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Published: October 31st 2017
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I wipe sideways down my cheek. Brown. Step by step, I continue my walk, returning from the closest neighboring Peace Corps site, about 4 miles away. Blowing snot into a tissue, I see the contents of my nose. Brown. The road, the fields, the houses, the few plants still barely living: all brown. It hasn’t rained more than a mist since April. Everything is coated in a thick layer of dust. Harsh winds blow the eroding soil into my mouth, my eyes closed tightly, praying the wind will die down so I can finish my walk in relative peace. It’s as if the winds wait until the earth is most vulnerable to unleash their wrath. If tumble weeds existed here, we’d all be buried in them. The rainy season usually comes in November. By October, clouds begin to pass through, and by December, an hour of sun is a precious gift from the laundry gods. Last year, however, the rains didn’t begin until January. In a village based on subsistence agriculture, late rains mean late food. Late food means people die.
I pass the children in my village with the skinny arms and bloated bellies. Kwashiorkor. Abnormalities in
the digestive system due to malnourishment, particularly lack of protein. There are only a few children with the syndrome, but it’s easy to point out. Then I pass the village office, greet the Bibis (grandmothers) that sit on the hill close by. They prefer when I use their local tribal language instead of Kiswahili. “Kamwenye!” I shout. Finally, I begin inward to my house.
Sometimes, I get an intuition something isn’t right. The locks are still intact, but before I even open the courtyard gate, I know there’s been someone there. When I open the door, the bushes I’ve been feverously watering, all my lemon grass I’ve worked so hard to recover from the last goat escape, and, alas, every single strawberry plant is destroyed. My compost pile is strewn about, and the goats have been let loose to ravage the garden. One of them lounges on a garden plot and the other frantically paces outside of the fence, wondering how she got so lost. And then I see the buckets. Two of my cleanest buckets are systematically opened and placed in front of my doorway. One with a human shit sitting in the bottom, and the
other human piss.
At the very beginning of my service, someone cut my locks but failed to break in. They didn’t, however, destroy any property or vandalize my house. Since then, children have reeked havoc on the goats, untethering them or binding their legs. Young boys have surrounded my house at night, shouting into the windows, “I LOVE YOU,” sarcastically and mimicking asking to marry me. Two weeks ago, I returned from tethering the goats to find a plate of human shit placed in front of my courtyard door, and then when I was away for my early service training, someone had broken in and unleashed the goats. Although my sweet counterpart tried to blame it on faulty tethering, I knew better. And then, this.
Of course, my village government is humiliated. My Village Executive Officer had to personally remove the shit-buckets, pleading with me not to panic. They told me that a security guard would now be sleeping in my courtyard when I travel, and, although I believe them, it’s difficult not to feel discouraged. That garden is a teaching tool. Next week we will be planting the first crop of Orange Fleshed Sweet Potatoes there, and shortly after, the village ducks will take up residence. If I can’t trust that my courtyard is safe, it will negatively affect the whole village and all of our communal projects. Thank goodness my potato sprouts were inside last night.
The thing is, it wasn’t personal. Bad kids mess around back home all the time. The difference is that, here I’m an automatic target because I’m different, weird, the Mzungu. The male teenagers here finish primary school and often don’t have work to do or other things to keep them busy because the secondary school is so far away. If they don’t have the financial support to start a business taxiing people on motorcycles, or if their families are struggling to keep a farm due to AIDS or other illness, they often end up drinking, hanging around, and looking for trouble. The gender norms typically keep females busy, carrying water, doing housework, and certainly not consuming alcohol. This makes the young men a particularly at-risk population, and simultaneously a particularly difficult population to reach.
After wrangling the goats, reporting the break-in to my village government, and chatting with multiple Peace Corps staff, I continued along with my day. I went to hang posters in the village clinic, advertising our weekly agriculture class. The nurses were up-in-arms for me, disgusted by the village youth and pitying me all-over. I do love those pants-wearing women. I had sat my (other) water buckets down by the village tap that’s closest to the clinic, planning to carry water after hanging the posters. Frustrated, tired, and angry, I turned around from the clinic doors and saw my neighbor. She was hoisting my already-filled buckets onto the ledge of the tap to ease my journey before beginning to fill her own buckets. She smiled politely.
So maybe not everyone’s going to treat you with the respect you feel you deserve. Maybe being the only differently-colored person in a village is challenging (and if you haven’t experienced a time where you lacked majority-privilege, maybe you should). Maybe individual people in difficult circumstances make hurtful choices to cope with their own environment. But at the end of the day, there’s always a good person to balance out the bad. The universe always has it ways of keeping balance.
For now,
Your Mzungu
PS- As an update from Dar es Salaam, when I left the ville shortly after writing this, my house was broken into again and several things were stolen. Peace Corps is currently keeping me in the capital until my village can provide a comprehensive safety plan, and I won't be able to get the ducks or continue my projects until I am allowed to return. Although I'm discouraged by the repeated offenses, I have faith that things will work themselves out, and am grateful that I'll spend the meantime on the coast by the Indian Ocean. More October updates to come! It's been a wild month.
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Mary Gowland
non-member comment
My first thought and my second thought.
Hi Sweetie, I love to keep up with your adventures but this one was hard to read. I'm so sorry you are coming up against these problems. I want you to be safe, to grow, and to experience the satisfaction of making a difference. There are many things that can happen from here on out and I hope you will be safe no matter what. My first thought to fixing this issue with the boys was to put them to work. If they have something to focus on that gives them the means to help, help there community, their family, and show how able they are, they may fall right into place and be a blessing. However, not knowing the temperature of this situation and how volatile it is I can't gauge whether this is teenage crap or something more difficult. If you think something like work will help them, I am willing to send support for you to pay them in some way. My second thought was maybe you can start a self defense class. When we teach this we also teach responsibility, and empowerment. They will see you as a force to not be messed with and a great teacher who they will respect and want to learn from. I know you will do great things and make a difference. You are inspiring and doing something I always wanted to do. Buckle your seatbelt my dear and remember your Krav training. You are not someone to be messed with! Be safe!!