I am a Volunteer…Now What Do I Do?

I, Katrina Shankle, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States of American against all enemies, domestic or foreign, that I take this obligation freely, and without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion, and that I will well and faithfully discharge my duties in the Peace Corps (so help me God).

It is official, as of Friday September 14, 2012, I am officially a Peace Corps Volunteer; after three months of training where I successfully met the language, technical and cultural components I was permitted to swear in with 65 of the other Stagiers in my class. We didn’t have Hillary Clinton, or any other big name swear us in, but it was the US Ambassador to Benin’s first act as Ambassador, as he had only been sworn in himself 24 hours prior- which is kinda cool.

I thought having spent so much time and effort trying to get into the Peace Corps and then with the ups and downs of training, the whole thing would have been a more emotional experience. However, the week ahead of swear in was a blur of last minute administrative tasks, goodbyes to the people I have spent the last 3 months getting to know and surviving stage with, and packing,  all of which ended with me waking up early to catch a motorcycle taxi (Zem) to the buses that would take us to swear in. On any normal day, the second I stepped out on the street I would be accosted by Zems looking to take a fare, but of course on the day of swear in, I could find none. After turning down several non-official Zem drivers in an effort to avoid breaking too many Peace Corps policies on the day of swear in, I had made it all the way from my house to the main road, and still no Zems. Finally a man in a blue shirt (the color Zem drivers in Porto Novo wear) drove up, at this point, already late I barely negotiated, and just hopped on. Only after we were already on our way did I notice he did not have a license number on the back of his shirt, he was in fact just a guy in a blue shirt giving me a ride. Luckily Peace Corps didn’t seem to notice or care and I made it to the bus on time.

As we waited at the US Embassy for the ceremony to begin, rumors began flying by those who snuck a peak in the kitchen, that there would be burgers, pigs in a blanket, quiche, crab cakes and of course beer- all the glorious things we had been salivating over thinking about for the last three months (except for the beer, which we all enjoyed abundantly after training each day). Thus, by the time the ceremony began- on Beninoise time, alors en retard- most of us were hungry and ready to move on to our shopping and other post swear in tasks.

It wasn’t until I was sitting in a taxi at 5 am, driving through Porto Novo the next day, still dark, that I realized that my 3 months of Stage were over, that I would likely never live in Porto Novo again and that I had taken my oath and I was finally a volunteer. After what felt like summer camp or study abroad all over again, I finally felt like I was in the Peace Corps. Then I fell asleep.

12 hours after saying goodbye to my house in Porto Novo, I was sitting in my house in Banikoara with all my bags and a dinner I grabbed on the road. This was the start of my service.  However, it was also the first opportunity I had to use my new internet key and reconnect to the outside world, so naturally the first thing I did was check my email, Facebook, the news, and ESPN. After being sufficiently overwhelmed by the happenings of the outside world, and disappointed in my sports teams, I began cleaning the house and unpacking. 24 hours later I was still cleaning and unpacking. In that time I began to get a feel for what home would be like for the next two years. Living in a desert, I am learning, means that no matter how many times you sweep, the dirt and the dust will prevail, I discovered that my toilet leaks when the water is left on- unequipped to fix this, and too lazy to figure it out, I have decided to just turn the water source on and off, half the lights in the house don’t work, rain on a tin roof is really loud and really wet when you have leaks, the fasteners we were supposed to get with our propane tanks, stove and hose were not actually in my supplies (against my better judgment I checked for gas leaks by lighting a match near potential sources of leaks, with no explosions I decided my stove was safe enough- in retrospect it was not the smartest move on my part), I have pet crickets and there is a chicken that sometimes hangs out by my bedroom window.

After successfully unpacking my house in the first 24 hours, I was ready to start meeting the community. Peace Corps warned that people would just show up at our house, invite us for dinner and offer us help moving in. My community was more or less uninterested in me. Not to say that they don’t like me but there has been a Peace Corps Volunteer in Banikoara for the last 6-8 years and there are other development agencies here with other foreigners allegedly residing in the community, thus the excitement of having a white person living in the neighborhood is diminished. After walking around and saying hi to my new neighbors without much excitement on Sunday, I returned home looking forward to my first day where I would at least get to see my coworkers. Monday came and went, then Tuesday, Wednesday I bumped into my counterpart who informed me the mayor’s office was busy, my supervisor was in Parakou and she was leaving for Togo, then she said something about not working until November or December and left. Moments I wish I spoke better French.

In the absence of work or much social connection, I have spent my days studying French, Barriba (the local language), talking to my security guards (both very nice people and my main source of social interaction), visiting the market, trying to cook with items available and recognizable to me, giving up on cooking and exploring the cafeteria world of Banikoara and contemplating whether the water I drank at the cafeteria was a bad idea midway through an attempt to go running which in reality was more of a half run mixed with trying not to fall in the mud, get hit my a Zem, all while people continue to greet me with things like bon sport, bon perspiration, bon travail and the uncreative bon soir.

So many times I have been warned that this is the reality when you get to post but still I can’t help but wonder if I am already failing at being a volunteer or when this initial complete lack of structure will come to an end. I have moments where this is a low for me, where I worry about my ability to integrate and work within my community. I continue to remind myself of how long it took to get to know my coworkers in a structured office setting in India to accomplish work and that brings some comfort but for those who know me well, four days of having nothing to do is four days too many. Thus, in typical Type A Katie fashion I woke up this past morning and made myself a daily schedule rationing when I would exercise and when I would do language study, when I would study for the GRE and when I would wander the community and try to integrate, we will see how long this schedule lasts.

A harder point of being a female volunteer here is that I can’t just go to a bar and hang out and make friends because it would be considered inappropriate, further challenging me is the warning Peace Corps gave women of hanging out and making friends with men- by doing so it is generally assumed that you are agreeing to date them on some level. This is restricting. But today I cracked, a Nigerian man invited me to get a beer with him after he finishes work, starved for human interaction and friendship, I agreed, stressing that I am married of course, but that only sometimes helps. Here’s hoping that I have made myself a friend and that I won’t spend the next hour explaining why if I am married I am here and uninterested in getting married again. Lucky for me I have found the key to ending marriage proposals, after informing a different suitor I did not want children, he informed me that no one ever would want to marry me then and that was that. Oh cultural exchanges.

Hopefully, for my sake, I will have more to report on in the weeks to come.

A la prochain.