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.
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