Where is the Line?

I came into the Peace Corps an already tainted ex-pat.  I remember in my first couple months I met up with a recently finished Peace Corps volunteer who had returned to Madagascar.  A wonderful woman and certainly someone who had been a tremendous volunteer, I enjoyed a nice lunch with her in my banking town.  During this lunch she told me about the many reasons she had returned to Madagascar.  One of the main ones was that she was paying for the education and health of a small child whom she even hoped to “adopt” and bring to the states in order to give him the better education (and life) offered there.   I remember thinking that this was sweet and awfully nice, but that it was a kind of dependent relationship I would never allow myself in while working overseas.  If you help one host country national so much, what are his/her neighbors going to say?  I thought back to a critique of the “starfish story” I read in my last year of university (you know: the one about the dude who is caught throwing one starfish after another, out of thousands who have beached themselves, back into the ocean and says something to the effect of “at least I am helping that one”).  This critique (a good, quick article if I could only find it) spoke about the success that is better achieved by working towards community progress; not just choosing the one sea-creature and sending it back to its home but trying to figure out how to prevent them from beaching themselves in the first place, or perhaps how to help them to return themselves.  (I guess what I’m also talking about reaches into the “dead babies floating down the river” story as well).

Okay so where was I?  Right: I was an already-disillusioned, already lived-too-long-in-developing-countries-and-can’t understand-why-someone-would-put-so-much-effort-towards-just-one-person grump.  I’d hear these stories of volunteers developing strong relationships with individuals in country and continuing them in a financial way afterwards and I thought “that’s very nice, but I will never cross that line”. 

But then a strange thing happened: I fell in love.  It was quick, within three months of moving to my new site.  I admit it: I am a sucker for a good laugh, a striking set of brown eyes, and a solid afro.  Each morning I would get myself out of bed excited to see the apple of my eye with whom I’d spend all my free time.  We’d cuddle and teach each other things from each of our cultures and it filled me with lots of joy and after time I found in me this strange desire to protect and take care of….her. 

Oh yeah, I suppose it is important to mention that I have not taken a host country “sipa” (boyfriend).  The new love of my life is a little girl named Shiela.  Here she is

A couple of months after Shiela and I became buddies, her health began to disintegrate.  Energy-wise, you wouldn’t notice a thing.  She was still the chipper young lass who was so excited to wake up every morning that she’d forget to put on underwear as she ran over to play with her friends.  (Often her mom sees me in the morning and throws a pair of knickers at me, telling me to find Shiela and make her put them on).  But Sheila’s appetite began to increase absurdly, her stomach bloated up, attached with bad stomach-aches and diarrhea.  She developed some sort of infection in her eyes, causing her to loose all her eyelashes.  She is sprite as ever, but physically falling apart.  Her parents took some methods towards healing her eyelashes, but her stomach issues (which is clearly worms) have not been addressed, and they have no plans of taking her to a clinic about them. 

I find myself in this very strange position now.  I have always told myself that it was inefficient as a development agent to help out just one person.  But now there is this other part of me that feels a kinship to someone and wonderfully, I have it in my ability to help her out.  It would take very little out of me to get her back in good health.  Perhaps just a deworming pill!  But not only is this against my former principals, it is against Peace Corps rules; we as volunteers are not supposed to give out medication.  If you give it to one person, then everyone will ask. 

But I love her!

Where is the line between being a good, supportive community volunteer and intervening too far?  This is just one example out of so many that have come at me in my two years since being here.  I believe so much in the Peace Corps experience especially in that it is based around building inter-cultural relationships.  But once you have those relationships, how can you watch the people you come to love suffer? 

oh the things we do

If you are looking to go through the most humbling experience a human being can actively choose to do, Peace Corps is a good place to start.  There is this great David Sedaris story about his venture to learn French as a middle-aged man.  He explains that although in body you are an already grown, formed adult person but the way you speak is like a four-year-old kid.  

I'd hoped the language might come on its own, the way it comes to babies, but people don't talk to foreigners the way they talk to babies. They don't hypnotize you with bright objects and repeat the same words over and over, handing out little treats when you finally say "potty" or "wawa." It got to the point where I'd see a baby in the bakery or grocery store and instinctively ball up my fists, jealous over how easy he had it. I wanted to lie in a French crib and start from scratch, learning the language from the ground floor up. I wanted to be a baby, but instead, I was an adult who talked like one, a spooky man-child demanding more than his fair share of attention.(David Sedaris.  Me Talk Pretty One Day)

Its hilarious and right on to how I felt coming to my village.  Except language wasn’t the only way that I performed like a toddler.  Tossed into a world where everything from language to clothes-washing is foreign and confusing, one must be ready to see themselves as a newborn baby learning everything from scratch. 

Although at first, I must admit, it was quite irritating to be constantly told that I was “tsi mahai”.  Everything I did from washing my dishes to getting dressed in the morning to reading Malagasy was apparently wrong.  Because of this, I was the endless source of humour, since there is nothing so funny in the eyes of a Malagasy as someone making mistakes.  

In fact, I suppose I am still the endless source of humour, but now that I’ve lived in this setting for two years, I guess I simply don’t mind as much.  And this is what I mean by how humbling an experience the Peace Corps can be for a person.  Once you get used to the fact that you likely are going to do things a bit different, and that you will undoubtedly be called out for said difference, you can learn to laugh at yourself.  Once you stop taking yourself serious, you become a much better PCV.  

So I am far along on my track of finding myself and all trhe world I live in utterly ridiculous (as well as wonderful!).  I now go into each project, each classroom, each training that I do with a readiness to do absolutely anything in order to get my point across.  By now my ‘gasy is decent enough, but there are still plenty of moments where I don’t know a particular word.  I have become quite good at talking around a word, and even better at cherades.  I have no problem with appearing a complete fool in front of a room of strangers.  Ask my best friend in town and I promise she would agree.  

This past Sunday was Madagascar’s Independence day and so, of course, a grand fety was to be had.  My youth women’s group decided that they wanted to do some type of skit or dance or song for the event.  Thinking that I, the American that I am, must be full of cool dance moves (which I am!), they asked me to teach them some American dances.  Now, I fancy myself something of a dancer, but I haven’t been to a dance class since I was 5 years old and in bright pink tights and a Mickey Mouse headdress.  But if they ask, I must deliver (I don’t know where I got that moto) and so I taught them the first dances that came to my head: the Cupid Shuffle and the Macerena.  

Well of course they loved it and decided we needed to do both of these dances on the day of the fety and I sheepishly agreed, wishing maybe that I hadn’t been so eager to please their demands for dance moves.  I figured I’d just stand on the sidelines and watch them do them.  But the day comes and of course none of them has practiced but still want to do the dances anyway.  So I am pushed to the front of the group and, with Shakira’s “Waka Waka” blasting,  we Cupid Shuffled in front of the mayor, town president, police force, all the town elders, and well, the entire rest of the town.  Than we Macarena’d to Jerry Marcos’s “Zaho tsy kivy” (an awesome ‘gasy song if your interested).  

Looking back on this now, I suppose I should be completely embarrassed.  But *shrugs shoulders* I’m not at all.  Though I will hear about it for the rest of the year, and surely my replacement will hear about it during his/her service, and likely the one afterwards too, I have come to a place where it is very hard to embarrass me.  

My friend Chris, who recently COS’ed and might even be back in the states by now (*gasp*) used to talk about this phenomenon of being unshakeable.  I remember him telling stories and always ended with a indignant “go ahead! Just try and make me feel shame!  You can’t: there’s nothing left!”.  So I guess that’s just how it goes for us PCVers.  We fall into a place of not caring and just enjoying the silliness that is tossed our way, whether or not we created it.  It’s actually quite ‘gasy of us.  

I feel I must end this by saying that it might not be all PCV’s who end up feeling this way.  There’s this silly quote that floats around facebook sometimes that goes like this:

‘If you go to Latin America, you’ll come back fomenting revolution; If you go to Asia, you’ll come back spiritually enlightened; And if you go to Africa, you’ll come back laughing”

And I guess this pretty much sums it up. 

Things that are normal now... Part I

1.  Not having any days that feel like the weekend.  Everyday is a workday in the bush!  You try to take a day off to do "just relax" and three hours later you're bored and wondering where everyone is.  Inevitably they are doing something you were trying to avoid like weeding the fields or a four-hour church service. 

2.  Being peed on by babies.  I admit that I always feel lucky when I am passed a baby.  Not only are they all super cute but it also means that the mother trusts you enough to not drop him/her on his head (a trust that most American mothers would likely not lend to me either).  Since I've been a volunteer the kids have been the best part of any day and those little, crying nuggets are no different.  However, diapers are not a luxury enjoyed by the babies of the bush.  This does not, as one might hope, speed up the potty-training process.  Instead it means that you will often be transformed from being the trusted momentary caregiver of the little tyke into the depository for its daily milk intake.  I'm surprisingly used to it now.  I carry around an extra lamba. 

3.  Getting laughed at whenever you talk to someone new.  Perhaps it is out of surprise, but whenever I meet someone here or even if someone simply overhears you they are overcome with laughter at the fact that I am a white person speaking 'gasy.  I know its not a bad thing, but I continue to feel a little confused whenever I saw "good morning" and someone cracks up. 

(...more to come)

unteaching

I find myself the center of the room, though eyes are far from all on me.  The classroom is filled with 27 students packed into tight rows and sweating.  A few at the front avidly pay attention, yelling out answers whenever I question the class.  The rest talk amongst themselves waiting, perhaps, to be told to be quiet.  But even once the request comes their conversations halt for mere seconds until the faces turn back to their friends.  I’ve been told the best way to get attention is to bring out the bamboo stick.  Alas, I’ve yet to come to such aggravation. 

I have put into my job title the teaching of middle school and elementary school students in my town.  For the last sixth months I have taught an environment course at the EPP (elementary school), started up a lifeskills course with the middleschool women, and helped the English teacher with his beginner English course, something I feel slightly obligated to do as he cannot carry a conversation in the tongue.  If I have no other skill, I do speak English. 

I enjoy both of these classes.  I’ve always liked working with kids and since joining Peace Corps have certainly found them easiest to work with of any community members.  Ever enthusiastic, not as likely to laugh at me maliciously when I shovel a hole differently.  In general, they seem to like having me around.  And both courses has led to other work such as parents who learn about their kids making composts.

But at times I find the work outstandingly frustrating.  Take for example my environment class yesterday.  These kids are all 9 to 10 years old, have been in school for 5 years now so have grown accustomed to the idea of learning (something that if you walk into the youngest kids’ classroom is surely not comprehended; it’s an absolute zoo of youngsters fighting over oranges or bananas…whatever was brought for snack by someone else).  So I go into my class, having lesson-planned for a couple hours during the week in order to make sense out of this environment material that they haven’t, in the last few months, seemed to receive very well.  It is utter gibberish to them.  So I always bear myself with a game, a participatory model, a field trip, or some activity to make it more fun and gain their attention.  This is a kind of learning that they are completely unused to, of course.  They are comfortable with a teacher writing paragraphs upon paragraphs in French (a language they do not speak nor understand) on the board, and then copying it down).  But still I am convinced that this is the way to make it happen!  To get through to them!  To make a point! 

Anyways, yesterday.  I have come bearing two games.  One is a sort of musical chairs that represents the affects of deforestation on the lemurs.  It goes reasonably well, as I play myself, the big bad human who needs to cut down the trees for realistic reason such as cooking, building homes, and of course, building churches.  As the music stops and one of the students, or “lemurs” is left without a spot I tell him that his tree has been cut down and so he has died because he had nowhere to sleep and a predator ate him.  This goes pretty well and is pretty solidly understood, though its clear the only thing they are interested are the jams leaking out of my ipod. 

The second game is meant to portray erosion.  I’m trying to show them why trees, and their roots, are needed in order to stop water from pulling tons of dirt and sand into the ocean, destroying the land.  So I set up a relay race and make two teams.  I tell the team members that they are all water.  I also set up six kids in front of one of the teams as stones and trees that they need to crawl under (between their legs) or over (leap-frog style).  The other team has no obstacles at all.  In my head this will show them how fast water will move if it doesn’t have obstacles such as tree roots to block it, just a clear path.  Because clearly the team with no obstacles is going to win, right?  Of course not Kelly.  Instead what will happen is the team with the obstacles will do their best to kick each of the students posing as trees or “not quite” lean down far enough to crawl through legs so I end up with five students bruised and the other side hasn’t even begun running.  Point not proven. 

I do not know how to prevent the chaos that happens whenever we do something fun.  Today we (my environment class) planted our pepiniere (tree nursery) and I couldn’t believe how egotistical and undisciplined they behaved.  All trying to steal seeds from each other and me, all jumping in front of the other.  Where does this behavior come from?  Is sharing really something that is taught rather than something instinctually understood?  Sometimes I think it is a reaction to the way they are treated at home since there they are of the age that receives the least benefits and the most chores.  The babies get disgustingly pampered, the papa’s alternatively are able to take the most for themselves and the mama, who is the cook and handler of all things worth wanting in the home, does a good job of keeping herself fed and happy alongside the days chores.  It is these middle kids who get shirked, they receive the least protein or side dish (though plenty of rice) and the most trips to the water pump.  In the classroom they are treated much the same: the teachers are always ordering them around to weed the school ground, sweep the floors, or even fetch the water for the laundry they have decided to bring to work that day.  My nine-year-olds get yelled at, smacked upside the head, and put to work everyday.  So perhaps they see me, who always acts more like a buddy than a disciplinarian, and feel that they are let out of that environment.  They never neglect to take the opportunity to go nuts. 

                It might sound like I am being a pushover.  However, my ability to stay relaxed and kind to misbehaving kids is practiced and purposeful.  I think kids should have the freedom to create their own dynamics.  So often adults interfere within the play of children because they see that they find something distasteful.  I can relate to that; I always feel irked when I see kids engaged in physical fighting.  But plenty of people would prove that this is natural.  And who doesn’t like a good wrestling match among friends (my buddies and I used to play “street fight”…)?  When I see it, I try not to react to my bias and overanalyzed thought that these kids are showing violent behaviors.

                But it is still hard to see kids act selfishly and thoughtlessly towards each other.  I don’t know how to teach them the value of respect, besides showing it to them.  This method, as of now, has not worked.  Yet I still resist the seemingly midevil practices that the other teachers use to gain it.