A large wooden desk is the best protection I can come up with, though still I edge my chair as far back as politeness will allow. Across from me sits one of my more motivated students, a 23-year-old university student majoring in environmental studies at the public university in Diego. Currently waiting for the school strike to be over, he is stuck as the guardian of the health clinic in which his sister works. Bored, he has requested my mad tutoring skills in the aspect of “green-English”. Always happy to talk ag and environment in any language, I have agreed to come a couple times a week for language-learning. Unfortunately, he has taken a much deeper interest in speaking English since I became his personal teacher. It is with my almost-faded patience that I dodge the well-memorized lines of “you do not have a boyfriend?” or “you do not miss me?” and continue to teach this fellow my mother-tongue.
This is one of the hardest tasks for me to work through as a PCV. When I meet an individual that is truly motivated and already showing great work ethic in learning something new, I automatically want to help them. These people are not the norm, this fact especially bloated due to the first town I lived in, and therefore are gems for me to come upon. They are the people that we volunteers dream of befriending.
However, they are not always the most appropriate or secure people to be friends with depending on who you are as an individual. I am a little white girl. Or on another day, a petite Caucasian woman. I am also a farmer. As a farmer, a lot of the people I work with are men. This is something I am used to as all of my bosses at the farms I have previously worked on have been men and I have always quite enjoyed these farmers’ company. But working with men in Madagascar has turned out to be a completely different story. No matter what our work or discussion for the day is, it will most certainly come up whether or not I am married, and if I am not, why I am not looking for a Malagasy husband. I always try to take a joking tone so as not to be overly assertive (a trait that I have noticed really turns people away even as friends) and just make a joke of it. Perhaps I’ll explain that I don’t want a Malagasy “vady” because they don’t know how to be loyal to their partner. This they laugh at, denying whole-heartedly even though it is absolutely true. It’s just a promiscuous culture! Which is fine, just not my “fomba” (style...culture…ah, some words are just hard to translate). If I’m lucky, it’ll end there with a good chuckle. But once in awhile, as is with this student sitting across from me, it is impossible to make them let it go.
And so each time I come for our lesson, I brace myself for the entourage of questions about my love life and why I do not want to go for walks on the beach with him and why I will not give him my phone number. Ever trying to be the appropriate volunteer (which to me means not blowing up at a villager no matter how annoyed I get), I try to be direct about my discomfort of talking about this. Perhaps I will get him to lay off for the day, but to be sure the next lesson will have the same kind of examination thrown into it.
So, what do I do? I want to help out any who believes that I have something to offer them. All of my time is devoted to them! But moments like these are just awful for me. I deeply want to be seen as asexual in this town!
But that brings up such an interesting point in the being of a Peace Corps volunteer. You come in wanting to see yourself as an ideal role model, someone devoted to hard work and public service. Perhaps you imagine yourself walking around the town helping old women cross streets, teaching children how to read, farmers how to grow food. But when it comes down to it, you are just a person. Just an individual who has identities and a background. Likes and dislikes. And that is not only how you will come to find yourself in your new Peace Corps life, but also how your community will see you. Sure, in ways you are just strange enough that they can categorize you as “vazaha” and therefore something very different from themselves. But when it comes down to it, you are not some savior sent from above but a person who has the potential to be a community member. And as such, participate in normal community routines. Such as taking a husband. Having babies. Suffering. It is actually quite beautiful that they can come to see you that way for it means that you have become relatable. And it’s always a cool feeling when I find that someone in town knows something specific about me and in that, recognizes how it makes me different or the same as someone else.
Alas, I still wish I wouldn’t be seen as every mans’ potential third wife.
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