6/1/2010
“Any transition serious enough to alter your definition of self will require not just small adjustments in your way of living and thinking, but a full-on metamorphosis.” Martha Beck.
Down another bumpy road, an old man fiddles with his car radio as he tells me about the one that got away. “South Africans- they stay for no one. I guess I wasn’t good enough, wasn’t worth it. But man. SHE was the ONE.” The radio calls out, “Young men, come and work for your King! Be a soldier!” Swaziland’s occupations: teacher, nurse, soldier.
He puts his hands back on the steering wheel and begins the series of usual questions. A free ride ALL the way to town, I’ll answer any question he asks. Why, where, when, and what are you doing here?
“For how long?” He repeats.
“One year and one more year to go.” I reply.
“How long?!”
“Two years.”
“Two years away from home?! Why, you’ll go back a stranger!” He laughs.
I politely laugh back and shift in my seat with discomfort at this realization.
“But did you REALLY know yourself before you came to Africa?” He asks.
It was almost a year ago, when I didn’t really know myself. It was almost a year ago when we came to Africa. I remember shaking hands with “Season 6”. Shaking the hands of those who had been here a year. The circle of introductions, “I’m Meredith. From Seattle.”
“Me too!” A girl from Season 6 exclaims. We exchange addresses. Two years ago, only a block away from each other. “Can you explain it to me?” She asks me.
“Explain what?”
“Home.” She says smiling.
At the time, my mind was fresh with scenery, smells, and color. But now, I have difficulty remembering what it was I told her. Now I have difficulty remembering home (Seattle or Indiana). But I remember what she said to me after I talked her through a tour of how “home” was when I left it. She said to me, “Thank you. I needed that.”
And it was almost a year ago when our APCD, Chad, handed us a piece of paper with the Peace Corps logo on top. “A letter,” He told us. “A letter to your future self. What do you want to tell yourself a year from now?” After we’re done writing, he collects our letters. “I’ll return them to you in one year.” I can no longer remember what one year ago Meredith wrote to me. I wish I could.
And now, a year into service, Season Six is starting to leave. In just a few days, the first eleven will take their journey back home. Back to the routine, the order, the color of the outside world….. HOME.
Myself, many from my group, and many from group 6 leave for the weekend before their departure. A three day concert/festival: Bush Fire. For eleven group 6ers this will be their last experience here in Swaziland with us. We enjoy outdoors, music, over-priced arts and crafts all going towards a good cause, drinks, and camping. It’s been a long time since I’ve been around so many “white” people. I say white, not because all foreigners to Swaziland are white, but because visually it was shocking and at times hard to handle. Most of us have forgotten how to act around “Westerners”. We know how to act around our fellow PCV’s and the Swazis, but we haven’t been around anyone else in a long, long time. Socializing has always been easy for me, but now, I find myself incredibly awkward and unsure what to say. Watching men and women holding hands, holding their children, love and affection, direct eye contact. To me, this has become the abnormal. We run into other PCVs form neighboring countries: Mozambique and South Africa. Loud and in your face: Americans. I’m immediately turned off.
“So much public transport and so easy to get around! Beautiful mountains and nice weather! You guys got it SO good here!” They exclaim.
“Hold on. Wait. Is this where we, as Peace Corps Volunteers from different countries, get into a ‘brag off’? Who has it harder?! Who’s more hard corps?” My sarcasm is thick and for once I'm around people who can pick up on it. Peace Corps Volunteers: We love to get together and talk about who has it worse. It’s annoying.
It’s Saturday night at Bush Fire and tomorrow morning eleven volunteers from Season Six will be gone. As I’m watching the last performance on stage, a volunteer from my group nudges me. “Look Mere. They’re saying their goodbyes.” I look over and see the crowd of Group 6ers. A handful of them make their way to each person, hugging and crying. Words are being exchanged but I’m too far away to hear. I want to be there. I want to be in this moment with them, but this is THEIR group. I want them to experience it alone. I watch the handful that is leaving break apart from the other group 6ers and make their way to the taxi. One of them stops and turns. She stops to look at someone from her group that is not leaving and is actually staying another year with us. I know they were once in a relationship and I know it didn’t end well and they haven’t spoken to each other in a long time (which is difficult to do in such a small country). She walks up to him and he takes her in his arms. She’s wiping away tears as he makes funny hand gestures trying to make her laugh. They say goodbye. Their reconciliation brings tears to my eyes.
As she’s walking away I run up to her. We embrace and she tells me what every volunteer should tell another, “You are making a difference…. Just hang in there.”
And then they were gone.
Another workshop with my fellow Season 7ers. A year ago we began with Pre-Service training, then In-Service training, and now: Mid Service training. Peace Corps knows we’re all reaching that realization of, “Oh my God, I ONLY have one year left. Or, Oh my God, I have ANOTHER year left.” They gather us and our “counterparts” together. A two day workshop with a Swazi we’re working with in our community (a counterpart). They try to get us energized and organized about projects to start with them. Most volunteers bring the “counterparts” they were originally assigned. Most have not worked with these people at all because counterparts lack the motivation. Peace Corps explains to the Swazis that a volunteer is a CO facilitator a CO mentor a CO learner….. YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO WORK WITH US! WE ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO WORK FOR YOU. Many volunteers roll their eyes. They know full well when they go back to their communities they’ll never hear from their counterpart again.
I bring Justice. Justice is motivated. Justice is empowering, wonderful, and my bright light. I’m lucky to have found him. Unfortunately, I’ve got a viral infection that’s been going around so I do what I can in between trips to the bathroom. “We have to start a club Meredith. Where in order to be apart of it you have to get tested.” I explain the dangers of forced testing, but I like his enthusiasm on getting people tested. We want to do a workshop for young men during the World Cup. Justice’s youth center is one of the only places in our area where people can watch it. We want to take advantage of the audience. When else can you get a hundred men in a room together?
Our counterparts leave us and our workshop turns into a two day Grief and Loss Bonding experience. We talk about the year ahead. We talk about Season 8 arriving in less than a month. “We have to make this transition as easy as possible for them. We have to be careful what we say. We have to be prepared for the tough questions they’re going to ask us about the realities here and our work.” Did Season 6 have this same conversation about our arrival?
Our country director steps in. She talks about perspective. She lies down sheets of paper. Written on them : “I want to go home.” “This is what I came here to do.” “What am I doing here?” “I can see the difference I’m making.” “What a great opportunity” “I made a commitment and I’m sticking to it.”
“These are quotes from other volunteers at their one year mark. I want you to find where you’re at, your perspective. Go and stand where you feel.” We all have difficulty with this. Everyday we go through every one of these perspectives. In this moment however, I’m at “What a great opportunity.” You can’t help but feel relieved and yet saddened at the few who have stepped on “I want to go home.” “What am I doing here?” and “I made a commitment and I’m sticking to it.” We are seeing we’re not alone in this struggle.
We get in a circle, hold hands, and begin the sharing. One volunteer, someone I have so much admiration and respect for and one of the strongest people I know, raises her hand. She has difficulty talking through the tears. “I love you guys. I do. And I don’t want to go home, but I’m finding it so hard to stay. What I’m going through, I don’t know how much more I can take.” Several of us get up to give her a hug. I keep my hand on her knee. We all want her to know she’s not alone in this.
Later, the few group 6ers running the workshop, ask me to be on a panel of those who have experienced grief and loss. “We know you’ve lost a lot of your dogs, and we thought you’d like to share. Maybe it’ll get other people to start sharing.” I feel kind of stupid. On the panel with me are my friends who together have lost a homestead sister to homicide, another promised her training homestead father she would come back and see him but he died before she could, and another who saw the hanging body of someone he knew who committed suicide. Then there’s me and my dogs. But I know I carry something WE all can relate with. Something we are ALL going through: Guilt.
“Back home, like I know many of us were, I was kind of the counselor. I was the one you went to lean on. I was the hand you held. I was THERE for them. For my family, for my friends. Leaving them for two years for people who often don’t even want my help, kills me. My inability to keep in touch. To write letters. To dig deep into their lives. To tell them about mine. I’ve lost that personal connection. I’ve lost my role in their lives. A few got angry. But now, they’re OK without me. And, I guess, that kind of hurts. And it shouldn’t. And my little sister. Alone. Going through puberty. No one there to tell her “they” don’t matter. You’re cool just the way you are. I feel so much guilt. And sometimes I feel like I don’t know myself anymore. Or maybe I’m finding out who I always was.”
We’re asked to close our eyes. Our group leader begins, “I want you to think of someone you’d like to see. Someone you wish you were there for. Someone who you’ve lost touch with. Someone you want to ask forgiveness from.” I think of my brother. I think of a dream I had just two nights ago. Another nightmare about him. He’s alone in an attic with pieces of tape covering every hole and crack in the walls and floor around him. My sister appears and is standing next to him as he sits hovered over on the edge of his bed. “He doesn’t want the voices to get in through the cracks, so he covers them with tape.” She doesn’t understand why I’m crying. I pick up the roll of tape on the ground and begin to help him cover the cracks, but my tape won't stick. It keeps falling and the voices are getting in. I have these dreams of those I left behind.
“I want you to stand in front of this person now. I want you to take their hand and tell them, “You’re sorry.”
And for the first time, in a long time, I let the tears come out. I hear others crying around me. I try to wipe them away before we’re told to open our eyes but they continue to pour out of me. I’m trying to let go of the guilt. We’re all trying to tell ourselves it’s ok. We did the right thing in coming here. We want forgiveness. I want to forgive myself.
Our PCMO (Peace Corps Medical Officer) stands to talk. “You are all bearing witness. You are bearing witness to a country that is experiencing massive die out. Generations are being lost. People are dying everywhere, and you’re all witnessing it. Let it out. You’ve got to let it out.” And that's just it. We're all just witnesses and we want to be MORE than that.
We light candles as each of us says something about our group. It's my turn, “A year ago, we said goodbye to our APCD, Chad. None of us really knew him that well but we all saw how much he meant to Group 6. At his ring out ceremony in September, he said something that didn't really resonate with me until now. He told us, choking back the tears, for a while he had given up on Peace Corps. He didn’t know if he believed in it anymore. But then he pointed to us and he said, ‘But you guys, volunteers, I never stopped believing in you.’ And that’s exactly how I feel right now. I love all of you and I am in such gratitude to be serving with people with such big hearts and SO much compassion. With all the apathy that surrounds us out there, it is so empowering to be with all of you now. Every one of you gives me strength and affirms my belief in humanity and in the people again. I am honored to be serving alongside all of you.”
Our Grief and Loss ceremony is ending. One of the volunteers wishes to share a song with us, “This song always reminds me of us.” She plays a song by South African: Lucky Dube “Freedom Fighters”. As the song plays I open a letter our Country Director had passed to all of us. Inside is a piece of paper with the Peace Corps logo on top. It begins with, “Dear Future Meredith.”
“Do you remember a conversation you had with your best friend when you graduated high school? She asked you what you wanted to do with your life. You told her you were going to join the Peace Corps and she laughed and said to you, “Maybe you should just stick with Americorps…you can't handle something like the Peace Corps." I hope you are still here with the Peace Corps Meredith. I hope you know you FINALLY did it. And you are here because of YOU despite what everyone thought. I hope you are happy and smiling. And I want you to remember, FINALLY, I am proud of MYSELF.”
It truly has been a life changing year for me and I’m looking forward to the next one. Group 6 will be gone soon and we’ll be the ones welcoming Group 8 with open arms. And maybe this time, during our circle of introductions, someone will say their name and they’ll say they’re from Indiana or Seattle. And they’ll talk me through a tour of home. And I’ll smile and say, “Thank you. I needed that.”
"Freedom fighter standing on a mountain
In a foreign country
Trying to send a message
To his people, back in the ghetto
He had a home one time
Love of a girl
But he left that behind
Oh yes I can hear him clearly as he whispers in the air
His voice came out loud and clear
All he asked for was a prayer and as he turns to walk away he said
I'm still here in the house of exile
For the love of the nation
Sun went down on the mountain
Birds flew back to their hiding places
Leaving him standing there like a telephone pole
In the still of the night
You and I dream
Dreaming of Romeo & Juliet
All he dreams about is the freedom of the nation
When every man will be equal In the eyes of the law
As he closes his eyes
For the last time he said again"
