The look of quiet strength

Life after the sudden and unexpected coup d'etat and evacuation has slowly simmered into...a lot of contemplation.

In my last blog, I wrote candidly about my feelings after being unwillingly removed from Mali. I joke that I have "refugee" status, but really that's not funny. There are real refugees in Mali, and all around the world, who have had no such shelter and no such luxury as I did to flee the country...safely.

With that said, the taking of my Peace Corps life has told a very telling story. Just a month ago, my life for the next 12 months was perfectly planned out. Just a month ago, I was researching vacations, graduate schools and job prospects for my post-Peace Corps life. And now, in just one month, I'm on a new continent, contemplating in which country to live and just exploring what it feels like to live by the seat of my...gut.

Evacuation has taught me how short life is. I took it for granted that I would live another year of my Peace Corps life. What things would I have done, had I known? To me, it's important, to live with no regrets, to try new things and to be audacious, and never have to look back and wish I had done something I didn't do. So, when I look back at my Peace Corps life, I have no regrets. This experience has taught me that life is too short not to tell people how much they mean to you. That life is too short not to dig into those relationships that make it worthwhile. That life is too short not to live the life you deserve. And it's also too short to give up on your dreams.

What would you do if you weren't afraid? (in short)

I am so glad I worked hard on the language acquisition in Mali. It taught me so much about the beautiful depths of the culture and it illustrated how hard I was willing to work for my Malian friends. I am so glad that I spent all that time walking down the streets, greeting literally every person I saw. Strolling down the street, greeting, was always something I enjoyed, but now I see its true importance, in retrospect. I guess it was about a willingness to integrate...mutual respect, that I could show my Malian friends.

I am so grateful I spent time chatting with people under the constantly moving shade, dancing my way through the hard times and telling jokes left and right, as Malian culture dictates.

I can squeeze my eyes shut and see Sabou's smile. Sabou is the President of my women's shea butter cooperative. She is one of the most inspirational, strong-willed and saavy women I know. Sabou is a feminist in a country marked as one of the worst places in the world to be a woman. Sabou survives Polio, and cannot walk, in a country where there are no legal rights for people in her position. She strongly and slowly cranks her hand-crank wheelchair around the rough edges of Mali, without a complaint and often with a fabulous sense of humor. In a country where it is stigmatized to A) be a woman, B) a strong, outspoken woman and C) living with physical handicaps...AND running her own business with more than 1,000 members, as a WOMAN? Yeah, that's Sabou. She's awesome. She graces us all with her incontrovertible strength.

One of my up-and-coming friends (right before the coup) and a new English student of mine, Mami, lived down the road from me. Almost daily, Mami would call on me from her concession, while she was busy juggling the pounding of grains for her family's meal, the care of her younger siblings and her studies. She would yell, "HEY RAMATA! AN BENA ANGALAKAN KALAN WA?" (Hey, Ramata! Are we going to study English?) And she never stopped asking me.

I would tell Mami that when work lessened, then we would start studying together. Mami is one of the very few students chosen to explore Holland on a student exchange program with the Dutch organization, Voorshoten. She wanted very badly to learn English so that she could speak it when she arrived in Holland.

When I finally went to spend some time with Mami and her family, I was overcome with an incredible sense of respect for her, and for the quiet strength of all the women I had met in Mali.

I sat there, with my hands in my pockets while Mami welcomed me into her home one night. This meant sitting outside under the one, flickering light, while Mami and her dozens of family members and friends buzzed with chatter. We sat, joked and drank tea. They all begged me to stay for dinner. It was getting late and I really wanted to get some work done, but I relented.

Mami pulled out her English books, proudly. She told me how much she wanted to learn English and she smiled at me with a big, toothy grin. As she did this, her brother, who is about five years or so younger than she, started hitting her, telling her she was stupid and protesting that she couldn't speak English at all.

The insults being a product of youth immaturity, I can understand that, but what I witnessed that night represented a greater obstacle that women in Mali, and really, in the world, experience...all the time.

How could Mami ever build the confidence to persevere when she was constantly told she "Can't do it"? How could Mami ever convince her parents to keep her in school when the entire society thinks she's not the right gender to complete the task? Furthermore, where could Mami turn when searching for the possibility of an English-speaking Malian woman when there are none in her environment?

Often, people say that there aren't adequate numbers of women in politics or science, for example, because women don't want to be in these fields. It's way more complex than that.

And Mami is a great example. Did Mami want to learn English? Did she want to stay in school? Did she want to make good grades and eventually graduate to college? Did she want a career of her own, able to function as her own autonomous individual? The answer to these questions is Absolutely! But when she had people, especially those stereotypically in power, telling her that she cannot do it, that she isn't good enough, that it's not appropriate work for her gender...It's just not that easy. And that night, I could understand the plight of women in Mali just a little better.

Mami, of course, prevailed, and continued to badger me to teach her English. That night, I invited her to my English club and she met some wonderful English learners.

There is this look that I noticed when I was in Mali. I saw it when I looked up to Sabou during big decisions. I saw it when I glanced at Mami that night, amid her brother's insults. I, myself, stared unwaveringly, when my male boss at my women's sewing school refused to shake my hand because I am a woman. It's the look of quiet strength. Quiet perseverance.

When I told Sabou and my Si Nafa people "Good-bye," Sabou told me not to worry. Although Mali seemed to be crumbling and sliding away like sand slides through fingers, Sabou told me that they would not stop working. They would keep going. And she gave me this look, and I understood.

Do you see it? 

Update: After the Coup

Four weeks ago, I would have never imagined that in one month's time, I'd be in consolidation with all of the people in my region for two weeks, evacuated out of Mali, closing my service to become a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer and sitting here writing a blog at my best friend's house in Ukraine. So, greetings from Ukraine.

It's amazing how absurd life is. One minute you have an entire life planned out for yourself, and the other minute it's suddenly over. 

On Wednesday, March 21, my friend, Cary, came into Kita to head into Bamako the next day. After he showed up, we all got text messages from Peace Corps warning us about gunfire in Katy, neighboring Bamako, and in Bamako. Cary was advised not to go into Bamako. 

That night, I went to bed thinking the protests and unrest would settle down immediately, like it had in the past...And then at 8 AM, Thursday, March 22, Cary called me to inform me that the military had officially declared a Coup d'etat and the Malian government had been overthrown. The news came as such a shock that I thought he was joking. 

Rehashing the details of the coup, the eventual rebellion in the north, our consolidation and evacuation feels a lot like rehashing the saddening details of a break-up. I will love Mali forever and I will be eternal grateful for all of the lessons the country and its people taught me. 

That Thursday, all of Peace Corps were ordered to be on "Standfast." We were to stay at our sites and hang tight until further notice. Cary, Steph and I were the only ones in Kita during the coup. We checked the news obsessively and anxiously awaited any and all updates from PC and the US Embassy.

The media, and PC, were shocked by Mali's sudden upheaval. Mali was considered Africa's model democracy. In a matter of hours, its government was overthrown, its constitution suspended, the national television station overtaken by the junta, the borders closed, a country-wide curfew imposed, the April 29th democratic election called off, some Ministers, Presidential candidates and Governors arrested and the President, Amadou Toumani Toure, vanished without a trace...not to be found or heard from for weeks. 

While the news was unfolding, I had a bad feeling that the situation would worsen. Not only was Mali's government squashed by a pissed off military, but it left a gaping vulnerability where the separatist groups in the north could easily take over...Which is exactly what happened in the following weeks. 

By Friday, we got the news from PC that we were being consolidated. I worked with Cary, Steph and two Malian staff members to call all of the Volunteers from our region declaring our consolidation by Saturday or Sunday, to my site of Kita, the regional capital. 

Volunteers were confused and angry. Their villagers were even more perplexed because, there, in the small villages, everything was normal and peaceful. The villagers, of course, weren't being barraged with news and they weren't in the epicenter of chaos, like the Volunteers who were stuck in Bamako or the northern regions of Mali. For the next few days, constant gunfire could be heard in the northern region of Mali, and blanketing the streets of Bamako. 

The first day of consolidation blew my mind. Suddenly, I was seriously questioning whether or not I would be able to finish my service in Mali while the questions piled up. When Volunteers arrived in Kita, we were all begging for answers...What did this all mean? What was going to happen to us...What did the future hold for Mali? How could this even happen...to Mali of all places??

Consolidation dragged on. Every text message from PC or the Embassy was yet another chance to glean answers. We were on the edge of our seats every single time our phones beeped. We would read PC emails and text messages together, as a group, tearing apart every sentence our Country Director wrote, wondering what it all meant. And the waiting, wondering and questioning stretched on...

Creative stress relief was a big deal breaker during this stressful and uncertain time. We made a Risk board, ping pong table, cooked family dinners and shot water balloons from the roof of the stage house as healthy stress relief.

We made a Zombie A"coup"alypse movie during our consolidation.

As the situation unfolded, each day it was looking more and more likely that something drastic was going to happen. Our PC staff seemed so optimistic, but many PCVs had that sense of gut-dropping dread that we were leaving. We were consolidated to our regional capitals on March 24 and de-consolidated on April 2. In the middle of the night on April 2, all of the Volunteers in the northern region of Mopti were evacuated and told they were all going home. We were re-consolidated on the morning of April 3. By the afternoon of April 3, we all got the news that the entire country was being evacuated.

After nearly two weeks of consolidation and uncertainty, with days after days in which the 25 or so of us in Kita (in one small house) were not even allowed to leave the house, we finally got some answers - our service in Mali was over.

The rebels in the north took over Timbuktu, Gao, Kidal...cities that they had been fighting for for up to two decades. Most foreign aid was cut off...including the US's foreign aid. And then ECOWAS decided to impose its sanctions, closing the borders, strangulating fuel quantities, cutting off commercial banks. These events led to an impossible situation for PC...and evacuation was the only option.

There is nothing that can prepare you for the news that the life you had planned for yourself was going to be ripped out from under your feet. There is nothing that can prepare you for saying goodbye to an entire city of people while you're numb and so in shock that what's happening isn't even registering. There is nothing that can prepare you for closing a very important and powerful chapter of your life...so immediately, so suddenly, so without warning. But, like I've learned in PC,  you deal with the hand that's been given to you.

We were evacuated from Mali, to Accra, Ghana, on April 8. The buses left almost two hours late, broke down on the way to the airport and the trunk of our bus flew open while on the road, jettisoning luggage across the road...but alas, we made it and were safely evacuated.

Upon arrival to Ghana, Peace Corps Washington flew in special staff to help us with the transition. On Monday, April 9, we started our official "Close of Service (COS)" conference. We spent five and a half days contemplating our options - from direct transfers to other countries to going back to the States to re-doing our Peace Corps service from scratch. Peace Corps put us up in a luxurious, freezing-cold air conditioned ocean-side resort with amazing and delicious meals, a casino and Vegas-style pool.

Imagine going from your village, speaking Bambara, living with the poorest people on the planet to abruptly thrown into an early COS conference in a five-star resort on the ocean in an English-speaking country where you have to make several major life decisions in a matter of days.

Peace Corps handled the evacuation really well. They kept in constant contact with us, sending us important updates and trying its best to communicate as honestly as possible. Our COS conference was...surreal...but it was a great transition to the next stages of our lives. How many of us would continue to live in mud huts without electricity or running water if most of us were going back to America? The ocean-side weather, English speaking and western food were a great way to transition from Peace Corps Volunteer to Returned Peace Corps Volunteer.

During our COS conference, we had a group counseling session. During the session, people were visibly upset. We had been evacuated for fewer than 24 hours and there we were talking about how to healthfully handle this new stage of our life. At the breaking point, after several people had started crumbling into soft, vulnerable tears, the counselor compared Mali to our first love.

That's when I left the room.

I've really started to accept the sudden transition and realize that I may not be going back to Mali again for a long time. But there's something absolutely gut-wrenching about comparing Mali, one of the world's top 10 poorest countries, one of the top 10 worst places in the world to be a woman, one of the hardest Peace Corps countries to be a Volunteer, to your first love...the love you'll never forget and always love.

It's because that's exactly what it is.

They say that Africa changes you forever because it's real. You don't get any comforts, cushions with Africa. You go and you live. And the people take you in and change you for the better. They may lie to you (Mali's indirect communicative style), but they live more honestly than we all do in the States. They may be malnourished, but they're the strongest people in the world. They withstand hardship that millions of people can't even imagine. They may be poor, but their culture, their sense of community and family and unity, is intensely rich. Mali is not a place you forget. It's a place that grabs you and devours all of your previous conceptions about the world and teaches you lessons that turn you inside out.

The people take you in like their own. They call strangers their family. They honor you by giving you their family name. They joke with you to show you they love you. They give you their last meal, during a famine. They'd do absolutely anything for their "brothers," their "sisters," their "mothers," their "fathers..." because, to Malians, it doesn't matter the color of your skin, where you're from, who you are or what you've done, you're family...and a family takes care of each other.

Damnit, Mali, I will miss you terribly. Mali, you are my first love and I can never, ever, ever forget you. I'll think about you every day and keep working on the sidelines to give back to you.

I still have so many stories to tell. I will continue to tell them on this blog. I strongly believe in the power of story-telling, of keeping the Malian traditions alive...that's what Malians would do anyway. So, stay tuned. From me, and from Mali...

It ain’t no use to sit and wonder why, babe

It don’t matter, anyhow

An’ it ain’t no use to sit and wonder why, babe

If you don’t know by now

When your rooster crows at the break of dawn

Look out your window and I’ll be gone

You’re the reason I’m trav’lin’ on

Don’t think twice, it’s all right

Saying goodbye. For now. 

Reflections, 358 Days

Being here in Mali allows me to do so many cool things with my time and my life. When my PC friends express concern that they're not going to obtain a job post-PC, I always remind them that their everyday life is the answer or the story for every interview question out there.

Interviewer: "So, tell me about a time when you had to be self-motivated."
PCV: "Well, that was my life for more than two years! I had to work in the middle of nowhere, barely able to speak the language, in an unfamiliar culture, adjusting to blasting furnace temperatures soaring over 100 degrees, kids screaming "White person!" at me, gawking, pointing, without a boss, a support system, English speakers, an office, written literature in an illiterate culture. Every day was a struggle to be self-motivated. But I did it. And I did it for more than two years."

Interviewer: "Can you describe a time in which you dealt with challenging people?"
PCV: "Well, I have two years of dealing with difficult people and situations. When you're constantly misunderstanding each other and don't speak the language or fully know the culture, it makes every single thing very difficult...When it's the culture not to show up on time and you've spent all week preparing for something only to have to wait for an hour...or four...and then they can barely understand what you say...Well, dealing with challenging people and circumstances was my life for more than two years."

Interviewer: "Tell me about a time you created something from scratch. Describe a time when you solved a problem. Explain a situation in which you showed leadership skills. Describe a situation in which you had to work with little or no resources. Tell us about an experience in which you handled several challenges at once, successfully, or a time you had to work under pressure. Detail a time when you persevered and didn't give up, but wanted to. Explain a time in which you didn't succeed, and how you handled it. Detail a work experience in which you had to think outside of the box. Elaborate on a situation in which you had to work under stressful circumstances and how you handled it..."

The list goes on. Peace Corps coaches us through every "challenge" question life could hurdle our way. When we leave this country, we will not only be better citizens of the United States, but more aware, insightful, alive, dynamic citizens of the world.

I've been in Mali about 358 days now. Yeah, that means that my one year anniversary will commence in one week. In one week, I will step forward from the "One Year Volunteer," to the new shoes of a "Second Year Volunteer."

Some PCVs describe their Peace Corps experience in two intriguing ways. One - it's all a dream. Two - it's a mini life. Agreed. I've described these same sentiments on this blog. In one week, the monumental occasion of my half-life will occur. I will be the equivalent of 50 years old. Wasn't it just a month or so ago, when I hit 37 years old? And I'm already 50??!! Wow, time sure zips by.

The life lessons I've learned here would require a book to illustrate them all.

Patience. Go with the flow. Perseverance. The journey. Have faith that life will connect the dots. Yes, we can. You get what you give. Think big. The secret to life is falling down seven times and getting up eight. Drink more water. It's all about the relationships. Just dance. Smile. A positive attitude is your best friend. Push yourself. The way you think matters. Stressed? Journal, work out, listen to music, talk to friends. Give back...and many more.

I want to write something official on the  year mark, so I'm withholding some of the lessons I've really developed here.

My sister emailed me the other day, responding to a previous email of mine during which I asked for her advice. She answered that, "Soon, Laura, I am afraid you won't need my wisdom anymore." Wow...

Living in a third world country with the everyday realities of Mali is not something that anyone just chooses to throw themselves into. This is something that only 200,000 out of the 300,000,000 Americans have taken an oath to uphold regarding their service to their country. This is an elite club of crazy, activists, people who are used to changing the landscape of the world around them, people who are used to getting it done...who come to places such as Mali and Ukraine and Vanuatu...and begin to comprehend the heart-wrenching realities of life on the other side...of the life of the forgotten majority...life of the unacknowledged majority of the world. And oftentimes, we waltz in with idealism and the passion to match, and immediately fathom that...it's not that easy. And that's when the answer to that interview question about dealing with failure and learning from it comes in.

The mornings when the alarm clock is snarling repeatedly. Beep! Beep! Beep! And you think, "Today, I'm just going to sleep in because I can...and because I just don't want to go outside my hut." But, you get up. You think about letting down the little kids you work with, or the street food lady smiling at you when she sees you. You pull on your Malian clothes. You jump on your bike and ride across town, though reluctantly, and you greet and wave excitedly at the locals on the dirt sidewalk. And you go and spend the day, drinking tea, eating with your hands, stuttering through Bambara, chatting and greeting at every corner. And next thing you know, the sun is setting and you did it. And it was a damn good day. That's when you can answer the interview questions with stories about self-motivation.

The late nights in our hut...when the only sound is the crickets or the mosquitoes buzzing in your ear...with thoughts bombarding you like a nagging kid tapping your shoulder. The nights when you sit there and honestly ask yourself if this is what you're made of. When you position your head in your hands and sigh out loud...and seriously ponder what the hell you were thinking of when you locked yourself into this decision. Those late nights...those are the ones that we look back on with strength and power and pride, after the fact. That's when the answer to the interview question about perseverance comes in.

At the end of the day, I know that I can't stride into my town of Kita and change the world. I just can't. Behavior change doesn't occur like that. But, I can do my best. I can make friends and peace. And I think the most valuable thing I will bring back to America in the next 15 months or so...is the character I built within myself. Because I will come back not as Laura Vest, but as a different, renewed, better, more honest, strengthened version of that Laura. And I'll be able to tackle anything life hands to me.