I Will Learn to Love the Skies I'm Under

I’m sorry that I haven’t written in a long time.

I’ve been struggling with what I wanted to tell the general public about how I’m feeling.

I have been waiting to go into the Peace Corps for years, so when I finally got in, I didn’t think twice about saying yes. There could be no problem. This was part of the plan. Things don’t go wrong when there are plans made.

So imagine my surprise when I got to my site, and instantly didn’t love it. Not even liked it, not at all. I wasn’t sure what the issue was, but I knew that I wasn’t happy. Everything made me upset. I would go for a run and every 5 seconds I’d hear “Opato! Opato!” (Opato is ‘white person’ in Temne). Or I would slow down when I was going up a hill and I’d hear “Oh, are you tired?” with a smile that seemed to imply that the Opato couldn’t run. Opatos couldn’t do anything that you needed to in Africa. We can’t carry water without spilling it, we can’t carry shit on our heads and we can’t just sit for hours on end and stare at each other.

Nothing is easy here. Nothing.  There were days when I just wanted to hide in my house and I totally did. I would read for hours on end, sometimes ten hours a day. I just wanted to be in any world but the one that I was in. I can’t remember now what I thought life in the Peace Corps was going to be like, but this wasn’t it. I was at site for a week, and it felt like an eternity. The thought of two years made me not able to breathe. I would burst into tears spontaneously over the smallest things. I had zero appetite and whenever I would eat, it always came right back up again. Whatever my mind was doing, my body knew how it felt about Africa.

I came to Freetown because I had a cough and because I needed to not be at my site. Getting here should have taken me 4 hours and around 10 hours later was when I actually stumbled into the hostel. Like I said, NOTHING is easy in this country. I was instantly comforted by a bunch of the Salone 3s, the group that has been here for a year. Well, they tried anyway. They all assured me that things got much better when school started, and that a routine makes the days go by faster. You get through it, they told me. But I wasn’t sure that the only thing you should hope for was to get through your life. I wondered if you ever began to like it, or if it was just a constant battle of wills against this country that you didn’t want to lose.

I was raised not to give up on things just because they were difficult. That life wasn’t always easy and sometimes you just had to deal with things. But I was also raised extremely comfortably. I was beyond loved by my family, who supported me so much. All they wanted was for me to be happy and all I wanted was to make them proud. So there was no way for me to look at coming home as anything other than giving up. But the more I battled with the idea of being here for two years, the more anxious I got. I’ve never been an anxious person before.  So this was a foreign and completely unwelcome feeling.

I finally had to let myself think about going home. About how I could cope with a sense of failure. I had to decide if the sense of failure I would feel at home would be worse than the feelings of apprehension, depression and dread I felt about staying in this country. Then I remembered that I had only spent a week at site, and the sense of shame burned a little deeper. I had been out of my comfort zone for one week and I was already ready to give up.

I have decided to give it another month. I would go back to site and speak Temne, be laughed at by every person I ran by and try teaching 60 kids at one time how to solve a simultaneous linear equation. My hopes aren’t high though. I hate dishonesty, especially with myself, and the truth was that I was thinking this month as just a courtesy to myself, so I could go home and feel like I tried. So I wouldn’t have to be on a date in a year and have to say that I was in the Peace Corps, but couldn’t handle it. At least if I gave it more time I could say that the country just wasn’t a good fit for me. But then I thought about what I would be leaving behind in this country.

When I think I have no reason to stay, I remember that I have 39.

The amazing people I came here with. Strong, smart and fiercely loyal to one another, I know that they’d be fine if I left. I’m not delusional enough to think that I’m holding this program together or anything, but I do know what it does to our group when someone leaves. We’ve lost 3 of our own so far, and whenever they go home, there’s a hole left in the group. The circumstances under which we all met bind us differently than they would if we had met in the states. We have no one in this country but each other. At least not that understands us like we understand each other. No matter what personal shit anyone is dealing with with another person, they’re going to be there, no questions asked. We’re family first, everything else second.

They love me enough to assure me that no matter what, they’ll be here for me and they want me to make the decision that is going to make me the happiest. But I love them enough to try again.

I can’t make any promises. I have no idea what the next few months will hold. I have no idea if the Peace Corps was actually the right decision for me to make. I have no idea if this country is right for me, or if my mental health can handle being here. But my friends pulled me out of a funk about the PC when I was in the states before I had even met them. Maybe they’re all I need a second time.

 

“I will learn to love the skies I’m under”

 ~’Hopeless Wanderer’, Mumford and Sons