Urban Sprawl

March 26, 2011

Yesterday was Friday. I was walking home from work and afternoon errands, and a mere two blocks from my house I was so overcome by hunger, exhaustion, frustration, anxiety, and nostalgia that I seriously felt I could not take another step. My first impulse was to just sit down on the sidewalk, and, in a moment of deep self-indulgence, I really considered doing it. The concrete seemed so sunny and friendly. Why not just sit there and wait for some kind of solution to find me?

I didn’t sit. I kept walking, mostly because I knew that sitting on a sidewalk would in no way make me less hungry. Nevertheless, I am still a bit awestruck by such an intense feeling of I-can’t-go-on. Part of the problem is that I have started running again, and—out of shape as I am, all the exercise makes my legs feel like they are made of jelly. It was also a Friday, after a week of work at the Talibe center, where I split my time between tedious data entry and feeling deeply inadequate, mostly because of my lack of language. I am throwing myself into learning French and Wolof as best I can, but learning a language takes time and communication is difficult. That morning had been especially frustrating, as I had spent at least an hour watching my boss edit my beautiful, equation-driven Excel spreadsheets with hunt-and-peck typing and a hand calculator. Explaining Excel is hard in French.

The nostalgia is easy enough to understand. I miss Niger, and my friends. (I think about you all the time.) I miss being the pro, the old blood, the wizened sage.

The anxiety stems from a combination of boy-troubles and the fact that, with regular Internet access, I am able to spend several hours a day reading the news. Though there is a great deal of unrest in Northern Africa, things are stable in Senegal, minus a few some anti-government protests. I can’t pinpoint the one crisis that is making me so uneasy, but I’ve realized the single greatest psychological impact the Peace Corps has had on me is that I am constantly anticipating the next disaster: site closure, coup d’état, faulty latrine, crazy landlord, friends dying, evacuation. Things never stay settled for long. We live in a constant state of flux.

Here’s the thing, though: Really, my time in St. Louis is going very well. I don’t LOVE my life here, but, walking around the cute colonial streets, I feel like I really COULD. It’s beautiful, comfortable, and I feel like my work at the talibe center will eventually be very fulfilling. The fact is I’ve been flung back in time to September 2009, when I was first adjusting to my site in Niger. I barely spoke Zarma and really had no idea what I was doing. I constantly questioned my decision to join the Peace Corps, was agonized by the fact my days weren’t caulked full of clearly meaningful, gratifying, baby-saving work.

I’ve forgotten how my first months in Niger were peppered with debilitating frustration and doubt, as well as glorious little triumphs that filled me with such a light of joy and clarity. And now here I am, the new kid again, suffering the same extremes: landlady scolds me + so-and-so doesn’t understand what I’m saying = I have a bad morning and question why I’m even here; later, a cute, so-shy-he-can-barely-look-at me talibe does a Winnie the Pooh puzzle with me + I say something sassy in French = I feel like a million bucks and daydream about living in Africa for the rest of my life.

You’d think that things would be easier the second time around. I think that too, and I think that thinking is making it harder. In other words, as a Peace Corps savant, master-integrater and language learner I wonder: I’ve been here three whole weeks, why are things easy yet? Also, I need to remember I don’t even have the strong support network of volunteers I developed in Niger. I’m sure I will find good friends here too, but I’m just getting started. And until I get to a point where I am comfortable with the language and established in my post, I need to resist all urges to sprawl on the sidewalk and wait for the end to come.