Development isn't easy. Defining it is an issue all unto itself but I'm not getting into that because a definition isn't what is needed right now, and anyways my Marxism would just get in the way. You can't throw money at it. You can't just "do development" for people. You can see it. You can sense it. And you can watch it happen over many years. Technically as Peace Corps Volunteers we are development workers. We are all here for different reasons. We all have job descriptions. We live by the code of three goals. These goals are not tangible. We cannot always see the fruits of our labor. What we can see is love lost, folks back home not quite understanding what we are doing here, ourselves unsure of our competences and our value. Why are we here? Why am I, someone who got a degree from a liberal arts college in political science, helping people with their agricultural development ? Why is it my right to walk into someone's field and tell them how they might better grow their corn? As many of you know my knowledge of field crops and farming in general is limited to say the least. I spent my "formative" years studying human rights in Africa, francophone literature and understanding why ethnic conflicts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo occur. But now I'm here, living in a village that is the epitome of subsistence farming. We grow what we can eat and if the rains come in full throttle (400mm during rainy season) we can maybe make $100. Everyone in my family eats off about a dollar a day. I am here because I chose to come here. I wasn't forced to sign up for these 27 months. My tour of duty, as I like to refer to it, is my choice alone. I received a very comprehensive training (in my opinion and others may beg to differ) from the Peace Corps Senegal team. I feel comfortable in village. I have integrated very well into my family and my village. I have a few work partners whom I cherish and some friends who think the world of me, as I do them. But my job isn't always easy.
Right now in the midst of rainy season I am extending improved variety field crop seed to farmers as a joint effort in cooperation with ISRA a Dakar seed research agency. I have about 16 farmers who I have given seed and a training to about the program and their responsibility to the seed and to me. They will notify me when they sow the seed, add any herbicides, weed or thin, etc. I visit these farmers at least once a week. As of now only about a third of my farmers have sown their seeds. They are all very busy planting all their other seeds, the seeds that to them matter so much more than my seed. Their seed is their livelihood and my seed is just a side project. Something that may produce a good yield but not enough to make a profit in their pocket. Often when I go to visit a farmer's field or to see them at their houses they are not there. They are out in their other fields. I find myself feeling frustrated with myself for not being more productive. Once field visits are done with the farmers that have seeded and I have answered all their questions and asked them mine I go back home. It's early, before anyone else has returned from the fields. People ask me why I don't have my own field of peanuts or bitter tomato or okra. I tell them what I have in my garden and explain that I visit other people's fields and I'm free to help anyone with gardening or tree planting, etc. but it isn't easy coming back around noon and feeling useless as everyone else rolls in on the charette at 2pm exhausted. But let me be clear, my job while it may be agriculture work is not to do the work for my farmers. I'm not about to go and be free manual labor for someone. That isn't development. And frankly, as a woman, people tell me I'm exhausted after I've used a small hand hoe for ten minutes. But that doesn't seem to bother me. If all these things were to bother me I would be miserable. And if I were miserable I would go home.
Instead I chose to look at my service through a different lens. I believe I am helping people, not all may be agriculture related but it all "counts". I've been planting trees out in fields where there normally aren't trees. I've taught farmers about thinning their crops and adding amendments to their soil. And above all, I've seen my baby sister speak before anyone else her age in the village. The small successes should be celebrated. We should be proud of ourselves and I know our families back home are proud of us. Our Peace Corps service is much different than it was for those volunteers twenty or thirty years ago. Yes I can type this blog post on my iPhone in village and post it this weekend. Yes I have easy contact with my supportive parents. But that doesn't mean that my service is easier than it was for those volunteers many years before. I can't, and no one should, compare my service with that of my doctor who 20 years ago served in the DRC. My service isn't lesser because I can contact my friends and family. My service isn't lesser because I am not able to be as effective in changing the behavior of planting seed in my village. Every volunteer will say that their service is their service, unique and independent. But everyone suffers from comparing their service to someone else's and struggling with the judgement of their work from their host families, counterparts, other volunteers, our Peace Corps bosses, people back home, and none of it makes this any easier.
Peace Corps is not supposed to be a permanent reality. It also shouldn't be something that makes us question our self worth. I tell my fellow volunteers that I think of my service and my time in Botou as a hiatus from my real life. I understand that this is my present. But I also know it won't last forever and that my other life is waiting for me back home. I am looking forward to finishing my two years and come back to my life a changed person: changed by my service, my language, my name, my village, my incompetences, my successes, and my self worth.
