ET, I'm Going Home

Once again, I write to you from over the Atlantic.

But this time, I’m headed home.

After many conversations, tears, indecisiveness, and far too many goodbyes, I’ve decided to ET and head home early from my Peace Corps service.

For those of you that have had the misfortune of being one of the people I overanalyze every aspect of my life with, you’ll know how long I’ve wanted to do Peace Corps. And how hard of a decision it was for me to leave it.

I have a fear of a life ill-spent. That I’ll get sucked into a life that I despise. I always thought that was going to be a life of corporate submissiveness, where I would have to work countless hours making sure some rich white male could afford his Boca condo. I always thought I would hate a life like that. I didn’t dream that I could also hate a life in a mud hut, halfway around the world, doing what everyone else called ‘worthwhile work’.

Don’t get me wrong, there were parts that I loved; that I can’t wait to get back to. I loved how easily Sierra Leoneans accepted strangers. Everywhere you went, everyone wanted to know you. I loved the steady bass line that resonated from every club until all hours of the night. The Sierra Leoneans loved to dance, and so do I. They laugh easily and are so thankful for any help. I served with the loves of my life, whom I’ll miss more than anything else I ever have.

But the bottom line was this- I didn’t like who I was becoming.

To the outsider, Peace Corps is this amazingly selfless thing. Everyone admired me for taking 2 years of my life and living in the poorest country in the world. They rained praises down, like I was some kind of saint. What no one knows is what a selfish thing Peace Corps really is. Once you get to country and realize the full hopelessness that exists, and get over the defeated attitude, service becomes about you. Self discovery, intellectual growth and friendships forged.

I read a lot of books, made best friends, fell in love and slowly realized I didn’t like who I was becoming despite these things. I yelled a lot at people who didn’t deserve it (and some who really did), chased kids off my lawn like a crotchety old man, and realized how many times a day I thought about how much I hated kids. So much hatred and enmity was bubbling inside me all the time. I had slowly regressed to a point that I couldn’t find my way back from. The only good thing in my every day was my friends, who had seen the changes in me too, worried like I was.

The tribe I lived with and I didn’t mesh well, and I worried what 2 years would do to me. I didn’t want to be a person who came back to the States a racist, elitist, nationalistic asshole. And I felt like with the job I was doing, I was fast tracked to that fate.

As a writer and lover of words, I’d have a hard time picking a favorite quote. But gun to my head, I might have to go with F. Scott and his quote “I hope you live a life you’re proud of. And if you find you’re not, I hope you have the courage to start all over again.”

I never knew what he meant by courage until I was faced with it. Walking away from a ‘should’ goes against human nature and every way I was raised. You’re ‘supposed’ to finish things you start. You ‘shouldn’t’ give up when things get hard.

 But at what cost?

How would the seesaw of life measure up with a completed service that comes with a black heart? I want to be proud of my story. And the only way I know how to do that is to love people. And any thing that gets in the way of that has to go.

So once again I find myself over the Atlantic, tears in my eyes because of my friends that are waiting back in Salone, but a peace in my heart knowing that I made the right choice to head home. Whatever I was supposed to get from Salone, I did.

I hope to find my way back to Mama Salone one day. And with a mission that I believe in, one that fits just like your life is supposed to.

But not too soon, because the coffee really sucks there. 

"Respect yourself enough to walk away from something that no longer serves you. grows you, or makes you happy."

The Beautiful Truth

Our egos take a bow here every day. Everywhere we go, it’s always, “Fine girl!” or “Hey, baby”. Once I even got a demand to show my asshole to someone. I admit that one threw me off. Pretty much because it was really demanding and specific. Anyway, we’re pretty hot shit here. Not through anything that we do, but because we’re white. Foreign. Different.

Anyway, it’s simply good self preservation to remind yourself that you’re not really that special, and you’re really not that attractive (95 degree weather with 105% humidity is no one’s friend). You begin to write it off and soon, you realize that irony of ironies, the place where you get the most compliments is the place you feel least attractive.

I didn’t realize the damage of this habit of Americans until recently. I was with one of my best friends here, a person who is far and away one of my favorite people I’ve ever known. He told me that he feels like he blends in and that people don’t notice him. That he wasn’t anything special. He said this so matter-of-factly, like that was simply the irrefutable truth. He didn’t sound upset about it, like you can’t really be mad about the fact that one toe is longer than another. It was just who he was.

I sat there in disbelief, not even sure where to begin to explain to him the way he really was. How I saw him. How far from the truth he was. That he was one of the most captivating people I’ve ever met and there was this sort of magic about him that I’d never seen in anyone else. He couldn’t blend in if he tried. When I feebly tried to explain this, he chalked it up to not knowing him long enough. I wanted him to know that the more I knew him, the less ordinary he became.

This was the first of many similar conversations I’ve had with people here. Somehow this topic always got lost in the states with movies and school taking up so many of the conversations. I was talking with a group of people about what we didn’t like about ourselves and the things people were pulling out were so strange to me. These things that just simply weren’t true from a preoccupation with the size of your head to never feeling confident in anything that you do. This self loathing that seeped from everyone filled the room, killing the love that we were trying to send their way.

No one can claim that they see themselves the way that others do. So much of our time is spent trying to wonder what these things are that the other people might be saying and imagining the worst. It’s true that the haters are going to hate, but more than likely, people are loving something about you that you missed.

Not caring what others think is something that was always associated with strength, and in many ways this isn’t a bad life philosophy. But in our haste to disregard what others think, you run the risk of never seeing something in you that shines so brightly it blinds other people. This strength, this thing that you miss could be so life-altering, could be the thing you always needed to hear, that refusing to listen could be detrimental to your life.

I was explaining my relationship with my mom to someone earlier today and I was telling him how stressful it was sometimes, because she honestly believes there’s nothing that I can’t do. I used to write it off as it being part of her job, one of those things they teach you in parent school. But as I’ve grown up, she’s been my biggest fan, and it’s gotten more and more real, this unwavering faith she has in me that my life will be extraordinary. I hate to tell her that this isn’t true, that my limitations are so real they drag me down to a point that I can never see myself rising up from them. In this scenario, who has the better deal?

How much would your life change if just for one day, you believed what everyone told you about yourself? (The positive stuff, screw the haters.) What could you accomplish if the things you hold yourself down with, you gave to someone who really sees them 20/20?

Let people see you. More importantly, let them love you. One of the many wonderful teachers that you meet in books once said “We accept the love we think we deserve.” Let yourself be loved. Just for once, let someone that loves you to the moon and back explain why. Ask them what they see. Everyone has this unspeakable beauty in them.

Let it speak.

 

“Butterflies can’t see their wings. They can’t see how beautiful they are, but everyone else can. People are like that.”

Story of my Life

I sometimes feel like the background music of my life is the sigh.

I usually hear it after what could be deemed my catch phrase- “Tell me a story.”

I love a good story. But that demand almost always trips people up. All of a sudden their lives flash before their eyes and they realize the mundane nature of their day to day. More than likely they fend me off with throwing the question back at me, laughing or in more experienced cases, just flat out telling me to fuck off.  

At my core, I’m a writer. What drives me is the story. There’s nothing more interesting to me than getting lost in someone’s mind for a while. But I believe the most interesting story should be your own.

The ego is the most concrete part of the human experience. If you want a foolproof conversation starter, ask someone about themselves. No matter where your intellect lies, talking about yourself is a universal skill. So many people want to know so many things and people want to tell them. There are very few actual ‘private’ people, despite protestations of the opposite.

I’m just a writer chasing my story.

My Peace Corps group is composed of 40 20-somethings who just hang together, drink and shoot the shit. So naturally, the topic or virginity surfaces often. Apparently the fact that I still have mine shocks people. They approach with caution, morbidly curious, but not wanting to offend me when they ask what happened. I told them that the opportunity has presented itself, and it wasn’t religious or safety concerns that I had, but creative concerns. It wasn’t the story I wanted to tell. My life on paper is of infinite concern to me. The walls of my life are clustered with books, tangible evidence of my experiences.

I want to make sure that my story is one worth telling.

This is why I’m having such a hard time struggling with the decision to leave the Peace Corps. It’s the story of my life. No matter whom I choose to tell or how I choose to explain it, when the cocktail party is over, the story finished, I have to live with it. Is quitting something this big a chapter I want to have?

Or do I want to have a chapter entitled: Peace Corps- I finished, motherfuckers. And have that be the mentality that I bring back to the states. Completion that comes with anger issues, PTSD and a mild dose of Stockholm syndrome.

Right now, the thought of going home makes me nervous because I have no idea what I’d do. This was the plan for 2 years. I was supposed to have 2 years to plan the next thing and be a badass. But if I went home, tail between my legs, what would I do? Literally live in my parent’s basement, frantically trying to put my life back together? I have visions of me desperately trying to figure things out:

“I changed a light bulb one time and didn’t get electrocuted. Maybe I should be an electrician! Syracuse has a program and then I can move to Colorado and try my hand there. The 401k may not be the best but maybe I can add plumbing to it in a few years; be sort of a renaissance woman? Yeah, that sounds like a solid plan.”

And just go through this with everything until I fall exhausted into a bottle of drink or a drug induced coma. There’s no guarantee that if I leave the Peace Corps, the chapter after will tell people I got my shit together. And that isn’t the story that anyone wants to tell.

 I want desperately to not live a paper life. I want people to see the life in me, not read about it. But chasing the story is so inlaid in me, I have no idea how to break the mold and just be. Jack Kerouac, one of the greats gave writers the advice, “Be in love with your life, every minute of it.” I think the assumption is the story will find you.

 

I just hope mine doesn’t get lost.

Whatever Souls Are Made Of, Ours Are the Same

My life has always had background music. Any experience I had has had a song that went with it. From that mentality, Salone has had many contenders.

Fun’s song, ‘Some Nights’ was the top for a while, particularly the bridge where the singer is familiarly wondering if this all was worth it (So this is it? I sold my soul for this?) Also by Fun, ‘Carry On’ has made its way onto my wall at my house (When you’re lost and alone and you’re sinking like a stone, carry on).

Times like today where I went junking and made out like a bandit, all I can hear  as I strut away is ‘Thrift Shop’ by Macklemore ( Probably should have washed this, smells like R. Kelly sheets, but shit, it was 99 cents!)

But the most applicable at all times is hands down ‘With A Little Help from My Friends’ by the Beatles.

I know this is a tune I’ve sang before, but my people here are my people for good.

I was recently talking to a good friend from home who I haven’t talked to in a while and they asked me about Salone, and why it was hard for me. I realized that I don’t know how to explain it really to someone who doesn’t live here. I don’t know how to speak American anymore. I didn’t realize I had lost it because I’m around my Americans all the time, but they understand the random Krio that slips into the conversation, the Salone sounds that we use to convey tone and don’t write home when we talk about how sometimes flogging makes sense.

There’s more to someone speaking your language than tonal muttering and guttural sounds. There’s an inherent connection that we all share here that doesn’t seem to translate to friendships in the States.  There’s nothing external about anything here. I mean, we scoped each other out when we first got here and then we all promptly stopped shaving and flossing, and started getting random rashes, losing muscle and smelling. But no one cares. Because we’re all so gross, no one really notices.

Once you strip all the American trappings away, you get down to what actually matters. There are so many times that my best friend and I look at each other, usually when I’m trying to explain why fashion is important or she’s rattling off the stats to every team in the Premier League, and we know that we never would have been friends in the States. That thought both terrifies and mystifies me. How much of your Identity is rooted in external things? Would I have missed out on one of the strongest relationships of my life because I thought sarongs were more important than soccer balls?

This is true with pretty much everything here. You don’t have your things here. You don’t have your clothes, your makeup, or sometimes even your dignity. But without all of that, you’re stripped naked, down to as real as you can be. And when people can love you for that, they’re soul mates.

I’ve always believed in soul mates. To much mocking from my friends, I always believed that there was one perfect person for everyone and your paths would cross when they were meant to. That when you met that person, you would know. I still believe this in the romantic sense. But more strongly now, I believe this with your friends. Your true friends who know you past anyone else.

The Salone 3’s that have been here for a year already have been our lifelines in this country, and I know we want to be the same for Salone 5 when they get here, so…

For future Salone 5- here’s my most important piece of advice I can give you from this point in my service- Love your family. Your Peace Corps family is the only way you’ll survive here. And they’re the greatest people your life will ever have. Make them yours.

 

 

“He’s more myself than I am. Whatever souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”

-Emily Bronte

Just A Bad Day, Not A Bad Life.

Melville’s Moby Dick begins with Ishmael declaring that when he’s grim about the mouth and feels like knocking people’s hats off, he takes to the sea.

I always loved the imagery of a disgruntled Ishmael just pissed and going away from the port, away from all the trouble that he had to deal with. He had someplace that was all his, or at least in his mind. He could escape from what was torturing him on shore and his release made for an escape from a situation that proved too much for him.

Landlocked in Africa, there is no sea, no place for me to take to, which means therefore, hats will be metaphorically flying.

There’s really no point in getting angry here. No one understands what I’m saying anyway. The point is moot. However, today was one of those days that starts with stepping in quicksand and ends with an anvil falling on your head.

Banking here is a disaster and after the third bank didn’t have power, I very rudely asked a teller if there was anything that worked in this country. His tired response, that was not at all offended even though it really should be, made me realize perhaps I wasn’t the only one sick of it here. Charging back through town, I literally almost pushed a bobo (little boy) into the gutter for referring to me as Opato (white girl). I get called Opato roughly 207 times every day, but this one in particular almost ended in violence. Throw in yelling viciously at okada drivers who shouted pointedly sexual epithets in my direction and the unknowing bystander might think that I had Tourette’s, not just a bad day.

I’m not sure how to make these days fewer with more time between them. Today was the worst in a long while and probably the first time I felt like being violent. No one could say that I was ever a patient person, or a particularly non-confrontational person, but I’ve never been someone to take my aggression out in a physical way. Perhaps there’s no more room inside my body anymore and it’s just coming out my extremities. Perhaps this is why flogging is such an issue here. Maybe if you had to be raised in this country, your anger would build to a point where beating kids with sticks was the only way to get it out.

I’m not sure if this is a welcome change from constantly bursting into tears. The fact that those seem to be my only two options makes me wonder how Peace Corps ET(early termination) rate is only about 35%. I would think feeling this many things at once would make people too insane to even continue service.

I just have to keep telling myself that it’s just a bad day, not a bad life. But when the day to day starts to get repetitive, you begin to wonder how much day to day strung together begins to form your life. And are you living the way you want to? What can you live with?

How much can one person really do?

Provocative Plasas

So, in the States, everything was about sex. The ads, the propaganda, and almost every girls night out ended there. Somehow, it was a universal topic. I could talk about it with my friends, my teachers, even my parents, although I know that last one is pretty unusual. My parents are pretty much the coolest people you’ll ever meet.

Anyway, when I first met the other volunteers I was serving with, we were living it up our last night in Philly. Drink after drink, raucous conversations, and of course, talks about sex. It’s human nature and something that a bunch of 20-somethings can all talk about.

Now, 4 months later, infinitely closer to all the people I came with, sex still comes up on occasion. But there’s a new kid in town, something that we talk about with much more regularity, passion or longing.

Food.

There are many things to like about this country, but the food is really not one of them. At least not for me. Some people really dig the plasas (what the Sierra Leoneans call the part of the meal on top of rice) that we eat here, and are cool with eating kukuri (cookery) food every night, which generally consists of enough rice for ten, cassada leaf and enough palm oil to drown you. Not I. I find my only child syndrome manifesting in odd ways here. I was never forced to eat what I didn’t want to, so when I’m being force fed cassada, I almost rudely turn it down.

Sierra Leoneans are a very simple people. They don’t mind eating one of 4 revolving dishes that they make here every day. I’ve never once heard a child go, “Aw mom, cassada again??” They just eat it and shut up, like my mom used to tell me all the time.

The main stars of Salone cuisine are: Cassada Leaf, Granat soup, Petete leaf, and Acheke.

Cassada is the big kahuna. Everyone eats cassada, pretty much every day. The cassada root looks sort of like a potato, but has a totally different flavor. I’ve only had the root a few times, mainly when I would get sick during training and my host family would proclaim that eating the root would make me better. That was pretty much the only time they would force feed me anything, determined to make me ‘better’. The cassada leaf is a fibrous leaf, which they take off the stem, beat the ever living hell out of until it’s practically mush, and then boil it with beans or dried fish and serve it family style with rice. Cassada is the missionary position of food here. The go-to, the staple, always a classic.

Granat Soup translated is pretty much peanut butter soup, which is actually less gross than it sounds. Sierra Leoneans will take the peanuts and grind them until they’re a really runny kind of peanut butter. They’ll put a few packets of this into the soup with palm oil, the red monster that when consumed in excess, will turn the sensitive skin of the white man orange. They’ll sometimes add other things, like onions or beans and usually a dried fish or two. As far as options go, this is probably the best in my opinion. Granat soup is the crowd pleaser, the doggie style of the plasas world if you will.

Petete leaf is served basically the same as cassada, except you don’t need to beat the hell out of it like cassada. You mainly just chop it up and boil it with the fish and beans or whatever else you want in it. It’s a little slimy going down, but the flavor is a nice change from the slightly charred taste that cassada is always sporting. Petete is a nice change from cassada, but not too far from what you know, with it still being a green plasa. Kind of like shower sex.

And then there’s acheke. My disclaimer for acheke is this: after you’ve been force fed weird and excessive amounts of African food, you just want things that are familiar, even if they have no business being served together. Acheke starts with a foundation of gari, which is fermented cassada root. Then goes a heap of macaroni, and if you’re at a really classy acheke place, maybe some vegetables. But usually just onion, because they’re easy to find and cheap. Then they’ll slice and egg on top of that and put on either fish or chicken. They top it off with a gravy that is mostly palm wine and hot peppers, then a dollop of mayonnaise and a healthy squirt of ketchup. Mix it all together and it smells and looks like vomit, but sustains many of the volunteers that are here. Acheke is like the weird foreign position that Cosmo featured, one that seems like a good idea in theory, but you can never quite figure out how to do it like the magazine says. But it feels okay anyway.

If you’re abstaining like me, then you leave all plasas alone. I ate them for the ten weeks of training and then decided that was enough. I mostly eat boiled peanuts here, which I really think the states should pick up. It really is the best way to eat a peanut. For now, this is okay. But I’m also about 55 pounds lighter than I was when I came here, so I’m not sure how much longer peanuts will cut it.

My fellow PCVs are the loves of my life and in so many ways no one in America can really understand many aspects of our friendships. And one of the oddest things to an American might be how frequently we talk about food. But think about how many times you mentioned sex today. When you’re as hungry as we are, food is at the forefront of your thoughts.

I don’t think I’ll be opening a Salone-style restaurant upon my return to civilization.

Little Tappers of Doom

Whenever I talked about getting a dog, my mom always told me that I would lose interest in it once it got old, because old dogs aren’t nearly as cute as puppies. I always argued that dogs were cute no matter how old they were, hoping that that flew in the face of her baby-things-are-always-cuter-than-grown-things theory. 

However, one absolute non exception to her theory is goats. Grown goats are terrifying and mean and baby goats are the cutest things in the entire world. I think that it’s the most precious thing ever that their hooves are called little tappers. Apparently I relay this fact often. A friend of mine told me that I tell him that every time we see a baby goat. I didn’t believe him until he started pointing it out every time. That was also when I realized we were spending far too much time together. 

Anyway, the point is baby goats with their little tappers are the most adorable things ever.

So I was fine with the fact that my village was overrun with goats. I live toward the end of town, right before the main road, and there are not many people around me. I have 2 neighbors, but aside from them, it’s just me. I also have the biggest veranda. So naturally when it rains, my veranda is the spot that the neighborhood animals congregate on. As soon as the rain comes, my veranda is overrun with chickens, sheep and of course, goats. 

On the first real massive rain of my time here, I was sitting in a chair, trying to force myself to walk the quarter mile to the well and pull some water for a bath because it had been about 5 days and it was really time. Before I could move though, the rain came and my phone rang simultaneously. I grabbed my phone and talked to my friend for a few minutes before I realized that I could solve my laziness problem by just catching the rainwater. So I opened my front door, and my back door, and was going to run into my latrine, which is just out the back door and around the corner, attached, but outside. 

I was trying to hurry before the rain relented while also trying to make plans for the next day on the phone. Just as I was reaching back door, I heard angry bleat from behind me. I turned and saw the most precious tiny goat ever, which, for some reason, was pissed. He had chased me through my house and then proceeded to chase me out my back door and into my latrine. I was cornered in my latrine, with this 15 pound runt of a goat yelling at me, while my friend is still jabbering on the phone, unaware that my life was in mortal peril. 

Unsure of what to do and unwilling to have my tombstone read “here lies Kylee Reynolds, she was trampled to death by little tappers” I yell into the phone, 

“Banjor! A baby goat is attacking me!”

He stops talking asks me to repeat myself, and then proceeded to absolutely crack up which was no help whatsoever. While he was pissing himself from 7 miles away, I did the only logical thing, which was wave a bucket at it, stomp my feet and yell at it in Temne. He finally got scared and ran back into my house, where he promptly got stuck under my desk. While I was trying to get him the hell out of my house, his scared yelps attracted the attention of his very formidable mother, who stuck her head in my house, scaring the ever living crap out of me. Before things got primordial though, the baby goat unearthed himself, and ran off my veranda, his mom following suit.

I collapsed in my chair, bucket in hand trying to process what had just happened. Banjor was still on the phone, laughing but trying to pull himself together. After assuring him the goat was gone, confirming our plans and hanging up, I looked out at the road. Almost as though it was scripted, the offending baby goat walks by, looks at me, bleats, and moves on. 

I never did catch that rainwater.