I stepped off the bus into a dry heat. I shook a few hands, picked up my bags, and made my way up the street. My front door was locked, and the lock was rusted. Used the back door. Put my bags down, stretched, and walked up to the canyon, where I had last looked over this little slice of the world. It had been 25 days since I’d been in my village. In that time I had seen 2 of my best friends married to 2 beautiful people, been welcomed home into a house I’d never seen before, been greeted at the airport by a reception committee that I hadn’t seen for a year (except on my bedroom door), rafted down a river, lost sunglasses, kayaked down a river, got bit by a spider, healed, addressed a Rotary Club, helped stage the entertainment for Peace Corps’ 50th Anniversary celebration in Tanzania, delivered a well-received speech at said celebration, knocked beer bottles off ski poles with a frisbee, watched fireworks over water, drank beer, jumped fences, gave toasts, got bought shots, won at trivia, went on roller coasters, saw the Phillies ring the bell, saw old friends, hugged my mother, lost to my father at pool, drove my sister crazy, and fell in love all over again. There were hellos and goodbyes and so longs, there was crying and laughing and, by god, there was dancing. And now...now it’s over. Until next time. Until next time.
Coming back to the village was like remembering an old song. The smells, the faces, the air. My house is still here. My friends thought I’d left them, but were happy to be proven wrong. My cat had forsaken me, but I lured him back with fish, affection, and promises I don’t intend to keep. And my work...my work. Got back on a Thursday, and after about half an hour to digest the fact that this life was not imagined (no more than my American one, anyway), I realized that it was, in theory, a work day for my tree nursery. So I thought I’d go have me a look, see how the pine seedlings are doing. I was prepared (and mildly expecting) for some regression, for some dead seedlings. Yet nothing, nothing at all, could have prepared me for how damn proud I was when I arrived, and found...people. Working. Working hard. Thrilled to see me, but as a friend, not as a savior. Green, happy, tiny pine trees. It....works. This wasn’t just some cockamamie scheme, because now they believe in the work we’re doing. And in that belief lies all the difference. I would be remiss if I did not give all the credit to one Charles Kiswaga (I call him K-Swagga), who is the unrelenting taskmaster that actually made this happen, that made a cranky, travel-sore volunteer feel like a proud papa on the hour of his homecoming. Here’s to you, K-Swagga.
I have to move again. Not far, at least. Not this time. My village, unbeknownst to me (yet knownst to them), only had a one-year lease on my house (I use the term lease loosely), and it is up. So they have built a new house at the primary school which will house myself, future volunteers, and eventually, a primary school teacher or two. Yet not eleven months after I boldly claimed that this house would be the longest standing home that I would have had since high school...out I go, once more, into limbo. I have not stayed anywhere for more than 10 months in the last 8 years. It’s not a bad thing, not really. An old mentor once told me that your first five apartments should be better stories than apartments...check. But all this moving has caused a phenomenon that I’ve noticed in myself and many of my friends. I go home both ways. When I was headed to America, I was going home. When I was headed back to the village, I was headed back home. I've got one year left in a spectacular job...but then it's time to find one home. Just one.
To finish: I was graced with an opportunity to give 4 speeches in 3 weeks. The first of these was the speech I gave at the 50th Anniversary of Peace Corps’ work in Tanzania. I shared the dais that night with the Director of Peace Corps, the Ambassador of the United States to Tanzania, the Under-Secretary of the Tanzanian Ministry of Education, and my boss, the Director of Peace Corps Tanzania. It was one of the greatest honors of my life. At least a dozen people helped me to write the speech you are about to read, and without even one of them, its reception would have been impossible. Thank you Andrea, Brian, Stephen, Natalie, Anne, Katie, Paul, and all the rest. It very recently occurred to me that what I’m going through right now is not an introduction to my life...it is my life. And though I may live quite a long time, I will never forget coming down from the podium that night...and seeing people standing. And applauding. For one amazing night, in the middle of Tanzania, I was a mile off the ground. And then I got on the plane. For a whole other adventure.
Anywho. Here's the speech. I hope you like it.
Dr. Florence Turuku, Ambassador Lenhardt, Director Williams, Country Director Wojnar-Diagne. Distinguished guests, fellow volunteers, ndugu wenzangu. Take a moment to look around. We are not natural neighbors. We come from different generations, from different states and different countries, from different religions and backgrounds. But today we are united in a community of hope, brought together by an unshaken devotion to our common humanity. So it is today, and so it was at the beginning of our journey.
50 years ago a group of driven individuals arrived in what was then Tanganyika. It wasn’t a country yet, it wouldn’t be for four more months, and when they arrived, they were greeted by a sign which read “Beware the lions” And there it started. But who were these people, these reckless ambassadors? Reading the first curious accounts, the first letters home from a new frontier, one gets a sense of their characters. Who were they? They were George Schreiber, who talked about embodying “ a pioneer type of spirit”. They were George Johnson, who said “Peace Corps exists as an embodiment of a conviction that the best way to achieve global understanding is to put Americans in contact with other nations.” There were 35 of them, engineers, surveyors, and geologists. They came from Princeton, Harvard, Michigan. And they were drawn together by a man who stood on the steps of Ann Arbor and told the assembled students that based on “your willingness to not merely serve one year or two years in the service, but on your willingness to contribute part of your life to this country, I think will depend the answer whether a free society can compete.” 5 months later, the Peace Corps was signed into law, with Kennedy again telling us that “We will send those abroad who are committed to the concept which motivates the Peace Corps. It will not be easy:”
Across the nation, people were moved. They volunteered, they went to boot camp (Drill sergeant and all), and they became the first soldiers in an army of peace. 50 years later, that army has fought poverty, hunger, disease, and subjugation in 139 countries, side by side with peoples of every language, tribe, and religion. Kennedy’s words have outlived him. The army fights on. And though it sometimes feels as though we are pushing at the ocean, progress has been made.
Yet for all the measurable progress, so much of what Peace Corps does is unquantifiable. There is no box that shows how amazed the children were when the seedlings began to grow, no graph to measure the change in a woman living with HIV when she realized she had become a leader. And more: how many Tanzanians knew, until the moment they were proven wrong, that Americans could never swing a jembe? How many Tanzanians did not believe that we could dance? And how many of us volunteers never guessed at the number of different ways life could be lived, and lived beautifully, until we came here? We might have read about the poverty, but how little did we know about the generosity? These things may be unquantifiable, but they are no less real. Mwalimu Nyerere said "To measure a country's wealth by its gross national product is to measure things, not satisfactions." Many other organizations build more things. Yet I doubt there is another organization that builds more satisfactions.
But where do we go from here? The goal of our work is to make the continuation of our work unnecessary. We are not there yet, in fact we are nowhere near the limits of our potential. Success is based on expectations, but it is also limited by them, and we are limiting ourselves, and our communities. We are still prisoners of what Michael Gerson called “the soft bigotry of low expectations”. We must never tire of pushing ever upward. We have come so very far, Tanzanian and American alike, still we have so very far yet to go. This is a party to celebrate 50 years of friendship and accomplishment, but it can be more. Let us stand together tonight and take this anniversary as an opportunity to recommit to the spirit of the Peace Corps, to remember the sense of duty that brought us all here, to do better, to go farther, to try harder. We can expect far more from one another, but we can also offer far more of ourselves. American poet Robert Browning wrote, “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?” Today is a golden opportunity on this golden anniversary to not set limits on our potential, but rather expand our expectations.
I don’t know much. I left America a year and a week ago, and I’m just beginning to realize what I don’t understand. But I love this job. There is nothing like it. I said goodbye to everything and everyone I held dear, climbed onto a plane with a large group of strangers, got pushed out at 30,000 feet, landed, and began to plant trees, dig wells, and teach beekeeping. One day, maybe, I will get good at my job, at which point it will be time to leave. And after all of that, after the level of insanity I’ve put myself and my loved ones through, the thought that will keep me up at night: is how do I get back to Tanzania?
Because somewhere along the way, something changes. We came here as ambassadors from America, to show Tanzanians what America is really all about. But now…now we have become ambassadors to America, from Tanzania. For the rest of our days we will do all we can to represent Tanzania: its beauty and its need, its poverty and its riches, its depth of generosity and humanity. The Kiswahili word for together is “pamoja”. It literally means “in one place”. And if that’s the case, none of us will ever be together again. A part of us never left America, the land of the free, the home of the brave. But a part of us will never leave Tanzania, “nakupenda na moyo yote”. Part of us will always be Tanzanian, rising with the sun, gripping the hands of strangers-turned-family, forever exchanging with unguarded smiles the news of the morning.
Peace Corps is not for everybody. As Kennedy said, “it will not be easy.” It is painful, and it is lonely. Yet none of us here today have to be here. We could be living closer to our loved ones. We could be making more money. We could be cooler, or more comfortable, and God knows we could be cleaner. But each of us decided that there were more important things to us than comfort, that while a ship in the harbor may be safe, that is not what ships are built for. Everyone here today, Tanzanian and American, has dedicated a portion of their lives to the belief that with devotion, and kindness, and an insistence on a brighter future, change is possible. Everyone here today is part of something greater than themselves. We are all soldiers in an army of peace. An army that marches on, as our President Barack Obama said, “with eyes fixed on the horizon and God’s grace upon us.”
