Of Meetings and Men

The Peace Corps has three primary goals:

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

Unlike in other work atmospheres that I have experienced, I do not have an immediate supervisor reviewing the work I do daily. There’s no one to call me into their office and say, “Samantha, I don’t think you promoted a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served today. Let’s try harder tomorrow.” In many ways, the month of January has been my first true month at work and I’ve been learning a lot, not only about being a volunteer, but about being my own internal supervisor as well. At the beginning of the month, I opened my planner and stared at the blank squares that made up my calendar. After three months of training and a few weeks of orientating myself to my village, I thought about how it all came down to that moment when I was supposed to start doing – doing community assessments, integration, introductions, protocol with officials, baseline surveys and everything else we were told in training.

Well I didn’t quite know how to schedule “integration” or “community assessment,” but I did know how to schedule a meeting (thank you Phi Sigma Sigma and GW Alternative Breaks), so I used that as a jumping off point. I scheduled meetings with the staff of the health center, community health volunteers and the staff of the high school. I tagged along with friends to community group meetings and a church service. I even had the opportunity to join UNICEF and UNHCR in a two-day meeting/survey of primary schools in the area. In all of these meetings, I introduced myself, my role and the Peace Corps. By the third meeting, I had my spiel down pat and normally ended with a version of, “While I do not have money or things to give out, I do have information and a lot of time to share. I look forward to working with you all. Does anyone have any questions or suggestions for me?”

Some meetings went smoother than others. At the church and with one community group, someone had to translate my French into Gbaya (the patois of the Gbaya people) and Fulfuldé (the patois of the Fulbé people). In both of these languages there is not a word for “volunteer,” so some time was spent clearing up confusion after I heard the word “dofta” (doctor) being used to describe my role. Despite this, I should be pleased with the fact that the word has spread from my introductions at meetings: more people are saying “Bonjour Sam-an-ta!” instead of “Bonjour Nassara (white person)!” when I walk down the street.

I received some great questions and suggestions, but on more than one occasion it seemed that people were more preoccupied with the fact that I was a woman who was living away from home for two years than with my reason for being in Lokoti. Most of the meetings I attended were dominated by, if not were consisting entirely of males. After a really great meeting with the high school staff, I opened the floor to questions and received one: “Are you married?” At other meetings, people asked me if I lived with a husband or father. One community health volunteer even offered to have his 7-year-old daughter come live with me because the idea of me living alone was so strange.

In being faced with a ton of questions regarding my marital status, I thought about maybe making my life a little easier by making up a “go-to” response: “Oh, yes. I am already married. My husband is a top White House aide and couldn’t take leave to come to Cameroon with me” (can you tell I’ve been watching too much West Wing?) or “Oh, no. I am not married because my parents would never permit that right now.” But in the end, I have been answering with the truth: “Oh, no. I am not married. Why not? Because I am too young, because I have way too much to learn about myself and because my focus in life is on exploring what the world around me has to offer, and not on finding a husband.” In answering with the truth, I have realized that I’m turning questions that I originally found trivial and irrelevant, into an opportunity to promote a better understanding of American culture (sounds a lot like Goal 2 to me!).

I have found a lot of success in the meetings that I have had this month, but I have also found it in the many men that have been at those meetings. In talking with them and answering their questions, they now know that a woman can be single, live alone far away from family, pursue a meaningful job and even paint their house (this, believe it or not, was shock to some people when I told them I was painting a room in my house)! And maybe those men will even go home and tell their daughters about what they’ve learned.

After all of the meetings (and the men), I think the biggest lesson I learned, as a new volunteer (and supervisor), is that you cannot plan everything. When looking at a row of blank calendar squares, you just need to have faith that something will come to fruition. Perhaps the greatest example of this was a meeting of all the principals of the local primary schools in the district I was invited to attend by the inspector of the school district after we ended up sitting a table apart at a restaurant the week before, just by chance.

While I’ve highlighted some of the eventful moments of the month, there are days that are more lackluster, where meetings fall through, or where there are no meetings at all because you are at a loss as to where to go next or because you need to muster up the strength to put yourself out there and fumble over a language you have yet to master. During those days, the internal supervisor in me assures myself that I have been working slowly, but surely on the goals I committed to when I became a volunteer – for in preparing to work on Goal 1 of the Peace Corps, I have inadvertently addressed Goal 2 and through this blog, conversations and photographs, I’ve started embarking on Goal 3.