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I didn't actually think too much about the specifics of living with the host family. In my mind, though, I was going to get here and I'd integrate and it'd be great and I would just-- it would be like I was one of them. And [LAUGHS] I knew that wasn't going to actually happen, but in my mind when I envisioned it, I was like, but I'll get close. That's not quite how it turned out. But my host family is amazing.

I didn't really grasp the significance of it, that you're actually going to be with a family and you're going to be part of this family. You're going to be their child. I call my host father Papa, and I call my host mother Yaay. Yaay is mom in Wolof.

The expectations that I had were mostly on the friendships that I would cultivate, my relationship with my host family. This is Haddi, one of my younger host siblings. She is always a total firecracker and always brightens my day when I see her.

My relationship with my host family here, we're actually very, very close. And part of Senegalese culture, joking around is appreciated a lot, and I have done that all my life. I'm a prankster and a jokester, and I love having fun. So they appreciate that a lot.

I have five host sisters. I wish my language was good enough so I could actually connect with them. It has been interesting being a female that presents like a Senegalese person and not participating in the household chores. A kind of dynamic that we're not all on the same page. Yes, I'm a little bit older as well, but there's something to be said about sharing the work that makes you the same. And when you're not sharing the work, it puts you on the outside. Because I knew I wouldn't be able to be part of the cooking rotation, nor did I want to be part of the cooking rotation, I knew that I wouldn't be able to sweep every day, I knew that I wouldn't be able to go to the wells with them every day, I didn't volunteer myself to do some of these things.

And over time, I think it's taken a toll. It turned from sort of offhanded comments to more upfront comments. It all sort of came to a head when I'd come back from the well, I was in my room, and they were very loudly voicing their opinions with my host dad about how I should go to the well with them and that I don't do anything and that I'm not helping. Needless to say, it did not feel good to hear and what was making it worse is that I couldn't articulate myself fully and I couldn't make my point as well as I wanted to.

So when I was off on vacation about two months ago, I had a site visit, so my tech team came to my house and spoke to my counterparts and also my family, and they only had good things to say. But the only thing that stuck out, I think my father said that I don't ask for permission when I go places, when I leave town.

I was born in Colombia, and I moved to the States when I was five, back to Colombia when I was six or seven, eight, nine, and I did the back and forth thing until I was 12. Then I stayed in the States in Florida. When I was 16, my mom and dad were elsewhere working, and I pretty much watched over my siblings, my younger siblings, in Florida.

And then going from that to then graduating, going into college, living alone, going on internships, having jobs, and living basically alone, having no parental supervision, to then coming here to Senegal and living with a family who expects you to ask for permission when you are going to places. Or more so, it's to let them know, but it's also asking for permission. And also if you have friends over, if you want to have people over, of course you have to ask for permission.

I didn't foresee the amount of distance that still exists between us, and that's in part from language barriers, in part from cultural barriers. Often, I find it difficult to approach people in my village and even my host family and some of my closest work partners about personal things that are going on in my life.

It doesn't affect my life, really, it doesn't affect my work, my overall mood, and it's just-- you're 25 years old and you have to ask, hey, is it OK if I go to the city tomorrow? Or at least let them know, or if I want to have friends over, hey, can I have two friends over this weekend? They're spending the night, for the weekend.

I am an economic development volunteer in Senegal, and the goal is to bring resources from outside the city here, and so, basically, it's a networking event. Our entrepreneurs here, about 50 of them, are coming and networking with about 15 representatives of agencies that are working in Dakar, in the capital, and a couple other suppliers and service providers from regional capitals around our region here.

My job is really to empower the community, organize them in the way that they will themselves continue organizing this effort in the years to come after I leave. It's important that it's community-led, because that's the Peace Corps model. It's supposed to be sustainable. And the way that it's going to be sustainable is that they themselves do all the work or most of it, at least, so that when I leave, they can continue doing this and it doesn't just fall through.

Before coming in, I knew that in this kind of situation, especially going to a country where English is not spoken and going to a rural community, I wouldn't be able to do a lot of high-impact work. I knew that in theory, but in my mind, I was still hoping that I would be able to come in and have some kind of big change, and years later people would be talking about, oh, that one health volunteer who came and now we don't have cancer in the world. She did it all. And I knew that that wasn't going to happen, but I still hoped something of the sort might happen.

I've had to sort of readjust what impact means to me, what high impact means to me, even just accomplishments. I've had to redefine what that word means to me.

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Before I came, it was difficult for me to even have any work expectations, since I didn't know anything about agroforestry. These farmers have been working in their fields for decades. And so who was I to come in and say, this is wrong, what you're doing, do it this way. I didn't find a lot of work very quickly. I saw a lot of potential for it, but I didn't really know how to channel my own motivation and the motivation of my community.

This is one of my work partners. His name is Oosman Finn. We have been working together for about a year. So a live fence is composed of unpalatable or thorny trees, and it creates a barrier so that animals cannot get in. So the field is able to be protected, and the farmer is able to grow what he needs to grow in his field. The first one we planted is right in here, it's right in up against.

He has beans, cashew, mango, he's got a little more room to go. So they're going to have to continue with the next volunteer next year. But he's great, he's been really motivated and outplanted all of this on his own and took care of it, and they all grew really well.

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Today we started about two hours late. We were supposed to start at 9:30 with just welcome speeches 9:30 to 10. From 10 to 12 we were supposed to have the panel discussion, then we were going to break for two hours, lunch, and then from 3 PM to around 5 we were supposed to have the workshops. But it ended up being just from 11:20 until 4:00 PM nonstop. Then we had lunch, and then everyone went home.

The content that was in the agenda, we did it. It was just completely different, as expected, it's just the agendas here are a formality. They never go the way you expect them to. I spent most of my time today taking care of my counterpart's child, because truly my counterpart or my work partner and I, Malamine, he is the one who organized this event with me, and I want him to be the face of the conference. I don't want people to think it was me. That is what I'm here to do. Just give them the little push that they need and stay in the back, let them go on their own. Yeah.

Oh my gosh, yesterday there was this one woman who had a little problem with compliance with bringing her youngest child to do baby weighings. And when I was walking around yesterday, she told me that she took her child to the health post because her child had been in red in the growth monitoring, which is bad. It's red, yellow, green, green obviously being the best, yellow being that in-between, and red being immediate action is needed. And she had before been really resistant to the idea of having to go to the health post.

And she had been saying that she knows her children, that they're fine, she's doing fine, all the while that her child was very small and very underweight. And that was one of those situations where yesterday when she said, I went to the health post and now they say my child is fine. And I actually confirmed with the ASE of my health hut that the child is not even yellow, but in the green. That is one person, that's one child. But that's a lot. It's those little moments that do make a lot of it worth it.

I definitely cry in my hut, in my room. Often it comes from on days that I just am really overwhelmed, whether that's projects that aren't going well or a comment that someone made that just kind of sent me over the edge, or just generally being overwhelmed with the heat, the mosquitoes, everything compounding.

I had heard, of course, everyone hears that Peace Corps is hard. I knew that. People told me. I talked to so many RPCVs before I came here. But in my mind, I had what I thought I knew was hard. And I'm thinking, yes, but I'm a trooper and I'll take the punches as they come, but we'll get through this, because I thought I knew what hard is. Hard in the context of the Peace Corps is not you're in physical pain or things like that. Hard is the fact that you can't call your mom at the time you want, because the time difference and also you don't have reception in your village. Hard is missing a significant event in your friends' and family's life because you're here. Hard is missing a holiday that usually is not a big deal. But all you want is to just be with your family at that time.

There have been times in the Peace Corps when I felt down. I had done a study for waste collection in the city. And the authorities didn't show up at the meeting where I was supposed to present my results. And that was months' worth of work. I also took a class online on trash and waste management in developing countries. I prepared for that study. I walked around doing a market study. I did a lot for that, and in the end, when I went to present my results, the authorities weren't there. And then I had other things going back-- my personal life back home, at the time I was dating someone, and we decided to break up. I spent more time at home, for sure, reading and keeping more to myself.

Just short of two years into my service, I went home for a few weeks for my brother's wedding. And it was such an amazing time to be a part of something so beautiful with people that I love so much. And I came back from that on the day of one of the biggest holidays in Senegal. And I was just really hit with the contrast of what I just left this place of family, friends, so many people that I love, so many friendships and relationships that mean so much to me. And then came back here where there's still a lot of people that I love, but they still aren't my blood family. And they still aren't the people that I grew up with and that I'll be with 30 years from now.

This is Elizabeth Mamjana Maron. She's my cultural counterpart. She has been a wonderful resource to have someone to slow down and explain things. Because after the novelty wears off of a new volunteer, at first everyone's like, yeah, let me explain, let me explain, and then after a while, especially when I wasn't progressing as fast as I would have liked to or they would have like me to, people go back to speaking normal speed, and if you catch it, you catch it, if you don't, you don't. And it was great to just have her to just be like, here, let me not just tell you what this means but let me explain it, let me give you examples. If you can have one person like that, it makes a big difference.

My friend here, Malamine Jain, I met him at the post office. We joke around a lot. He calls me [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] in Wolof translates to prankster, and also he call me Mr. Omelet, because I eat lots of omelets. I supplement my diet here with delicious omelets from the market.

Mousa I consider as a member of my family now. He's a good, good, good person, because since he is here, he don't stop helping people. Every day we go together on the road, we see people saying, yeah, Mousa, Mousa, Mousa, Mousa. It is a proof that people love him.

This is my host mom. Her name is Owa. When I very first got to site, there was a big gathering of 60 people. And they presented my name, or they gave my name, and my host mom danced for me. And that was my very first introduction to her. She is someone whose advice I actively seek out, especially when it comes to questions that I have about cultural differences or what have you.

You're never going to become 100% Senegalese, because you're not. You don't look Senegalese, you don't talk like them, no matter how good your language is, you're just not from here. But do I feel as a part of the community? Of course I do, most definitely.

All in all, I think I will walk away from my time in Senegal having grown and learned a lot and in the end leaving a positive impact on my community. And I think that's all I can ask for.

I left a very good job to come here, and there is not one day when I regret that decision. This is the most meaningful and novel and impactful decision I've ever taken. But of course, that doesn't mean every single day is a happy one, and it doesn't mean every job, every project I partake in is a success. No. You have defeats. You just get up and keep on walking.

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