Waking Up

The other day I woke up with the immediate need for contemplation. I wasn’t sure why and to what end, so I brought the thought right back to what I was doing: waking up. By now I was standing at the window, peering over the setting of this recent act. Tin rooftops populated my foreground with the expanse of lake emerging beyond them. It was not quite light, but a large harvest moon lit a fisherman heading early to his acadja with oar in hand and feet solidly planted in his pirogue. Distant drums beat the tune that had woken me up for a few moments earlier in the morning. They no longer seemed a nuisance with the impending dawn so near. A glance at the grove of trees a few blocks over failed to find any of the monkeys I happened to spy the previous morning. I marveled at these details and thought back to where else and how I had woken up this year.

In Benin, I most frequently wake up in a village not far from Lokossa, the site of our training center. Kids are already giggling or munching on breakfast, and the steady swishing of a broom matches the ticks on the watch next to my bed. Earlier upon arrival in Benin, I awoke to the early hustle and bustle of the country’s economic center. This summer I went on a few road trips: One morning I enjoyed the sound of Elvis music at Graceland’s new hotel complex; I felt rejuvenated after a long day of driving to St. Louis; much like Lake Ahémé, I saw a sea of corn highlighted by the orange dawn in Monmouth, IL; in Washington, DC, where an intense day of constituent lobbying awaited; and the chill of Lake Superior breezes and a hunger for freeze-dried food welcomed me to a new and wonderfully exhausting day at Isle Royale National Park. Of course, most of this year had me rushing out of bed after too little sleep and too little work in the throes of yet another capstone deadline at Macalester College in Saint Paul. It was that or a calm morning in Bloomington, where the clang of cereal, the newsprint of the day’s StarTribune, and loving words of family welcomed me to another day at the place I will always consider home.

It was an overwhelming, uncontrolled string of thoughts. They meant all the more to me at the time because it seemed like a perfect metaphor to this point in my Peace Corps journey. (Did you think you were doing to avoid another metaphor?) I was halfway through a two week visit to the site where I will volunteer for two years come December. The first few days were a whirlwind of visits to village chiefs, women’s groups and their gardens, local schools, markets and shops, and local language classes. It happened that just as I was going numb with explaining the three goals of Peace Corps and four more for my program the visits subsided to a much calmer schedule. I was picking up on local language, which allowed me to actually greet people with the slower schedule. I nonetheless felt restless and frustrated with children demanding my attention, adults throwing local language phrases and vocabulary lessons at me at any given time (even in languages I was not on track to learn), and the prospect of a week and change of… what else? There was simultaneously nothing to do and a workbook full of activities to complete. The stress had caught up with me, and all I wanted was to get everything done by not doing anything. I lied in bed each morning for several minutes, never quite ready to wake up.

Lucky for me, an afternoon meeting was cancelled. With the extra time, I sat in the shade in my host family’s courtyard and read one of the books I brought from Lokossa. For an hour or so I escaped my frustration, only returning to the world in front of me to look at the lake that was too. Not only that, but the book returned me to the abstract social theory that, in one way or another, motivated my joining the Peace Corps. I returned from my time reading with a greater sense of why I was becoming a Peace Corps volunteer and how essential and advantageous these two weeks at site were. After all, very few programs offer their trainees such an opportunity. (Peace Corps training is pretty heterogeneous across countries.) I was also conscious of how I felt at the end of each day where, no matter my sour mood waking up, I would smile with the memories of a successful day enjoyed.

I had woken up. While the schedule didn’t pick up for the second half of my site visit, it had no need to. I spent plenty of time with my friendly and gracious host organization counterpart, asking him questions about the local economy and his taste in music. I spent time in the community, taking walks and stopping to chat with people, introduce myself and the Peace Corps, and ask them about themselves. My counterpart and I led four public meetings to introduce myself and the Peace Corps and respond to questions with the general public. I even filled out that once-daunting workbook.

My host family during site visit and I. There are a few neighbors in

the midst as well.

We don’t intentionally wake up, from sleep or stupor, but that little effort of self-care or refocus may be all it takes. Doing so allowed me to be more present, reflective, and proactive in my training at site. I now head into the second half of Pre-Service Training (PST) with a head more level and expectations more vivid. I have a community behind me with its identified needs and goals. To extend the metaphor one last time, PST had begun to wear me down before the site visit. After the visit, though, I feel refreshed and motivated to learn and grow, to not only wake up but get moving.