Almost a year

Presently the rain has stranded me in my house, but not before a forty-minute walk home in moderate drizzle. Luckily I had the foresight to both close my kitchen window (so as to avoid a repeat flood) and to bring my rain jacket. It began to rain when I was at hospital vaccinations cringing at the most ear-piercing  of infant screams. During a brief period of reprieve, I ran over to the CEG/high school to ask if my campers had turned in their permission slips. Friday is the last day of school, and I really need to meet with them at least once before then. Somehow I am down to the absolute wire on this and at the point of near panic. So I really hope it stops raining so the girls will come back to school this afternoon. Deep breaths! I also have a village-wide baby weighing tomorrow in Pede, a little town about 5k north of Kandi and need to color in about sixty growth charts.. But because I also need to work on Peace Corps' Goal 3, I'd rather be writing.

So despite my crazy schedule of late, I've been counting down the days until July 2nd, which marks one year in Benin. In some ways it feels like I just arrived with a group of fifty-plus trainees, all anticipating becoming strangers (or yovos or batoures or anasaras!) in a strange land. And other times it seems I've been here my entire adult life. Perhaps I've lost perspective, but I do believe it to be a huge accomplishment and have decided to celebrate by a) baking brownies and b) buying myself some new clothes online to bring back when I go home on vacation.

Just as I had lately pondered how much my life has changed in the last year, I noticed Paul Farmer had been chosen by Foreign Policy magazine as one of the 100 Most Influential Global Leaders of 2011. Dr. Farmer is a medical anthropologist at Harvard and co-founder of Partners in Health, an absolutely fantastic organization (and my dream employer) whose focus is improving healthcare to the poor of Haiti, but also in a few other mostly forgotten locales like Peru, Russia, and Rwanda. Check them out at http://www.pih.org/.  He believes (as you would think most people would, but apparently not) that the poor deserve preferential treatment in healthcare. He believes, too, that medical and social issues are intertwined. You can't solve one without addressing the other. I first read about Dr. Farmer's work in 2009 in Tracy Kidder's Mountains Beyond Mountains, and I can say without hesitation that it set me on a new course. This book, combined with cubicle-induced wanderlust, led me to Peace Corps Niger as a community development volunteer, then by the grace of God/Allah (though I didn't know it at the time), to Peace Corps Benin as a rural health volunteer. One trip to the library changed my life; my librarian friends would be proud! My close friends will also recall that I, by some strange and most excellent twist of fate, met Dr. Farmer (who sported a giraffe tie) on the way to Benin. On the escalator at the Brussels airport, in fact. He was surprised to be recognized and he thanked me and my fellow volunteer John for serving. One of the happiest moments of my life and feeling totally validated: check and check.

Actually, now that I think about it, that was the second strange and most excellent twist of fate of this journey: the first was passing the New York Times building on our way to JFK and eventually to Africa. NYT columnist Nick Kristof has taught me more about social issues (particularly involving women and children) through his column and the book he wrote with his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, Half the Sky, than any other public figure I can think of. His column (and frankly all of the New York Times) is on my top five things I miss from America . (It is accessible online, of course, but I feel like magic is slightly lost.) Anyway, thanks to Dr. Farmer, Nick Kristof, and eighteen months and counting in Africa, I'm a different person, and hopefully mostly for the better. Even through all the moments I miss my family to the point of near tears, the mosquito bites, the bouts of foodborne illness, and any given taxi ride, I know I made the right decision to come.