April 2012
Then things started to look up for me. Around April my
transition back to a stable life in the states started to take shape, just in
time for it to be over.
It must have started with a joke with a friend. Harley, who
had just finished his service in the Peace Corps in Cameroon, had recently
moved back to his home New Mexico. When I had asked him earlier about his plans
after Peace Corps, he told me he would probably stay in New Mexico with his
parents. I told him it would not last long. Sure enough, after a few weeks in
New Mexico, I talked to him online and dropped on him the Anchor Man quote “I
think after this is all over, you and me should get an apartment together.” It
was in jest, but I also meant it. And he was totally down for the idea.
So we moved into a shared house together. I was thrilled to
move out of my terrible living situation, and to have another friend around.
Plus the people we moved in with were the kind of people that we could live
with.
Soon after, I managed to get out of my restaurant job in
Bellevue. I replaced it with two restaurant jobs which were a big step up. I
had caught wind that I had no chance of advancing from my position at my job in
Bellevue, so I figured if I would be a busser, I might as well work closer to
home and make more money. One job was at a popular seafood restaurant that was
something of a Seattle icon. It attracted tourists, elderly regulars, and boat
people. It wasn’t the best group of customers or co-workers, but it was a huge
restaurant that provided a steady and reliable income. The other was something
of a dream restaurant job. It was as close to an enjoyable service industry job
as I could have imagined. It had a mature and friendly staff, a respectable
clientele, and a chef that was recently named one of the best in the country.
It was by far the best restaurant job as I could have asked for. It was the
rare service industry job I could take a bit of pride in.
With things in order, I could enjoy my last summer in
Seattle for a while. I had a Peace Corps application in the works, but I had no
idea when I would be leaving. It could be anywhere from August to the following
winter. I felt like I was finally getting things in order. Plus I was lucky
enough to have Lise come and stay with me for the summer. My previous living
situation had made her last visit complicated. Now we were free to enjoy each
other’s company and have some truly memorable times together. We spent time
canoeing Lake Washington, going to Capitol Hill Block Party and camping. It
really made the summer perfect.
So now I was waiting to hear from the Peace Corps. I had
been jumping through their hoops for months. I don’t feel like going through
the details of that, but it was a long process of doctor appointments, dentist
appointments, endless paperwork, visits to various government offices and going
to copy shops. I even had to go back to Idaho once to get a dental exam because
the corrupt dentist in Seattle (recommended by the Peace Corps) said he would
need to do over $700 worth of (unnecessary) work to sign off on my paperwork.
After constant waiting, I received a phone call saying that
my Peace Corps invitation had been sent. They said that I would probably be
going to sub-Saharan Africa. This was a good thing. My dream was to be going to
a French-speaking country to go to West Africa. I had done everything possible
to set myself up for a French-speaking placement. I didn’t have the formal
education in French that was required, but I had studied French on my own for
three years, especially in the last few months. I had taken a Clep exam and
passed with a high score, which qualified me for a French-speaking placement. I
will be honest that my ambitions for joining the Peace Corps were not entirely
altruistic, and I wanted to be able to greatly advance my abilities to speak
French for many reasons. I had put a lot of personal effort into learning the
language and wanted to be place where I could hone these skills.
I figured that the invitation letter from the Peace Corps,
which would include my country of placement, would arrive within a few days.
Unfortunately the Peace Corps seemed to send it at through the slowest possible
means. It got there after about eight days.
Mama called me, saying the letter had come. My heart pounded,
yeah yeah yeah, dramatic lead up to my announcement. I was incredibly nervous
of course. She told me I was being sent to Rwanda on September 11.
My reaction was tempered by many factors. I was excited to
finally know. I was shocked by how soon I would be leaving. It was a tight
squeeze. Peace Corps is required to notify you at least 8 weeks in advance, and
mine was exactly that much. I can move quickly, but this was still
overwhelming. Lise would be staying until two weeks before I left, and I was doing
all I could to not be distracted during her visit. I knew that two weeks
between her visit and leaving for Rwanda would be nuts.
As far as Rwanda, my reaction was mixed. Yes, it is a
Francophone country, but it didn’t mean much. For many reasons, the country has
recently switched to English, especially as a language of instruction. This was
very important, since I was going to be in the education sector. Also, because
of how homogenous Rwanda is, I would not be trained in French, but rather
Kinyarwanda, which is spoken throughout the entire country. On the other hand,
I was excited about being placed in a country that I completely did not expect.
It was a curveball that I welcomed. I had many dream placements, such as
Guinea, Togo or Cameroon, but I also kind of wanted to be put in a country that
I knew nothing about. Rwanda fit the bill. Of course I had read a lot about the
genocide over the years, but I knew that there was still so much to learn. Plus
it was in a region of Africa that I was very unfamiliar with. It was East
Africa and Central Africa at the same time. It had close historical ties to the
Congo, but was also geographically close to East African countries of Tanzania,
Kenya and Uganda. This was a region that I had always overlooked when it came
to traveling, but again, my ignorance of it was a big plus.
My job assignment as well gave me pause. I was placed in the
teaching sector, most specifically English teaching. This was definitely not my
top choice. Over time I had developed a somewhat cynical view of the idea that
teaching English to people in developing countries was going to help the
country’s situation. For example, teaching children English in a place like
Mali or Cambodia seemed like it would only provide opportunities for a few
people in the tourism sector or maybe the lucky few that got into international
business. It did not seem to be the kind of thing would have a significant
impact in alleviating poverty. Plus, tourism in developing countries is very
volatile. Take Mali, for example. A year ago tour guides most definitely
benefited from their ability to speak English. Now that it is unstable and
tourism has dried up, it is no longer putting food on tables or supporting
industries.
However, Rwanda was unique. The whole country, which spoke
French as its international language, has decided to switch to English. One of
the major reasons for this (among many) was the fact that many of the
neighboring countries are Anglophone. Rwanda is trying to promote valuable
economic ties with countries like Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania, rather than the
troubled Francophone countries Burundi and Congo, which are far more troubled.
The country officially changed the language of instruction in schools from
French to English just a few years ago. It has obviously been a difficult
change for the country, but it is a change that I feel I can support. It is not
because I think that one language is better than the other, but it seems that
English will be a more valuable language for Rwandans than French. This is why
I feel good about my efforts to help Rwanda in their transition from French to
English. Still it is ironic, as I was really hoping to use the Peace Corps to
improve my skills in French.
I was also conflicted in a more selfish way. As far as my
job with the Peace Corps was concerned, I was hoping for a role that would set
me up to learn more about development. I did not feel that English teaching was
very different than other posts where volunteers were able operate more like
NGO or development workers. It is something I really had a desire to get
involved in for the sake of my post-Peace Corps life. At the same time, I know
that teaching English as a second language would give me the skills to teach
English anywhere in the world, if I so wanted. In the future, if I am ever in
need of a decent job abroad, my experience with the Peace Corps will give me a
huge advantage if I need some work teaching English.
Once it all sank in, I felt overwhelmed with how soon I was
leaving. Eight weeks is not a lot of notice. I had to continue working the two
jobs I was about to quit, move out of my house, continue the never-ending
barrage of Peace Corps paperwork, make visits to friends in Phoenix and my
sister in Indianapolis, and squeeze the most time out of the time I still had
with Lise in Seattle. It was an intense last month. Every time someone asked me
if I was excited or nervous, I had a difficult time mustering any emotion. I
wasn’t sure if it was because I was too busy to contemplate the fact that I was
about to spend the next 27 months in an African country I knew relatively
little about. Perhaps it was because I had left the country blindly for various
reasons in the past and now I was getting used to it. Maybe it was the fact
that the Peace Corps was not my first choice of options, but rather the next
logical move in my life. Maybe it was all of those and more. It is impossible
to say.
When it finally came time to leave home on Sept. 10, I can
say that I still felt very little. Of course I was sad to say goodbye to my
family, and I knew I would miss them. On the other hand, I had done this
before, and knew what to expect. My best guess to explain my calm and tempered
mood was that my excitement and my nervousness were counteracting each other, leaving
me to appear bored and boring. I wanted to muster up strong emotions, but then
again, I knew those would really come flooding in the moment I stepped off the
plane. Just like usual.
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