One Hand Does Not Catch a Buffalo

by Aaron Barlow

  5:20 p.m. Bintou, the president of the health committee and the most motivated person in the village, just arrived. When I got here at 3:00, I was feeling good, feeling energetic, and ready to work. Now I feel discouraged and foolish. If things continue like this for two years, I may have to shoot myself. I have here what I consider to be an almost ideal situation. And I have a positive attitude (though that’s being crushed little by little).

  I don’t know how other Volunteers do it. I really don’t. Well, I know some make it through only because they stop caring, or they never did care. I don’t want to stop caring. So, consequently, I fear I’m going to continue to get hurt.

  Thank god not every day is like this. But the roller-coaster ride I’ve been on for the past nine months is tiring.

  Later, the same day: Well, a couple of people came. And I was clearly upset. Bintou yelled at me. Adama yelled at me. “You shouldn’t have gone to that conference; you should’ve stayed here and prepared, called people to the meeting!” That did it. If he had any clue how important it was to me to attend that conference, or how completely destroyed I would feel had I not gone…well, I was about to burst into tears. So I got up and left to calm myself down and avoid having everyone watch me cry. And, everyone laughed.

  Bintou came to me and yelled some more: “Anger is bad! Anger is bad! You have to come out here and listen to us!” I took a couple of deep breaths and went back. But I needed more than that couple of minutes to hold back the tears. I sat down, and they yelled at me for being angry. Then they picked up on the tears streaming down my face. “Wait, she’s not angry; she’s crying! That’s bad! Crying is bad!” Not to mention, quite funny, apparently.

  Adama was practically rolling on the ground, yelling and laughing. What a great way to make a person feel better. One of the joys of village life is that things that happen that are funny today are not just funny today, they’re funny for days and weeks to come. I don’t think crying is ever forgotten. No one took me seriously before—now it can only be worse. And the whole village will know by tonight that I cried when no one showed up to my meeting. Fabulous.

  I know, of course, that the reason for my crying is much deeper. One, I needed it. In the past nine months I’ve cried twice. Two, I desperately need a vacation. Three, I had an emotionally disturbing morning experiencing closed minds and watching videos of little girls being cut. Four, I’ve been putting up with all this for nine months. Five, my emotional support system consists of people who laugh uncontrollably when I cry. Insane—you have to be insane to do this job!

  May 17, 2001, Bendougouba: Yesterday’s writing was very interesting—a written record of my rapid descent from energy and passion to shame and disillusionment. I felt great yesterday morning. I pursued something that was important to me, did what I needed to do even though common sense (and Adama) told me I shouldn’t. At the conference Adama seemed happy that I was there. It was only before and after that he chastised me. So I was up on high—but the higher you are, the further and faster you fall. Still, I don’t regret going to the conference; had I not gone, I would feel a lot worse today.

  Unfortunately, I now feel less likely to have faith in the people I work with, to put my soul into something, only to be disappointed. If people don’t want to take control of their community’s health, I can’t help them. If something is really important to me (and this job is), I put my all into it, I make sacrifices for it. And, time after time—like yesterday—I get shot down, with no one around but me to pick up the pieces. Each time my faith is weakened, little by little. From time to time it gets restored—which is so important—but again it almost makes the falls harder.

  I honestly don’t know if I can continue in this way for two years. It may prove to be too much of a sacrifice, too much of myself being pushed down, taken away. I don’t need to be here. I can’t continue to give of myself this way with so little result. On top of difficulties with work are the difficulties of my personal life—my limited support network, my need to feel loved, my need to feel like part of a community. The kind of support I need is limited. In the village, I get some of it from Adama, Fadiala, and Bintou. But, as evidenced yesterday, that doesn’t always work well, although Bintou did postpone travel plans for me last night because I was upset. Otherwise, I have Sima and Karin—my two closest teammates and two people I love dearly. When I’m alone, I have my journals and my thoughts.

  As far as feeling loved—I know that I am loved here, but the manner of expression of love here is not what I’m used to. It’s not explicit. At times, it’s even harsh. So my loving comes from the children—the very small ones, the innocent ones who love me unconditionally, now that they’ve grown accustomed to my presence. Unlike adults here, I can love babies in the same way I would in the States. And they love me back the same way, too. Our love is non-verbal. It’s smiles, touches, closeness, laughter. No pressure, no expectations. But again, it’s limited. Granted, there is no shortage of babies, but as an adult woman I need more; I also need to feel I belong.

  I feel welcomed here, but I don’t feel like a part of the community. I feel like a novelty, appreciated in the sense that it’s fun to have a toubab around (“What is she doing here again?”), nice to have someone to help with the work, make us look good, make us laugh. I’m very much affected by the temperament and attitude of those around me, and so I tend to derive my own mood from that. It becomes a constant battle I fight to remain positive and energetic while others are apathetic, to continue doing my best to be a member of the community and to be accepted despite the laughter. To try not to see misunderstanding on my part or in others as my own failing.

  Well, I sure have done a lot of thinking in the past two days. Happy six-month anniversary of installation! It’s not all bad, of course. I’m at a low point now, but I’ll rebound; I always do.

  Marcy L. Spaulding served as a health education volunteer in Mali from 2000-02. After returning, she published her journals in a memoir entitled, Dancing Trees and Crocodile Dreams: My Life in a West African Village, the book from which “The Conference” is excerpted. Marcy misses her friends in Mali and once in a while craves a big bowl of rice and tiga dege na, a dish which she has woefully been unable to recreate at home. She also misses taking baths under an open sky. Marcy currently lives (and loves!) in San Francisco, California.

  Girls’ School

  Marsa Laird

  Though the hopes of earlier times have often been dashed, the belief in the power to change can remain.

  I presented myself to the headmistress two days late.

  My heart was hammering and my legs felt weak as I stammered out an apology. I had been felled by food poisoning, I explained, and this was my first day out of bed.

  She said nothing.

  I tried a touch of humor, remarking that I had hoped for a quick death, but that it seemed I was destined to hang around a little longer. Her lips compressed into what was clear evidence of a dour Scottish disposition. She ordered me to return in two hours to teach my first class.

  The school she presided over was the first in Somalia to educate young ladies beyond the ABCs, and I and a fellow Volunteer were to be the first teachers of the new upper grades. During our training, one of the lecturers had commented that when we taught boys, we taught boys; but when we taught girls, we taught an entire generation. So I walked back to my house and tried to keep up my courage, this goal in mind.

  When I returned two hours later, I was terrified.

  The girls, ages twelve to sixteen, were already assembled in their classroom. At a nod from the headmistress, they stood at attention and recited in a sing-song voice, “Go-od mor-ning, Miss Marsa.” Then she was gone, and I was alone with the girls, rows of them.

  They looked beautiful in their white-cotton school dresses, concealed under long wraps of colorful fabric pulled over their heads whenever they left the school. This was less a matt
er of religion at that time: the prevailing attitude was that girls and women were the property of the men in their families. The wraps had the added advantage of hiding the girls’ liveliness and curiosity from outsiders.

  That was why I was here, to liberate them! This was going to be my mission, to help the girls take their rightful place in society.

  While I was formulating these lofty thoughts of youthful, untested idealism, I realized that if I didn’t gesture to my students, they would stand all day.

  The large, sparsely furnished classroom opened to the outside along the entire length of one side of the cinder-block building. Besides the students’ desks, it contained a long table and a blackboard on legs. That was it. Glancing around, conscious of the expectant looks on the girls’ faces, I saw an open closet. The shelves were piled high with ruled copybooks and boxes of pencils. Nothing else. But I was a Peace Corps Volunteer. Our motto, like the Boy Scouts—or was it the Coast Guard?—should be “semper paratus.” I would ad lib. I could do that.

  I was already thinking ahead, planning to inspire them with the story of Madame Curie, who had won two Nobel Prizes in science. (Maybe an edited version of Eve Curie’s biography of her mother was available in a series of English readers for African students I had seen elsewhere.)

  I asked my pupils about their ambitions. After some hesitation it turned out, remarkably, that they all wanted to be doctors and own color TVs. I told them I would bring a tape recorder the next day—which, in 1962, was about the size of a small suitcase—to interview them and let them hear how they sounded.

  They were transfixed, although I wasn’t sure if they knew what a tape recorder was.

  Everything seemed to be going really well when I became aware that they were looking down at a point near my feet. Some of them were even holding their hands up to their mouths trying to suppress titters. As I looked down, to my horror, I saw a huge, fat worm with a segmented body and many pairs of legs slowly crawling along the cement floor toward my sandaled feet!

  It turned out to be a millipede. I had never seen one of these creatures before and didn’t know that they were only ugly, not dangerous, so I yelled in fright, banging my head against the blackboard as I ran from its path. My students were completely delighted, shrieking and clapping their hands with pleasure.

  I looked at my watch and saw with relief that it was time to dismiss them; the girls appeared disappointed that there was no more entertainment on the program. As they shuffled out, I reflected with more than a little trepidation that this was only my first day as a Peace Corps teacher.

  My students looked beautiful as they paraded across the square with just a touch of self-consciousness. A crowd had gathered to watch the different contingents march past to honor the first president of the new Somali Republic, Aden Abdullah Osman. That image remained vivid twenty-five years later as a group of Returned Peace Corps Volunteers walked across Memorial Bridge to Arlington, Virginia, waving handmade blue-and-white Somali flags and singing the Somali anthem “Somalo Wanachsen” (Somalia is Great). My students would be middle-aged with their own families now, Madame Curie forgotten.

  The millipede fiasco on my first day at the Girls’ School in Hargeisa brought my students and me together. They developed a protective feeling toward their ignorant American Peace Corps teacher. They giggled over private matters when they were supposed to be studying, but I still think they were trying to please me. What the girls liked most were games and dancing. Especially dancing. They also liked to sing.

  One girl followed me around whenever she had the chance, offering to do things for me: “Can I, can I, Miss Marsa?” She had a narrow face, large eyes and a curved forehead, a facial feature distinctive to many Somalis, adding to their unusual good looks. I had a crush on one of my teachers, too, when I was about her age.

  I would come over to their dormitory after supper from my house nearby to say goodnight. My maid-in-waiting would always take my hands when I stopped by her bedside and murmur, “You are my dream,” in the exaggerated flowery way Somalis often used when expressing themselves. They have a gift for oral poetry.

  One day, this touching ritual came to an end. The school discovered that the girl had tuberculosis, and she was sent home. Later I learned that she had died. This taught me not to get too close to any of my other students, although I liked most of them and encouraged their extracurricular chatter with me as a means of practicing their English.

  Their favorite method of practice was using my tape recorder. They were fascinated by the mechanics of it and loved to hear themselves while I attempted to correct their pronunciation.

  At the end of the school year, a Volunteer organized an English poetry recitation contest and I entered one of my students. She had worked very hard recording her English, spending hours with me after class. I picked Wordsworth’s “Daffodils” for her to learn because it was available and I liked it. To hear her intone “A host of golden daffodils,” with her hands clasped to her heart alternately brought tears to my eyes and suppressed laughter to my lips. She won the contest!

  The girls liked fairy tales, listening raptly to stories of abducted children, orphans, cruel stepmothers, wicked witches, handsome princes, and enchanted animals. Afterward, I would have them draw their favorite parts and write captions. They often chose sad episodes. Their drawings were childish; they weren’t used to figurative art, and in the past had only painted interlaced designs of flowers and birds. One example I saved shows a mother with her hands up to her face and a boy half her size with hair like palm fronds who floated in the air. The caption reads “o. don’t tak my child.”

  The lesson my girls found particularly distasteful was English grammar. I didn’t blame them. We used booklets printed by a British company that specialized in teaching English to African students. Many of the exercises consisted of paragraphs with blanks in which they had to write the proper tense of the verb indicated. The chief obstacle to this was that the Brits couldn’t get it into their heads that East Africa was not a suburb of London. The girls didn’t know about Liverpool Station or afternoon tea. So I used to substitute examples that were familiar, such as Mrs. Hasanabi’s Dry Goods Shop, or “a herd of sheep.”

  It’s forty-five years now since I taught in Hargeisa. Some of my students are probably dead. Hopes for the Somali Republic have all but vanished. Today the place where my school stood is part of a breakaway region of the original Somali Republic called Somaliland. It’s not recognized by the United States, but it’s doing well in comparison with Somalia, which is largely devastated. A while ago I received a letter and a few photos from a fellow-Somali RPCV who is involved with a fundraising project to support a maternity hospital in Somaliland, the first of its kind there. At the hospital babies are delivered and women are trained to become nurses, midwives and first-aid workers. And two young women are studying to become doctors. They appear in one of the photos in traditional Somali dress, their eyes staring intently at the camera.

  Looking at their smiling faces, I remember again the words of our Peace Corps lecturer all those years ago who said that when you teach a boy, you teach a boy, but when you teach a girl you teach a generation. Perhaps Marie Curie’s accomplishments may not have been entirely forgotten after all.

  Being a Peace Corps teacher in Somalia from 1962–63 changed Marsa Laird’s life. She got a graduate degree in ancient art, which gave her the chance to do some excavating in Iraq before the bad days shot down her career. So, she taught art to college students in New York City for twenty years. And, as it turned out, the time spent teaching English to girls and boys in Somalia, whose own language wasn’t even written then, was good experience for dealing with kids who resisted art at all costs.

  Testimony

  Stephanie Bane

  Disease, so distant, brings all of us home, all of us together.

  I barely knew Helene before her son died. She f
luttered around the edge of the family, slavishly devoted to her older cousin Yvette.

  Yvette ran a health clinic. We sat together in the shade of a mango tree one hot afternoon, talking about health issues in the community. Unasked, Helene brought us a tray of hot sweet tea. She served Yvette with her head bowed. The tea was sticky with sugar. In Chad, the sweeter the tea, the greater the sign of affection and respect.

  “Why don’t you sit down with us?” Yvette offered.

  “No, thank you.”

  Helene turned to me, a very serious expression on her face.

  “Yvette saved my life. I love her like my mother.”

  The remark was unexpected; I thought I’d misunderstood. Before I could ask the obvious, Helene walked away. I looked to Yvette.

  “I got her out of a terrible situation in the city,” she said vaguely. It was the only explanation she would offer.

  Yvette was the first wife of Thomas, the village chief. Thomas had four wives, three in our household and one in a neighboring town. He took care of them all financially, and all of their children. But Yvette was the wife of his heart. He considered her his partner in the development of the community. He would do anything for her. So when she asked that her adult cousin Helene and her toddler be allowed to come live with them, it was done. Never mind the expense of supporting them, or the shame Helene clearly carried with her. He even paid for her to go back to school.

  Helene was humble and shy. At school, though she sat near the front, she never spoke. In the crush of ninety students, it was weeks before I even realized she was in my class. Then I would see her, watching me with wide, clear eyes, taking everything in.

  When she occasionally found courage to make conversation with me at home, her French was beautiful, much better than my own. But that was rare; she would send her son David to see me in the afternoons, an emissary between us. He would totter back and forth while Helene labored over the evening meal and I wrote anxious letters to my mother, who had recently been diagnosed with breast cancer.