Packing

One hundred pounds and 107 inches is the limit for two checked bags. So how much can I carry upon my body, while I roll those two from pillar to post, literally. And how does one organize these bags. What will I need. What can't I live without.

Envisioning the two years ahead of my has proven close to impossible. Other's blog posts, advice, packing lists and photographs and videos only show me what other folks have experienced. Where they'll put an old lady like me could be quite different. Maybe I'll need suit jackets more than they do. And linen napkins to make my hut feel -- mannered.

It's all been thrift shop accumulated, but it's nice stuff. Too nice I fear. Too this. Too that.

I feel ridiculous for worrying about possessions. A peace corps assignment is not about possessions. But I am me and I have stuff, require stuff to do my job, and so exactly which stuff goes with me. This has been my last three weeks. (Along with odd jobs - babysitting Angelena, driving Miss Mary - to bring in cash and gas.)

Surely this minor anxiety is to be expected, and I'm sure, looking back, a normal peace corps experience -  packing. Thing is, it's accompanied the whole time with waves of nostalgia for the security and beauty that is home and family. With regret for all the gatherings and special moments I'll miss. With the lump in the throat concerns for my ailing, aging parents. Will they be alright while I'm gone?

We meet for paperwork and meetings on 25 September at the Georgetown Holiday Inn. The next day we are bussed to an unspecified airport (Dulles, probably) for our South Africa Airlines flight to Dakar.

I've got everything organized on a rack, in two suitcases, and in stacks in Mom's little guest bedroom where I've been staying. Barely one-third of it will fit. The rest goes into the attic and won't see daylight until Christmas 2014.

I wonder what life (what I, my family members, the country, the planet!) will be like in 27 months.

The Invitation

It came by UPS on Friday, June 22nd - the official Peace Corps invitation.

I'd suspected the assignment would to be in Senegal, given the hints Fritz had floated a week earlier, and a little applied research.  Senegal was the only French-speaking, sub-Sahara Africa country with an agroforestry program leaving in September. 

I emailed my acceptance to the designated address. 

I emailed family and friends.

I read the massive set of documents in my kit.

They sure don't sugar coat anything.  I'll likely have no running water.  No electricity.  Safety is an issue.      

Deepest Africa hadn't been my first choice.  I'd been nominated for Central or South America in Community Development.  I'd been envisioning a panorama of Andean mountains, cool green grass, and lamas. 

"That group is long gone," says Fritz, who called the night before I was leaving for a new job in Los Angeles. "You've worked in vineyards. You're interested in sustainable farming. What would you think about a post in sub-Sahara Africa? In the Food Security Program."

If the small print had me holding my breath, I'm all cheered up today, though, and back to excited.  I love exploring new lands; I learn so much.  And what better way to deal with an infuriatingly dysfunctional world than to grow food. 

My friend Konda, an Oakland-based documentary producer, sent me this email:  "You'll LOVE Senegal.  I just made a film there.  Can't wait to go back."  She's sending me a link to watch some of her raw footage. She says she wants to build a little house there. In Segou.

All I've ever known about Senegal was its location and that they spoke French.  I had a classmate at American University from Senegal.  He was tall, lean, sophisticated.  Huge smile.

My brother Andre emailed that he knows someone who went to Senegal for a dance program.  And that some of his favorite music and performers are from Senegal.  I guess his reticence for me to move to Africa is subsiding now that he knows I'm committed to this.  He knows life on the continent viscerally having lived there for a year. "My God," I remember him saying.  "The poverty's unbelievable."

There's so much to be done. 

I've got 90 days to learn French.

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