At the midpoint: opinions on my service and the Peace Corps

The Peace Corps is a volunteer-based organization. Individuals leave their homes for a period of two years for the opportunity to serve peoples around the world. It sounds idealistic, but is it? Who truly benefits from the Peace Corps?

Before I joined the Peace Corps, I had grand visions of doing some real good in the world, making peoples lives better and happier. I envisioned myself working hard under the burning sun, hands dirty, and sweat running brown down my face. Once I became a Peace Corps volunteer, however, I was immediately told that three-fourths of the organization’s mission is “the exchange of cultures”. Translation: the vast majority of a Peace Corps volunteer’s time is spent shooting the breeze with the locals. Actual work is not a priority.

Before joining the Peace Corps, several former volunteers with whom I spoke portrayed the in-country volunteers as lazy, drunk, white people. They explained that many volunteers do minimal, if any, work during their two years of service.

Mauritania is different. I feel that most volunteers here try very hard to find work. In a country lacking alcohol, work is the next best cure for depression. I’ve noticed, in fact, that the most content volunteers in this country are those who have the most work. If nothing else, work provides a means with which to pass the time. This is not to say, however, that work is abundant here. Some volunteers try as hard as they might never find or accomplish any substantial projects during their service. And if they voice the lack of work to their superiors, they are often reminded again that three-fourths of the Peace Corps mission is “the exchange of cultures”.

While work is sometimes difficult to find, it is important to note that overall, volunteers successfully finish a handful of projects, some of which are large and substantial, during their brief stints in the Peace Corps. These projects, while supposed to be sustainable, however are usually not, and they fail as soon as the volunteers leave the country. Sustainability, by the way, is a complex beast of a thing that I will comment more on later.

So, who does benefit from the Peace Corps? Is it the volunteers who get to experience the developing world in all its glory, or is it the local population who we, as volunteers, are supposed to serve? At present, I vote that the Peace Corps is a largely selfish endeavor on the part of Americans, and especially American youths. The actuality of the Peace Corps does little to improve the livelihoods or lifestyles of the people in those countries where it serves. The young American volunteers, however, gain experience and insight – if they choose to do so – of the culture and mentality of the developing world. Some volunteers may argue that there exist exceptions to this generalization: some locals are greatly changed through their contact with the Peace Corps. I don’t argue with this. As a whole, however, an American’s two-year service with the Peace Corps has minimal impact on the lives of those who he “serves”.

Are we helping?

Mauritania is a difficult place to work. Over the past 40 years, international aid donations have helped fashion a culture that refuses to be self-sufficient: the people demand for handouts as if they are owed such contributions from the developed world. People here survive with the bare minimum, but yet they are, as far as I can tell, content with their lives. They snub at being told how to better their lives especially if it means that they have to work just a little bit harder. It’s not that they are lazy. No, they simply don’t see the point of working harder if they are already living, in their eyes, satisfactory lives. And why work if donations are so easy to come by? This attitude is partly to blame for the lack of sustainable Peace Corps projects within the country. Locals simply refuse to continue the work started by volunteers during their services. It is in this way that several past “successful” Peace Corps projects have met their ends.

Teach a Mauritanian to fish, and he will curse you under his breath. Hand him a fish, and he will appreciate you and put out his other hand.

The Mayor of Kiffa once told my former housemate, Josef the French volunteer, that he prefers the French to Americans because Americans hate to give others their money. I feel that this attitude can be found throughout the country. So I ask again, are we helping and if so, who? We are in a country where no one wants our help. Even if we do something good here, will it last?

* * * *

All is not bad with the Peace Corps. As I start to work more closely with the various UN organizations here in Kiffa, I am realizing how little the people at the top truly understand what happens at the bottom. This lack of understanding results in the implementation of ill-formed projects that waste resources and encourages corruption. The Peace Corps, on the other hand, works from the bottom up. Volunteers understand the ins and outs of daily life and have a greater appreciation for which projects will actually benefit the communities.

I feel that other international aid organizations should look to the Peace Corps as an example to follow in this regard.

* * * *

As for I, I have been thus far adequate in my work as a Peace Corps volunteer.

All right, honestly, I don’t know people. It’s hard here. I’m not complaining. It’s partly what I wanted when I joined the Peace Corps – a challenge. And I’ve found that. Each day is a challenge for one reason or other. I also wanted to grow as a person, and I feel that I’m doing that too, slowly but surely.

I have no idea what kinds of changes my Peace Corps experience will have on me, and I will most likely not recognize these changes until I return home at the end of two years.

All in all, the Peace Corps experience has been a good one thus far {i.e. I’m still alive} and I’m looking forward to the second and coming year {i.e. I expect not to die by the end of the second year}.

Till we meet again, in that place where time has little sense and life full of meaning…

VAC and the Welcoming Committee

I have been given the immense honor, my friends, to be the Assabe Regional Coordinator for 2007-2008. Apparently, my good nature and impressive work ethic has made such an impression on other volunteers that, in a surprising act of democracy, I was voted to be the next coordinator…Oh! The power that I now wield: great forces will bow down at my RC mercy; no army will be strong enough to withstand my brute RC strength; and no damsel will be able to resist my infallible RC charms. Oh! The power!

Actually, no one else wanted the position, and I showed the slightest enough interest to be nominated and voted upon. The job is nothing glamorous. It entails being a “conduit”, as the Peace Corps terms it, between my fellow regional volunteers and the Peace Corps headquarters in Nouakchott. I also have to manage the regional Peace Corps bureau, i.e. pay bills and so forth. It sounds easy, but thus far in my first week on the job, I have managed to bankrupt the regional bank account and lose the regional bureau through unresolved rent negotiations {the owner wants to raise the rent and I refuse to let her do so!}. So, on the bright side, there might not be any need for my job relatively soon.

* * * *

Each quarter, the regional coordinators gather together to form a Volunteer Action Committee (VAC), the purpose of which is to communicate volunteer concerns and issues to the country Peace Corps staff. The first meeting was held at the end of June, a week before the arrival of the new Mauritanian Peace Corps trainees. The meeting went smoothly: the staff readily agreed to most of the improvements suggested by the VAC.

* * * *

Following the meeting, the VAC was given the task of the Welcoming Committee. The regional coordinators worked long and hard arranging the logistics for the arrival of the new class of trainees. Worry not, for we partied hard also. We didn’t want any repeats of The Shining (“All work and no play…”), especially with new blood on the way.

The trainees arrived into Dakar, Senegal on Wednesday morning. A group of us, me included, flew down from Nouakchott in a rented jet plane, all bleary-eyed at three in the morning, gathered the trainees and flew back to Mauritania. The following day and a half consisted of herding the new ones from their respective hotels to the Nouakchott bureau for official paperwork, medical exams, cultural presentations and so forth. I am relieved to report that no one died before they all headed down to Kaédi for the beginning of Stage 2007.

While the trainees were generally in good form, some appeared weaker than others. I have found, however, that outer weakness often hides inner strength. Everyone seemed to be in a cheery mood and glad, strangely, to be in Mauritania. I feel that most don’t know yet what they are getting themselves into. It will be interesting to see how many of the 72 survive this summer and become official volunteers. I hope that they all do, but I know that some people will terminate their services before then. It’s just how it goes.

Up next time: “One year done! What comes next?”

Jazz Fest ’07, Nouadhibou, and AIDS, AIDS, AIDS

Oh! Jazz Fest: a festival of jazz if you will: jazz, being that melodious rag of a thing that wanders into some smoke-filled room {the smoke: gray swirls wafting higher and higher into the darkness), settles onto a wooden crate, and slowly lulls you into an unpunctuated dream of easiness smudged with the grittiness of shattered hopes.

Oh! Jazz Fest! The experience had is nearly perfect: good people, an amazing venue, a lively nightlife, and the lack of actual jazz. The last, by the way, is what makes the event nearly perfect and not entirely so.

St. Louis is, in my opinion, a piece of paradise here on earth. The air is cool, the beach is warm, the streets are lively with the hubbub of daily activities, and people are smiling and singing. Sounds like paradise, no? Indeed.

During the festival, the RIM volunteers stay at two different hotels. One, located in the center of town, provides easy access to the seemingly never-ending nightlife, which by no means are restricted solely to nighttime hours. The other hotel, where I stay, is a 45-minute walk from the town center and only minutes from the beach. My few and precious days are spent relaxing on the hotel’s rooftop veranda, relaxing at the beach, relaxing at the RIM booth (where we “sell” Mauritanian produced odds and ends) and just plain relaxing.

There’s nothing more I can say about the trip, as the rest is better told in person…{A quick note though - a warning, if you will, bore out of my individual experiences: it is highly ill-advised to get smashed the night before one has to travel many a miles in cramped and most definitely uncomfortable conditions, as such a personal circumstance invites nothing but additional misery.}

* * * *

After St. Louis, I head north to Nouadhibou to help at the local Girls Mentoring Center – a Peace Corps run venture focusing on the education and mentorship of young Mauritanian girls. Nouadhibou is nice, but a little too nice. It is so nice in fact that I forget I’m in Mauritania. The weather is damp and cool, almost like the Northwest. The beaches are breezy and empty: Mauritanians don’t like going to the beach. Scattered on the shorelines are countless shipping boats, some – beached and rusted – look ghostly. At nighttime, we go to the Chinese restaurant, openly famous for it’s booze and prostitutes. The food is good, too.

I enjoy my time there, for the most part, but by the end of the trip I’m ready to leave and return to Kiffa. I think, dare I say, that I’m homesick…but I can’t. I come back to Nouakchott for a weeklong AIDS workshop organized by my boss. Kiffa, sadly, will have to wait.

* * * *

“Everyone has AIDS! AIDS! AIDS! AIDS! AIDS! AIDS!”

The AIDS workshop is held in Nouakchott and consists of a handful of volunteers and our counterparts. The workshop is run by two very enthusiastic Gambians and a Peace Corps staff from Washington D.C. The information presented is already familiar to most of the volunteers, but this matters not, as the aim of the gathering is to better equip the counterparts in educating the populations of their respective towns and villages on HIV/AIDS.

I notice early on that the room is oddly black and white: most of the counterparts are Africans and not Moors, the more conservative of the two groups. I, having no great like for the Moors, let out a slight smile at the observation.

The workshop is long and tiring. The counterparts are bossy, making group work difficult. In addition, the counterparts are too comfortable sharing various parts of their sex lives that I, frankly, find neither relevant nor appropriate for the workshop and venue. {I don’t want to know that you practice polygamy because you love sex, or that during the middle of foreplay you open a condom with your teeth, or that you married you underage cousin who later cheated on you, or…and it goes on.}

In the end, however, I feel that the workshop has been useful and educative to the counterparts. We spend the last day making plans for what we will do with the information that we have learned once we return to our respective sites. I hope that everyone will follow through, or at least make an attempt in doing so.

That’s all folks! Come back soon for another whirl around the Mary-go-Round! Wheeeee!