seven months

Written at site, 2 September 2011, 10:24am

Today marks seven whole months in Mali. I can’t decide if it’s hard to believe or not. Here I am writing about it, so it must mean something to me.

“Twenty-seven months” sounds more like a sentence than a service. Maybe it’s because that phrase has been hammered into my head for years, ever since I started thinking that the Peace Corps might be for me. And then I had to really give it my full attention when I officially started the application process in early 2009. I had to think about it as in “You must prepare your personal and professional lives for a service of twenty-seven months” or “you will live abroad as an integral part of a community for twenty-seven months” or my own, “Twenty-seven months abroad on Uncle Sam’s dime? Uhh, yes, please!” Save for my immature rendering of this rather serious position, a commitment of “twenty-seven months” sounds impressive. Intimidating, even.

As I reflect on being here for seven months, I can’t help but feel a small sense of accomplishment. Twenty-seven is such an odd number (ha ha) but I’ve just succeeded in lobbing the ugly part off. Twenty is so much more palatable, I feel. Less than two years, just two tantalizing months from “eighteen months,” which is a much more accepted, professional, and recognizable length of time. Some days it feels unreal to me, so I have to look down and check: seven red beaded bracelets on my left wrist. Seven down, twenty to go.

When I look at it like that, it’s much less scary than when I first had to internalize that number. Back then, I had to swallow it like a bad pill; now I see it as a milestone. Sure, I’m only a quarter of the way in, but now my feet are appreciably wet and somehow I’ve found a little Chelsea-sized niche and I feel only slightly less helpless. “I’ve done this for seven months already, and I’m just getting started!” I gleefully think, bolstering myself. Seven months is a pat on the back, a shot of encouragement before the shit really hits the fan. Perhaps I feel more acclimated now, and it’s true that I’ve felt the jolts of culture shock less often. I can see my ideas percolating down into the beginnings of projects, the makings of an actual job. These are good things.

Yet, sometimes, I experience something akin to a sucker punch. Amidst all the self-congratulatory flexing, ugly, harsh words eek their way into my inner-monologue: “You have such a long time left and it won’t all be happy or easy.” Or, “They still don’t respect you or listen to you, what do you think you’re going to actually accomplish here?” And just like that I’m forced to admit that seven months is nothing to brag about. Not even close. It’s a scratch on the surface more reminiscent of the unsightly chunk missing from The Sphinx’s nose rather than the smooth skimming of cream from the top of an otherwise perfect bucket of milk.

Yea, I’ve been thought a lot, and yes, (I like to think) I’ve wizened up, gained perspective, confidence, and even a decent understanding of a cool African language. But when you really distill it down, I haven’t done shit. I get the feeling that PCVs go through their services like anyone goes through life: mostly focused and meaning well but blind to the big picture of their contribution to the world until much, much later when it finally dawns on them what they’ve done, how they’ve changed.

Regardless of the struggles I’ve surmounted and those I have yet to face, I’m glad I’m here. Seven months in my opinion is a pretty decent bit of time, so I’ll take the credit, thank you very much. Maybe in another seven months, when I find myself at the half-way point, I’ll see this first seven in a completely different light. In fact, I’m sure I will, because my experience as a PCV in Mali shifts every day. Sometimes the change is huge, like tectonic plates slamming into one another, rocking my world, bringing fresh ground to new light. Sometimes, I feel like I’m on the other end of it, the quiet fishing village that gets wasted in the furious aftermath of the resulting tsunami. Most of the time, though, I hardly notice it. Change over time is often imperceptible. Which is why one day, I’ll wake up in my own apartment on the other side of the world and wonder if these random, lasting memories I have of Mali are all just part of a dream I had once. And then it will come back to me that yes, I did do that. I did live abroad as an integral part of a community for twenty-seven months. And I’ll wonder how I got from there to here, how I managed to convince myself for even a moment that those amazing, life-altering, earth-shattering twenty-seven months of my life was nothing more than a passing fantasy. Where did the time go?

So here I am, sitting at my blue and white table on a bright but otherwise unremarkable day in Mali, talking about time and my place in it. Looking forward, looking back, trying to wring out every drop of memory this experience can yield. Seven months. Twenty months. Twenty-seven months.