Why is Peace Corps so hard?

No matter how many times you pass an iron over the ideas, plans and projections that make up a project plan, it never ceases to come out with more wrinkles than the skin around my ‘Gasy grandmother’s eyes.  

 This past week proved just that way as finally it came time for my AIDs awareness and 50^th anniversary of Peace Corps celebration to come into fruition.  

It started out with a fixable problem.  As I was preparing my tiny hut for the eight incoming volunteers my best friend showed up, days later than I had been expecting her and claiming to be sick.  Because of her apparent illness, she told me, she would not be able to do the cooking that I had hired her to do for our guests.  Always understanding, I told her I’d find someone else and was able to spread our eating over more community members.  This was a good way to bring some money into my town, anyways.

First issue resolved, I go about cleaning up the yards to pitch tents, stopping by the homes of the community members who are taking part in the festival, basically making sure everything was set to go.  It seemed to be, so as my first guest rolled in I relaxed.  Vanessa and I got our final posters in order and went to “misangasangana” around town.  More friends show up, we enjoyed the company with a couple of THB’s and get to bed at a decent time hoping that the morning with run smoothly.  

We get up, have coffee and mokary (fried rice balls, or flour balls…okay they are pretty much just doughnuts) and go over to the school where we have space to work.  The festival is to start at two that afternoon and I am the only person who really knows what the game-plan is due to the inherent communication diffuclty amongst volunteers living deep in the bush.  

As we are going over skits, songs, and weather-proofing posters I notice a lot of the women from my town are coming in dressed up in their women’s group outfits, all green and white and wearing matching baseball caps.  This was the outfit they were all meant to wear that afternoon when they perform at the spectacle I have organized.  Two come over to the classroom and hailed me out.  I walked out cheerfully and asked them if they were ready for the afternoon’s events.  They smile and say yes, except that they want to start the event now (at eight in the morning) instead of the intended two o’clock start time.  You see, there was work to do later in the afternoon, and anyways they are all ready to go!  I sighed, and tried to explain to them that we couldn’t just change the time the day of the event.  PSI, other town counterparts, and a few more PCVs were still on their way and there was a purpose to the timing.  They got kind of mad and said that some of them would have to go home now. 

We move along through the day.  I shake how patronizing my town president is to me when he disbelievingly asks again “so your boss isn’t even coming?” and start assembling the market space, changing into a Peace Corps festival.  We have posters illustrating the history of Peace Corps, current and past projects going on across Madagascar, the Peace Corps goals.  A huge poster was set up with pictures of volunteers and their counterparts.  Apart from that, I had put together posters with information about all of the different sectors that we pasted up (with some difficulty) along the market’s walls.  We start up the music, pull out the red ribbons, and give out lottery tickets.

Of course, a festival with informational booths is not something people from the bush of Madagascar are used to.  People awkwardly stand outside the market looking in on the funny-looking white people.  I walked up to them and explained that if they get over their fear of the foreigners they could win prizes and ribbons, oh my! 

Eventually they do, and shyly they glimpse at the decorations up on the wall.  We try to get them excited, teach them the songs made up about using condoms, protecting yourself, abstinence; all those silly things that they don’t want to know about.  After a little while, I am again reminded that some people need to start walking towards their far-away villages so we start the show. 

It goes fine.  I start MCing and pull the women’s group up.  They do an adorable dance and song number that talks about working with Peace Corps and Americans.  The president of the town comes up to do a speech that makes him seem much more endearing than earlier.  Then we get to it!  I do my speech about the wonders of Peace Corps (which, despite the cynical tone of this blog post, I solidly believe in).  We do our skits, imposing the late volunteers to try to fake knowing the lines.  We sing songs, which luckily I had taught to the middle-school girls so they fill in the enthusiasm.  Games and speeches are gone through and if nothing else I think that the town saw a good side of Peace Corps volunteers.  I even heard some people asking for condoms.

The event ends after PSI shows a movie on their Cinemobile.  It’s a 40-minute film about “maro maso” (many eyes, an expression that means being interested in lots of women at once).  The town seems to really enjoy it, and the volunteers go off to dinner and for some celebratory beers feeling accomplished.

The next morning we are to bike to another town to do the whole thing again.  It is about a 30 km bike ride and mostly downhill, so we figure we will get it done within 2 hours.  But of course, after the first ten km we notice that a third of the group have fallen far behind.  So we stop and take a breather to wait.  Half an hour later, we see James running alongside his bike, Lily and Jonathan biking behind him.  Apparently he got a flat before he even got past my village’s road.  

I send most of the group off, staying behind to help James find someone to fix the wheel.  It only sets us back 45 minutes and we head off after them, booking it to Vanessa’s village.  

The rest of the day goes fine, the event goes pretty well and the villager’s seem to respond to it.  Happy to be finished, we conga-line out of the festival.  It is a beautiful evening, and Vanessa’s site is a beautiful village.  Right on the beach in a small fishing village.  We decide to go for a sunset walk and glimpse the sunset.  It’s beautiful, and as I’m sitting curled up with Lily and Nicki I have one of those great Peace Corps moments and realize that this is something most people don’t experience.  And that I soon will not.

We walk back and it is already dark outside.  About half a k away from Vanessa’s hut I take a step that I thought would be sand, but turned out to be a sharp rock.  I tumble and fall face-first onto it’s brother rock.  My face fills with blood from the cuts surrounding my left eye, begins to swell up and I am led back to Vanassa’s hut where the health volunteers who smartly brought all of bandages and cleaning equipment wipe me down.  

And here I am three days later, finally back in my village, walking around with a big fat shiner and being gawked at by my community members.  The best line I’ve heard so far is “wow, injuries show much better on white people than on us”.  

(Disclaimer: The festival went great.  Both communities got excited about Peace Corps and perhaps even about safe sex…though that I’m not sure how to tell.  It was the biggest project I have put together and have had to see through the whole way, and I feel pretty good about how it went and how well it was received.  But seriously…why does Peace Corps have to be so hard?).