5 Week Challenge – Status: COMPLETION

Well fine ladies and gents, friends and foes, comrades and countrymen, and anyone else who maybe stumbled accidentally upon this blog via Google search but was so captivated by my witty title or flattering author picture that they decided to start reading… I have officially COMPLETED the 5 week challenge!!

I am now fluent in both Malinke and French. As well as Wolof. I can carry water on my head for miles. I can eat rice neatly out of my hand without spilling. I know everyone’s names in my village. As well as all of their children’s names, where their parents came from, what they farm in their field, what their favorite foods are, what all of their hopes and aspirations are for their lives and their children and their grandchildren, and what they think about every night in that peaceful moment of diaphanous clarity just before falling asleep.

Except that I don’t. I don’t know any of that. Such a claim would be both pathologically facile and a blatant lie.

And yet, I am still glad to have participated in the challenge. Here is why:

For one, my language skills have indeed improved significantly.  I am, by no means, anywhere near fluent.  But I can at least have a conversation. I can order food. I can ask for directions. I can ask about people’s children or about their work. And I can tell people that malaria is bad so they should hang their mosquito net.  And I trust the rest will come in due time.

Secondly, I have started to get to know people. I know all the names of all 25-35ish people (the number fluctuates) who are living in my compound as well as most doctors, nurses, lab technicians, midwives, birth attendants, pharmacists, community health workers, housekeepers, guards and chauffeurs that work at the hospital in Saraya.  I know most of the boutique owners and most of the ladies who sell hot bean, egg or tuna sandwiches in the morning. I know many of the kids that play basketball in the evenings and quite a few teachers at the middle school/high school. People have started getting used to my presence here. They know my name and they know that I live here; I’m not just passing through.  All of that is critical for me to begin to feel like Saraya is my home.

Thirdly and lastly, I’ve started finding my niche.  Probably most new Peace Corps volunteers or trainees, or people about to leave for Peace Corps staging, would corroborate the notion that the scariest part about going into the Peace Corps is indefinite expanse of unknowns.  For SO LONG, you just don’t have any idea about what your life will be like in any respect for the looming 27 months (2 years + 3 months). Little by little this gets less opaque. Around a year after applying you generally find out what country you will be going to and when. Six to nine months later when you actually arrive in country you find out where exactly in that country you will be going for training and what language you will be learning. A month or two into training your actual village placement is revealed and you have the chance to see it for the first time – see the people and the houses and the environment of where you will be spending the bulk the next two years.  But then a month later, fully “trained” and ready to go with all your clothes, food, water filters, medical equipment, etc., you arrive in village and you still have no idea what they hell you are doing.  This is NOT one of those jobs you show up to where you show up to be handed a list of tasks, duties you are responsible for and deadlines.  There are no deadset work hours or work days (or weekends for that matter).  You may or may not even have a physical location where you go to do your work. And you may or may not have any idea who you should be working with.  Peace Corps technically assigns each volunteer a “counterpart” who is a community member that has agreed to be the volunteer’s work partner and help them facilitate projects.  This person generally attends a 3-day training workshop in Thiès with the volunteer (although my work partner was absent for this) to orient them to the goals and methodology of the Peace Corps and how they can support their volunteer.  However, their involvement in the volunteer’s work and inclusiveness of the volunteer in their work varies on a wide spectrum from counterpart to counterpart.  This is therefore a job where you have to FIND your own work. You have to go out, talk to people, follow people around, ask questions, take notes and YOU have to CREATE your own role.  You need to find the things that need to be done and do them.  During these 5 weeks, I believe I have begun to find some of these things.  Just by hanging around the health center every day for example, I was invited to attend an HIV screening in a small village about 2.5 hours outside Saraya called Bambanding. During the screening it became apparent that there had been no community mobilization for the screening because there was not a Relais (a community member trained in a specific health topic) in that village who had been trained in HIV. Therefore, nobody was telling village members about why HIV is bad, how to prevent it or why to get screened. So only 17 people showed up to be screened that entire day…  Enter Diabou Tounkara (me)! HIV education and Relais training may be just the perfect place for me to start my work here...

While I may, at times, feel like I have hit the ground running already, I know that the real work is truly just beginning.  There is still so much to learn, so many people to meet, and so many health issues to tackle.  But I probably need to go to the capital for a salad and a beer to celebrate making it this far before I jump on into it.

Yay for the end of the 5 week challenge!!