| | This is a journal entry that I wrote last week, and I thought it was appropriate to share. I have been thinking of legacy a lot recently. The British Prime Minister Tony Blair is going to be stepping down in the next few weeks, so the people on the radio keep going on and on about legacy. Now I absolutely know that my work here is nowhere near the scale of Blair, but is still has me thinking. My COS date is in September, so I will have been in my village for 21 months- 1 year and 9 months. That’s pretty long to be living in one spot working to make a difference. I think it warrants talk of a legacy. And the optimist in me just needs to fight tooth and nail to not allow the complete and utter pessimist of Lindsay to come out. I talked to Namory, Fode, and Aiche about this, and they were quick to mention the SPA project for lights in the maternity as a major factor of my legacy- well that and working to get the blasted maternity opened in the first place. But I honestly think that the maternity would eventually have been opened- I mean, it was built without any outside assistance. And I just feel pompous crediting myself with opening it. Is that just my humble nature though? I think I am going to mention opening the maternity and getting lights for it on my DOS (Description of Service) though. I have to, otherwise I don’t really have anything else to mention. My soakpit project was a bust (I did get two made at the maternity though). And the moringa trees, provided they don’t get eaten by any animals might be okay. The other day, I discovered that 4 were eaten, and I got really upset, I think because I am putting my legacy in the hands (or should I say branches) of those trees. So if they fail, what sustainable thing have I done here? I mean, no one listens to a word I say, and they just laugh when I get frustrated. Sometimes I am convinced they just want to say they know a white person and get gifts from her. If that is the case, where the hell is the development work we are supposed to be doing? What the crap is Peace Corps doing here? I have heard volunteers cynically say that the only reason we are here is for the cultural exchange. So we can go back to our big comfortable houses with Big Macs, Mercedes’ and the Gap, and explain what life is like in Mali. So instead of people watching a documentary or Hollywood film about Africa, they get a real life person telling the sensational tale, instead of an actor. Then they can be shocked and bewildered for about 10 minutes, only to go back to their Grey Goose cocktails or Starbucks coffee, and forget about it. Then they are preached to by a famous pop star or politician for “forgetting about Africa.” But what are they supposed to do really? Even if they did decide to go to Africa themselves and try to do what they can to ‘help,’ what can they do? So where exactly do I fall into this intensely depressing equation? I don’t know. Am I doing more harm than good? What did I spend two years doing? Is maybe convincing 1 or 2 women to go on birth control, and 1 or 2 women to begin sleeping under a mosquito net better than nothing? Well obviously, but it still seems ridiculously hard to quantify the work I have done here. Granted, quantity isn’t as important as quality, as the old saying goes- but is that the case in the big, scary problem that is Africa? I don’t really know- but I am far more depressed now than when I began this journal entry… Read what I have read: Confession of an Ugly Stepsister – Gregory Maguire Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America – Barbara Ehrenreich A must read- a woman decides to live in three cities in America on medium wage jobs, to see if she can survive. It’s an eye opening book, and shows America on an economic scale, and just how out of balance it is. |
