Real fast I just want to spend a second apologizing for my lack of updating. I’m not going to bother making up an excuse, although if I did it would be along the lines of “it’s too hot! I’m too not-quite that busy! I was busy reading every silly novel I could get my hands on!” In the spirit of being a good blogger, I’ll give you an actual update on my life this time, instead about waxing poetic about Big Thoughts. (Because this blog is more me yammering on about whatever “poignant” thoughts are rattling inside of my head than any kind of coherent or useful rendering of my life here, this will probably be far more useful and informative than most of my posts. You’re welcome!)
I just got back from Parakou a few days ago. I came bearing the way-too-much stuff I’m usually dragging around this country, as well as a giant sack overflowing with soccer balls. Soccer balls?! Yes! I have started a girls soccer team/club. It’s equal parts let’s gather weekly and talk about girl-type problems and why boys are bad and why you should study and grow up to be the beautiful, intelligent, and successful women you absolutely can be, with some soccer thrown in. It, like almost any other volunteer-driven activity, is kind of a mess, with me bumbling around in my french with these big ideas and then being met by a sea of wide-eyed girls staring back at me uncomprehendingly while they wait for their teacher to translate my french into french. But, as every country in the world that is not America knows, soccer speaks a universal language and it doesn’t matter that half of the girls don’t speak french and that my Fulani is limited to “Good morning, this tastes good.” Everyone knows what to do with a soccer ball. I have an infinity of wishes and hopes for these girls and this club, and if a fraction of them come to any kind of fruition than I will be very happy and proud.
I think I’ve alluded to my latrine project, in which we will construct 18 self-composting latrines all around the village, giving every single person access to a latrine (as opposed to pooping out in the open, which I’m sure you can spend way too long thinking about why that is a bad and terrible thing). Other the last few months they have slowly been going up, bricks made, doors added, the mason walking around town and heckling me for running about and always being on the way to somewhere else. If you are surprised that this major project, that I have barely mentioned, is already on the eve of completion, then you know exactly how I feel. These latrines have completely snuck up in slow-motion at me, and though I know in my head that that is ridiculous, that I am there to watch them grow from sacks of concrete into corporal buildings, well… I guess there’s a metaphor for my entire Peace Corps service hidden somewhere in there. You watch every minute ticking by so slowly, then you look back and see how far this road stretches and the math just doesn’t add up. I guess, in the latrine project’s case, my part hasn’t really started. I’m not an engineer, I can’t design a composting latrine, but my engineer friend can! I’m not an accountant, I can’t pull together a budget managing many many thousands of dollars, but my accountant friend can! (Actually I can, and did a little bit. But I digress.) I’m not a mason, I can’t build a structure out of nothing, but my mason friend can! But now my cue is quickly approaching, and here I find myself standing on the wings preparing for my part in this community drama: talking about poop! I am on the precipice of having many, many, many conversations about poop. Shit. Caca. Feces. Defecation. My mother is incredibly proud. I can joke but it’s actually pretty cool that my village wants to be the cleanest, prettiest, healthiest village ever, and that the road to that goal is paved with the absence of poop everywhere. I can teach, and lead, and help my village make and enact big awesome ideas, and will!
That’s the best definition of a Peace Corps volunteer I can give you: we’re not masons, we’re not engineers (actually, some of us are), but we are leaders and guides and friends and big-idea facilitators. Sometimes we have the ideas, and sometimes we take the ideas of others and make some calls and find some money and hire some people who do know what they are doing, and maybe it sticks. I know a lot of things about how to be healthy and civilized, some from very selfish places, but if they fall out of my pocket and mean something to someone else, then that’s not nothing. I don’t hold any illusions that I carry a massive weight on my shoulders, but I do hope that I can pass along these little nuggets that create the kinds of small changes that snowball into something bigger and better. Maybe that’s not how it will actually turn out in the long run, and this whole development thing is actually the mess people say it is, this white guilt change-the-world save the babies thing that people say. Maybe it’s just a strange social experiment with no measurable results. But maybe I will have planted these small seeds that grow into something, and continue to grow after I’m gone. And that’s not such a bad thing to hope for, I think.
I have other things going on too, of course. Soon you’ll be hearing from me about Camp Glow, which I am directing this year. We’re working on the grant and getting more and more excited about it, and I’m sure I’ll come knocking on your email and Facebook doors, asking for money. I find myself getting more busy as the time grows shorter, which absolutely anyone could have anticipated but still manages to surprise me. I’m sure the next time I find myself wandering on here I’ll tell you all about the bike tour we have planned, in which I and a handful of volunteers and very enthusiastic Beninese partners bike a not insignificant distance, leading trainings in villages along the way. Sierra, my close mate and co-conspirator on this project, and I are competing for the position of Not The Most Pathetic Biker, but as we have waited for the hottest part of the year I think it will be a close call. We keep each other going by day-dreaming about what spectacular physical specimens we’ll be by the end of it. (It’s only four days, mind you, but let us have this one.)
And, if you guys would be so kind, please send happy thoughts my way. My darling and dearest little gentlecat has been missing. I fear he has been eaten, which unfortunately is not a joke. (I say it jokingly in order to keep myself from actually believing it because, really, it IS ridiculous.) It’s only been a few days, and I hope that when I go home this afternoon that he will come meowing out with a good story, but like any good catmom, I worry.
