Part II begins…
…Overwhelming has been the only real way to describe not only site visit, but the last three weeks of my life. Although I feel as though my emotions and mind were finally keeping pace, by the time I got sick at the end of my site visit my brain once again shut off and I was once again rendered incapable of processing what was going on around me. The issue with this, unlike the first time around, was not so much my inability to conceptualize myself living and working here in Mali, but conceiving myself within the weird and somewhat unique social sphere I found myself becoming increasingly aware of.
A few main things happened over the course of the weeks I struggled to come to terms with the experiences of my site visit: I met a large amount of the fellow volunteers I would be seeing the most of over at least the next coming year if not longer, I moved back into my homestay site to spend my final two weeks there, and I experienced both Christmas and New Years in a social context completely unfamiliar to anything I have ever known previously. Needless to say that trying to process all that while at the same time trying to navigate an illness made the entire experience not only overwhelming but at times acutely emotionally challenging.
That being said I navigated the waters successfully and emerged on the other side of the entire debacle with good moments, lasting memories and even better stories. Although I did not expect it nor at all feel prepared to deal with it, I made it through to the other side successfully and did so because of a few key things: presence, family and friends at home, friends here and the ever growing realization that I may be victim to the circumstances and unpredictability of Mali, but in the end I will dictate on my own whether or not my experience here is a good one based on the decisions I make about my actions and attitudes throughout the course of the next two years.
When I refer to presence I mean it in the sense of being present in everything that I do here. Although, as I have previously stated I struggled with this concept and idea throughout basically all of my first month here and now feel as though I am here, I’m not here in the sense that I wish I was. Instead, the issue has not so much been alleviated as it has shifted from one issue to another. Although I now find myself present in what I do here, my ability to find a middle ground between where I am now and where I was 3, 4 even 5 months ago has become much harder. I’ve found that the weeks directly following my site visit have shaken any lingering sense of a honeymoon with Mali that I might have had, and forced me into trying to better understand not only who I am and why I came here, but also how I am going make it through the next two years taking on a split persona: Mali me, and American me. I think I can attribute a lot of my malaise over the past two weeks to trying to balance what is slowly developing into two distinct lives: two families, two distinct sets of friends, two/three languages and two homes. That being said, I think that I am slowly moving out of this malaise, realizing that such a lifestyle is not as improbable as I originally thought.
I said presence, but presence has taken on a new sense here, and one that is very hard to qualify in a direct and literal sense. On the one hand my success as a volunteer here and my happiness as a human being over the next two years will be in large part a direct result of how I interact with my community, accepting them as my own and getting them to accept me in the same way. Although this has been stressed over and over again in all of our training, the part that I didn’t realize, and what proved to be harder for me, was to take on this new persona with a grain of salt, not compare it to the life I left behind in the states, and just accept it in the same manner I have with everything in my life: love it for its very imperfections.
This seems like a simple enough task in the short run (ie: study abroad or living in a country with less stark differences from back home), the definition is much harder within the conceptualization of a (possibly) uninterrupted two year stay here in West Africa. It’s more difficult because it demands two things that other experiences haven’t: a deeper acceptance of the difficulties and realities of life here, and a much stronger desire/need to keep in close touch with those back home. Christmas and the week following were strong reminders of this. Talking with my parents and some of my closest friends has centered me once more, helping me to realize why I came here in the first place and why I made the sacrifices I did to do what I am doing currently. It helped remind me that although life was chugging along without me back home, I wasn’t missing as much as I sometimes felt like I was, and that regardless of my absence the people who I care most about were and still are standing behind me in everything I was doing, and willing to support me as best they could. Those conversations, those comments, those letters and packages en route keep me focused and present here because they are a constant reminder that this is not only what I was meant to do, but that everything that I am feeling currently is merely a temporary stumble, a “defining moment” if you will, that I will persevere through and emerge on the other side a better person for it. So, in a sense life here is a dual presence, a global presence, balancing a life flung far across the world and in the process enhancing the state of mind and knowledge of an increasingly growing base of open-minded and caring individuals in a way that would have never been possible if I had stayed at home and mitigated my personal risk. Remembering this, and staying present in this mindset will no doubt be essential to my success and sustained happiness throughout my Peace Corps service.
On the topic of mindset, there is one more piece of the last few weeks that I have left out of my analysis: how I view myself within the context not only of my Malian community but the small group of fellow PCV’s and expats that are my best cultural connection to back home. To be honest, I’ve feared on multiple occasions that I would run into issues and personality conflicts with other people, which is a very large worry to have when a small knit community of only a few hundred people is all you can really rely on, and burning bridges can lead to blowback, and you have very little control and very little leeway over the people you find yourself forced to trust and rely on here.
Although I still think this is a legitimate fear, I think I viewed it in a much more fatalistic light than I should have. I interpreted the situation from a position of no control, as if my own person had no impact on the social sphere I found myself trapped within. As if my own personality and actions would not have any effect on the people around me, only vice versa. Looking back on those worries and fears I expressed to myself in my journal in the weeks following my site visit, I realized that they were very one sided. I had forgotten in this trainee state of feeling like a child that I was still very much a master of my own fate, and that how I chose to define myself within the cultural and social spheres I found myself caught in here.
In the end, and I think in life in general, fate is a very easy way to relinquish control but also to shift blame. I think that in order to be happy not only here, but in general that a certain sense of ownership and decision-making capability must always rest in your own hands and in that sense I will re-quote the very same individual who was responsible for the title of the very first post I ever made on this blog:
“If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.”
-Maya Angelou
In the end I alone will dictate how I live, work and enjoy the next two years and in the longer run my life in general.
These concepts, everything I have just said feels as though it is very basic life philosophy, psychological mind vomit of no real application in the real world, but the Peace Corps training (which will officially end in under two days) has taught me that, much like international development work, what is discussed in Ivory Towers is extremely different from the realities on the ground. Only until you put your feet on that ground do you go from understanding to living, thinking to being, watching to acting. Until life forces you to come to terms you can only read those terms and try to understand them in a philosophical context.
This is, in every sense of the word, as real as my life has ever gotten, and it’s those moments, as cliché as the words I may use to describe them are, that will teach you the most about your life.
