To bedik or not to bedik

Comfort can be a dangerous thing.  That is because effort takes… well, effort.  Comfort is easier, more practical.  Putting oneself out there, trying new things, meeting new people, it can be uncomfortable.  That is because we find comfort in repetition, in the things we know; we take comfort in the common.  Trying new things, meeting new people, it introduces so many variable, so many unknowns, that it is hard not to pass it up and avoid it altogether.  I find myself in this mindset often, and it is part of the personal growth I wanted to achieve during my time here in Senegal.  The will to leave my hut and greet people, to meet tons of new people and experience something completely foreign from everything I've known.  A new culture, new food, new people.  I wanted to break away from the comfortable.  But the thing with personal growth is that it is something you have to do every day.  Every day you have to wake up determined to be the person you want to be.  It is very difficult not to relapse back into complacency, to shirk potentiality for comfort.  This is a story that highlights that struggle.

Now that the rainy season has truly and fully come, the work of all Peace Corps volunteers cranks up a notch.  For agriculture volunteers it’s the planting season, their time to extend seed varieties and introduce better practices for farming.  As for us health volunteers, rains bring the mosquitoes, and mosquitoes bring malaria.  This is why during the rainy season just about every health volunteer shelves their other projects for a while to focus on malaria work.  In Kedougou we are working on a project called PECADOM Plus.  I’m not sure if you remember from my blog posts from last year, it was when I drove around the Saraya district to random isolated villages to shadow malaria health workers.  This year the program has expanded to the entire Kedougou region, so I have more localized work around my village.  As such I am partnering with the Thiabedji heath post to supervise seven DSDOMs there; the malaria health workers.  This included overseeing the practicum training of the DSDOMs and formation of women’s support groups in the villages where the DSDOMs work.

Alright, now that the introduction is out of the way, the background being established, to the actual story itself!  So I found myself, as I often do, on a bush path bicycling under the hot African sun.  Although it’s rainy season, it is still really hot.  It’s always hot.  You get used to it.  So I was biking back from the Thiabedji health post, which is about 18 kilometers from my village.  I had just spent the whole day, and the 3 days before it, supervising the DSDOM practicums, and was understandably tired from it.  As I was leaving the health post I realized that my water bottle was empty.  This usually wouldn’t be that bad of a thing, but since it is Ramadan, it is pretty awkward and somewhat impolite to ask to fill my water bottle.  During Ramadan, Muslims fast both food and water from sun-up to sun-down every day.  I’m sure that they would have given me water if I’d have asked, but I didn’t want to seem inappropriate.  So I figured, it’s only 18 kilometers, how hard could it be?   Right?

So back to where I left off in the story, I was biking through the bush, half way back to my site.  This was about the point where it hit me just how truly thirsty I was.  

still unamused

I had been working for 4 days, biking back and forth, just generally fatigued.  I figured that when I got to Guingara, which is about 5k from my village, and conveniently Christian-Animist, I’d ask for water there.  And that’s when it happened.  As I approached I heard singing and chanting and the clanging of bells.  I crested a hill and saw before me a large crowd of people, seemingly milling around.  When I got there I realized that they were all using hand-hoes to remove weeds from the field.  I had stumbled upon a Bedik kille.

So kille is a Pular word meaning a group work day.  Basically everyone gets together to help someone with a task, whether it’s plowing or threshing or thatching a roof.  Bedik killes take it up a notch in that they have people dress up in traditional grass shirts and bark shorts wearing masks and clanging bells.

they also like to dance

  And they drink palm wine.  I mean, a lot of palm wine.  When I got there a lot of them were already fairly thoroughly intoxicated, which made them that much more enjoyable. 

I got off my bike and asked for some water.  A woman grabbed a gourd bowl and dunked it in a benoir to pull out some water for me, which I drank greedily.  Only in retrospect did I notice how murky the water was and that we were right next to a river.  Yeah, I think I drank river water that she was using to wash her clothes.  Oh well, we’ve all had giardia, right?  They also brought out palm wine and offered it to me.  As I was still thirsty and it seemed cleaner than the murky laundry water I accepted.  So there I was, having quenched my thirst, ready to bike back to my village.  They told me to stay and hang out and drink palm wine and get to know people, and that’s when my dilemma arose.

See, I really wanted to get back to my site.  I really wanted to lie down on my bed, drink some lemonade from drink mixes, maybe eat some beef jerky and read a little (Lord of the Rings anyone?)  Maybe I’d take a nap, who knew?  But I did know that comfort was calling in the face of activity.  I was so set on getting back to my room.  After all, I didn’t know these people, I’d have to awkwardly greet them, and I wouldn’t really know what to do.  In other words, it would put me out of my comfort zone.  So I thanked them for the water, said I’d see them when I’d see them, and then got on my bike and started to ride off into the sunset.  Well, I was actually heading east and it was 3:00, but all dramatic exits should be into the sunset, shouldn’t they?  But alas, life is never quite as epic as you want it to be.  Contemplating the dramatics of my exit, I got on my bike and was gone.

It was about 150 meters later when I stopped.  Why was I biking back to my hut again?  So that I could take a nap?  So that I could avoid talking to people and read a book?  Is this why I had come to the Peace Corps?  I had wanted to get an in with the Bediks for a long time, but now that the opportunity had arisen, I was skulking away.  That’s what I do.  I imagine all these great things that I will do, make all these plans and form all these ideas, but when it comes to actually executing them, I can never pull the trigger.  This is because I am always tempted with the promise of comfort.  Like I said before though, personal growth isn’t deciding you want to be a certain way, and then bam, you start acting like it.  It is a daily struggle, a mindset you have to renew every morning.  I have forgotten that lately, accepting complacency rather than striving for better.  All this ran through my head as I biked away from the work party.  And you know what, I am proud to say that I turned around and biked back.  Sure, it would be an effort, but I knew that at the end of the day I’d be happier this way.  Even more so, I knew that if I didn’t turn back, I would always regret it.

So this is an anecdote highlighting a daily struggle I find myself in.  I regret to say that many days I lose that battle and hide out a bit too long in my hut, or cut my conversations short because I don’t want to trudge through Pular, but it is those little victories that reinvigorate us.  That give us the confidence that maybe it isn’t as uphill of a battle as we think.  Sometimes you have to turn around and get back in the fight. 

This is also the story of how I got really drunk with a bunch of Bedik dudes in the middle of the wilderness and helped them plow a field for fonio.  It’s a story of how I spent an afternoon getting to learn about the Bedik people and making friends.  The story of how I got a new Bedik name: Jean Baptiste doondu Keita (apparently in Bedik culture all male children are named according to when they are born.  Doondu is the name for the third-born male.  They then also have a Christian name).  And lastly, this is the story of how I stumbled back to my village just as they were breaking fast and was able to keep my composure through the whole thing.  After all, it was just another day in the Peace Corps.  Sure most days are pretty boring, but there is always the chance of experiencing something truly extraordinary.  What matters is that we are bold enough to take the chances to experience them and not let them slip by.

The Scouring

I’m not sure if you’ve ever read the Lord of the Rings.  I hope that you have, as I consider it a great novel, but I understand if you haven’t.  Some people find the language used and Tolkien’s style to be a bit too archaic for a modern audience; and who wants to hear the professor drone on and on about forests and dells and vales, pages upon pages.  I personally think that this adds to the charm, but can see how it could seem a bit overly verbose.  Well, if you haven't read the book, I at least imagine that most of you have seen the Lord of the Rings movies.  They are rather fantastic and present a great, if not wholly accurate to Tolkien’s original work, story.  You might be asking yourself why I am talking about the Lord of the Rings so much in my blog, besides the fact that I am a big fan (John Kelley, I’m still expecting that Tolkien trivia-off).  I bring it up because there is a part of the book that I think sums up how I felt while in America.  It takes place at the end of the book (spoiler!!!), after Frodo has destroyed the ring. (Though it wasn’t really Frodo who achieved this in the end, as he ultimately failed in his quest to throw the ring into Orodruin, being overcome by the corrupting power of it.

cast it into the fire!!!

 It was Gollum whose actions ultimately led to its final destruction.  In a way then Frodo was able to fulfill his quest because it was Frodo’s mercy, allowing Gollum to live, that precipitated the ring's destruction.  I guess this points to Tolkien’s notion of mercy and redemption, that through mercy greatness can be achieved.)

Anyway, so Frodo is on the road back home.  And whereas in the movie he finds the Shire as good as ever and a warm welcome waiting, the book is quite different.  Frodo comes back to a Shire that has been corrupted: trees have been cut down, the people bullied in a police state, even the jolly mayor was rotting in some cell somewhere.

.

Isn't that a much better ending?

Of all the changes made in the film, I think that this is one of the most egregious, as it is thematically imperative to the narrative.  Frodo can go back to the Shire, but he can never truly go back home.  Home was his innocence, it was his naivete, it was the world he knew before he realized that there is a bigger, grander, more dangerous world out there.  It is his youth, that ultimately can never be re-obtained, and the filter through which he see the world as adults is irrevocably set over his eyes.  And after all, isn’t that the point of a hero’s quest?  He leaves young and innocent, goes on a bunch of adventures, learns a bunch of stuff, and comes back home a changed person.  He is then able to share what he has learned to better the people back home (I think that’s what Joseph Campbell was talking about, I never read his book).

Something about a cycle

 And while he brings a boon, he is forever restless, filled with wanderlust, dissatisfied with a life that was once enchanting, but now seems boring.  This is just like Bilbo coming back after an adventure of his own.  Though he was happy to be back home, he was never truly content or joyful, for he ever heard the call of the distant mountains, the falls of Rivendell, the very call of adventure.

Now this might seem a bit extreme, and I admit that I am speaking in hyperbole, but it is quintessentially the same idea.  When I came back to America I was amazed at how quickly I fell back into my old habits.  The first day you get back is amazing.  What is this comfortable stuff under my feet?  Carpet? Unheard of.  Because it's really the little things you come to appreciate after being devoid of them for so long.  Sitting on a comfortable couch after a long day.  Taking a warm shower under a faucet with running water.  Feeling clean.  I mean, truly feeling clean.  Here in Africa we take showers rather frequently, but I never feel truly clean.  This is probably because while in America, when you are indoors, you are isolated.  Nature is outside, you are inside.  In Africa, I never truly escape nature, what with the crickets and camel spiders and frogs and lizards and mice that live in my hut.  I mean, my roof is essentially grass and my doors are more nominally so than substantively.  That first day is great, looking down at your clean feet in a climate controlled room. 

And then there is the food.  By god, the food!  The first thing most people have asked me when I returned to Senegal was “what was the first thing you ate when you got to America?”  I thought I’d take this time to answer this question: it was beef enchiladas.  So Good.  Just think of all the food: carne asada burritos, fish tacos, pizza, hot dogs, lasagna, hamburgers, Indian food, Ethiopian food (gotta get that tej!), dim sum, sushi, gyros, bacon.  You get the idea. 

Tej!!! It really is half the experience!

As I was saying before I got distracted by food, after that first day it is very easy to fall back into old habits, and whereas the thought of a good beer was once amazing, it becomes once again commonplace.  America truly is the land of plenty.  After a week my whole year in Africa felt like a dream that I had just woken up from, reemerging into reality.  This was actually at first rather concerning, after all, what had I spent all this time there for if everything went back to basic normality (normalcy is technically improper, being coined by Harding in his famous “return to normalcy” speech.  Wait, I just looked up the Wikipedia page, apparently it had been in English dictionaries dating back to at least 1867.  Harding himself said that he looked in the dictionary and couldn’t find normality, but could find normalcy.  Fascinating).  Anyway, whereas habits returned to normality, I never truly felt that I had mentally.  I’m not saying that I went crazy in Senegal, though I haven’t had that checked… I’m just saying that I was never able to get back into that pre-Senegal mindset.  There was that lingering wanderlust, that vestigial pull of nascent adventurism.  Like Frodo going back to the Shire, I felt like I wasn’t able to truly go home.

And what does that mean for me now?  I’m not all that sure.  I once saw myself as the type who would live in America my whole life, getting an entry level career job and working my way up.  That’s the modern American dream after all.  I’m not sure if I’d be satisfied with that anymore.  I’m not saying that I never want to settle down, but this is the time to explore.  I’ve heard the quote that we are an unfortunate generation because we were born too late to explore the globe, but too early to explore the galaxy.  This might be true, that there is no more uncharted land, but there is so much exploring that we can do.  Though we might be able to look at satellite images of the amazon rainforest, that is not the same as going there and truly exploring it.  I feel like I am rambling.  The point that I am trying to make is, my time in America has shown me that there is a seed that is planted in anyone who lives abroad, such that America loses the pristine shine of our youthful understanding of it.  Maybe this means I want to stay abroad for now, and not permanently move back to America.  I don’t know, but whereas that uncertainty was once terrifying, I now find it exhilarating.  I suppose that is the nature of personal growth.