REAL TALK About How It Feels to Be A Black Peace Corps Volunteer in an African Country, Pt. 2

Race has been a defining part of my service. I think that whether we’d like to admit it or not, it is a pivotal component to every PCV’s service. Whether you “see race” or believe it to be an issue in your personal life or not is completely irrelevant. Your community does and will respond to you depending on how you’re racially and socially perceived in any Peace Corps country. I don’t think we talk about this enough. And, over the past two years that I’ve lived in Mozambique as a Black, American woman and witnessed the similarities and differences of my service with my constituents, my perceptions of what my identity has meant and how I’ve come to understand the importance of the awareness of race among PCV’s has grown sharply.

I want to share these conclusions here. But first, let’s get personal.

In my original observations last year about what it meant to be Black in Peace Corps (specifically in an African country, you can recap that here), I’d come to accept that I would be treated with significantly less privilege and respect than white volunteers. And I thought I had arrived to a space of peace and acceptance about that. But over time, things seemed to be changing within me. I’m going to give you to you raw as I experienced it. These are my experiences, and my truth. After experiencing some of the worst racism of my life, I can now reflect and understand the stages that I’ve gone through over the course of my two-year service:

Denial

I sucked at Portuguese. I knew it, my community knew it. What took me a very long time to understand was that other PCVs also sucked at Portuguese. But I felt like I was judged more harshly. It was seemingly affecting my integration and Mozambicans’ interest in working with me at my hospital and in my community. It definitely affected my desire to be social and open with others, since being made fun of and talked down to hurts in every language. So, I stuck with the few Mozambicans who were patient and loving towards me and my language journey and held them close. It wasn’t until I got more comfortable with my Portuguese that I realized relations weren’t improving much.

When I finally could express myself and my desire to work with others, be included, and propose project ideas, I was often ignored and rejected. My JUNTOS group became my saving grace early on in my service because, for a long time, they were the only ones patient enough to actually hear what I had to say. So, I started blaming it on my being a woman. Gender inequality is such a palpable social issue in most Peace Corps countries that cannot be overstated. It is so, so much harder to be a female volunteer than a male volunteer. Period. And so I blamed it on gender for a while…

Until I visited “white” (anyone of lighter skin tone is perceived to be white; more on this later) female volunteers’ sites and witnessed their treatment by their communities.

Let me take a step back and clarify: I am aware that all attention is not wanted attention. Read any PCV blog about the prospect of living in predominantly black and brown communities where one is the only (or one of the few) white faces in a town or village and they will state then fact that this can be an immensely challenging experience. This, however, is not that blog. I acknowledge the struggle, but in this instance I want to explore the privilege of that attention. The immediate respect. The willingness of others to listen to the ideas and opinions of a random American volunteer who, because of their skin’s lightness, is perceived to be more intelligent or well-informed. Whether that be the actual case or not. Witnessing this made me feel a complexity of emotions and how naïve I had been about blaming my language and gender; both of which had played a significant part in my treatment. But the realization that I was having a substantially more difficult time because of the fact that I was a dark-skinned Black woman in a nearly completely Black nation hit me like a truck. The fact that this was barely discussed among Peace Corps or among groups of PCV’s began to infuriate me. I was now aware. And I was angry.

Anger

Some of my favorite memories of Peace Corps training were the diversity of personalities I was getting the chance to meet and get to know. I have not been a jet-setter and had very little international traveling experiences before coming to Mozambique. I’ve lived in the state of Georgia my entire life. Coming to service and meeting so many Americans from different backgrounds and walks of life was a very exciting and eye-opening time for me.

After a significant amount time in service, conversations alter and tend to become pretty uniform. We all joke about being hungry, dirty, and a little crazy. Things that used to be a big deal and would send us crying to mom are now small, daily occurrences that we barely notice anymore. We generally all become a bit jaded about the process and lose motivation in waves that ebb and flow naturally. What I couldn’t relate to, however, was the growing acceptance of privilege that I witnessed many PCVs settle into.

I grew tired of hearing the same stories of “Posh Corps”, offerings of air-conditioned rides and mansion suites from white South Africans, and the “uncomfortable” conversations with racist undertones against Black Mozambicans and Africans in general. I grew irritated about the stories of “nice” compliments and preferential treatment that Mozambicans give, which are frequently actually indirect instances of them putting themselves down to put whites on a pedestal. Hearing PCVs brag about how much money they’ve made or plan to make by selling their precious locks got under my skin and I often didn’t know how to respond or explain why.

Now, I do.

How could one enter Peace Corps with such ignorance of the very real affects of colonization? Of the whitewashing of international media and the social manipulation of Portuguese colonizers to feed the lie of inferiority into the minds of Mozambicans for generation after generation. How could we, as representatives of an American organization invited into this culture to help and serve, be so unaware of the implications of our presence and behavior?

The anger period was short, but strong. I am not typically an angry or cynical person, though, so something was going to have to give. I soon realized I was using the anger to cover up the wound.

Grief

I have wanted to come to Africa since I was a little girl. I was not the PCV applicant who selected “Anywhere” on my application. I wanted to come to the Motherland and experience any culture, as long as it was on the African continent. When invited to Mozambique, I accepted the offer immediately and felt as if it were a dream come true.

As a darker skinned Black volunteer, who has studied and loved African culture and history my entire life, coming to Mozambique and being treated with such inequality and disinterest in many ways broke my heart. Seeing white volunteers be so embraced and welcomed made me jealous, and it hurt me to be rejected in those same spaces. Service has many different kinds of affects on PCVs, some more positive and others more negative. I began to notice an increase in confidence, boldness, and self-assurance from other PCVs. But how couldn’t you feel that way after being placed on such a high pedestal for two years of your life by nearly every member of society?

I experienced within myself the complete opposite. The self-assured, self-loving woman who came to Moz wasn’t there anymore. I began hating my body, my skin color, my hair, and myself. Come to find out, awareness of the system doesn’t always make one immune to it. The societal messages that were screaming at me daily that “white is right” and that I am not enough were chipping away at me. Little by little. At my confidence, my self-love, my self-awareness, and ability or desire to stand up for myself. These foundations that I had so carefully and consciously built up over the years were unconsciously deteriorating.

Until I woke up one day in early February 2018 and didn’t recognize myself anymore. Where was my voice? Where had I gone?

Awakening

I stopped manipulating my hair (twist-outs, braids, etc,) and started rocking my fro daily. I began working out, eating healthier, and paying more attention to the way I dressed and welcomed how my curves made things fit a little tighter in some places than others. I blasted the Kendrick and let myself be serenated by Solange. Not because its trendy, because its healing. I had very tough conversations with other PCVs who I trusted and felt would listen to me without getting defensive or devaluing my experience. And I began loving myself radically.

I accepted that the racism I’ve experienced during my Peace Corps service has been emotionally traumatic, but soon after this realization I gave myself some perspective: Three months from now, I will be leaving Mozambique. The severity of how this overwhelming social conditioning affected my self-esteem will become a memory and I’ll return home to Atlanta where Black self-love is as abundant as sweet tea. But what about the Mozambican women whose perfect, smoothe skin glows like chocolate in the sun and whose full hips fill out capulanas so effortlessly? Who’s going to speak and breathe the love back into them?

I am convinced that, as American volunteers, we fall into two categories: Those who reinforce colonization and white privilege, and those who don’t.

And not only white volunteers, either. Black, biracial, Asian, Indian, Latino, etc. We all, if not self-aware, can play the part of Americans imposing more harm than help. None of us are perfect, and the social implications of our presence here in Mozambique were intense and widely unexpected. I get that. But this is our reality. And we can choose to take responsibility to do the best we can to spread self-love, understanding, and equality. Or, we won’t. That’s on you and what you value. We all come to the Peace Corps for different reasons.

As for me, I choose love. I choose to stop every woman I see with natural hair and tell her how beautiful her hair looks. I choose to tell a different little girl, everyday, how gorgeous and smart she is. I choose to call out any critique given in my presence between women about hair, weight, clothes, etc. and reinforce beauty and acceptance. I give compliments without having to be given one first. And I challenge everyone around me to think about why they are convinced that “foreign” is “better”. Changing my tactic from getting sad, or mad, to being empowering and has done wonders for my own self-esteem and brought my joy back. Some days are still fairly difficult. Some moments are harder than others to be gentle and loving toward myself, and remind myself that hate (of others and self) was taught. But that isn’t who we are. The devil is indeed a lie.