A ginge by any other name...

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…

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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