Post-Peace Corps readjustment

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Originally uploaded by parisdelhi

Coming back to the US can be damn hard. Once you are in the States, some wonderful feelings are felt but, no doubt, with the lack understanding ears, one can certainly become mildly and temporarily depressed.

Finding the cultural continuity that I described in an earlier entry can be very helpful to recent Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCVs), but in the interest of fellow RPCVs I would mention the possibility of collaborating to launch or further a project back in your Peace Corps country. As we know, one must have some very effective ways to insure correct use of funds but with strong contacts on the ground and in our world of cell phones and western union, I have found that possible. Co-designing and providing funds for a sustainable and growing beekeeping project has given me the opportunity to do something meaningful. I planned this project with two fellow community members from my Togolese village before I left that village and did not launch it to keep my emotions up. I helped plan it because I believed in it. I believe that this project will be effective, and that it will not create dependence, given the way we designed it. Because I believe so strongly in the effectiveness of the project and that I am doing the right thing in implementing it, it has given me a mission when my overseas Peace Corps mission has just officially ended. This project has also made me feel present in my Togolese community and happy to still be a member of that community and an active participant in its welfare. I may no longer be a Peace Corps Volunteer but I am still and will always be an Affem Boussou community member.

Fetishism of Commodities

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Originally uploaded by JCTownsley

I just heard Cornel West say "Fetishism of commodities." He said "It is also among the destitute because the destitute have a fetishism of commodities, a fetishism of success [and think] 'all I need is success, and then somehow I am a better person.'"

I think it is hard for Togolese to escape the "fetishism of commodities" as they peer out into the world through TVs and Radios and I think it is very connected to what the Ugandan Farmer Said in my last entry. He said "They shared a lot of things together...But now things have changed. Each person is on their own. A few people who have acquired material wealth are very scared of sliding back into poverty. They do not want to look like us." It is hard to not be a commodity fetisher in Togo as you learn of the rest of the world. And I believe the young generation will be heavily influenced by commodity fetishism but I also saw a lot of spiritually learned Muslims in Togo refuse commodity fetishism by emphasizing how fleeting and ephemeral earthly life is and how useless that makes attachment to money and things. A nomadic herder, himself a muslim, asked me, as I handed him money for taking me and my friends out in the bush with his cows, "Do you think the prize is down here [on earth] Kabirou? Forget about the money." That came from a man that can live on 20 dollars a month and to whom I was handing 30 dollars. His photo accompanies this entry. I have seen less of that mysticism and refusal of worldly goods in the Christian areas of Togo, but I spent less time there. It is hard for Togolese to escape the "Fetishism of commodities," in the the Commodity Fetisher Gala that is our world. That is sometimes hard to deal with as a Peace Corps volunteer who may have been able to join the Peace Corps in part because you have rejected commodity fetishism. You find that you and the Togolese are going in opposite directions, them toward and you away from commodities...

"Development"?

The following two points of view get at a very sociological and anthropological aspect of "Development": How have Western fueled development and westward emigration affected home-grown development in Africa? Togo led me to ponder this question more and more as time went by.

"Poverty has always been with us in our communities. It was here in the past, long before the Europeans came, and it affected many - perhaps all of us. But it was a different type of poverty. People were not helpless. They acted together and they never allowed it to squeeze any member of the community. They shared a lot of things together: hunting, grazing animals, harvesting. There was enough for basic survival. But now things have changed. Each person is on their own. A few people who have acquired material wealth are very scared of sliding back into poverty. They do not want to look like us."

- Ugandan farmer cited in Voices of the Poor, by Deepa Narayan; Oxford University Press: 2000.

On a very similar note, In a 2006 article entitled "OPEN THE BLINDS", now RPCV Dan Mueller tells us of a fictional African village that was developing at its own pace before the world started trying to develop Africa. It would seem that Mueller is saying that organic grassroots development is made impossible or improbable by the promise of the developed world driving up in a 4 x 4 and magically developing the village with money. That prospect drastically changes the rules of the game of getting ahead and tears apart the fabric of the developing society. Mueller continues, saying that the prospect of emigrating to the "developed" rich world and living the good life blinds Africans and leads them to forget the organic development that their ancestors, like ancestors all over the world, were engaged in. Mueller sees this state of affairs as being quite obvious to the observant development worker.