Echoes

In Africa, rain is generally considered a good thing. This being the case, Saturday's swear-in ceremony for the fifty some odd new Volunteers was indeed a good omen. The circus style tents in the ambassador's yard were put to good use as around two hundred people representing current Volunteers, administrators, diplomats, local host families, and others crowded around each other to welcome the newest addition to the Peace Corps Benin family.
Just a few weeks ago I had been training these kids with other volunteers and now they were getting ready to go to their own posts and really start their two year experience. What was I thinking a year ago as I swore in to begin my two years? Wasn't I just a kid too, aren't I still? Has anything changed? Yes and no, like life there's no cut and dry answer to things, especially when working in a developing country. But like all things it amazes me that it's already been more than a year for me and my friends here. I never expected to be able to change all of Benin in one fell swoop, that wasn't my goal anyway. Personal relationships have always held more worth for me than grand idealistic crusades to educate the people, and on that count I've certainly learned about what it means to be personal with people here. How people will call you just to say hello, or just stop by your house and sit around with you for awhile. A recognition of the importance of sharing space with people, albeit sometimes to the detriment of personal time, is something that, while so common here, never ceases to amaze (and I'll admit, at times annoy) me. And yet I can't help but admire that, that people are that comfortable to just come and sit down with you, perhaps talk a bit, but when all the topics of conversation are exhausted they'll find no need to add anything, they just like being around you gosh darn it! Two years seems like a lot but after one year I can see that it's not really even a drop in the bucket. It's more like a tease, you get to know your people and then just as you start to get the hang of it a year has already gone by, and I imagine eventually two years will fly by in just the same manner. What the swear-in ceremony really helped to do, what it gave me, was a renewed interest in what I do here, in what it means to be a Volunteer. There were speeches and food and drink afterwards, and that was all great, but it made me excited, if not more excited, for my post, my village and my job. The new Volunteers would be going to a totally new place and I would be returning to my "totally new place" after a long period of absence. I knew how exciting it would be, how trying at times, and how humbling. It felt as if I was a new Volunteer again and I'd be experiencing all these things again for the next year, and this time I'd know more what to treasure and what to brush off my shoulder. In short, the speeches and pigs-in-a-blanket were good, but they're not what it means to be a Volunteer here. It's what you do that really leaves echoes in time and space, not what you say. I hope to leave a few echoes this upcoming year.