A Village Called Washington STATE

I love my village. I realized this today when I thought about having to live in Kayes. I hate Kayes. It’s a stereotypical African city; dirty, smelly, too many people and too much attention for the Tubob.

I’ve finally figured out how I can help and what I can actually do. I’ve been here for three weeks and I have in my head some plans but it will probably take me a year to really figure them out. My promise to myself is that I will do something that pushes me out of my comfort zone, something that is relatively time-consuming and that can be sustainable. Luckily for me, I’m the first volunteer in my village so I get to be the one to mold their vision of what a Peace Corps volunteer does. My goal is to link health education between the health center and the school. In doing my survey I’ve found that most people don’t know anything about sexually transmitted diseases or how our bodies react to parasites and malaria or what soap does to make us healthy. This needs to change but it has to start at an early age. I just read Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace…One School at a Time. It’s about this guy, Greg Mortenson, who happens upon a village in northern Pakistan after failing to summit K2. He promises to build them a school and he comes back in a year with all the materials and follows through with his promise. He spends the next decade building, refurbishing and maintaining more than 50 others throughout northern Pakistan predominantly promoting education for young girls.

After 9/11 he embarked to spread his message of peace through education in Washington D.C. he said, “I don’t do what I’m doing to fight terror; I do it because I care about kids. Fighting terror is maybe seventh or eighth on my list of priorities. But working over there, I’ve learned a few things. I’ve learned that terror doesn’t happen because some group of people somewhere like Pakistan or Afghanistan simply decide to hate us. It happens because children aren’t offered a bright enough future that they have a reason to choose life over death.” Luckily my village has a school, but I’d be surprised if these kids have ever read a book or played a board game. I’m certain they’ve never seen a map of the world or understand that my village is 3,000 miles away from where they think it is. My goal is to promote health education through children, and little by little it should work its way into the next generation. Being connected with the health center is good, but it has been my experience that by combining public health and professional health we send a confusing message that two are the same thing. I intend to distance myself from the health center in order to maintain my role as a volunteer and not a doctor. I am not here to deliver babies and my presence there sends a confusing message of hope to the very sick people who have to come there.

If I send one message through this email it is to explain to my readers; my family and friends, that Malians don’t get to wish for things like we do, they don’t worry about car payments or soccer practice; they worry that their kids will live past the age of five and beat the odds that they might die of some sort of water born disease, malnutrition or malaria. But, they aren’t a sad bunch of children with distended bellies and worried mothers. Their ignorance protects them and allows them to properly and normally live their daily lives in general happiness.

Before I came to the Peace Corps, and really before this week, I didn’t think Peace Corps was a worthwhile organization. I selfishly took this on because I wanted to challenge myself and I have changed my entire perception of that since I’ve been at site. I’ve come to realize how much of a difference my presence can make in these people’s lives and I’ve recognized how profoundly difficult it is to leave home and live in a mud hut for two years as the only American/white person in my village.