air conditioned SUV 1-2 days/week. This is not to suggest that other NGO’s and governmental organizations aren’t doing good things. Obviously they are and Peace Corps relies heavily on good working relationships with many of them. After all, Peace Corps brings no money to the table, although it takes over a year living in the village to convince them that you’re not rich and do not have the means to fund a library, high school, futbol (read “soccer”) field, and bowling alley (OK – nobody in Daboya has asked me for a bowling alley but it sounds like a neat idea). So how do we make a difference? By blending into the community and discovering from the inside what they REALLY need and want and will support. Then, a PC Volunteer (PCV) can go to work and find ways, many include NGO’s and government organizations, to fund these projects, help to supervise both the external parties and the village people involved, and train local personnel in everything from tree planting to annual reports so that the project becomes sustainable long after the foreign faces and accents are gone from the community.

A tourist gets the “experience”. A 3-6 month NGO volunteer gets the adventure. But only people like missionaries, those who move to a country to live there, and PCV’s get to make a new culture part of their lives and established routines. I’ve had my ups and downs here (and thanks to all of you who have supported me in SO many ways to ease the way through those “downs”) but I am very glad that I got to move through the whole cycle to come beyond “me and those interesting people” to simply “us” and having “my living quarters” morph into “my home”.

And, when all goes well, there might, or might not, be something tangible to show for our efforts. In the case of our tourism efforts in Daboya, we actually now have a building (thanks primarily to Nature Conservation Resource Center and funding from the European Union). So feast your eyes (if I can get the photo to download properly) on Daboya’s new Visitors’ Centre!! We still have some landscaping to do and the signage isn’t up yet but we are open for business so ya’ll come!! We can share a bowl of banku with groundnut stew or, if you’re a wussy, I’ll make you a fruit salad and tuna sandwich!