Took a break from writing for a while. Lack of focus and a bit of senior-itis as well. Our training is coming to an end and soon we will be volunteers. Currently I am on my first night in my assigned village of two years but more on that later. I want to take a few moments and point out a few interesting memories of the two weeks or so that have passed. Language and comprehension still alludes me and I spent the last week in training village doing my best but constantly being frustrated. Plus I felt like the only way to progress was to stop speaking English which is impossible with 3 other American trainees around who I constantly try to relate every waking moment to, in the hopes that they are having similar experiences and therefore I am not so unlucky, crazy or ridiculously stupid. Plus having our LCH 24/7 means even if I wanted to speak Pulaar all day I’m still way too tempted to turn and ask for help instead using my own fortitude or relying on my own resources, wit, courage, self reliance and/or “F-A-C-U L-T-I-E-S” as Salinger put it. But I am responsible for my own learning as M put it last night and therefore if I haven’t mastered the ancient oral language of the West African Fula tribe in 8 weeks then it’s my own damn fault. But maybe I’m being too hard on myself. So I digress. Everything else in village was pretty regular. Played UNO and guitar at night with my family. Studied all day. Went to A’s village to have lunch one day and learned Crazy 8’s which I hadn’t played in 20 some years and realized that Crazy 8’s is Uno. It’s the same game.
The Gambians have funny names however for the suits of a deck of cards (they also have issues organizing more than 7 or 8 cards in their hands (not in a bad way, just a funny way). Diamonds are not Diamonds, they are Biscuits. Spades are Black Hearts. Hearts are Love Signs and Clubs are something called Tankepeter, I don’t know how it’s spelled. Pronounced something like “thank you peter” or Take a picture or Hackapeter – the German meat. A boasted her Attaya brewing skills and I tried them out and for a toubab she’s pretty damn good. She came over to try a Fula lunch a few days later and brewed some Attaya as we worked on our last Technical Assignment. Our whole team was impressed. Our LCH seemed to take a liking to A as well, admiring the fact that she eats with her hands out of the food bowl and not with a spoon. I have been to a few other training villages for lunch and noticed that most trainees do not use their hands. M, A, and myself do and I pride us on that. Not to say that eating with a spoon is wrong but I have noticed the whole “when in Rome” thing being an apt part of integration, and where language or lack of fish-eating has failed me, at least I am still diligent in eating with my hands so as not to completely slip back into my American habits---of desiring convenience, cleanliness, or common sense. In the land of the blind, the man with one eye might be king, but I don’t think I’m here to be king. I’m here to be blind, more or less, just like everyone else. That, easily is the hardest part of integrating, not being turned off by sights sounds and smells based on what I compare them to in my previous life which was rich with meaning in one way, in that my cause or desire for film making or storytelling or whatever was very clear, or was, in years past.
But now, certain ideas and fictions I had in my head are getting clouded. I’m worried that they are dying. I hope all it is, is that they are taking a temporary break or hiatus. I need those fictions, and worry about the realities that are taking their place. We had Thanksgiving two days ago, Kennedy, the brains and poster boy behind this operation was shot 44 years ago this Thanksgiving. He was a president, like Washington, Lincoln and Roosevelt(s) that I had no personal relationship to. I was not alive when he or they were alive. Their words and actions affect me everyday however. The day after Thanksgiving we had a reception at the Kairaba Hotel for the 40th anniversary of Peace Corps in Gambia. 40 years of uninterrupted service. Two original volunteers from ’67 were there. All 100 some volunteers, currently serving, a slew of Gambians, the Gambian military band, and us, 24 trainees, who in a weird way were referred to specifically as trainees as if pointing out that we have not yet accomplished anything when we all think that we have, going though a major physical and emotional adjustment and all. In any case the event promised us a chance to meet famed President Jammeh but he didn’t show, to no one’s surprise. But what we got instead was a pretty decent speech from our CD about Kennedy, reminding me again that there was a reason that I am feeling on edge, being torn at the seams. That whole “ask not what” thing. It seemed to finally hit me like a ton of bricks. I always go back and forth about whether I should feel proud about what I’m doing. It’s very easy, even as a trainee to feel cynical and that a free ticket to Africa is just that. A two year form of escapism. Instead of making a movie or writing a book, I am watching a very long and involved travel show or drama inches away from my face, like if I were to sit half a foot away from the TV, wearing 30 specs, and tracing my fingers over Braille lettering, everything is real but nothing seems that way. It all seems like I’m being John Malkovich, or JD, or Momodon Bah, but I was never those people before. I was just familiar with them. When M, our CD spoke about watching JFK give that speech, I wondered if:
A)I would ever be alive to see a president as charismatic and outwardly true as that. (Clinton, yes, even Clinton wasn’t that man, and f*ck the Bushes). I want another JFK. I wondered also
B)If I were alive to hear that speech would I be motivated to join the Peace Corps in the sixties and/or
C)Would I make it past training. What we are doing now is not remarkable. Not in any stretch of the imagination.
We are coddled compared to those 40-30-20 maybe even 10 years ago. The world is getting hard, but we as people are getting easier. It is impossible for me to believe that I have made any great sacrifice in coming here but maybe if I keep thinking about Kennedy, maybe I’ll buy into some form of pride and not just float through this experience. Our volunteer leader, F, and our other volunteer facilitator, J, both seem put together, both probably younger that I but seem years more mature. I look at F and hear about what he has done and pity him for going back to the states because it is as if he has actually done something with his life these last two years, he has done something for his country, and going back, I fear the hum-drum will swallow him up.
Having been out of the loop for only 2 months, I find little desire to know what’s going on. The same thing happened when I moved to Berlin. Hurricane Katrina happened; brought America “together” and I thought I would have been envious for missing it. But I wasn’t. A form of self-centered-ness is a lack of homesickness I guess. The other trainees admire my ability to nap almost anywhere including a massively bumping ride down the south bank highway. Is it that I have an uncanny knack for relaxing or that most times I don’t care about the details or what’s going on in front of me and find better solace closing my eyes and escaping into whatever my brain tells me to think about? Or maybe I’m just a sucker for the sandman.
On Thanksgiving we flushed out of our training village and drove to Kombo to have dinner with every volunteer and admin at the Ambassador’s house which I on the beach with a pool, all the beer we could drink, all the food we could eat. It was great. The day went from walking away from my host family which, surprisingly I grew to really care about and which I could spend the two years with, when my second oldest host brother Amadon came back up to the road after everyone had seen us off and just stood there watching the bus that was about to take me out of his life. My heart truly broke and I had to get off the coaster to give him another hug and hope that I would see him again. The mood was high on the coaster as we picked up everyone else. I didn’t feel like being happy, but over the course of the day everyone’s energy exponentially grew and I couldn’t help getting swept up as well. At the ambassadors we drank and swam and I met some more volunteers and I almost forgot about my sleepy little training village. Times were good there. It only reminds me of how we are getting it easy. Or at least I am. Or was.
Today was another story. Today we begin our site visits. Three days to checkout our village, meet our new host families, and negotiate rent and food and laundry. I was first to be dropped off. B or L.J. as he was aptly named, American named that is, will come on the third day to help me with negotiating the money stuff. Today, until Monday I am all alone. I was dropped off and I met my family. I was told something different about them, or at least the picture in my head was all different. I knew very little since I am not taking over for anyone and since no one wanted to talk about the last guy here or why he early terminated a year ago. Whereas K, my old training village, was a sleepy little hamlet, my current village seems more like a forgotten outpost or inhabited ghostown. Something about it smells like the film “A Fistful of Dollars” or was it “for a few dollars more”. In any case, I am not Clint Eastwood. This is not Yojimbo, and my family is nice enough and no one is at war, or so I hope, and chances of something going awry are slim to none. But I am on edge just the same. There’s smoke in the air and I can’t tell which direction it is coming from.
My house has holes in the thatch roof and my backyard fence was in shambles, the replacement fence was pseudo put up and I am writing tonight on my bed/sack of hay. Obviously the amenities are few. Nothing will be quaint and cute as it was in training. College is over, life is what I make it. My main goal is to learn or understand what they are saying about me. Then find out what the town needs and by God keep busy. My new host brother who’s a little older than me came to greet me, as I was setting up my bed and doing little unpacking. Later I went to fetch water and he was sitting outside my door looking down in the mouth. He said: “a bazi sundu am do” I had him repeat it several times, I knew the words but couldn’t understand the meaning behind them “I took his house” he said. He had to bathe, where was he going to do that. Depressed and ego probably a little bruised he had to give up his house, he, his wife pregnant, and maybe another toddler probably had to move out so I could have a place to live. As much as the prospect of toubab living with the family can be, it must suck to be ousted, furniture, family and all to some other less exciting digs. I didn’t know what to say. Sorry. I was kind of going through my own thing. I didn’t know how sympathetic I should be about it. For the same reasons that I don’t give every person I see a hundred bucks, even though I really want to, I just can’t muster the strength to bend completely backwards. A part of me wants to help. Anyway, any how. But another part of me knows how much b.s. that is. No one can help anyway, anyhow. We just don’t care and are too concerned with ourselves, our lives and end up going to church only twice a year Easter and Christmas and telling ourselves we will make up for missed charity by feeding the homeless on Thanksgiving when no one helps 364 days of the year. I was losing light and needed to get to the pump so I could wash my water filter. I would have loved to explain the complexities of a J-curve and why him giving me his house would eventually lend to a great gain than his current loss but, I just didn’t have the words. And where does he get off!! Like I am not already overwhelmed?
I further have a strange taste now in my mouth at about this spot. There was a bit of mystery and controversy surrounding it that I can’t get into now, which only adds to my desire to write tonight for a few hours, hoping to figure out where I am and how I am going to deal with it. Arriving in F Kunda two months ago made me ask what the heck I was doing with my life. Then I loved it and didn’t want to leave. This town could have a similar effect. I’ve been here 8 hours or so and had a great dinner and slow evening of bad Pulaar translation with my host parents. But as I arrived and Peace Corps and the last trace of U.
S. connection left my sight I again asked. “What the heck am I doing now? I’ve done it again like it or not. Sink or swim if I’m lucky, maybe both.
Like most journals that have come before this one I preface for the multi-numerous time…
“O snail,
climb Mt. Fuji
but slowly! Slowly!”
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