I spent the weekend in Kissidougou working with Ben to paint a world map on the outside wall of the Kissidougou library. He had already gotten it started with a few other volunteers, and so when I got there the blue ocean background and the outlining of all the countries was done. We spent the better part of two days painting all the countries in and painting the Guinean flag and the Peace Corps symbol. Here is a picture of how it looks now. It will have to wait until Ben gets back from his trip to finish it.
Here is us painting. We did most of the countries, the other two did a lot of the ocean.
Here is the map almost finished. We have just the labels and a few errors to do.
There was always a crowd watching. It was kind of annoying, but at least they showed interest.
It was a nice little project, and it was good to get out of Faranah for a few days. I have been struggling a lot with feeling like my service isn’t worth anything, and being there, having a project, and mostly returning home, helped. I have two ongoing projects that are actually happening (English classes and a business club), and a third, fourth and fifth that I hope will take off, but it is hard to believe that it will actually change anything.
It was enough for a while to know that it was a challenge. Now I find myself mostly just bored, and though my work is picking up, it still leaves plenty of hours free. I know, I should take the opportunity to fulfill other goals or to just enjoy myself. When I entered Peace Corps I knew already that much of my sense of self-worth was tied to feeling productive or like I was accomplishing something. And I knew that it was going to be a struggle to feel like I wasn’t just wasting my time here. I suppose I am trying to learn how to be happy without the feeling of accomplishment, but now that I have that opportunity, I am not so interested in it. I am finally starting to have a picture of what I want my life to be like, or at least I have found a picture that I am happy with, and now it feels like I am killing time until I make that future happen. A year and a half is a lot of time to kill, even if I am having fun for some of it.
All of this will hopefully settle back down. I had expected to feel pretty distraught after Mary left, but I almost feel as if I am having more trouble now than I was when I first arrived at site. Partly because I was hoping that I would have smooth sailing until my first year was up, the latest issues have been even worse.
I’ve been feeling pretty down on aid too, in general. I think the Peace Corps model is essential, but I feel like we lack the resources to accomplish something significant. The model of every other organization seems worse, in that it only encourages the pursuit of aid money instead of the development of infrastructure and industrial capacity. If all of your educated people are trying to get jobs at aid organizations, who is left to take initiative and develop the private sector?
Some things in aid are good. I am generally in support of education and health aid, and even infrastructure aid to some extent, but with all of it there is the problem of choosing to work with local people or bringing in your own workers. If you bring in your own people the people you are trying to reach are less likely to trust them. We run into this as volunteers all the time, often with people shaking their heads as if they are saying that is how white people do it, but here in Guinea things are different. On the other hand, by subcontracting your aid work out to local people, you run into the issue of diverting the educated and motivated people into working for aid instead of being self sufficient. And you have problems of corruption. All of this might be worth having the population actually listen and change how they behave, but I get the sense that Guineans who work for aid organizations are treated with the same sort of enthusiastic acceptance followed by dismissal.
This is not to say that Guineans are stupid. They have been doing things here a certain way for a long time and it has generally worked. And I don’t think aid can get away without imposing some of its cultural values on the people they think they are helping. We want Guineans to become more like us, but they are arguably right to say that working harder to get money above what they need to live is not worth it. Especially when the opportunities to exploit that extra time are so limited.
Much of my discontent is due to being increasingly sure of my feeling that a lot of my interactions are filled with gaming the system. Several of our partner organizations, at least for SED, feel distinctly like they requested volunteers because having volunteers makes them look more attractive to potential aid doners. Once they actually have us the interest in working together seems minimally designed to make it look like they care. It is no fun to be a lame duck.
And yet that is the cynical view. Of course it is happening, but I also believe that many of the people we work with are genuinely excited to work with a Peace Corps volunteer. But they also need to be paid, and since their salaries come from aid doners, they would be foolish to put more effort into achieving things at the cost of pursuing more money. Economics would say there is an optimal choice that maximizes the receipt of funds, but that is not the same choice that maximizes satisfaction among volunteers.
Anyway, tonight I made some cinammon pancakes and I’ve been trying to plan different ways to make my service feel more fulfilling. I am going to try not allowing any pleasure reading between eight and five. If I can stick to that I will at least feel like I am doing some kind of work (afternoon naps are still allowed though). This week I have a class every evening except Thursday, so I actually have a lot of prep work to do. Maybe I will be singing a different tune by the end of next week.
