This past week I read The Ponds of Kalambayi. It’s the memoir of Peace Corps volunteer Mike Tidwell, who served in a village in Zaire (now called the Democratic Republic of Congo) in the late 80s. It seems that so many Peace Corps volunteers are either writers or readers; many are both. I enjoy reading stories from other volunteers and comparing and contrasting experiences.
Tidwell worked as a fishing extension agent. During his two year service, he taught Zairians fishing culture. After a rigorous training in the US, he moved to a village close to Mbuji-Mayi in the country’s south central region. Tidwell’s main work involves visiting the men of nearby villages on his motorcycle, scouting out potential areas to dig ponds, instructing them on the digging (often taking 50,000 shovelfuls to get the right size), teaching them how to add the proper compost to the pond and also how to feed the fish. Along the way, he learns about generosity in the form of selfless, community-centric villagers; and the greed of Westerners who exploit the village farmers by forcing them to grow cotton, only for them to buy at low prices, and the exploitative diamond trade in Mbuji-Mayi. While Tidwell was there, a normal Zairian made $170 a year – or the amount of 2 ½ months of Tidwell’s living allowance.
It takes Tidwell along time to convince people. Many villagers think that he will take the harvest of fish. He is, after all, a white foreigner in an Africa that’s always been pillaged by his kind. But he gains the farmers’ trust and eventually ends up running a successful project, no thanks to the corrupt government officials that want a piece of the action. The main point of the project is to give malnourished people a chance at daily protein. Tidwell preaches an ideology of limiting family size as well – something villagers can’t understand. Many village men would rather take the trouble of digging two ponds, if only because that means they can have more children. What Tidwell understands in time after many frustrating discussions is that intentionally limiting family size is of little use when nature does it by itself. He attended over 200 funerals in two years, many of them caused by accidents or otherwise curable diseases.
The part that resonated with me the most comes in the later chapters of the book. In a tiff with the US government, the Zairian government refused to grant any additional visas for new volunteers. Tidwell’s Peace Corps director writes him a letter, begging him to extend for a third year so that a volunteer may remain in the valley and continue the work. Otherwise, it may be years until someone else came to take his space. Tidwell considers it briefly – until he acknowledges his own limits.
Alcoholism is a dark cloud amongst volunteers. The reasons that cause it are almost limitless. If stress is situational, part of me thinks alcoholism could be situational at times, too. Firstly, gender roles and societal expectations come into play in many of the countries volunteers are sent to. In most cases, it’s rude for a male volunteer to refuse a drink. In other cases, drinking is a social event that builds friendships, connects people, and paves the way for future working relationships. “In the beginning I drank to be sociable. I drank for entertainment – to relieve the monotony of village life. But now I was drinking seven days a week… Not by any stretch of the imagination could this be called normal consumption, (p. 254)” Tidwell said.
Alcoholism is also a side effect of depression, or at least serves as a coping mechanism when volunteers feel alone, homesick or frustrated with their work. Tidwell described workless days as such: “These weren’t good days for me. With no work to do, nothing on which to train my mind, I grew restless and depressed. Time seemed to slow down, then stop altogether… By one o’clock, a book tossed aside, I’d feel that tug, that need to do something… (p. 251)” The same reasons caused Tidwell to start drinking far more than he should have, and it was with the knowledge that he was slowly becoming an alcoholic that he decided to decline a third year. All of this supports the often underestimated mental and emotional toll that Peace Corps service takes.
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