Peace Corps

From 2000 through 2002, I served as a rural health Peace Corps Volunteer in Thiangaye, a village in northern Senegal (West Africa).

The Peace Corps has three goals, expressed on its website as:

(1) Helping the people of interested countries in meeting their needs for trained men and women.
(2) Helping promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served.
(3) Helping promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of all Americans.

First Goal
As a rural health PCV, my main "job" was primary health education, i.e. teaching villagers about preventive health. In particular, I trained three villagers (relais) who then carried out activities to teach the rest of the village about health issues. My major "professional" accomplishments as a PCV included:

Trainings of Trainers
In collaboration with other volunteers, I organized six trainings of our village relais, facilitated in Pulaar by our Ministry of Health counterparts. Topics included prenatal health, birth, family planning, diarrhea and hygiene, first aid, and vaccinations and infant care. After each training, I worked with my relais to prepare health talks (causeries), in which they taught other villagers what they had learned at the trainings.

"Sammba e Demmba" AIDS Mural Project
"Sammba e Demmba" is an AIDS story adapted to local society and culture, designed by earlier volunteers. After painting the murals, I trained my relais about AIDS, and they did 5 causeries in the village. I also organized (and performed in) a "Sammba e Demmba" play.

"Life Skills"
The Peace Corps' Life Skills Manual is a blueprint for educating youth about HIV/AIDS, STI's, peer pressure, communication skills, etc. I worked with other volunteers and Senegalese counterparts to create a district-wide Life Skills action plan. We organized and facilitated three seminars for teachers, as well as holding Life Skills activities/discussions with youth in four villages.

AIDS Education Tour
Along with the other PCV's in the region, I helped plan an AIDS education program spanning northern Senegal (the Fouta), consisting of a two-week seminar for our relais and a 10-village tour with health talks, theater, and concerts, all focusing on AIDS.

Vaccinations
With my relais, I helped vaccinate children against polio in 110 homes.

Secondary Projects

Second and Third Goals
For me - and, I think, for most of the villagers I interacted with - the most important part of my Peace Corps experience was the cultural exchange. I became immersed in these people's culture, in their village, in their life, and I hope they at least caught a glimpse of the world I came from. In Thiangaye I acquired a second family; I have a mother there, a father, and a large assortment of siblings. I received a Pulaar name - Aysata Kan - and an identity corresponding to it. I learned to speak Pulaar, and I developed a personality in that language. Most importantly, I developed incredibly close friendships with many, many people. Some of my best friends in the world are in that village, and I miss them every day.

The day I left my village, I wrote a long email to friends and family, which included the following:

...somehow we have the mentality all along that this is temporary, that we only have x many months left or y many weeks, and thinking that way somehow helps to get us through. But then it becomes a matter of days before I leave, and then I realize how wholely my whole self has been invested in being here for two years. When I left I didn't allow myself to understand why people were acting like I was going to be gone forever - I thought, it's just two years. But two years is a long time when you are becoming another person with another name living another life, and then suddenly that life is cut off. It is hard. It is harder to leave than to come, because when we came we assumed we would see our friends and relatives again, but now we are leaving we don't know if we will see these friends and relatives again. And it is scary to think how easy it is to lose touch, especially a continent away, so that after awhile it might be hard to remember what it felt like when those were my friends and family.

Both times that I went back to Senegal to do my fieldwork, I did manage to get back to Thiangaye (a three-day trip from my fieldwork site) for an all-too-brief visit. It was an indescribably wonderful experience: it felt, in fact, like I had really come home again.

You can see some photos of my time in the Peace Corps here.