Life travels into the north and then back south again.

I just returned home from a wonderful trip to see my family and some beautiful cities in Central Europe. The effect of the trip is still sinking in, but I have the impression that it will profoundly effect my Peace Corps experience. Being back in a Western culture grounded me once again in the myths and foundations that I grew up with, and seeing it in all its affluence made me more determined to respect the great potential for good one person can aspire to.

Above all walking around the airports, cities, subways, restaurants, parks, government buildings, etc. reminded me of some of the more noble aspects of development in Western society. The incredible work ethic, planning, skill, and community needed to organize and build the cities and structures that we have surrounded ourselves in, is essential to Western experience. Above all else there is the drive to move forward, to constantly challenge what we are capable of achieving, is a trait often lost to volunteers in The Gambia when we are chugging away at problems with bargaining for a good price on bananas. We lose one of our basic Western qualities, the constant desire to drive forward, because we focus only on the experience of being pushed back by the little things.

When I first stepped into the Banjul International Airport, roughly 10 months after I first got off the plane to start my Peace Corps service, I was overwhelmed with the speed of motion and the robotic inorganic direction in which everything flowed. People rushing around receiving tickets, tossing bags, and presenting passports was disorienting in its mechanical efficiency. In village we live on human time, the time of doing things without the fear of the hourglass.

Arriving in Brussels and then Vienna and Prague I almost instantly felt capable of socially acting in the setting but still oddly out of place. Everything was so familiar from my time studying in Europe, I could fairly easily navigate the physical environments of BMWs, marble floors, flush toilets, subways, and vending machines. Life in Europe came rushing back to me in huge waves of familiarity, and by the end of the week I was far out to sea. However, I also felt this incredible discomfort originating from comparing the European existence to one that I would have been experiencing a week ago in The Gambia. Not that one was better or worse than the other, the discomfort was from the knowledge of the mobility that I was being afforded. Knowing that in terms of being "Gambian" and blending in culturally I was on a one way street. I was on the trip, I would see things and thoroughly enjoy them, but always knowing this was a privileged situation I could not share with anyone else. Knowing that I was leaving all of my family members back at the cross roads and they would remain rooted in The Gambia, outside of my European experience. This was the discord that lead to discomfort.

Upon landing back in The Gambia I realized how much my life was rooted here. There was an overwhelming sense of being back home arriving back in my compound. I suppose that's the reality of Peace Corps service, or life in any singular place for a sustained duration. It does mold itself as a place of comfort and belonging, whether or not you actually would consider it to be a permanent home.

The events after my landing firmly reinforced the feeling of being home in The Gambia. Riding in a gele-gele, we were stopped numerous times by people requiring to exit exactly at their street junction, stopped by quasi threatening police check points, and finally stopped to help another gele-gele cool it's smoking engine with a jug full of water. As I arrived back in my town, went to get an egg sandwich from my regular guy and had a long Gambian greeting with him as well as a delicious egg sandwich. The roads were still dirty, the friends still cheerful, and the egg sandwiches still served with hot cocoa. All in all I was back home. I was back home with a new perspective on where I came from and where I should aspire to go. Back home with a renewed sense of a drive forward to better myself and my community.

That’s when the new feelings I’ve been having about Peace Corps began to come to me. It’s not just cross-cultural exchange or technical skills that make the organization worthwhile, it’s also the fact that the Peace Corps builds better Americans period. Builds better Americans by making them more adaptable, more humble, more caring for our fellow man, and ultimately more desirous to change things, to bring the human race forward.