The Selfish Years

With one week left until I depart for Cameroon, I've been fielding questions about my (possibly questionable) decision more than ever. Questions about questionable decisions are to be expected, so it doesn't faze me. Probably the fourth most common question (right on the tail of "Where is that?" "For how long?" and "How many languages?") is...

Now why are you doing this? 

An excellent question. The flippant reply would be: why not?! After all, I'm 22, with no responsibility, nothing and no one to hold me back!

View of Istanbul, Shot by yours truly, July 2013

But in reality, there is much more to it than why not. Really, there is discovery. In Heart of Darkness, Conrad is fascinated by Africa because it's a blank spot on the map, ready to be filled with whatever horrors or wonders your mind can conjure. In Dark Star Safari, Paul Theroux notes that this is more or less still the case. For many of us, "Africa" summons up images of dark children, ribs poking out and spotted with flies, or of pirates on little boats commandeering very very big boats, or of the mass killings of Rwandans or Sudanese. Or maybe just The Lion King. (Go ahead, sing the opening scene, full volume, don't look to see who's listening..) I'm sleuthing for the "real" Africa, the hum-drum daily routines and mysterious beliefs and the shared humanity. I've already found Timbuktu and Cameroon and Mount Killamanjaro on the map; now I want to see them, feel them beneath my feet, sniff out the lurking smells - I want to discover. 

This is what appears when I search Africa in Google Images.
And it shows up in about a thousand different versions.
(I'm just approximating there.)
I think I can find & shoot a better picture.
Now I will urge you again to sing Lion King. 

There is also adventure. My only experience with Africa is a brief sojourn in Egypt, when I visited Cairo and Alexandria with USC's Problems Without Passports program. To see the pyramids and the sphinx is something every child has dreamed of. When it becomes hard to remember if that mental-image-memory of Giza is an authentic one, or one from a history book, I can draw forth memories of sound that must be my own: our guide's tale of Horus, his compassionate commentary on religion in Cairo, his laughter when I asked if the City of the Dead is a slum. (According to him, it's not - not compared to some of the sprawling, dirty places on the outskirts of the city. But it's poorer than any place I have seen in America.) But if I asked Egyptians, would they tell me their country was in Africa? I doubt it, regardless of what geography says.

Dat's authentic. Was 125*F that day too.

Lastly, there is an opportunity to make a difference to someone that I would never have met otherwise. Maybe that's the idealist in me talkin'. But that's not such a small thing, really. When many of my friends are applying to tens of jobs and hearing nothing at all, or hearing honest "thanks, but no thanks" responses when they're lucky, more of us are turning to other options. So suuuure, I'm making no money and buying no cars and investing in zero condos... BUT! the job market sucks, and philanthropy is an appealing alternative to doing nothing. Plus, the struggles of those less lucky than us - both here in the U.S. and around the world - is ever-more apparent. So maybe, for my generation, our twenties can be our un-selfish years.

In exactly 7 days, I will leave for staging in Philadelphia, then a few days in the capital Yaoundé, then two or three months of training in Bafia (which I am already lovingly referring to as "how-not-to-die-or-embarrass-your-country-training"). Wish me luck (for the packing, of course) & send me love... 

Fight On!