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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