Allow me to
introduce you to someone...
I didn’t want
to announce anything and make a big deal before now because, honestly, I wasn’t sure I liked her
enough to make it official.
At this
point, there’s no use in denying it – things have gotten serious between us.
Ever since
the moment I set foot in Dubreka for Pre-Service Training, she’s been an
integral part of my life. For the past
19 months, we’ve shared joys and sorrows, all the difficult and educational
moments, innumerable tubes of sunscreen, and unforgettable bouts with G.I.
illnesses. It’s liberating to finally
say that we share more than just the tangible joys in life – we are of one
mind, body, spirit, and mosquito-netted bed.
* Friends and
family in the medical profession, don’t commit me yet: I am in full possession
of my mental faculties, and have not developed a split-personality.
What I have
developed is an indescribably frustrating and simultaneously fulfilling
relationship with a persona named “Aicha.” *
Now for the
“Wtf are you talking about?” portion…
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
My name is
a difficult one for the untrained tongue, as evidenced by years of native
Spanish-speaking language teachers calling me by different variations of
“Kelsey.”
I responded
to Casey, Cassie, Kelly, Kaylee, Kesley, Leslie, Klesey, Kayzee, Klesley,
Kellesley… until they finally threw their collective hands up in the air and settled
on “Consuelo.”
(Well, YOU try swallowing your “l” while
simultaneously moving your tongue to the front of your mouth to make an “s”
sound, if you’ve never in your life had to do that before!)
This same
tongue-twisting combination of phonemes caused a good amount of trouble when I
came to Guinea. When faced with the
prospect of going by “Kishee” for the next 2 years of my life, I opted to
accept my host family’s name gift, and was thus christened “Aicha Barry.” Little did I know that this simple baptism
marked the beginning of an entirely new way of life, one where duality is the
name of the game and where regret and pride go hand-in-hand.
Though
Kelsey did not cease to exist altogether, she did take the back seat once
training began. It was not Kelsey, but
Aicha who learned how to do laundry, Guinean-style. Not Kelsey, but Aicha acquired recipes for
peanut and various leaf sauces (Kelsey only put her two cents in by banning cow
tongue and bitter eggplant from the list of acceptable ingredients.). Aicha stumbled through language learning,
bungled even the simplest of social interactions, and eventually figured out
how to keep her students awake during English class (hint: Offer a free
lollipop to anyone who can stick their entire pencil eraser up a sleeping
student’s nose… gently, of course.).
All in all,
Aicha the porto learned a good deal, and for a long time it seemed that Kelsey
was merely hitting the snooze button until she was in the presence of other
Peace Corps persons. But then something
changed.
For a good
year and a half, I kept Kelsey semi-hidden, like a guarded secret designed to
protect myself from the difficult realities of cultural adaptation. At times, I very seriously regretted adopting
a Guinean name; it seemed like just another barrier between me and my
neighbors. Still, in my village I strictly
promoted the Guinean/American Aicha over
the American/Guinean Kelsey, 1) in
an effort to make people see that I didn’t think my culture was superior, and 2)
because I was afraid of getting hurt.
Defense-mechanisms
come in all shapes and sizes, right?
Here are some examples…
1. Aicha didn’t touch, and she definitely didn’t
dance.
No hugs, no
kisses (maybe some on the cheek after returning from a long journey), no
shoulder-leaning, no hand-holding… exotic-looking foreigners are generally held
at arm’s length, which, though a sign of respect on the part of the community,
also makes for a very lonely foreigner.
The dance
scene au village is commonly used to segue into more intimate
behind-closed-doors activities, and the clubs are usually filled with my
students and coworkers.
Rationalization for
not going out for “soirees”: mixing business and pleasure in a village of 4,000
just didn’t seem wise.
More likely
reason: I blame a lack of guts needed to bridge that cultural gap and to accept
all the potential awkwardness and misunderstandings that come with physical
contact.
*Consequently,
my daily fantasies generally feature hours of purely platonic cuddling in a huge
puddle of friends.
Judge me.*
2. Aicha did not talk about my parents’ divorce
and the beautiful mix-and-match family that blossomed afterwards.
Aicha feared
explaining that the father in most of my photos isn’t my biological one and
that I love my siblings and nieces and nephews to death even though they aren’t
my blood kin. Why? Because people view divorce as unacceptable,
and there is absolutely no tie stronger than a bloodline here. From what I’ve been told, thinking otherwise
makes you, quite frankly, bizarre.
3. Aicha did not discuss my strong opinions
regarding sexual violence, a woman’s right to make choices concerning her body,
religious institutions, and the queer community.
Opinions
like these generally result from personal experiences, yeah? And personal experiences are all sorts of
tied-up in personal identity, yeah?
Unfortunately, by generally-accepted standards in Ditinn, many of my
opinions (ergo personal experiences, ergo aspects of identity) are fundamentally
warped. That’s where the fear of getting
hurt came from.
So, all these opinions
and experiences and facets of identity were quickly wrapped up in a neat little
“Kelsey” bundle, and packed away into the corner of Aicha’s metaphorical pit
latrine (because nobody wants to
snoop around in a pit latrine, you know what I mean?), where they were planned to
be left untouched until after Peace Corps.
So what
changed?
To be
perfectly honest, people got curious.
My
neighbors got to know Aicha pretty well, in all her inane idiosyncratic ways,
and saw that she could hold her own and was here to stay in the village. However, they must have also noticed that she
was, well, missing something. A history,
to be exact. As luck would have it, I
was fortunate enough to click with a couple of good friends, and finally
reached the level of comfort (and language) necessary to talk about the more
abstract and interesting things in life.
These friends started asking about who Aicha was before she came to
Guinea and, all of a sudden, “Kelsey” was no longer a secret, but a precious
gift that I could give to them. Friends,
it felt like a weight had been lifted from my chest.
Slowly but
surely, I have begun to mesh Aicha and Kelsey into one person. Controversial opinions are neither completely
avoided nor openly stated, but they’re definitely up for discussion. Though talking about love and life goals may
be better left closer to the end of my service, it feels like things are
heading in the right direction. The most
frustrating, and yet very best thing about this is that it wasn’t me who made
it possible.
I had all
but resigned myself to live life here as Aicha, and to accept that my neighbors
would never truly understand me. I
decided that I was proud to be accepted as Aicha by the community, and that
that would suffice for the remainder of my service. Without friends asking a simple question,
showing interest, and being open to talking about difficult things, I may never
have stepped out of this bubble of protection.
It seems that along the road to cultural acceptance and “being an
effective Peace Corps volunteer,” I’d forgotten how important and relieving it
is to be fully open with people. Quite
honestly, that frightens me. My friends
here have given me a wake-up call, and a very bright one at that. I hope now that I’ll be able to bring Kelsey
out into the daylight more and more as time goes on. Recent victories: I’ve started accepting
random babies onto my lap, and will regularly hold hands with a very friendly
cab driver named Saliou. (Don’t worry,
he knows we won’t get married unless he offers me forty cows and manages to
gift me all property rights to the Ditinn valley, waterfall and all.)
So what am
I really trying to say? This “cultural
integration” process is a ridiculous and gorgeous ride, and I realize now how
naively I have perceived it. Before, I
thought cultural integration was a thing I did,
and something that I was solely responsible for.
I see now
that it’s more along the lines of stepping into a stranger’s open arms and
accepting all the warmth, odors, sweetness, discomfort, fear, and possibilities
that come with them.
Isn’t that better,
in the end?
Sending all my love your way.
<3
