Wednesday, March 11, 2009

I've got a toilet!

So this has been a big month. For those of you who have not heard about my adventures in January, I’ve written the blog post, but I’m probably not going to post it for a while, so send me an email if you’re really curious. Suffice it to say that Peace Corps admin got a little irritated at me.

I tried to worm my way back into their good graces, because I wanted to get a site change. The projects that I posted about a few months ago kind of dried up. The computer classes became monotonous and largely pointless, as most of the students I was trying to teach couldn’t read. The drama club never really happened because the majority of students going to Njaba Kunda School don’t actually live in Njaba Kunda, but in one of the surrounding villages. Many of them walk for an hour or two to get home every night. It doesn’t matter how motivated a kid might be, he’s not going to walk two hours home and two hours back in the evening for rehearsal. The club had a lot of interest in the beginning, but after three meetings where four kids showed up (then three, then one), I had to admit defeat.

There’s a nearby town, Kerewan, where I’ve been doing a lot of interesting work. It’s the seat of the regional council, and it’s got a radio station, multiple NGOs, businesses, and schools with drama clubs already founded. It got a little ridiculous, to the point where I was spending two or three nights a week there, sleeping on my friend’s bamboo couch.

I had a simple solution. The amount of work I did in a week in Njaba Kunda I could probably accomplish in a day. Kerewan is about an hour’s bike ride away, so why not just shift over, living in Kerewan and spending a day or two every week in Njaba Kunda? I would be able to accomplish much more, working with the regional council, helping draft policies that affect thousands of people. The radio station reaches a good chunk of the country, and everyone listens to the radio, pretty much all the time. You can’t find a better medium for public messages. There’s a resource center with a meeting space and computers that the American Embassy donated, just sitting there without someone to run it. There are professionals who want computer training, who will understand the concepts and apply them in their jobs. And the drama club is well run and energetic, and just needed someone with some experience with larger productions to help them start performances for the public. And I would still get just as much done in Njaba Kunda.

That was the pitch I sold to Peace Corps admin. They were understandably hesitant. They don’t like moving people from their sights when they’ve been there less than a year, unless there’s a security risk, because they feel volunteers should give their sights a real chance. Plus, like I said, they were less than pleased with me at the time.

So we wrangled and argued for a while, until I had to leave for WAIST. WAIST is the West African Invitational Softball Tournament. It’s a meeting of groups from all over West Africa, mostly Peace Corps but also some embassies, to play softball and socialize in Dakar, the capital of Senegal.

I had gotten really sick the weekend before, vomiting and whatnot, and I hadn’t been able to eat for a few days, so I lost about five pounds. If you saw me these days, you would know I can’t really afford to lose five pounds. So when I went to Dakar I went crazy. Hamburgers, hot dogs, beer, Indian food, pastries, beer, steak, chocolate mousse, and lots of beer. At one point during a game I had to put down my can to catch the ball, which was a great sacrifice. I gained back my five pounds and then some.

Through a weird series of circumstances, I ended up being captain of Peace Corps Gambia’s C-team, the third-stringers, the ones that, when asked if they wanted to play, said only if they were allowed to drink on the field. Many of them had never played softball or even baseball in their lives. We didn’t win a single game, which was fine. No one expected to. More than once we walked the other team’s entire batting line up straight through. It was strange being captain, though, because I felt a sense of responsibility, like even if we weren’t going to win we could not completely embarrass ourselves. It made me oddly tense, which was the exact opposite of the point. Eventually I just said hell with it and drank more beer.

I actually got a lot done on that trip. I met a woman who worked at the Embassy and we started talking about West Africa and development. She had some fascinating stories to tell about the foreign service, and she seemed really interested in some of my ideas about economics and outsourcing in developing countries. I told about her some of the projects I was working on, trying to get some advice, and she gave me her card and told me to email her and we could follow up. It was only as I was walking away that I looked closely at the card. She was the American ambassador to Senegal.

So that was embarrassing, but great. I’m sure she’ll be a great contact. I also attended an all-volunteer meeting for Senegalese volunteers. They had a number of interesting round-table discussions, including one about something called a Regional Strategy Plan. I can say without exaggeration that that discussion changed my entire Peace Corps service.

It’s a little too complicated to fully get into, but a Regional Strategy Plan is a way of creating a framework for the projects of all the PCVs in a region by finding common goals, quantifying them, and coordinating efforts among volunteers to accomplish them. Basically it gives PCVs some extra credibility and authority, making their work part of a larger effort rather than just an individual’s good idea. It’s an amazing plan, and I walked out of the meeting knowing how I was going to make my mark in the Peace Corps.

Back in Gambia, fired up with my idea, I started networking and making meetings, getting all the volunteers in my region of the Gambia together to start making plans. We actually had our first regional meeting last weekend, and it went well. If we can pull this off, it will be a model for all the other regions of the Gambia, and it will change the way we do our services.

In the midst of all this passion and bustle, admin told me I could move to Kerewan. Like a kid with a new toy, I had shifted all my energy to this new project, so when I got the news I saw it more as an inconvenience than anything.

Until I saw the toilet.

You don’t understand. You can’t. Nothing can communicate to you the almost religious awe with which I beheld this porcelain beauty on first site. In Africa, you spend a lot of time on certain unpleasant activities, and when your only outlet is a whole in the ground, it gets old fast. Now I can just sit. Maybe read. Rest. Be secure on my throne, lord of my domain.

If I’m going to be perfectly honest, it’s actually kind of a pain, because I only get water at random hours of the day. It’s even less constant than the power. But when it’s working, man. Watch out. After I’m done, I wash my hands. In a sink. The luxury is overwhelming.