So what do you think of when you think of Peace Corps? The image of Peace Corps in many people’s minds I think is a bunch of 20-somethings living by themselves in the middle of nowhere among “the village people” with little to no contact to the outside world, without cell phones and they just spend two years in the bush hanging.
Well, I may feel like I live in the middle of nowhere sometimes, but Peace Corps ain’t what it used to be. Some could call it “posh corps” but I call it development work. In my experience, Peace Corps is developing from a cultural exchange with a little bit of work thrown in, to a development organizations. To be productive, in my opinion, one needs to be able to communicate and have access to certain things without being in the bush all of the time.
For one, Peace Corps is growing at a rapid rate, especially in Senegal, so we literally cannot be so isolated from our fellow volunteers because there is not enough space. Nafadji is one of the more isolated sites and I can get to my closest neighbor in a mere two hours. Volunteers need to be closer to one another, because the sites way out in the bush and inaccessible – volunteers do not go to those places. But because of this rapid growth and thus proximity to each other, we can work together on projects and get a lot more done. This is really helpful when, for example, I can call my neighbor Kate, who is an agro-forestry volunteer to teach people in my village how to grow trees, because I certainly lack a green thumb. 100% coverage of mosquito nets in the region would not be possible without collaboration and volunteer mobility.
Another thing that helps this collaboration is cell phones. I can set up a meeting in 10 minutes with text messages. Volunteers have free calling to each other, which is convenient when we need to talk to someone because we think we are going insane, but also for work reasons.
And, last but not least. We can have internet without having electricity. Magic, you say. There are these little USB keys we can buy that connect to the internet on the lap top. No way, I mean, they do not work that well but to send an occasional email or excel spreadsheet. Voila!
So I would not say that I am living the life of blackberries and wifi, or it is not like I am sitting in an office with air conditioning. But volunteers are becoming more productive and using technology to do their work, and to teach people. A lot of SED volunteers teach computer classes. I spent two hours today teaching my counterpart how to use facebook. This world is becoming more and more technological and teaching Senegalese people how to use it is important. If we tried to keep up this isolated in the bush image, we would not be helping anyone but our badass points.
