Wednesday, July 14, 2010

To Everything: Turn, Turn, Turn

First and foremost, I’d like to begin by apologizing for not writing in such a long time. I know that I promised to keep writing as long as you keep reading, so it’s important I keep up my end of the deal. However, my goal in writing this blog was to maintain integrity and honesty within it. I was having a hard time writing, because I could not truly see many of the situations that have ensued over the last three months objectively : I was too deep inside the maelstrom to get any sense of clarity. After several months of drafting, I believe this blog update to be the clearest and more sincere representation of how my service has been over the past three months.

Also, I’d like to dedicate this blog to my Dad. Through his own rough and ragged road on the way to recovery he has shown me - even though we are thousands of miles apart - that dedication, perseverance, strong family ties, and a little faith can get you through the challenges of life you don’t see coming.

Thanks again to all of you who have let me whine, complain and offered advice and condolences on the phone or through emails over the past few months. I know I can be a lot to handle - even from thousands of miles away. Thank you again, from the very bottom of my heart.


Bienvenue au France

I think it was the bread that did me in. In the beginning of April, my Peace Corps confidant, Tracie and I broke out of Africa and into the First World - France! Out of happenstance and circumstance, we also were joined on our tour de force by our friends Jamee and Ben, Oh la la, c'est une belle vie! We started our sojourn in the outskirts of Brittany, in a little town of Falleron. Tracie, Ben, and I had the fortuitous opportunity to stay with an old friend of Ben's (a former missionary priest in Benin named Vincent) in the village of Falleron for a couple of days. We frolicked around the countryside, checked out all the beaches and historical sites - the oyster bays, the marina, old castles and churches, relics of World World II. Conveniently, Vincent's parents live next door, so for lunch and dinner, I had opportunity to take in some authentic French cuisine (and practice my newly acquired French language skills with real French people who spoke no English), and it was spellbinding. The meals went on for hours and the conversations rolled fluidly and effortlessly around the table. Every night felt like Thanksgiving dinner - smoked, salted ham, butter fresh from the family farm, pâte, foie gras, camembert, string beans in butter cream sauce - and oh, heavens, THE BREAD. If the French contributed nothing to the world other than their amazing ability to bake off loaf after loaf of crispy baguettes jewels, I'd still consider them to be one of the greatest civilizations in the world.

After three days in the French countryside, we went off to Paris - the City of Lights, the City of Love. After a brief stint at the nearest Western Union (I was promptly robbed of my wallet upon my arrival at Charles de Galle airport, so my parents had to wire me money *thanks again for that*), we check into our lovely little hotel. The location could not have been more perfect for two food-deprived Peace Corps volunteers: a 24-hour bakery across the street, a McDonald's on the corner, and several Asian eateries within walking distance of our nearest Metro stop. Together, the four of us conquered the city - romantic pictures by the Eiffel Tower, a morning walk up the endless stairs to La Scare Coeur, Les Champs d'Ellyses, authentic French onion soup and red wine at local cafes, and a eerie yet incredibly interesting subterranean tour of the Catacombs. We spent our nights eating sushi, pizza, fresh salads and soups, and of course ( I am but my mother's daughter) indulging in a plethora of regional wines. But really, again, I must go back to this - France to me, was all about the bread. Bread stuffed with cheese and meat. Baguettes smothered in brie for breakfast in the morning, and the smooth, subtly crispy oral extravaganza that was a bona fide croissant. After four days in one of the most beautiful, historical, magical cities on Earth, my stomach was stuffed to the brim, my heart was aflutter with romance, and even the rain and the cold was a refreshing reprieve from the hot, dry, desert of Kalale in April.

One week after our first foray back into "civilization," Tracie and I came back to Benin.

Returning back to Benin from France has been the hardest part of my Peace Corps experience thus far. It boggled my mind, after seeing tours of grand castles and churches built in the fourteenth and fifteenth century without the aid of modern technology: Why is Benin not capable of this? What did France have then that Africa lacks now? Of course, there are a whole host of answers to those questions (money, infrastructure, ingenuity), and all of them frustrated me. How could a country like Benin (poverty-stricken, under-educated, lacking in public transport, sanitation, and infrastructure), even exist on the same planet as France, as America? Dwelling on questions like these only leads to narrow, self-scrutinizing questions: What am I really doing here in Benin? Is anything that I'm doing, that I have done, actually making any difference? How am I ever going to muster eating baguette bread in Africa again???

La Chauleur

It was with those questions in mind, I returned back to teaching English in Sub-Saharan Africa. Let's go over a bit of geography first: Sub-Saharan Africa. Little Benin is located quite miraculously just below the drift of the Sahara Desert - the LARGEST, driest, and arguably the most godforsaken plot of space on the entire planet - and just a teensy bit above the Equator. When I arrived back from cold, rain-drenched Paris, I came into the midst of La Chauleur (the hot season). La Chauleur literally translates to “the hotness.” So, in effect, I went in warned.

Just how hot it would get, however, is still almost unimaginable to me. Temperatures reached well into the 110 degrees Fahrenheit range, but those are just numbers on a scale. What it felt like - that is another story in itself. Typically, in Kalale, it only rains during the rainy season. So, since I arrived in Kalale last October, it had not rained at all. Not even one little drop. During the windy season, as the harmattan zephyrs threw dust all around, I barely noticed the lack of rain. Everyday welcomed me with a blue cloudless sky, a steady, calm wind, and gorgeous sunsets spreading streaks of pink, red, violet, and amber across the twilight sky. But not during Chauleur. Chauleur was mean and heartless. The sun, so bright and forceful, created a heat wave so intense it felt like a smog cloud of fire. The intense heat turned the dirt roads into crags and craters, eroding away at any parts that contained the least bit of moisture. Each winding road in the village reminded me of a scab, raw and red, turning a ugly brown, unable to heal itself. Wells ran dry. All vegetation was suppressed underground to seek shelter from the violent solar rays (which meant no more onions, ochre, or tomatoes…the vegetable staples of my diet). There was no respite from this heat. Even at night, the arid climate remained steady in its course to bake me alive. My house is made of cement and capped off with a tin roof. Every single day and night, I was drenched in my own sweat. All over my body, especially in very inconvenient parts like the backs of my knees, the small of my back, and the crevices in my elbows, I developed heat rash. It is a plague of Biblical proportions. Tiny little bumps that resembled cystic acne protruded from my pores - red, glaring, and angry. The only thing that even mildly helped to numb the constant pain was dowsing myself in Gold Bond. In so doing, I began walking around town looking like an awkwardly sunburned ghost, and which made for good prodding and fodder for my Beninese neighbors. There is no electricity during the day, therefore, the was no fan or air conditioning unit to save me from my sweat-soaked stupor. Even the fan I had for the five hours of electricity I have during the evening acted more like a blow dryer than an acclimatizer; it just pushed hot air around the room in oscillating circles.

But my body was not the only thing affected by La Chauleur. Teaching English became a battle in and of itself. Not only was the heat conspiring against me, but so was another worthy adversary: a two month strike during February and March that tacked on seven additional weeks of school to the final semester. Now, instead of finishing school in early May, all the teachers would be teaching through the eye of the Chauleur storm. Days dragged on, my exercises were constantly interrupted by students begging to get a drink of water to cool themselves down (and how could I deny them, in the extreme heat, while I continuously took long pulls from my own Nalgene bottle?) and the irratation of having to focus, sit still, and endure in the excruciating environment.

A horrible thing happened one afternoon. I was passing out the grades to a quiz to a class of younger students, and they became supremely rowdy. They were hitting each other, storming my desk, arguing points of the quiz when I repeatedly reminded them I would review the quiz after all the grades were handed back. But the blame was on me. That afternoon, I lost control of my class. In my exhaustion and dehydration I stopped being an authority figure and started to just lie myself down like a mat to walk all over. As fate would have it, the Surveillant of the school came into my class, filled with rage, demanding from class to know why they were so disruptive. I kept quiet as he reamed the entire class out over their unruly behavior. It was the first time I had ever seen the Surveillant, the school's disciplinarian, but also my good friend in village and colleague at school, become so infuriated. That's when I noticed the thick, long, dark brown strip of leather he had in his hand - a cattle whip. I'd know since I started training to be a teacher in Benin that corporal punishment was protocol in schools, but never before had I seen it with my own eyes. One by one, he pointed at students, had them kneel before him with their palms facing outward, towards him; sternly, and with an expression as cold as ice, he beat one student after the other with the whip. Tears welled in their eyes. These students - my students- who I had grown to care for, known by name, developed a pleasant rapport with, were being beaten, because I lacked the wherewithal to discipline them. Racked with guilt, I could only watch about four of them being hit before I gathered my things and attempted to leave the room. But the Surveillant stopped me at the doorway. He looked at me politely but insistently and said, "Madame, I think you should stay and watch this. This is how Kalale reforms students who disrespect their teacher." I stood frozen for a moment - filled with guilt, anguish, heartbreak. But he was my superior and a man, and I knew enough about Beninese culture to note that although his tone was asking me to stay with polite regard, the subtext read quite clearly: I want you to see what happens to students here who misbehave. Stoically, I walked back to my desk at the front of my class and watched in shock and horror as all sixty of my students were lashed. In my heart, I knew I had failed them. I learned a very quick, very hard lesson that morning. It was no long "good enough" to just sit up and stand in front of the class and preach the grammar and phonetics of the English language. I had to teach them respect, I had to lead by example, no matter what conditions I was under - because I was a teacher, their teacher. I also realized the consequences of me not following through with my actions by the marks left across my students' hands and behinds.

I left class that day, head in hands, eyes filled with salty, burning tears and wallowed in self pity. When I finally cleared the wetness from my eyes and took in a deep breath, I saw that even despite the heat, the famine, the tedious work of living life in an African village, people all around me were surviving, even thriving.

I Will Survive

When the going gets tough, the tough get going. When you’ve got nothing, you’ve got nothing to lose. These were hard times for me. Major adjustments in my life, testing my physical and mental ability to keep up with the oath I’d taken in September - to commit myself to Peace Corps service for two years. Yet, all around me were just ordinary people. Ordinary, everyday, average African people getting along just fine. The students whined, yes, but they still showed up to classes in large, steady numbers. The Mamans who served breakfast, lunch, and dinner in the village market still came to work everyday, food prepared and ready to eat. Granted, they were accustomed to La Chauleur, and I’m sure have adapted to the climate over generations in a way that my body never will over two years, but they were plugging along. So why couldn’t I? I remembered what I was here to do: to give students a skill that could help them improve their quality of life.

No one ever said that this was going to be easy. People actually told me I was a brave person to come to Africa and do what I was doing. I didn’t really understand what they saw or, even in their naivety, what they really meant. What I was doing was not a test of how good a teacher I was, how well I could endure in an environment under extreme conditions, or how good my French was. It was about making a promise to serve a community and sticking it out until the end. It was about the oath I made to the Peace Corps and my fellow volunteers - not to win every battle, not to be the best English teacher in Benin, but to continue to do my best work as best as I could and see it through until it was finished.

As it goes in life, even on the darkest nights, a few stars manage to peek through the clouds and twinkle in the night sky. That twinkle in during Chauleur was mango season. Oddly enough, the wonderfully delicious fruit thrives in hot, arid environments making Chauleur the ideal time to harvest mangoes. Just as luck would have it, the only shade blocking my house from the sun happens to be a four meter tall mango tree. All I had to do was step outside and puck a nice, round firm mango from the branch, pierce it with a knife, and dig right it, I suppose it was a fair trade - tomatoes and onions for mangoes. Mangoes are sweet, juicy, and filled with vitamins and nutrients. But mangoes are funny fruits. The outer rind of a mango is actually akin to poison ivy; it can make you extremely itchy, puffy and uncomfortable if you handle it too long. But just underneath all that tough rind is the most sweet, delicious, refreshing taste you can imagine on a parched, dry Chauleur day. In some ways, I felt like I was a mango. Chauleur had given me a tough, hard, even bitter exterior, but just below the surface lie the fruits of my patience.

The only thing that endured with more surefire gusto than the mangoes was our Girls Club. The girls had hit a great stride - all were attending practices and meetings on time. There was very little attitude from some of our more sassy girls. They were selling popcorn at World Cup screenings and school soccer matches faster than we could import the kernels from Parakou. They performed their routines and sketches for local events, did a community clean-up around the Health Center, and made quite a bit of money in the process (even enough to by themselves their very own drum to use for their performances). My little mangoes were growing, sprouting, and truly becoming the sweet little girls I always knew were hidden just beneath the surface.

Finally, on Friday, June 4, 2010 around 21:00 hours, the rain began to fall. It didn’t stop until early the next morning.

Down Came The Rain

Once it started raining like this, it didn’t stop. I woke up in the morning to warm sunshine, but the ground was still damp with the rain that had fallen the night before. It was almost magical. I got to keep my perfect, blue sky days without the heat, which was quelled by the soft, consistent, pitter-pattering rainfall against my tin roof at nighttime. Almost overnight it seemed, everything came into full bloom again. The beautiful red and purple blossoms flowered on the hibiscus trees. The dirt roads swelled with green flora. The rough crags and delves in the earth now held new green life. I woke up in the morning, in my own bed for the first time in two months, and searched for a spare blanket to cover myself from the slight chill left behind by the rain. I found the baguette bread in Parakou to be not only palatable again, but downright enjoyable! It was a thing of beauty, the stuff of myth and legends, and I think I could only believe it because it was happening right before my eyes.

The rest of the school year flew by in a flurry of final exams, grading papers, filling out report cards, and cataloguing who passed and failed. Out of all my classes - over 200 students in all - only eleven did not pass English for the year. I was extremely proud, of both them and me, because we’d made it through the first year of teaching English, and it was a success.

Just as the old child’s song goes, down comes the rain, and washes the spiders out. All the little spiders in my life - the heat rash, the lack of food, the intense heat, the never-ending school year - all were washed away nearly overnight with coming of the rainy season. I still have some actual spiders clinging to corners of my house, but if that is all I have to deal with for now, I say let them stay. It’s much nicer inside my house anyway.

The only fire the rain could not put out was the one raging all around the continent of Africa: a tremendous, howling, unabashed fever of supporters for the 2010 World Cup Games in South Africa. African identity amongst the countries of the continent is very important. The large victory for South Africa as host of the World Cup games was a small victory for all the countries of Africa. They even increased my electricity in Kalale to twenty-four hours per day, so that all the villagers could watch every game tha was televised. (I haven’t quite caught the football fever, so I used a lot of that extra energy to type out emails and watch movies, so it’s a win-win situation for me). The first game I watched was the United States versus England at a Peace Corps favorite bar/cafeteria in Parakou. They projected the match on a large screen, and about sixteen of us gathered around in our red, white, and blue to cheer on our home team. At the start of the match, they played the “Star Spangled Banner,” which inspired all of us to stand up and yell it at the top our lungs. Being in the Peace Corps has made me extremely patriotic. America may not be perfect; in fact, right now it’s overflowing with flaws and injustices. But take it from me, it’s a great place to be from.

During the last week of June, my post mate Jocylin and I packed up five of our top girls from Girls Club (the judging was based on grades, club meeting attendance, and overall behavior and rapport), and went to Parakou to participate in a week of Camp GLOW (Girls Leading Our World). The camp was funded in part by donations from local community groups and municipal offices and also by the generous donations of Peace Corps friends and family members (thank you to all who donated!). For one week, the girls participated in a myriad of activities from games, sports (I taught yoga), arts, crafts, journaling to taking in and discussing lectures and sessions on sexual health, financial planning, and how to contribute back to their communities. They ate three complete, healthy, nutritious meals a day and even had two snacks in between (I swear to this - one girl nearly cried out of joy when we handed her an apple. It was the first time she’d ever had one in her life). They attended field trips to the African Historic Museum and the Parakou University radio station. Because all of our Kalale girls had lots of experience performing in front of audiences, they excelled at talking about their Camp GLOW experience in a radio interview that was later aired throughout the Borgou region. But I had to admit, being a camp counselor was hard. The days were long (7:00 am - 10:00 pm, seven days straight), and watching over a massive group of preteens was exhausting. But it was all worth it to see the girls learning new things, making new friends from other villages, and having fun and enjoying being little girls. Save few a minor plights of malaria amongst the fifty girls, everything went off without a hitch. The most rewarding moment of camp however, came on the last day. We taught the girls the refrain verse of Aretha Franklin’s classic “Respect” in English. We translated the words into French for them, so they could understand the concept, but they quickly picked up on the rhythm and the flow of the original. When we played the song at the closing ceremony that evening, all the girls sang ‘Respect,” screaming their lungs out during the refrain. I loved watching them fail their arms in the air, swaying their little bodies back and forth to the “sock it to me, sock it tome, sock it to me” verse. When we told them that and African American woman was singing the song, they were even more impressed. That’s the thing about a good song; it doesn’t need translation - it just needs a beat and a chorus.

Out With The Old, In With The New

Tomorrow, I leave for the big city of Cotonou. I was voted VAC representative for the Borgou region, which means from now on, I will act as a liaison between the Peace Corps Benin administration and the volunteers of the Borgou region to address any problems or concerns they are having in their service. I think it’s a great position, because I get to debate, stand up for volunteer ideas and rights, and collaborate with my peers and staff to create a better service experience for everyone.

Yet, even cooler than that, on Friday, July 16th, a new group of potential volunteers will be arriving in country. It is a tradition for the preceding stage of volunteers to go down and greet the new stage, and it was a very fun, exciting event for me last year. I am all amped up to pay it forward. But, as change goes, when new stagieres come in, it means older volunteers are packing up their things and moving on their way. It will be sad to see some of my good friends and mentors leave, but I am thrilled to start anew with a fresh batch of bright-eyed and bushy-tailed newbies all ready to sign-up and change the world. It’s great to see that enthusiasm in people. It’s great to have the enthusiasm returned back to me.

It’s amazing what a difference one year, some hard work, a lot of learning, and a little rain can make.

4 comments:

  1. Well, my dear niece it seems you have truly out done yourself this time with your expression of your adventures (both good and bad), and the amazing growth you have achieved (Mike would be proud) during this year.

    As always you inspire me to look at things, a fresh, and with a new perspective. Some on the things you wrote about I knew of from our conversations, but seeing the written word makes them even more vivid.

    Thanks so much for sharing all of this with us. Keep on growing, enjoying and being the wonderful person you are. I love watching your evolution.

    Lots of love always,
    Aunt

    p.s. That was a beautiful dedication to your dad.

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  2. This is just magnificent in all ways. How you have grown as a writer and as a sensitive participant in and observer of the human experience! You take us by the hand and we can taste the bread, feel the heat, tear up at the classroom punishment, feel the relief the rain brings. And all the while we feel your love for your family, your friends here and there, your students.
    I feel this is a universal story--one that will be published as soon as your PC days are over. We are both so proud of you. (Aunt is right!)
    Love
    Jackie

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  3. Hi Dear,
    Dad, Ro and I just finished reading your new post. Your writing is is clear and real. We could almost taste the mangoes and feel the heat. You have grown so much this last year,personally and professionally.For every lemon you encountered this year, you made lemonade!! BRAVO!!! Miss you much. Thanks for writing. LOVE-Mom

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  4. Brilliant! I have tears rolling down my cheeks and I laughed out loud reading your tales of the last few months. Thank you for sharing your journey with us. This posting was well worth the wait!
    One love, Tracy

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