Growing Pains

Nobody said it was easy.
No one ever said it would be this hard.

- Coldplay, "The Scientist"


To see things plainly, you have to cross a frontier.

- Salman Rushdie, "Imaginary Homelands"

Life is full of turning points and moments of staggering clarity. My Peace Corps experience is, conversely, often composed of the opposite: moments of frustrating half-comprehension, cross-cultural confusion, blunders, and disappointing or unpleasant revelations. Thus, those rare, lucid moments of self-perception and insight, the bittersweet fruits of an endless journey, are unparalleled in value and significance. I recently happened upon one of those experiences of self-realization that caused me to reevaluate my current frame of mind and approach to this nebulous, enigmatic undertaking that is Peace Corps in Burkina Faso.

I departed on my recent trip to Ghana eager, I'll go so far as to say desperate, to leave Burkina and its reality behind. Ghana offered the prospect of a refreshingly positive (read: more developed) environment free from my consistent and very personal encounters with poverty and all its appurtenances in Burkina. Beyond a much-needed break from reality and a few days on the beach, this trip held the significance of a reunion with one of my very best friends from high school.

In the weeks preceding the trip, I had undeniably reached a low point in service, as was predicted by the graph of volunteers' emotional flux that we'd been given during training (it resembles, quite literally, a rollercoaster). The year mark typically constitutes the down-slope of a low point, an anticlimax of the cross-cultural experience and, for many volunteers, THE low point of service insofar as its intensity and duration. I had thought myself atypical, successful in staving off the predicted case of mid-service blues, until I suddenly found myself quite discouraged, mired in homesickness and discontent. What better time for a vacation, you might suggest?

While the trip was certainly good overall, seeing my close friend was at once a wonderful and welcome relief and an unexpected burden. I found myself looking at myself through her eyes and coming up sorely and unexpectedly disappointed. My self-perception, or the self I had hoped that my friend would perceive was an "adventuring-embarking, Africa-exploring" me, but me in reality was an emotionally fatigued, conversationally challenged shadow of a happier self. This was compounded by the fact that my friend of over a decade is significant to me of so much that is good, in a very personal sense - of home and a full and fulfilling adolescence, of enthusiasm, drive, and dynamism, of some of my most formative experiences and endeavors and of many of the truest and best qualities and parts of myself. I was caught treading water by someone capable not only of recognizing it, but of unwittingly holding up a mirror in which my sorry image was reflected.

This all sounds pretty pitiful, but the experience succeeded in giving me the proverbial kick in the pants that I needed. I certainly lamented the fact, both during and after the trip, that I had been down and out and a bit of a stick-in-the-mud at times, but seeing my friend was probably more helpful than anything in prompting me to get back on track psychologically and emotionally, often not a small feat here in the wilds of West Africa. That said, this whole Peace Corps deal is pretty sweet and, now that I'm back in action, recharged and ready to go, I'm fully aware of just how truly sweet it is and, more than ever, I understand just how profoundly and positively this experience has affected me.

I spent a few days in Ouaga after getting back from Ghana and had lots of soul-searching conversations with PCV friends, questioning myself and this experience and whether I could really hack it for another year. I headed back to village with a bit of trepidation only to find that I was literally able to breath a sigh of relief when I stepped out of the bush taxi into my village. I was greeted with such enthusiasm by friends and colleagues and was overwhelmed with the feelings of comfort and familiarity that immediately washed over me. Diabo is home and these people are MY people. What a crazy, beautiful, unbelievable thing. I live in a West African village and its people have taken ownership over me. I am their child, albeit of a slightly lighter hue than most.

A group of women come up to me as I was walking down the road in village the other day. None of them spoke any French beyond a few greetings, but they conveyed their feelings to me via a series of gestures and some words in Zaore that I actually understand. After repeatedly pointing at me, then pointing at their breasts and making suckling noises I realized what the women were trying to tell me: "you are our daughter."

To understand just one life, you have to swallow the world.

- Salman Rushdie, "Midnight's Children"