Time

The adventure begins here.  Sixty American Peace Corps volunteers sat with eyes closed, full stomachs, and warm blankets, utterly sleepless on a Delta Airlines jumbo jet bound for Senegal, West Africa.  For a few, the anxiety would wear them down and they would begin to doze but the wide open world of unknowns waiting to greet them on the other side of the sea deemed restful resting an impossibility.  I, myself, slept for just about an hour.  After a taxing week of late nights with friends and family, planning, packing, long goodbyes, and the ever present feeling that I was about to be hurled into a pit of darkness, sleep for a short time was inevitable.  But the excitement and nerves permeated my dreams.

What the hell does it mean to go away for two years anyway??

Since arriving in Senegal (any for many months before coming), all of the trainees have found themselves grappling with and confronting a myriad of fears and anxieties – heat, illness, theft, assault, snakes, spiders, language barriers, etc.  For me however, it is the sheer quantity of time and its opportunity cost that most intimidates me (although I’m not terribly excited about blister beetles and mango worms either).  Constantly I have asked myself what else I could do with two years…

Start a career? Get into a company and start working my way up?... Continue with school? Go for my PhD?... Apply to fellowships that are paid and target the development of more specific job skills?...

The fact is however, I would never be happy if I didn’t do this.  Joining the Peace Corps has been a dream of mine ever since I first found out what it was (Adventure? New languages? Weird diseases? Done. I’m there). If I didn’t do it now, I know I would always wonder: what if?

I truly believe that anything evil or hurtful of violent in this world can only be killed with kindness and that in dedicating these two years of my life to improving livelihoods and cross-cultural understanding is contributing to peace.  Furthermore, I believe that my 20s is my decade for accelerated self-discovery because of the vitality of youth and flexibility of few responsibilities.  And I believe that the challenges presented by Peace Corps service demand volunteers to dig deeply into the foundation of their character and decide what type of person they would like to be; it is an excellent agent for self-discovery.

And so… here I am.  Its 1 am, 90 degrees outside, and I’m hiding from the mosquitoes under my mosquito net in my bed as I write this... sweating... and reflecting on the decision that brought me here and the notion of time.

It is interesting to reflect on the value of my time because as I do it, I am already beginning to see how this way of thinking is the epitome of my American-ness.  Time is thought of very differently here in Senegal.  When you first get to Senegal, the first thing that anyone will do to you is greet you.  And they don’t just greet you. They greeeeeeeeet you.

Peace be with you.

Did you spend your day in peace?

Is it that there is no evil with you?

How are you?

How is you family?

Is there evil with them?

How is your job?

Is there evil there?

How is your goat?

Etc.

A proper greeting can go on for circa 5-10 minutes.  Ten whoooooole minutes of just saying hello.

Now think of how many friends, neighbors, co-workers and community members you run into in a day and think of greeting each and every one.  I calculated that on a typical day living in New Orleans I would have spent around 90 minutes of my day just on greetings (2 roommates=10 min, 3 friends=15 min, 2 acquaintances=20 min, 3 professors=15 min, my advisor=10 min, the lady who sold me a cup of coffee at Einstein’s Bagel=5 min, the person who swipes my card at the gym=5 min, the aerobics instructor=5 min, the grocery store clerk=5 min…). Calculate your time and then ask yourself, “What would I be giving up with # less minutes every day?”

I would say A LOT. For me, 90 minutes is A LOT. That’s my gym time. That’s my study time. That’s my time to run errands or, god forbid, read a book for pleasure.  And if you are American, I’d say you probably agree.  But the Senegalese would say different.  For them, the value of time is not measured in goals accomplished or tasks done.  For them, the value of time is measured in relationships. You can be a shark, first in your class at some big-shot university, flying up the corporate ladder, pockets full of money, breaking ground on new ingenious technology, etc. but you will still be nothing without your family and your community.

Put more simply…

In the US: Time = Money/Goals Accomplished

In Senegal: Time = Relationships

Greetings build relationships.  That is why for the first week of learning my language (Jaxanke), all we learned was how to properly say hello… shake their hand (unless you are a woman speaking to a particularly religious Muslim man who is forbidden from touching women)… curtsy if you are a woman greeting someone you would like to show respect to or avert your eyes if you are a man greeting someone you would like to show respect to… then spit out every greeting you can remember while you still have their attention and be sure to respond to their greetings appropriately as they simultaneously toss them back at you.

This is also why Peace Corps has devised a 3-month Pre-Service Training (PST) program that all trainees must complete before being sworn-in for service.  During this time, trainees oscillate between spending days doing technical training workshops at a central training facility in a big-ish city (Theis) and spending weeks with a host family learning how to integrate yourself into a Senegalese family and begin to build relationships (during what we call “CBT” or “Community-Based Training”).  My day during CBT generally looks about like this:

5:30am: Get woken up by the first prayer call of the day bellowing from the mosque ~100 feet from my house. Go back to sleep.

6:30am: Get woken up by the goat outside my window who cries when the sun comes up and tries to eat my clothes off the clothes line. Go back to sleep.

7-8am: Get up. Wash my face (the Senegalese believe its bad luck to greet people in the morning before washing your face). Greet my host family.  Breakfast with my host mom (aka “Na” which means “mother”) and Kadi, my fellow Peace Corps Trainee (PCT)/CBT site-mate. Usually we eat dry bread or bread with butter and Nescafe with powdered milk.

9-10:30am: Treck across sand for 20 minutes to my teacher's home for Jaxanke class with other Jaxanke-learning Tubabs (white people/foreigners) including Kadi. Treck back across the sand.

10:30am-2pm: Chat with Na. Attempt to study vocab. Help make lunch with host sisters if they are home.

2-3pm: Younger host siblings come home from school for lunch. Lunch with the host fam after forcing them to humor me with proper hand-washing technique. Usually we eat rice and fish (maloo nin yegoo) with everyone except my host father sharing from one big bowl (men generally eat separately from the women and children).

3-4pm: High afternoon heat = nap time.  There is actually a verb in Jaxanke that means “to take a nap after lunch”.

4-7pm: Chat with host dad (aka “Baba” which means “father”) on the front stoop until he goes to evening prayer. He is blind and chatty and loves company.

7-10pm: Help make dinner with my host sisters slash follow them around like a lost puppy because they are so cool and gorgeous and I almost never know what I am doing so I live by their example.

10:30pm: Dinner with the family – often millet or some type of grain with milk or yogurt.  Occasionally we get lucky and have salad with chicken or fish, green bell peppers, and French fries.

11pm-12am: Make fun of my host brother (he is 14 and too cool for school), drink mint tea (called “ataya”) with copious amounts of sugar and served very ceremoniously, and watch Mexican soap operas dubbed in French with everyone in the family room until the mosquitoes get the best of me.  Then retreat to my room to hide under my mosquito net.

12am: Bedtime

8 hours of sleep. 1.5 hours of class. 14.5 hours of relationship building.

I don’t know what all I will accomplish during my time here in Senegal.  I know I will never surrender my American value system entirely and I know there will be days when I want to accomplish things that the alternative valuing of time by people around me will frustrate me.    But I know that these two years will not be for naught. My priorities and values will be tried. And I will make a lot of friends. So that’s something…