Wedda: the sweet and sour fruit
And so I have a meeting with my supervisor on Monday. It’s going to be a plea to find me a new project. If the bureau cannot help me, there is a good chance I will go home...
Before in my service, there was always something new to be learned, when things were bad, I always saw a window I could try climbing through. Before the problems here were interesting to me. Before there were things I wanted to prove to myself and other people. Now I have nothing left to prove to myself and couldn’t possibly explain what Vie been through to people at home much less prove it, so I stop trying. It isn’t a thing of importance anymore.
My life is, in some twisted way, set up in Burkina-- my house, my cat, my neighbors, my community. My villagers love me, and that was hard won. My village did not welcome me at all when I first came. Looking back, it was kind of brutal. Now, they treat me like Imp one of them, and Vie slowly learned to balance my growing multicultural identity. Jean shorts for Ouaga, panyas for village. Of course, it’s more complicated than that, and it happened far more gradually and by surprise than I ever would have thought before I came here.
Really, it’s been trench warfare. Everyday. I tell people now, if they welcome you, that is everything. So many Peace Corps volunteers take their welcome(ness) for granted, or naively think they earned it. I try not to resent that they have not suffered this test.
No, my integration is not the problem. The problem is that there is no discernable work to be done in my village anymore. Yeah, I could plow through it and tell them what they need like any other NGO. I have my opinions. And they would sit there and swallow it, like nice passive Africans are supposed to swallow the messages and ideas of the west (to the bank.) No one refuses my work. No one is invested either. In its intensity, it is very much so a problem particular to my village.
This lack of human investment, this human passivity over time, combined with hyper disorganization and miscommunication (which in its severity is not necessarily characteristic of villages in Burkina,) has run my motivation and energy into the ground. Somehow, miraculously, I am out of ideas.
I do really enjoy the people in my village in their own right. But I don’t think its enough to keep me here. Vie been tutoring music with a girl in the next village over, but that’s not enough either. (Any rate, there is no piano or other instrument candidate to teach her with and this greatly limits the whole process, though she brought me a mango the other day. I was very heartened by this.)
Really, I wouldn’t trade the past of this experience in, I know that. Peace Corps was astoundingly the right decision to have made for myself at the time that I entered into it. Burkina is what it is, and I have made peace with that. My village and my villagers are who they are. I have, mostly, made peace with that also. Slowly, I am making peace with the whole of my experience here, and that is where I am right now. I guess that’s why I haven’t left yet.
These past weeks in particular I have taken the slow rolling demise of my service very very hard, and it has hit my pride like sledgehammer. Though now I think maybe it’s not demise, rather a progression toward a goal I really don’t see yet. A conclusion perhaps different from the other volunteers in this country at this moment. This is me saying all of the questions I’ve had here were answered.
Sometimes, you keep hitting a wall; you have to turn a corner. This is my corner. Now I only hope I have the courage to turn.
Before in my service, there was always something new to be learned, when things were bad, I always saw a window I could try climbing through. Before the problems here were interesting to me. Before there were things I wanted to prove to myself and other people. Now I have nothing left to prove to myself and couldn’t possibly explain what Vie been through to people at home much less prove it, so I stop trying. It isn’t a thing of importance anymore.
My life is, in some twisted way, set up in Burkina-- my house, my cat, my neighbors, my community. My villagers love me, and that was hard won. My village did not welcome me at all when I first came. Looking back, it was kind of brutal. Now, they treat me like Imp one of them, and Vie slowly learned to balance my growing multicultural identity. Jean shorts for Ouaga, panyas for village. Of course, it’s more complicated than that, and it happened far more gradually and by surprise than I ever would have thought before I came here.
Really, it’s been trench warfare. Everyday. I tell people now, if they welcome you, that is everything. So many Peace Corps volunteers take their welcome(ness) for granted, or naively think they earned it. I try not to resent that they have not suffered this test.
No, my integration is not the problem. The problem is that there is no discernable work to be done in my village anymore. Yeah, I could plow through it and tell them what they need like any other NGO. I have my opinions. And they would sit there and swallow it, like nice passive Africans are supposed to swallow the messages and ideas of the west (to the bank.) No one refuses my work. No one is invested either. In its intensity, it is very much so a problem particular to my village.
This lack of human investment, this human passivity over time, combined with hyper disorganization and miscommunication (which in its severity is not necessarily characteristic of villages in Burkina,) has run my motivation and energy into the ground. Somehow, miraculously, I am out of ideas.
I do really enjoy the people in my village in their own right. But I don’t think its enough to keep me here. Vie been tutoring music with a girl in the next village over, but that’s not enough either. (Any rate, there is no piano or other instrument candidate to teach her with and this greatly limits the whole process, though she brought me a mango the other day. I was very heartened by this.)
Really, I wouldn’t trade the past of this experience in, I know that. Peace Corps was astoundingly the right decision to have made for myself at the time that I entered into it. Burkina is what it is, and I have made peace with that. My village and my villagers are who they are. I have, mostly, made peace with that also. Slowly, I am making peace with the whole of my experience here, and that is where I am right now. I guess that’s why I haven’t left yet.
These past weeks in particular I have taken the slow rolling demise of my service very very hard, and it has hit my pride like sledgehammer. Though now I think maybe it’s not demise, rather a progression toward a goal I really don’t see yet. A conclusion perhaps different from the other volunteers in this country at this moment. This is me saying all of the questions I’ve had here were answered.
Sometimes, you keep hitting a wall; you have to turn a corner. This is my corner. Now I only hope I have the courage to turn.