Why I Write

So… why am I writing this blog?

1.    So that when I come back in 2 years and someone asks me “How was Africa?” or “What was Peace Corps like?” I can point them to here. 

Rather than stumbling through summing up 27 months of experience in a few, concise phrases (because also how do you go through an experience like this then answer questions like that??), I will tell people to read about it all here.

On a similar note, I can keep friends and family back home updated on the gist of my life in one fell swoop, rather than struggle to inform each person individually with my spontaneous wifi. 

2.    Toachieve Peace Corps Goal #3: Bring a better understanding of Beninese culture to Americans. 

Peace Corps operates by three goals for their volunteers, which to paraphrase here, are: 

1. To help countries help themselves.

2. To help countries better understand Americans. 

3. To help Americans better understand Benin.  

Unfortunately, I expect that most Americans know very little about Benin, and in fact, are unaware that it even exists as a country (I admit that I had never heard of it before my PC invitation). With this blog, I hope to share a little more of this beautiful country with the world wide web so that perhaps folks in all corners of the world can understand Benin a bit more.

3.    Because Sustainable Agriculture Systems is a new sector in Benin.

When I received my placement in Benin, I eagerly searched the web for any & all information about Peace Corps experiences, specifically clicking on volunteer personal blogs that could help me pack and prepare. However, I found very few blogs specific to Benin and none related to my sector, SAS (I now am aware of several really wonderful SAS in Benin blogs that you should definitely check out). 

SAS is a new sector in Benin, combining two previously existing sectors, Community Economic Development and Environmental Action into a new, single sector that encompasses everything on the spectrum of business and agriculture. My stáge group is only the second ever to be trained to do SAS in Benin, so my hope is to share my experiences here and have this blog serve as a useful tool for future SAS volunteers in Benin.

4.       I like to write. It feels legit. 

Even if not a single soul reads my blog (which won’t happen because at the very least my mom is my #1 fan—love you Ma), writing it all out is a healthy habit that I also happen to enjoy. I have a journal as well that I write in almost daily, but frankly, I can type faster than I can handwrite, and I can also easily include photos here that I can’t print out and stick in my journal.  I have never made a blog before (and it’s been trickier than I thought to get this started), but I think this will be a pretty cool platform to mess around with. 

Finally, I think it’s important to share experiences. Sometime new experiences do not feel completely ~real~ until you share them with others (there’s probably a psych term for that somewhere). I hope writing about mine for others to see will help me reflect on my experiences in a more coherent fashion than what I write in my journal and fully legitimize what I’ve been experiencing. My intention is not to overromanticize Peace Corps, nor do I want to become jaded in what I write about—I simply want to share some of my experiences.