An End, A Middle, and a Beginning

It’s that heavy sigh when the back cover falls shut on the seventh book of Harry Potter, when the credits roll after Lord of the Rings. At the end of a book or movie where I feel particularly connected to or interested in the characters, I always kind of miss them. Among other feelings—satisfaction or dissatisfaction with plot resolutions, appreciation for a well-constructed story, etc—I always feel a little sad. My connection with these characters is over. Everything to happen has happened. It is all done. I could go back and read it or watch it again, but I already know the ending. No amount of review will change the way events unfolded. The Titanic always sinks. The Ring is always destroyed. One of the Weasley twins always dies. Whether I’m finished or not, the story is complete. I think what strikes me most is the fact that no more can be added or amended. I won’t know any more about the lives of the Potters and Weasleys and I don’t get a privileged view of the reconstruction of Middle Earth and the age of men.

And these aren’t even real people. They’re characters that someone has depicted for me. They’re flatter and less interactive than real people. They don’t exist in all the in-between and before and after moments. So then, how much more do I grieve the end of 2 years in Coumba Diouma! Everything to happen has happened. It is all done. No amount of review will change the way events unfolded, although my interpretation of what was truly going on will change. And the way I relate to events and actions and interactions will change. Because I was there. I was a part of the story and the “story” is a part of me and I still exist. So do the people I’ve shared my life with here. So this story is incomplete. BUT, as far as my service to Coumba Diouma and my 2 years as a volunteer in that village, no more can be added or amended. That part has ended. And so I grieve.

After leaving the village I took time off. I went to Mali with Camille and Bethany, and partly with Amber and Emily and Kelly, too. I came back to Senegal and wrote my COS report, which documented all the work I did so that my replacement would be somewhat oriented to my village and at least know what happened before she got there. Then I traveled to “the motherland” and Sierra Leone with Mary, Roxy, and Andy. It was nice to see different parts of West Africa and to be able to appreciate how Senegal is different from its neighbors (even though this included the disappointing realization that Senegal scores lower on the street food scale than ALL the others). I had fun and interesting and unique experiences that merit more than a paragraph in a blog can afford. They’re much better told in person. All in all, it was a wonderful vacation, not least because it was the first time in 2 years that I have been free of any project or unfinished obligation weighing on my mind. It was nice to leave the village and that part of my service finished, knowing that I had work to look forward to, but that hadn’t started yet and therefore had no hold on me. It was a good middle.

Today, I am writing my blog from the World Vision office, where I have been working for 3 weeks on the Developpement Holistique des Filles (DHF) project (Holistic Girls’ Development). It is a World Vision project that partners with the Grandmother Project (another NGO) to “strengthen the capacity of local communities to promote the revival of positive cultural values and practices that contribute to the optimal physical, moral, spiritual, social and intellectual development of girl children and to advocate the abandonment of female genital mutilation (FGM) and other harmful practices.” Basically it is a project that engages communities in various dialogues (through forums, discussion groups, school activities, etc) towards the end that they are capable of identifying their own needs and taking actions that will provide the best environment for the development of their children. Not even a month in and I’m already swimming in NGO-speak. Let me try again. Basically, it’s a project that empowers people to find their own solutions to their problems, the main “problem” here being how best to raise their kids.

I am in Velingara and getting ready to move into my new home for the next 6 months. I’ll be living with a family near the office. It was very hard to find housing. I had hoped that I would be able to recruit some of my work partners to help me find something, but the options failed to pan-out like I thought they would. Lacking classifieds and craig’s list, I resorted to biking around town, looking at potential places (ie places with roof-top access) and awkwardly introducing myself to the family and asking if they weren’t possibly looking for someone to rent 2 rooms in the house. Everyone said this is the best time of year to look for housing because the school year finished last Wednesday and all the teachers will be leaving to go to their hometowns. The only problem is most available housing is either one room (not as much space as I want) or 4 (way too much). Almost all the apartments in town have 3 bedrooms, one living room, one or 2 bathrooms, kitchen space (which inevitably looks more like a walk-in closet), and sometimes have access to a roof. It is SUPER hot here, as we’ve well established, and so I was looking for a shared apartment (I wanted 2 rooms, one for me and one to use as a base for Vel volunteers, to encourage regional cooperation and coordination) with access to a roof where I could sleep during hot non-rainy evenings. Pulaar family was bonus, but any family would do. Also I wanted a finished apt--the one I’m temporarily squatting in is not quite finished. There were other requests—private “sitter” toilet, furnishings, a sink—that were desirable, but not crucial. Apparently, what I thought was not a very demanding list of requirements was, in fact, just different enough from normal to prove extremely challenging.

What ended up happening was this: another volunteer from a new site has extended family in town. They have all the requirements, except they have only one room. But they know a guy who can help. We called Ba, the vol’s counterpart, who is a teacher that lives in Velingara when he’s not in the village. I talked with him briefly in broken frulaar (French/pulaar) on the phone for about 45 seconds. He said he’d look. All my other options fell through, or in one single case, were FABULOUS except for being too much space for one person and too expensive. Also a little lonely. A few days later, I called back. He was in Dakar. A week later, I called back again. He’d take me to see some options. We saw one, but it was next to a plant. And a dump. And an abandoned shop. And had no courtyard, windows, or roof access. We went to another, but there was a problem with getting to see it too, missing key or something. But the guy (a friend of Ba) knew someone who had 2 rooms and might be willing to rent. We could go see it after dinner. We ate, we watched some soccer, we walked to the other house. Nice big rooms, nice big windows, shared shower and (sitter!) toilet. Huge yard where I could do a garden, instead of the rooftop garden I’d pictured. A pulaar family… fulakunda, the kind of pulaar most of my work is in now, that is different enough from pulafuuta that I have a hard time understanding a lot of what happens at work meetings. Sounds good, but I was waiting on one more that might turn out to be exactly what I wanted. Ok, so honestly I was holding out for the roof access. We can’t see it today but maybe tomorrow. He’s not in today but maybe tomorrow. He’s busy today but definitely, definitely tomorrow. I called Ba again. I’ll take it. I think it’ll be perfect. Tomorrow we paint and then I’ll go out of town for the weekend and when I come back it’ll be beautiful and ready for me to move in and feel like I’m alive! I am dying to stop living out of a suitcase and settle in. There were actually 2 other options that had the main requirements, but both meant sharing an apartment with a single man, and I don’t think that’s what I want or very appropriate. So, to sum up: a friend of a friend of a coworker’s coworker is going to be my new host family/landlord. And he’s got 2 daughters, a wife, and a sister. Sounds like a good time.

About the work, I’m very excited about what the project does. It always takes a little time to figure out where and how you fit into a new work team, especially one so small (we’re 5) where your role isn’t well defined before-hand because it’s new, and you’re working in 2 languages where you are fairly comfortable (and mostly comprehensible) at best, and a blabbering idiot at worst. But there are unexpected parts of the work like weekly English conversation groups with WV staff, and helping develop and refine computer skills, that make me feel extremely gifted and just exploding with valuable skills. There are other parts of the job, like interviewing villagers and figuring out how to appropriately document and profile the project’s effects and tangible results, that make me feel like I’ve got a lot to learn. But maybe the most exciting part (on the grand-scale) is that I really like what we do. And I could see myself working with this kind of project for a long time. And that is the first time maybe ever that I’ve felt like I might have a real career path ahead of me. But it is very much the beginning.

So, there we have it: all the components of a good story, mixed up, to make it more interesting: An end, a middle, and a beginning.