I've been working on a Peace Corps application recently. I'm pretty sure I'd like to do my service in Africa working in the field of HIV/AIDS awareness education or community building. I've done some research on a few small African countries, and the few I'm interested in most are Cameroon, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Botswana and Kenya.
Can anyone recommend or tell me anything else about these or another great African country in which to volunteer? I'd prefer a French speaking country (that's the language I'd like to perfect), and I'd also like a more liberal, accepting and tolerant area. Thanks. It seems like you've done a lot of good research on this topic already. I will try to share some additional insights that you can take at face value.
I served in the Peace Corps in Guinea, West Africa from 1998 to 2000. It is a Francophone country and the language training was very good, even for volunteers who already had some facility with French. My assignment was to teach math, but there was also a community development program that dealt primarily with public health issues. AIDS prevention was always a top priority. HIV infection rates are relatively low in West Africa, less than 5% I believe (this is low compared to some places further south) concentrating largely in mining areas or travel centers.
My experience with Peace Corps is that you don't get much choice as to where you go. Typically, you can put a few preferences on your application, but they will offer you a spot in a program in a country that has a need for your qualifications at that particular time. All you get to do is say 'yay' or 'nay'. That said, it's hard to find people with a background in French who want to go to Africa. So if that's what you want to do, you're likely to have that option. But you probably won't get to pick the exact country.
The public health programs ran in to a lot of frustrations. On one level, it seemed like the people were really receptive to the ideas of contraception and women's empowerment. I worked with my Principal to help educate the girls at our school about AIDS and condom use and such. My Principal was very smart and very well informed. Even without my input, he could recite statistics on HIV infection rates, and talk intelligently about the vectors of infection. However, I later found out that he impregnated one of my best female students, despite having his wife who lived 200 yards away from the school. It's not like he could claim he didn鈥檛 understand how the process works or the need for contraception.
As it turns out, it is very common for the teachers at a school to have girlfriends who are students. There is frequently a disconnect between what people say and how they live. I talked to one Guinean, who was also well educated, who referred to AIDS with its French acronym SIDA: Sydrome Invente pour Descourager les Amoreux. It was commonly believed that AIDS was a hoax invented by Americans or Europeans to keep Africans from having more children.
But this belief reflects neither ignorance nor stupidity. Their interactions are not as transparent as what we are used to. The belief that AIDS is a hoax largely reflects what Guineans typically see in the world. The proposition that there are these invisible little animals living in your semen that cause you to die after a ten year incubation period can seem pretty incredible by comparison. Keep in mind that Africans have been getting sick and dying for inexplicable reasons for the last 10 millennia.
I don鈥檛 mean to discourage you, but this is something I wish someone would have told me before I joined the Peace Corps. There is little evidence to suggest that distributing condoms and teaching Guineans about safe sex practices does anything to stem the rising tide of AIDS. AIDS thrives on intransparency and promiscuity and both abound in Africa. Many volunteers leave early, around 33% from the Guinea program. Someone once asked me why a volunteer would leave early. 鈥淕ive us a reason to stay,鈥?was my response.
I don鈥檛 mean to say that Guineans aren鈥檛 great people. They work hard and they care for their families. They love to laugh. But they lack the social frameworks we use to trust people they don鈥檛 know well. This will not be apparent when you first get there, but it will frustrate all your efforts to help them.
During training they told us that we wouldn鈥檛 accomplish as much as we thought. I thought to myself, 鈥淚鈥檓 not expecting much, a little something is all I hope to really accomplish.鈥?In the end, they were right. The most important thing you do with the Peace Corps is simply to show up. But this is no small thing. It鈥檚 experiential learning. No one can tell you what it will be like; you just have to live it. Du courage. Please put in your application at the local Wal-mart. Peace corps and USAID as well as the other NGO's do more harm than good. Its a great and noble idea, however NGO's have liierally screwed up the world and wasted too much money doing so First of all I command your courage, patience and that you care. I just want to share with you a little piece of info with respect to you willing to work in the field of awareness education:
http://www.progressiveconvergence.com/Ai...
Read it with open mind and then maybe we can all save 8000 black Africans who die every month of AIDS. |
