Like a lot of kids who see images of Africa on television, as a young person my heart strings were tugged when those commercials came on.
In grade school, a few of my friends predicted I would join the Peace Corps. So it was funny that my decision to go and serve in the Peace Corps was by far more based on my own survival needs than any pure motive to change people’s life Over There.
True, I had come from working with an environmental organization in the previous year, and the thought of Making Change in an overseas place was a romantic idea and seemed like a really natural direction to take. I was ambitious.
I’ll never forget the low left turning bank of the airplane, after a long trip from France, nearly a whole day flying over the Sahara Desert, banking low into the Niamey airport, and the sight of this expanse of orange colored mud walls and buildings for miles, tiny dark black people running and walking below, dust rising up from the city, a capital of a nation with almost no highrise buildings, nearly the entire city built of mud. I realized that this would be the real thing. The fear almost caused me to wet my pants. As it turned out, there would time for that later.
As the door of the plane swung open the Saharan heat hit our faces, like air from an oven. We stepped into the airport douane (customs).
The feeling of helplessness. The elation of meeting our guide and realizing gleefully that someone knew how to speak the local language and where we would be going. The rush of complete bewilderment as I took my first steps into a world extremely different from mine, wondering how in the world I would ever assimilate.
Fast forward two years to my departure from the country, after two years living in a sahelian village, decent language skills, some hard earned street smarts gained, the entire experience reaching it’s conclusion.
Did I really create change during my two years there?
I had been assigned to a familiar environmental program, one well known in the area. The work was familiar to the people there. All of the same opportunities and obstacles existed at the end of my service as the ones I had found in the beginning. I did a couple of small side projects that caught a few people’s imaginations. I’m sure my work and friendship touched a small handful of lives.
More importantly, I realized on the way home, I had changed myself, I felt like I'd never be the same. The things I saw, the people I met, the stories I came home with, really had a bigger effect on me, I think, than any lasting effect I might have expected to have on the village where I lived.
I was so much more a blood related global citizen than I had been before. I had worked hard, suffered some, celebrated some, joked a lot and fallen totally in love with a neighborhood of real people.
I felt my responsibility more acutely, coming from the wealthy and powerful United States, to my African friends and neighbors, the way I never did before.
My political feelings about different countries shifted, because now I knew something about the difference between a country’s government and the people who sleep in the houses at night in that country.
It was a relief to me somehow, to recognize how similar people can be in so many ways in all of the countries I visited.
My feelings about the possibilities of peace had been elevated.
I'm still learning things about Niger that I was completely ignorant of when I lived there. The people that were my neighbors were the sweetest, coolest, funniest, most patient and loving people I'd ever known. They were just like the folks I had left behind in the U-district of Seattle, when I left the U.S. for my African adventure. (Only living on more like a dollar a day.)
The net effect the experience had on me may have been one of Africa’s best hopes, in a funny way. What I mean is, let’s say that there is a neighbor of ours that needs our help, and one part of my country’s rich history is a liberal tradition of caring for mass human suffering. The more that the people of Africa can call to, and awaken, their American neighbors from our sleep, the better world we can create together. They succeeded well in my own case. I'll be blessed forever by their kindness.
I’ll always be grateful for the unexpected changes I experienced as I trekked off to the Sahara to try to save an African village, and then back home to the U.S.
I very well may have saved myself instead.
