The days have become long and exhausting with the arrival of the Sahara Desert sands. There is a haze that constantly seems to hang over me, with the lack of job, direction, and a good friend of mine leaving the Peace Corps early for personal reasons, it is sometimes hard to find a sense of purpose. Let me try to explain the different roles that we Peace Corps volunteers play in Cabo Verde.
Danny, my roommate, is an ED volunteer, or an education volunteer. He teaches English classes in the primary school, where every single kid on the island between the ages of 12 and 19 attend for their education. His integration with Sal Rei has been quite flawless due to his high profile job. I, on the other hand, am a SED volunteer, or a Small Enterprise Development Volunteer. As a SED volunteer our job descriptions are generally less constricted and we are given the freedom that ED’s rarely see. Generally, we SEDs are given a counterpart and an office where we are to make connections and network to eventually produce some development projects. However, I was never assigned a counterpart; I have nowhere to go during the days, just to wander aimlessly until I fall into something. For those reading this who know me, you know this is not my style.
I decided to take a vacation here recently to the “motherland”, Santiago. I needed to find my purpose; I needed to see my friends who surely would have words of wisdom. They could tell me what I was supposed to be doing, why I joined, and I could rediscover myself during some much needed time away from my island. I had some really deep talks with all of my closest friends, and none of the talks seemed to help, I still couldn’t see through the haze. I actually felt no different upon return to my island, still unsure and confused. It wasn’t until I sat down to write in my journal, that I had what some would call an epiphany, but I like my metaphor with the sands from the Sahara better, I had a moment of sudden clarity. The haze had been slightly lifted, the sand had cleared just enough for me to see what I had been missing the whole time. It wasn’t the talks about sense of purpose, what I could do in place of my primary project that helped. Everything changed in my mind when I saw that the time in between talks is what helped. The things I was doing and experiencing.
I spent one night with a very good friend of mine on his mountain in the middle of nowhere, literally. We played cards, smoked a cigar, and drank some good ol’ American whiskey. We had talked earlier about my concerns, but it was the deafening silence that spoke loudest, the moments where nothing else mattered other than the time with a good friend and some cards. I had a similar experience with another very close friend on the coast of the “motherland”. He is slightly older than me and had some great words of wisdom that probably would have been great words to bask in. However, I had little interest in what he was saying, mostly due to my own ignorance, but also because the words aren’t what mattered. We spent our time together doing all of the traditional Cape Verdean things. We even woke up one morning and found ourselves killing a pig and a goat on what we would later find out was the original fort of Cabo Verde. We performed the most traditional of traditions on what many consider to be the birthplace of Cabo Verde. Time after time, site after site, pen stroke after pen stroke, I saw what I had been missing. The most ironic part of this all, during my time in America I had a quote taped to my mirror, and it’s still there as far as I know. I won’t repeat the quote word for word for fear of butchering it, but I will give you the general significance; I was always living my life for the next moment, as if the moment I was in was a hurdle that needed to be conquered before my real life was to begin. Until I realized that my life had already begun, the conquests were my life.
I had been blinded by the sands, by the hurdles in my life. I may have no better sense of purpose, and I most definitely still don’t have a job. But, I am going to live in this moment and be whatever Peace Corps and Cabo Verde need me to be. As my roommate so eloquently said, “it’s like that scene from Batman; and if your only success is to make the job easier for the next guy, than that is what you will be.” As the sands of the Sahara cloud everything, I say, “where’s my handkerchief”.
