Life in the Peace Corps community relentlessly puts PCVs in interesting social situations. One that always amuses me is that of location-relations.  When settling into our new PC ways of life, volunteers quickly realize that it does not matter that during your three months of pre-service training your best friend was so-and-so, because now that you’re all installing into your villages, so-and-so lives 15 hours away from you via an impressively shitty vehicle and can communicate only through texting due to his/her spotty resseau (AfriFrench for cell service).  See those two people you normally would have never spoken to and maybe even avoided these past few months?  They’re now your family, as they are your site neighbors. Better find a way to be friends, because if you’re ever too sick to move or having some sort of mental meltdown, they’re your most accessible form of familiar support. Like it or not… well, you’d better learn to like it.

Kelly and her puppy Kindi during one of her stops by Fode Bayo

Enter the formation of odd-couples the country over. Take me for example. My neighbors? The one who lives 5k away, Kelly – she and I are not people who would normally gravitate towards each other. In social settings Kelly and I are not the same flavor of crazy, and since in PC you almost always only meet other volunteers in social settings, I feel as if Kelly and I would never have crossed paths, (we’ve discussed this, she agrees). Now, as Kelly and my site-mate relations have been forced upon us for over a year, I love her. Kelly is imperative to my happiness in Team Dabo land (“Team Dabo” is what we’ve come to call the villages that exist around my road-town as their social center). Now, when I don’t see or talk to Kelly for about a week, I start to get ancy. What is she doing? What if something new happened in her life that I don’t know about? She didn’t tell me her host moms’ funny comment of the day today! On top of that, I have yet to tell Kelly of my latest PC middle school romance account! Cue texting frenzy. The first time I visited Kelly in her village, I was back en route to the FB in twenty minutes. Now when we pop by each other’s sites “just to say hi,” visits rarely end within a two-hour time frame. Her resseau is as crummy as mine – I foresee separation anxiety when I move to Dakar in May.

My other neighbor?  When I first met Dave, my initial reaction was, “Who the hell does this kid think he is?” I was immersed in a lovey-reunion with some stage-mates that I hadn’t seen in months and he bounded into our circle, loud and talking over conversation with something none of us cared about (I know this is rich coming from the queen of tact and quiet). Needless to say, Dave annoyed me. And he knew it too. “Amanda Wybolt hates me,” was a phrase that got back to me a few times as Dave told many of our mutual friends at the annual Health/Environmental Education Volunteer Summit. (Yes, PC social circles exist on a similar plane to those of 7th grade.)

I didn’t hate Dave. I was just uneasy about how to approach our situation. A situation that, normally in the “real world” (as we often refer to existence outside of PC land), I would have just avoided Davie due to initial social mis-blend. But as the PC powers at be decided that we would be friends, we bumbled through our first few months together. It was the whole, he-knew-that-I-knew and I-knew-that-he-knew-that-I-knew but we’re both going to avoid it altogether type situation. So, we existed with a cloak of cordiality around us, while I was always half on the lookout for a good moment to have a “talk” with him about “us.” (Does this feel like high school to you yet?)

Fact of the matter was that Dave, love him or not, was part of my PC family, and I knew after the few site emergencies I’d had before Dave’s arrival, how important it was to keep your volunteer-family relationships working well.

As time moved on in the PC world, ill and awkward feelings between Dave and I dissipated. Short of the long is that Dave has also become an integral and enjoyable part of my PC life. He’s my road-town rock. Luumo (weekly traveling market near my road town) afternoons now pass enjoyably under the 121 degree sun as Dave and I chatter about books, the news, work, and of course PC social circles and snafus. (It’s almost impossible when volunteers are together to not talk about other volunteers. I mean, there are only 200 of us in country. Village stories do eventually all sound the same.) Dave and I never ended up having the “talk,” (indeed if Dave ever reads this it’ll be the most forward and public reference to our awkwardness we’ve ever exchanged… er, “Hi Dave!”), but now I really don’t think we need to. Truth be told, I could have gotten on through my two years without a friend in my road town, likewise Dave most definitely does not need me to function well in his PC life, but there is something that we add to each other’s time here, and I am genuinely happy to have Dave’s company and support in my PC life.

Where is this all coming from? In its initial draft-stages, buzzing around in my mind while biking around Kolda, this blog post was actually supposed to be about the Kolda Donkey Rally, not Amanda’s reflections on the PC social circles. I’ll try to re-trace the path my thinking took, (WARNING: uncharted and chaotic territory).

The nights before I joined the donkey crew, I was receiving texts from Kelly (who was already participating in the Donkey Rally) containing wild and hilarious ideas that she and other volunteers had come up with for the Cinco de Mayo party we’re hosting in Kolda. (Veterans of my blog will be familiar with the fact that each region of Senegal traditionally hosts a party for volunteers country-wide, though Kolda has lacked its own fête until recently. We’ve agreed on Cinco de Mayo and I’m head of the committee to make it happen.) “Can Mike, Charlene and I be in charge of drinks?  We want to mix Fosters Clarks in baggies to have multi-colored beverages!” and “WE NEED A GIGANTIC TWISTER BOARD!!” were some messages I received. Amidst laughing (and agreeing with) the ideas, I grew increasingly eager to join the rally. Clearly, every night after trotting (or peddling) along in the hotass sun and talking to anyone they came upon about Moringa, the donkey ralliers spent the evenings unwinding in a clutter of laughter and random discussion until they all fell asleep. I was excited to take up with the crew.

I was excited to join not just because the Moringa Donkey Rally was a Kolda region-wide event and from a work perspective I wanted to attend; not just because the idea of riding donkeys over 100k with nine other toubabs was too much of a hilariously odd-ball idea for me to resist being a part of; I was excited to join because I genuinely enjoy the company of all the volunteers in Kolda and was excited to spend a few days with everyone.

Getting ready to join the crew this past Saturday, my anticipation got me thinking: How may other regions feel this way about each other? I’ve always loved Kolda because due to its location, we’re isolated from administrative support more than most regions in country and therefore rely on each other for everything. We always joke about how much Kolda is a family more so than any other region, but it’s true. In recognizing my enthusiasm to spend 72 sweaty, sleeping-on-the-ground, slightly dehydrated and heat-exhausted hours with the same nine volunteers, I felt lucky to be among such company.

Corny, corny, corny, I know give me a break I’m bound to get a bit reflective and mushy as my final six weeks in Kolda tick by. Everyone says one of the best and worst things about PC life is how much time we have to think. Agreed, but still – my warm-fuzzy hours of Kolda reflection have led me to be immeasurably thankful to have lived in Kolda, especially among the volunteers that I have for the past two years. No matter how amazing the FB is, without the good times I’ve had among the Kalabandits (what we call ourselves – we have shirts in addition to our Christmas card) I am well aware that I would not have made it through these past two years a quarter bit as sane as I have.

Curtiss, Geoff, Cara and Martin unwinding the last afternoon of the rally

It’s not just that the Kolda kids are fun either. They are, but it’s more than that. I’ll explain via a story. My first afternoon with the Donkey Rally, I helped (read: held visuals since the causeries was in Pulaar) with a causerie led by my friend Geoff. During the causerie, the doctor who works at the health post in my road town sat in on half of the talk and in the middle of it all, interrupted to hand out Plumpy Nut to all the attending mothers.  Now, Plumpy Nut is great – nutritious and fantastic for malnourished kids for sure, but being that the point of our Moringa causerie was to show people that one of the best tools for fighting malnutrition is in their very backyards in the form of the Moringa tree, the doctor handing out Plumpy Nut didn’t gel too well with the message of our causerie. The doctor passed out the Plumpy Nut while Geoff’s counterpart talked about the vitamins in Moringa and Geoff’s face darkened. “We’ll talk about Plumpy Nut later,” he mumbled to me during a visual-aid change.

After the causerie, while all ten of the attending volunteers for the Dabo leg of the rally sat around chatting, Geoff discussed the negative aspects surrounding Plumpy Nut and its distribution. Listening to Geoff spew was one of the many moments over my two years in country that I found myself amused and impressed by my PCV company. As fatigued, sun-burned and hungry Geoff was, his arguments were well sorted enough to be sent back to UNICEF before they planned the logistics for their next Plumpy Nut distribution.

I don’t mean to come across sounding so surprised that my PCV company is clever. I didn’t assume that the PCVs I would come in contact with during my time here would be dumb. I would be lying though, if I were to say that I didn’t assume there would be a lot of the crunchy hippie PC stereotypes from the 60s and 70s mulling about. I can now tell you that while I have met a few of those, most of the PCVs I’ve become very fond of here are more on the critical, sharp, up-to-date, brilliant, creative side of the spectrum. They’re smart and resourceful. And they’ve left their two years here to do incredible things such as work for the ICRC, attend prestigious international programs at universities in Geneva and New Zealand, at Carnegie Mellon, Columbia and Yale. They’ve invented sustainable technologies used by volunteers the country-over. And amidst piles of Senegalese burgers stuffed with friend and bottles of Flag (the local brew), they’ve embarked on debates ranging from not just development but also international politics, policy-making, human rights, and philosophy.

So to bring it back, Kolda volunteers are not just fun. Peace Corps volunteers are not just fun. They’re smart. As I meet PCVs around Senegal (as small as our PC social world is, I still feel like I am always meeting new PCVs), I’m continuously impressed as some of  their intelligence and clarity of view pierces through their crazy personalities and Senegalese-grown quirks. Being in the company of people like this makes me excited to see the organizations and initiatives that they will one day run. Hokey as it may sound, they really are people who will change the world.

How does this all relate back to the Donkey Rally? Well, the Donkey Rally, regardless of whether it was the best malnutrition intervention we’ve ever come up with or not, is a perfect example of a crazy idea that grew into a creative way to get people to focus on a big problem in Kolda.

It is an example of one of the things that is invigorating about working with people in the PC community. While most jobs pride their employees on how much they can improve the status-quo, here, imagination is embraced and manipulated into legitimate development interventions. Ingenuity is the name of the game, and it’s a game that’s re-carving levels of wellness on both teams.

Sargent Shriver on the cover of TIME in 1963

I’m currently sifting through Sargent Shriver’s biography. Not to (again) get cliché, but it’s a really inspiring read.  Shriver was a tornado of creativity and a fascinating leader. As I read about him, it became clear how much his geniusly chaotic methods of problem solving laid the framwork for how the Peace Corps would operate. Better yet, they’re still alive in the ways the organization runs today. Similarly striking is how much Shriver’s methods are embodied in many of the PCVs I’ve met (notably though unbeknownst to most of them). To illustrate directly from the book: “the [Peace Corps] under Shriver’s direction never lost the anything-is-possible creative anarchy – a mixture of idealism, naiveté, and brilliance that had characterized it from the beginning. The early Peace Corps didn’t cut red tape so much as shred it.” (Sarge, Stossel, p 211) Reading that sentence was a compelling moment for me, as it is a pretty similar description of most successful PCVs I know.

What I noticed in reading about Shriver and the founding seeds of the PC is what I love recognizing in the PCV community. I honestly didn’t think when I entered the PC that I would come out as one of the PC’s (what I always viewed as clichéd) spokes people/advocates, but I can’t help it. Some of the people I’ve had the opportunity and enjoyment to work with in this organize just stun and inspire the hell out of me.

When Chris started telling me about the malaria initiative he wanted me to extend to work with, the selling point (though he didn’t know it at the time) came days after his initial idea drop. What really got me interested about possibly spending a year on this project was when he told me I’d be handling PCV communications in the 25 target countries involved in the initiative. Immediately my attention was grabbed. Talking to PCVs in order to  gather their stories, their gripes, their ideas and creative chaos that kept them amused during the day, was the type of work I could immerse myself in immediately. Collecting and re-sharing these such thoughts throughout the PC community is an aspect of my extension position that is similar to what motivated to take over the PC Senegal’s newsletter about 15 months ago (besides enjoying playing with publisher). Often, when talking to vols in country about especially great ideas they had, I wanted to plaster them on the front page of our newsletter to scream: “Your PCV community is brilliant! Read this and take it 40 steps further and who knows what we’ll be able to do.” Now that is more or less one part of what I will be doing working with the malaria initiative, except that ideas will be exchanged over every PC country on the continent. !!! Are you excited too? Because the potential in such an exchange is what will be getting me out of bed every morning in Dakar come this May. That and the fact that they sell mandarins year-round on every other street corner.

And yet… though from a work perspective I am endlessly inspired by my peers and leaders here, I often find myself feeling something missing on a personal level. I’ve met people that I know I will keep in my life for as long as I can, but to make an obvious statement, it’s not the same. I’ve yet to meet anyone here that has struck a chord in the same key as the one in which my closest friends from home virtuoso. Back home, we were not only a family but also deeply tied to each other on a profoundly personal and emotional level.  I read once that you should be worried about your life-state if you can’t name at least five people who would be willing to give blood for you at a moment’s notice, and though there are some PCV friends I’d give blood for in a minute and I know vise versa, the first people that pop to my mind when considering that statement are from my “old life” (pre-PC era).

I realize that going through the turmoils and joys together that made up the past six years in Boston and Chicago inevitably created close relationships due to circumstance yaddayaddayadda, but I suppose what strikes me the most is that gut feeling of a glow you get when you know you’re with people who are your closest friends, and the deep absence of that in my life I’ve felt these past two years. I’ve met a few people in the PC community that I could see a likewise friendship forming, but as I displayed in the beginning of this novel-of-a-post, relationships here are very much limited to our location.  So, be there a few other people in country that I may have gotten close to or not, I never saw them enough to have those relationships really develop. Especially since PCV social environments do not lend much to creating those intimate personal relationships when there are always fifty other PCVs around. This is where I’m reminded of a saying common in the PC community: you’ll never feel so lonely while surrounded by so many people.

I realize that I’m in a small camp with this sentiment. Before I even came to country, PCVs I knew around the world told me that I would meet the best friends of my life and that the most incredible type of people that are in the PC. It’s true – PCVs are a striking specie of human being that I am grateful to live among, but when I heard them back in Boston, I remember the words resonating oddly with me. I spent my four years at university and in the city surrounded by some of the most inspiring and closest friends I’ve ever had – really, that I’ve ever had – and the thought that the 200 people I was about to immerse my life in were going to be “better” than any friend I’d previously made seemed bizarre to me. I assumed that most people who made statements like that had never had friends like I do in their pre-PCV lives; I’ve found this more or less to be true.

Looking at my past two years here and the year I’m about to embark on, part of me aches to go home to them, because wherever they are is very much where I understand my home to be. I cannot articulate this longing – how when I think of them too much my thoughts go numb and fuzzy and sounds seem to blend together. It’s that knot-in-the-stomach, weight-on-your-chest feelings.  How can I be away from such vital friendships for another year? Do I think that these types of friendships will grow in this next year? Part of me does, or wants to, but I don’t know. I recognize too that I’m a bit conservative when it comes to opening up in the ever-shifting social environment that is the Peace Corps. I guess the theme of this last stream of thought is just that, as inspired and awed I am of people here, I yearn for my loves from home so much that sometimes it’s hard to focus.

Still, in the spirit of being motivated and confident in my upcoming job, I’m steadily becoming more at peace with my decision to stay here another year. The student loans won’t get paid off any time soon but my job will not only be changing lives but also will set me up in a far more competitive career-plane than I’m currently in… right? Right. Year three? Le sigh… yes please.