site site site

So my site was announced today, and as it turns out, I will not have running water or a flush toilet, and electricity is questionable. I’ll be in a small village on the Kovango River that separates Angola from Namibia, teaching grades 8-10.




There will be hippos. And I will have my own place, so when y’all visit, I can accommodate you!!



One thing that many people don’t realize is that the Peace Corps is everywhere, and volunteers are engaged in many different aspects of education, and community and economical development. That means that yes, many PC volunteers end up in large towns, urban areas, and now in Nam, business sectors.



But alas, I will not be one of those volunteers. In fact, I will be fulfilling almost every stereotype of the PC volunteer in Africa. At the same time, I feel as if I have already somewhat started in that role; even though my accomodations are beyond exceptional for training, many of us are bucket bathing, we do laundry outside, can’t go out past dark, deal with racism, etc. But experiencing it and feeling so natural and perhaps even more natural than I did in my role in the States continues to remind me of the whole Other ordeal. Now that I no longer can idealize Africa to be what I thought it should be, for Nam to look like what I would expect southern Africa to look like, I am no longer able to pretend that Africa is some far-off land of suffering that needs the salvation of westerners. In fact, I feel quite the opposite.



Africans welcome our skills, our willingness to provide help. They do not consistently show praise of humanitarianism, and they don’t understand volunteerism persay, but every time you greet in Afrikaans or Rukwangali, even when a trainer greets me on the street and we are overheard by a vendor, the appreciation of integrating into the culture is on their faces. It is this kind of relieving feeling that, if even I am to make no concrete and sustainable impact during service, simply by being a white person showing up and taking interest, I have already made an impact. With the effects of apartheid everywhere, literally everywhere, bridging the gaps of racism even for a minute—even for one smile, is little victory enough to feel like I have a reason to be here. Not to mention, the people I have met are awesome, and fatcakes are both delicious and ridiculously easy to make.