Breakdown

"Lean on me, When you're not strong, and I'll be your friend, I'll help you carry on, For, it won't be long, til I'm gonna need somebody to lean on. " -song

Today I attended a training at Projet Jeune for young leaders in the community to become peer educators with respect to reproductive health. The first morning module was conducted by Coumba, the second by Tchou Tchou, and the third by a woman whose name I can’t remember and it’s no wonder. Let’s call her Aminata.

So Aminata had already made a big deal of me signing the sign-in sheet. If she didn’t want me to sign it she should have just said so. Rather she came to me in the middle of the module saying loudly, You shouldn’t have signed this. I said ok I can cross it out. She said No that won’t work. I said ok and then turned back to the module. She shakes the paper again in front of my face and says You should not have signed this; Don’t sign these in the future. Ok I nod again. And then for good measure she repeats herself a few more times. Are you kidding me? Everyone was staring at us. Ok dear I understood you the first time. Now go away. Of course this last part was not said. When she passed around a new sign-in sheet she stood behind me and hissed when I received it from the person next to me. I ignored her and passed it to the guy next to me.

The sessions were conducted in French but frequently jokes were told in Bambera and everyone, but me, laughed. I, of course, would have liked to laugh and hear the stories and jokes too but no one offered to translate. So I just got the bare facts and none of the interesting tidbits. It is hard enough for me, a very social person, to navigate a second language and then a third here, especially when people who speak the one that I am more fluent in insist on only talking to each other in the one in which I am not fluent. It feels isolating and disturbing even. I’m left to my own thoughts in my own head for most of the day. That is difficult enough but Aminata added insult to injury. And she wasn’t done yet.

While Tchou Tchou included me in the activities when she broke groups out to discuss issues in greater detail, when Aminata was leading the module she pointed to me and said she doesn’t count, don’t include her in the breakout groups. Ooookay. After that she told me I could join any group I wanted but with such an introduction it proved difficult. As I attempted to join one group, they all looked at me, a girl said she doesn’t matter and they all turned their backs and went back to discussing. Wow!

I felt like I was at the receiving end of a childhood game of the silent treatment.
So I grabbed my phone and left. But it was too early to call anyone in the States, so I headed for the clinic to say hello to Coumba and Sogonna and return after the breakout. I got back just as they began presenting and then we had a break where we each got a drink and a snack. I was one of the last to get my food and as I walked outside all of the other attendees were already in small groups. I tried approaching a few but they did not acknowledge my presence (I don't matter remember) and the last straw was overhearing two guys talk about me but not to me. I gathered all my stuff and headed to the clinic for good. Coumba asked if everything had gone well. I nodded. She asked if we were on a break I nodded again. Finally she said what's wrong? I shook my head.

She told me to come in her office where embarassingly enough I ended up displaying just how upset this incident and others over the past month had made me. I guess everyone has a breakdown now and then. All I know is that mine ended with everyone in her office Tchou Tchou, Sogonna, Brahms, and Aminata herself who had been called to task for upsetting me so.

Aminata tried to defend herself by saying that she had not meant to exclude me, only to say that I was a volunteer who would not be engaging in the same work after the training. She softened what she had said in the module and I explained that even if that had been her intention, there was a better way to go about it. That I am clearly a stranger in a foreign land and I need not to be pointed out and excluded anymore than I already am. Tchou Tchou said she understood my point, that a faciliator never singles people out. I graciously said that Aminata had not been the only cause of me being upset and I did not want her to be too upset over the incident. Ugh how tiring and embarrassing. They tried to get me to go back into the training afterwards but I had had enough for the day.

I went straight to Fa's when I got home so I could converse with her and her brothers about music, art, religion, literature, geography, the state of the union and just forget all of this other foolishness.