Anticipating and worrying over the trip back home
Maite Uranga
Life in Africa
I just got back from our final conference in Peace Corps. Most of it focused on the transition from life in an African village to life in an American city. And of course we talked about the government logistical nightmare of completion. It was also wonderful to spend time with the 18 people left in my group away from the stress of Mauritania.
The realization also hit as I looked around the room that I made it. I made it through a difficult country to begin with, then there was 9-11 and now it is Iraq. I have seen an incredible outpouring of support for America and I have also experienced hatred. My parents' stress levels mirror mine as they ask every time we have contact the exact date I will get home.
The answer is I still do not know. It still depends on international relations. It depends on if there are any more accidental bombing of civilians. It depends on if the protests in Cairo continue to grow. It depends on if I actually listen to my parents. It depends on if I let myself see how tired I am from two years here in this time. It breaks my heart.
I came here with the desire to save the world. I know that everyone says that is impossible, but deep down everyone wants to do that. I saw the 9-11 attacks and the embrace of America by countries, kings and people who did not really like us. I talked to people at home about life for an American in an Islamic republic. We joked among Peace Corps volunteers about fighting the war on terrorism one girl's soccer game or computer center at a time. And in a sense I believed that and still do.
Now we are the only Peace Corps representatives left in an Islamic republic and again they are giving us the option to leave. And again I do not want to. Tomorrow is the big meeting with details and options explained. Now there is a lot of speculation. Whatever happens tomorrow will be difficult because it will not be on my terms. Throughout my whole service I planned how and when I would leave the site and return to the United States. Maybe that will happen. But probably lots of people who have been with me from the beginning will go.
Most likely I will go. A small part safety and a very large part exhaustion with uncertainty and a need to go to the next phase of life. In a month, I could be in a coffee shop or in a car on a freeway. It sounds so safe and secure. It sounds so boring and average. Here, I feel like I am doing something for the United States and also the Arab world, some days positively and some days negatively. In America I will feel helpless. I will watch the 24-hour coverage of the war from a couch and complain about the state of the world. Here when I walk down the street to buy bread in the morning I am doing something. Home to me represents passivity.
I am sure after a few weeks at home I will have found some way to change that. And as I start law school I will imagine all of the things that I can do with a law degree just as I imagined all the things that could be done with a Notre Dame undergraduate degree.
I used to laugh at the people that said going home is harder than leaving home. I did not worry about it at all until I watched CNN on satellite TV and later a television program try to explain all of Islam in five minutes. Also from the other side, I have heard my friends here defame America — the same friends that begged for help to get an American visa and praised everything American only six months ago.
My thoughts since my last column are a little more coherent, but that is all relative. I am still very, very excited to go home. Although the closer it gets, the less I complain about Mauritania and the more I worry what life in America will really be like now. It is a different place than when I left.
My group finished our close of service conference and drove between the two main cities of Mauritania, between which there is no road. Our three SUVs spread out across the open sand, dunes, beaches and rocks, sometimes fast and sometimes stuck in sand up to the axles. My trip is done. Now it is someone else's turn. There will be people brave enough, stupid enough and passionate enough to follow.
Maite Uranga graduated from Notre Dame in 2000 as an anthropology and government major. She is currently a Peace Corps volunteer in the Islamic Republic of Mauritania.
The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.
All Viewpoint Stories for Monday, April 7, 2003
