Surreallness

Wednesday, May 24, 2006

It is strange, after being in country for 10 weeks, all the thoughts that can go through your head. You see and endure so much here that it is difficult to comprehend. It hasn’t really been till now that I’ve in a sense had time to ingest it.

Tonight, I was coming home from a reception at the Ambassador’s Residence (hopefully I’ll write a post about that too) in a car rapid, and the surrealness of my experience so far hit me. The more that I thought about it, none of the 182,000 individuals that are and have been Peace Corps Volunteers have had the same experience. Even amongst my stage, everyone is having different encounters from what I’ve heard. Some have had good experiences, others have had bad ones, but a lot of it depends on what and how you make it out to be. This aspect is no different than any other job out there it seems.

While the Peace Corps definitely isn’t for everyone, so far, I highly recommend it. It is an experience like no other. It is one that not enough people take advantage of. There aren’t many opportunities that allow you to live and work amongst host country nationals in an environment that you are unaccustomed to. Even living in Dakar, where there are US government officials and lots of ex-pats, their experiences abroad are far different from that of a PCV. It has been good to see this though, because I have been able cross off jobs that I don’t want to pursue in a few years.

There aren’t many times in your life that you can legitimately take a leap, but I’m glad I followed through with this. The consequences/drawbacks of coming to Senegal suck, and I still get flustered because of them, but the reward is that each day is better than the one before (not necessarily because you are one day closer to coming home). I will say though, during the course of typing this, I got a call from Caitlin and Jeff, which put a nice end to the day. Calls from the States give the days a nice touch and put you back into reality. Also, in my situation, I fortunately have an awesome project I am working on too, which makes things more enticing.

I don’t know what sort of stuff I just spat out of my mouth, but it seemed important when it hit me to write it on the car rapid ride home…it might be what an open bar does to you. But in conclusion, my experience so far can’t be quantified with words. Everything has been amazing (doesn’t mean easy). I really wish everyone could experience this.

Hopefully, through this site or the emails/letters/calls many of you make, you are able to experience some of the stuff I’m going through. There have been a few questions and general topics that I hope to write about soon, including the types of animals I see over the course of the day in the streets of Dakar, my project (and pictures), cost of things, and more pictures (alittle difficult in this culture, but will try). If there is anything else you want to know, let me know. Keep the emails and calls coming. Hopefully, once my hand is better, I’ll be able to respond to everyone more adequately, but I apologize in the meantime.