Africa, the perpetual third world
January 31st, 2008 by tu_wheeler.When I was assigned to the Congo, I had a lot of learning to do as regards the lessons to which we would all be subjected by the Peace Corps. First we served three months in South Carolina (work training), three months in Burundi (language training), and then another three months in the Congo. The latter period was for more language training and also for the required “live in experience”. That meant each volunteer would live in the home of an African family, sleeping in whatever they provided, eating whatever they ate, and theoretically learning their culture. My live in “Parents” were an elderly couple. The man spoke French so rapidly and so softly that I seldom understood what he was saying, and the woman spoke Lengala which I did not understand at all.
My room in this mud and tin house was about the size of a bathroom back home. It had a small desk with kerosene lamp, one straight chair, a rod on which to hang my clothes, and a mosquito net over a tiny bed shaped like the curve of a hammock. The mosquito bar had holes in it, and it did not reach the bottom of my mattress. Which meant I could not tuck the net underneath. The bed itself was anything but comfortable because of the strange curve in the middle, making it impossible to sleep on either side or face down. I adjusted.
Meals were served after dark, by lamp light, when critters might crawl about the table (or the food) unnoticed. I seldom knew what I was eating, but I adjusted. During dinner every night, a radio blasted the news from Brazzaville keeping us informed of local politics and such, and everybody listened. Breakfast was not served at all. The “experience” was different for different volunteers, many of whom bought extra food away from the live-in homes every day. Some boasted how wonderful life was for them, while others complained their arrangement were not working at all the way they expected.
Different “parents”, different accomodations.
Each morning, we all had to walk to the learning center on dirt roads, usually accompanied by children going to school. The trip was about a mile for me, and was a sort of highlight because I was then able to see and explore more of what was going on around me. The training center itself was a large building built by the French some years before. It had a bathroom with broken fixtures and could not be used, and a kitchen which was not used for us, and an old laboratory with broken equipment. Our drinking water was brought in every day by Africans, because the elevated cistern on top of the hill had long been filled with junk and mud and debris and was no longer usable. Below our building, at the base of a sharp drop, were several ponds in which fish were farmed (or had once been farmed), and those too had been sorely neglected. Most of our training every day was language related, although we sometimes had Congolese officials who came to speak about fish farming and to explain why nothing worked. The reason was always the same. Foreign money was drying up.
When we all finally left the “experience” and returned to Brazzaville where the Peace Corps center was located, most were eager to get assignments… i.e., to find out where we would be heading for the two year committment. The only loose end yet to be tied, was the swearing in ceremony which was scheduled for a date about two weeks away. We had been involved with the P.C. more than nine months, and finally we would be real volunteers set to move to a place of unknown encounters, unknown hazards and unknown realities. And most of couldn’t have been more eager to get it done.
Frederick Edward Pitts homepage.mac.com/f.e.pitts/