Hello friends, fam, and friendly neighborhood stalkers!
It's been a while!
A few months ago, I got the most wonderful letter from a close friend of my parents' and fellow Newcomb-Tulane alum, Aunt Sue. Along with some hilarious questions that absolutely made my day, she asked if I would blog about negative stuff. I've avoided it thus far because thinking about the negative things long enough to write a blog post about them would be a bit of a downer, but I think it's time. I've decided that my previous approach was a bit selfish, and it's more honest if I share those things with y'all too....if anyone still reads this blog. ;)
Without further ado, the list of frustrating stuff:
1. Hands down, number one is missing my family. I still feel fairly well connected to friends, bc they're kinda scattered and doing their own things, but it's different for family. It's sad missing the happy fun things, but it's really hard missing the sad things, and feeling like you can't help at all.
2. There are a lot of small, daily frustrations that can pile up if I'm not careful. Hardly an exhaustive list but examples include: people soliciting me for money just because I'm white, men not taking no for an answer, people thinking that they don't have to be as polite to me as they do to other adults bc I'm a foreigner, knowing my health is taking a nosedive...
There's this one gem of a fellow in Tenkodogo who, on two occasions, has demonstrated the two main issues most clearly:
Him: I want a white wife. Want to stay with me tonight?
Me: No. I have a husband.
Him: Where is he? He's probably cheating on you, you can cheat on him.
Me: No, he's not. He loves me. Also he knows that if he did, I would kill him.
Him: Haha sure okay.
Me: Oh look at that I have to go
---
Him: I like your phone.
Me: Thanks, yeah, it's a good phone.
Him: Can I have it?
Me: No, it's my phone. If I give it away I can't talk to my family in America.
Him: Ask your parents to give you another one.
Me: Are you kidding me? Phones aren't free.
Him: You could tell them you lost it
Me: Why would I lie to my parents?
Him: Haha ok ok, see you later
He's a creep, but I'm actually really lucky in terms of harassment. I was just talking to a volunteer who has been advised not to leave her house without an escort, for her own safety. That is absurd, and she's stronger than I am for sticking it out.
3. It can be terribly, depressingly disheartening to see the hand that some people have been dealt. The two biggest things that come to mind are gender inequality and a broken education system. Both of these issues deserve a lot more air time than I'm giving them in this particular post, but things I'll eagerly discuss later (may be better in person...):
- female excision
- women and girls working allllll the damn time; girls have significantly less time to study thanks to household chores
- lack of information about the importance of family planning, and the impact that has on quality of parenting beyond toddler age
- girls leaving school because of pregnancy
- teachers using points on tests as bribes for sex; disclaimer: this doesn't happen at my school, but it is by no means unheard of
- students memorizing, not learning
- students not actually knowing French; it's not that they can't understand the material, they literally don't understand the words used to teach said material
- teachers who have little to no interest in teaching or their students. They get paid (pretty well)regardless of how much/well they actually teach.
Seeing the evidence of such huge problems every day - and knowing that I'm doing very little, if anything, to help alleviate them - is really really hard.
4. It's lonely. Admittedly, I'm not good at just strolling over to neighbors houses and inviting myself over. Culturally, that's perfectly appropriate, but it's hard to overcome 20+ years of American manners. I'm friendly with a lot of people in my village (okay, mostly small children), and I'm good friends with some volunteers, but texting and talking on the phone every few days just isn't the same as real, live, in-person contact. And you should know that this is coming from an admitted hermit!! There's just a different standard for happiness here. One of my volunteer friends (who has decided to go home, actually) pointed out that "Burkina happy just isn't the same as America happy."
5. Life can just be hard and complicated here. I'll try to be brief:
- trash pickup? Nope. Burn it.
- mail delivery? That would require actual street names and addresses.
- getting to village without my bike? Not if I want to comply w PC policy against motorcycles. I chatted w some PCVs when I was in Morocco on vacation and it blew their minds that I bike 30 minutes from my bus to my village. And some people have closer to an hour!
- test coming up at school? Okay, the secretary can type the test on a typewriter, or you can hand write a version to make copies. About 75 per class should do it.
---
One of my PCV friends recently told me that before she started Peace Corps, she met up with a returned volunteer who told her, "I had some of my best days and all of my worst days in Peace Corps." While that's not exactly the case chez moi, it's close enough.
Emotions can be a roller coaster - and not just day to day, but moment to moment. Last week, I was having a perfectly average day, I was content, and then I went to the marché...
I met up with one of my friends, and her new boyfriend was visiting from Tenkodogo so they invited me to dinner. It was so nice until we actually sat down and he decided to start acting like a typical Burkinabe asshole. In short, that means ordering her around, hitting on me incessantly (just because I'm white), and making it very clear that "he knew best." (No, please, God, do not put beer into my glass of coke. No, no, I'm serious. Oh, okay, you're doing it. You did it. That's disgusting.)
Beer/coke concoction aside, he was so rude, and I couldn't get out quickly enough. The entire walk home, I was stewing about it, thinking about all the similar experiences I've had recently, and how infuriating it all is sometimes, and how my friend doesn't even realize what an asshole he is because that kind of behavior is almost normal here...but then I walked past my neighbors' house and I fake smiled a hello, and then Diviney ran up and gave me a hug and then I smiled for real, and all was well. All of that - content, upset and annoyed and then okay again - happened within about an hour and a half, tops.
And then, sometimes #3 snowballs into a "what am I even doing?" feeling. I wonder if I'm just wasting two years being moderately happy sometimes and miserable at other times. Especially when I break the cardinal rule of Peace Corps, and start comparing my service to that of other volunteers. I know I'm not really changing those big issues, and I'm not doing this project like Volunteer X, or that camp, like Volunteer Y, and I start feeling worthless.
...but then I think about the time Nadez came to my courtyard door one evening around 6pm, crying. Her French is never very strong and she was too upset to really try, but between her French and my Mooré, I gathered that one of the other kids wouldn't let her take her bath at the pump. Luckily I had plenty of water, so I set her up with a bucket and some soap, and she went home clean and dry-eyed.
After that night, I realized that even if I don't have a million projects going, my neighbor kids and my students can tell that I'm an adult who pays attention to them. And I've decided, that's enough. And when things are hard or overwhelming, sometimes you just need a hug.
xo, chlo
