This is just one of those days when
you feel unbelievably lonely. Lonelier than you ever thought you could feel.
I’ve always been a social person, comfortable in my skin and often surrounded
by loving and wonderful friends and family.
In Togo, it’s been difficult to
maintain that status. I often feel uncomfortable in my skin, because of the
attention it draws and misconceptions that people garner from it.
I try to surround myself with
loving and wonderful friends and people I can call my family in Togo, but then
you find your brother, the person you love and hope for the most in the whole
country, has broken into your house, stolen a key, made copies and then broken
into your house yet again and stolen 20% of your monthly living allowance.
I try to be social, but then the
crowds try to push and pull me in every direction, giving no space for
l’etranger to enjoy the social time on her means.
These are things that I have
struggled with, gotten over, and struggled with again over the last two years.
And I know I will get over them again. But it doesn’t make those low times any
less miserable.
In addition
to the rollercoaster on which my personal happiness tends to ride, I’ve
recently had the challenge of a complexly intertwined personal and professional
lifestyle. In Peace Corps, your work partners, both host country nationals and
volunteers, are also your best friends. Your neighbors become your family. And
when difficult decisions need to be made when it comes to projects, living
situations or leadership positions in a large project, you can’t help but do
something that is going to upset someone from your small network of close
friends.
Maybe it’s realizing that you don’t
have the time to take on a village project that your closest counterpart really
wants (or you think it is a terrible idea and you simply don’t want to take it
on). If you don’t want to fund his project, he might take it as a personal
attack (we say he should know better. We know we’re not here to be moneybags.
But he has misconceptions about us and others of our nationality or skin color,
which brings us back to the second paragraph).
Or maybe its selecting volunteers
to take on leadership positions for a national large camp or event that you
lead and hope to see continue next year. Whoever you don’t select will likely
be upset, even if they have the emotional strength and intelligence to handle
it, move on and continue the friendship. And no one wants to hurt his or her
friends.
As I’m coming to the end of my
service, I find that for some reason these things are affecting me more than in
the past. I’m struggling with the loneliness, with the failures, with the
betrayals. Maybe its because I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, I
can imagine my life post-peace corps, that I’m finding it so difficult to live
with the passing moments of darkness. I know it will pass. I know I will come
out on the other end, fulfilled and content. But for the moment it’s a
difficult passage.
