While I was in Burkina Faso, I blamed not updating my Peace Corps blog on having limited internet time. But now that I have internet access every day, I still haven't been able to write about my experience. Since I've been home, I've had a lot of people ask me, "So how was Africa?"...and I don't really know how to respond. Part of me wants to answer, "I can't really speak for all of Africa...kind of a big place." The part of me that actually answers says, "Um. I don't know...It was good." But in reality it was more than good. It was life-changing and eye-opening and awesome and at times, really really hard and lonely. It's not easy to try to describe in a short conversation the overwhelming variety of people I met and experiences I had. BUT I will try now to give a little insight into my life during the 27 month service.
I made a lot of really good friends while I was there (both Peace Corps volunteers and Burkinabé friends, neighbors, colleagues). My closest Peace Corps neighbor was Joanna who became an amazing friend. Like me, she had a long-distance relationship, and was going through some of the same struggles as I was with work, and so once a week I would bike to her town and over a cold Fanta (and for her a Coke), we'd talk about what we missed about home and what made us laugh about Burkina's culture and how seemingly impossible it was to "implement" our project plan. We worked together and with the help of friends, family, and my church, we were able to finance two computer training centers to teach people basic computer skills.
I had lots of other Peace Corps volunteer friends who I'd meet up with in the country's capital, Ouagadougou, or in the regional capital, Fada. After living alone in a culture where you're the odd one, these people become instant friends and an outlet to talk about everything you're dealing with...and they speak your native language! I had a really good friend named Elsa who I visited in village and who visited me, and we were able to collaborate on several occasions. She's Hispanic and would get mad when the Burkinabé people called her white like me. I call her my Mexican sister.
I had two best friends in village, Pascal and Dayamba. Pascal is a tailor who works too hard and was far too generous to me. Every day around lunch time I would go to his workshop. He'd pay the equivalent of 25 cents and buy me beans and rice, and we'd talk and laugh while he worked.
Dayamba is about my age. He dropped out of high school because he ran out of money for tuition and he needed to support his family. He balanced his time between working in his fields and helping me with projects. He helped me start up a theater troupe of 4th grade girls and we wrote skits together about girls' education and health, and later performed them at events we'd organized. He also helped in every aspect of organizing a trash can project/collection service, building a well, and planting Moringa trees and holding awareness trainings where he'd translate my french into local languages.
My official Peace Corps counterpart was an old man named Bouba who took me to meet with the chief whenever I wanted to start a project and needed to pass before him. Bouba answered questions for me, helped me find whoever I needed, and always gave me advice and ideas. When my roof leaked, he found a guy to fix it. When I didn't know who to invite to a rice production training, he made a list for me of the biggest rice producers in the area and took his worn out Peugeot moped around all the surrounding villages to inform them. He was wise and funny and genuine.
All three Burkinabe men teared up (and men don't cry unless someone close to them dies) when it was time to say goodbye. Joanna bawled at the airport.
Needless to say, I miss them (and all the other friends I didn't mention).
Besides the people, I miss the slow-paced lifestyle, and more than anything I miss the community that surrounded me, that grew to love me. At first I thought it was overwhelming when people would come to my house all the time just to talk and hang out. Other times I think I actually enjoyed being with a friend in market and getting all of the attention. When I first got to my village, I felt like I would be some sort of outcast because I was so different. Who could possibly imagine me as the most popular person around? People I'd never seen before knew my name and where I lived. People who know me well would probably agree that I'm pretty shy and not that outgoing. But being in this new place I often found myself taking on a new personality where I wasn't so shy, where I'd talk to a hundred people at a meeting and not be nervous, teach students or a large group of women about nutrition and enjoy it. I was smart and funny to people there, and it was good.
But I did go through those hard times too. I met people who didn't really care about being my friend, but about what I could give them. And that's true anywhere you go, but as the rich, white guy surrounded by a village of mostly really poor people, it made me question almost all of my relationships. I made some mistakes and trusted people to follow through with projects who weren't reliable. In the end, I figured out who was responsible and trustworthy, and most important, who really wanted to do good for good's sake, and not for their own.
Even harder than that was being without the person I love most. McKenna and I had several ways to communicate, but they were all complicated. We had phones, but we were either 5 or 6 hours apart, so we'd have to make sure we weren't calling at a bad time or waking the other up. Calling was expensive, so we usually made a "one call per week" rule. But I only had service in one spot in my house, so if I wasn't there she couldn't get through. When she did get through, sometimes we'd lose the connection so many times that it was more frustrating than fun. We also had texts, but they were often unreliable. I could send a text and not get a response (and vice-versa) and wonder why she was upset with me when she never got mine in the first place.
We wrote letters, but they took at least a month to get to me. When I sent a letter, I would be so excited for her to get it, but by the time she got it, I'd usually forgotten what I'd written. Don't get me wrong, we loved our letters, it was just inconvenient that it took so long.
I'm not going to go too much into what it was like sending emails and chatting, but just imagine all the interruptions from unstable electricity and really slow internet while trying to have a meaningful conversation.
So it was obviously wonderful to be reunited with her, and to be back with my family, and back to America, the land of plenty. But I can't help but miss my life there, so rich with relationships and meaningful work. Now that I'm home, I'm having to readjust to a culture that isn't so community-centered but job-oriented, where people don't look at me like I'm a rock star, where everyone is watching t.v. or checking Facebook, and where we all have so much stuff. I do miss the simplicity of life there, and now that I've seen what life is like without it, I'm afraid of the way technology is taking over our lives.
With that said, I do appreciate America for a lot of reasons, and I am glad to be here. I appreciate: the way way we treat women and children, our healthcare and schools (despite their complexities), not having the same president since 1987, good food, toilets, but also those addicting things i mentioned earlier, t.v. and Facebook. Right when I got back I was kind of harsh towards our culture. Now that I've spent some more time here I've realized that I had the "grass is always greener..." mindset, and I need to appreciate what I have here and now. There is so much to be thankful for.
A lot of people have asked me about the Peace Corps and shared that they've thought about doing it. I would encourage anyone, young and old, to seriously consider it. Everyone has a different experience, but for almost everyone I know who's been a volunteer, it's been truly rewarding. I think its good for us to experience what life is like without electricity and running water and all the other comforts we have here. Life can be pretty interesting if you're willing to get out of your comfort zone and explore, and maybe like me, you'll realize that you have a lot to offer others if you do.
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