2006-07-11 - 12:08 p.m.

July 10, 2006

There’s a big fat lizard working its way around the room’s aqua-painted walls. The birds are chirping as they have, endlessly, the entire weekend. The toads have been keeping us company in the warm moon-lit evenings. I’m wondering why the rainy season hasn’t quite started yet and hoping it’s not a preemptive sign for drought this year. I can think of plenty of people out in the middle of nowhere who would suffer considerably if that were to be the case. And as usual I wonder why they are so stubborn as to stay there and not move to a more clement area of the country…

One of the little boys at the feeding centers passed away just a few days short of reaching the first month of “emergency food supplements” my parents’ and sister’s friends had collected money for before their trip here. Limnaye, who visited them after I left Magta Lahjar, said the children are eating dirt… a sign that they’re iron-deficient. Along with the iron in the dirt though, they are picking up more germs, viruses, bacteria ending up with diarrhea… and with no clean water available to them , and at this time of the year, almost no water whatsoever, dehydration seems to be the final sentence for these young skinny sickly children. These are the times when my mind starts racing, scrambling to find ideas about how to help more, what to do better, who to possibly involve, when and where to start.

As one of my trainees recently brought up to me, it is often easy to doubt the impact one can possibly truly have as a Peace Corps volunteer with limited tools and resources for just two years in such a poor country. He was debating on whether it was worth his time to stick around for his upcoming two-year tour or whether he should just call it quits and go back to the US before even starting… I remember having the same doubts when I first got here the summer of 2004. Looking at the people, so poor yet so peaceful and quaint, having a hard time coming to terms with the daily rhythm of life, so slow and surreal… who wanted to change? Was it really them? Or was it “us” imposing change on them? And what on earth could I possibly do to contribute in any way, shape, or form? I can’t believe how far those days seem to me now… time blending in memory, heat and sweat streaking images of the past, the unfamiliar sounds that eventually became second-nature and that will soon become cryptic again once in the US.

I do feel like my two years of service were of impact. Obviously I did not save a nation, I didn’t find the solution to a country’s poverty, I didn’t save lives… or maybe I did, one or two children closer to death were able to survive because of the feeding centers I started and managed, because of the basic hygiene and nutrition lessons I imparted on their mothers, because of the moringa seeds I helped plant and grow. Maybe I did teach a few women how to better manage their money, how to re-invest funds in their revenue-generating activities and how to start savings plans to respond to future greater needs, maybe I did instill some long-lost enthusiasm and excitement in a few girls’ minds, encouraging them to strive and reach for higher levels of education and ambition. Maybe I demonstrated to a few die-hard teenager boys that Americans are not so bad after all and that you can be a devout Muslim and still respect and befriend the West. Maybe I did demonstrate that not all Western women are scandalous and loose as TV often portrays them to be, that Americans can be wholesome, intelligent, generous, and caring. That their families back home are that way too. That we are just as human as they are… and that differences sometimes just lay in the country we were born in, the culture we were accustomed to, the language we learned to speak, the religion passed down by our ancestors. Differences that are comprehensible, differences that are surmountable, differences that really don’t matter once you get to the core of life, once you are bound to live together, share the same food, share the same water, share the joys as well as the sad moments of common days. I know I was able to reach out to friends and family back home to demonstrate these same things to them too. To be the bridge between them and a culture so foreign and often so scary, when seen through the lenses of CNN or BBC news… I am confident that I was able to be the proof that the intricacies of race, culture, and religion are indeed very intricate and complex… they cannot be generalized in black and white colors, good and bad terms, hues of gray do indeed exist and thrive in this large world. A world so large and so complex that often seems split in so many separate faraway planets.

I hope this trainee and the several others who are now in the process of doubting whether it is all going to be worth it, will be able to decide to give it a try. I agree with Obie, my country director, “Peace Corps is not for everyone” but I also believe that, despite the hardship you might encounter today, “tomorrow is, indeed, another day” it is worth waiting until the new day to see if you can stick it out just one more day… one more awesome, extraordinary, life-changing day.

Thank you all for your support… God only knows how much I’ve needed it at times!

Much love,

Jordy

P.S. 67 days left in Mauritania!!!

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