I vividly remember the disgust I felt when I went to visit
my site and discovered there were cockroaches in my latrine. I could handle it during the day because I
could see them run away, but the thought of visiting during the night made me
shudder to my very core. I hate
cockroaches. Bleh.
Flash forward about six months in Ghana. The latrine is no cockroaches’ land
after the application of some handy white powder and it’s really not a concern
to me. BUT I walk into my room after being gone for about ten days and there’s
a dead little guy lying by my door.
I kick it to the side and go about my business. The other volunteer who came with me
didn’t seem to mind either. In
fact, she put her bag on the scene of the cockroach crime.
What the hell happened to us? How could we be so gross? So you just join the Peace Corps and become a hippie?
The last question depends on the person, but the best
response is it just doesn’t bother us anymore. Call it desensitization…call it what you will. I’ve seen chickens slaughtered, dead
rabbits in a hand I need to shake (and invariably, do), goats copulate, and a
cat run by with a lizard flopping in their mouth.
Today, I felt a drop of something wet fall from the roof of
the store (a shack, basically) and on to my arm while I was eating. Since it’s not raining we could only
assume it was lizard urine. If I
didn’t have to use the private at that time, who knows how long I would have
waited to clean up.
The point of this blog wasn’t to tell you all how gnarly
I’ve become, though I know you are all thinking you will not be giving me a
hello hug when you see me next.
Instead, I want to illustrate how seven months (as of today!) can change
long-held perspectives.
Many of the things that used to seem to matter just don’t
anymore. I laugh at myself
more. I feel happiness in small
successes. I see the best and
worst in people and still think it’s possible to change.
If that isn’t worth seven months of my life, then I don’t
know what is.
P.S. To those who wonder what the hell I do besides get down at
church and eat chicken spines, here’s a look at some of my malaria education
work.
http://stompoutmalaria.org/weekly-awesome-ghana-volunteer-and-counterpart-spotlight-alisa-langford-and-osei-nkuah-jonas/
