The times, they are a Changin'

These are some of my neighbor kids in my reading group. When I took this picture I told them to smile like they were laughing, so they all started to laugh like crazy... hence the great facial expressions! I love these kids.

It’s that time of year again! School is finally over here, the rains finally started, all the school kids have gone back to their villages and everyone has gone to the fields. Bent over with a 13th century style farming tool, people turn over the moist soil by hand until they make neat rows, rows that turn into swimming troughs and drinking holes for ducks and cows when it rains. After the soil is arranged they take a mango branch and, hole by hole, poke it into the ground and drop a seed in. This goes on and on till all of their land is planted, all of their father’s land is planted, all of their brothers lands are planted, and so on.

Now’s also the time when the water tables rise back up. Soon water will be above the low parts of most roads, making transportation all the messier. All this standing water also means that it’s mosquito season again, which means people will start getting even more sick from malaria or colds, which they’ll conveniently call malaria anyway. The only good things that the rain brings are more food and colder weather. Whip out those winter coats everyone, it’s 85*F outside!! …and they do. They actually do catch cold here if it’s colder than about 85*. I’ll admit, I even put on a coat!

Unfortunately, it’s also time to say goodbye to people. My service is quickly coming to an end, and I’ll actually leave Boukombé around August 15th. Most of my work is wrapped up or will be easily right before I leave. My latest business club ended a few months ago without as much success as the year before. My reading club with all of my neighborhood kids will free up the kids’ Saturday mornings once I’m gone. My good friends in town will go on with their lives and probably talk about me and how nice I was, how fat I was (remember, that’s a compliment here. It means you’re a big person basically.), how my parents came, how I liked to work with kids and education, and how I used to always bake breads and cakes and cookies and share them with everyone. I hope that’s what they’ll remember. I don’t think anybody here thinks badly of me, but if there are some then those people might talk about how I bargain like an African, how they might think I traveled too much, how I refused to marry an African, or how I never really quite mastered Ditammari (the local language).

You might want to ask if I think I’ve been a successful volunteer. My answer would definitely be a yes. I really do believe so. After all, I’ve achieved exactly what I came here to do. In leaving home, I knew I wanted to grow along with a community and help them grow without just giving handouts. I helped kids by mentoring them and teaching them basic business practices. I even took a group of 15 on a business trip and introduced them to successful people who weren’t always well educated and some who were even successful even though they are handicapped. I helped a women’s group start a micro-credit union amongst themselves, and by the end some women could show me their increased savings balances in their account books because of their loan. I’ve helped kids learn English, and I’ve helped them get interested in reading with my Reading Club. I’ve also helped private small business owners make personal investment plans, which are helping them save the money to improve their businesses and their lives. I lived with a host family for over 2 months, and there I learned about life in the house of a Muslim family, and what it must be like to have 20 to 30 kids in a household all the time. I’ve also taught people about my culture, and I’ve learned an incredibly lot from them. I’ve also grown up while being here. I’ve learned patience, self-reliance, confidence, perseverance, what it’s like to be a minority, humiliation, and for a time I even experienced being poor first hand.

I’m truly going to miss my friends here. Most of all I’m going to miss Mama who has adopted me as her own and who I will never forget. I’m going to also miss my neighbor kids. They have always made me laugh, even on my darkest and most difficult days here. I’m going to miss Zena (a nickname), an intelligent female student of mine that has become a good friend and a huge help to me. I’ll never forget my work partner Paulin, who has always been there for me. I’ll never forget all of our discussions and all of the help he has so willingly given me. I’ll really miss Therese, who has always been a great friend and defended me till the end against the racism of others. I’ll miss my tailor lady, Fassi, who has always been a good friend and a willing student when it came to learning western-style clothing. If only you all could see some of the things we’ve produced! I would love to name off everyone I’ll never forget, all the women, all the artisans, all the people at the mayors office, all the people at Zongo (where the Muslim women sell things)… there’s just not enough time or space, but I’ll never forget any of them.

What next? I’m not quite sure. I would like to learn more languages, especially Chinese and/or Spanish, and I’m thinking I would like to continue to work abroad to some extent. It’s not like I have the fear of going home that so many volunteers develop, but it’s more that I feel like I have so much to learn about the world, and there’s so much I want to experience! I have an offer for grad school in China, but it’s starting to look unlikely that I will take it. I’ll probably take the GMAT again once I get home and apply to better schools. Right now it seems more and more likely that I’ll be putting off grad school for work though.

I’m really excited about my upcoming Close of Service trip!!! A friend, conveniently also named Sara, and I are going to make a tour of West Africa! She is going to meet up with me a week after I COS (Close of Service), but we’ll be going through Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo, and then back to good ol’ Benin where we’ll fly to Paris together and hang out for a few weeks. Then, to top it all off, I’ll meet my parents in Italy in mid October for a family vacation! I should be touching down on that sweet American soil no later than mid October! Oh that beautiful land of grocery stores, fast food and coffee shops… and broccoli, cheese, spinach, tomatoes… I’ll be seeing you soon!!! Is it too obvious that I can’t think about anything but food? That must be the malnutrition speaking.

Well, I’ll probably only write once or twice more before my service is over. It’s crazy to imagine that I won’t be writing about Boukombé and Peace Corps anymore. Anyway, I hope you all are doing well, and I look forward to seeing you all in just a few months. Isn’t it crazy how time flies???

Sarah



This is me with my new haircut. It's now the shortest it has ever been.