A Letter to My Replacement

The Good News

Your domestic situation is cozy. In relation to other parts of the country, your climate’s a refrigerator, Your diet’s rather thorough and when you wage the battle against boredom, you decidedly win, when you sally off to the waterfront to join those on vacation.

The Bad News

You’re not on vacation. And despite what your envious and inexperienced stage-mates may prattle on about, St. Louis is not a club-med resort, nor is it an ancient artifact. It is a raw and relentless expression of Senegalese urbanization today. It’s densely-populated, clamorous and dirty. The streets flood. The electricity cuts. The water dribbles. Not to mention, there are hundreds of young boys, some of them as young as five years old, who are forced to beg. Like many of the seaside entrepô ts of the colonial era, constantly reconciling their past with the present, the storied first capital of West Africa is no different. According to my eight-five year old grandmother (Senegalese), who grew up under the French flag, St. Louis celebrated its independence by simply falling apart. However, about fifty years later, proud residents and nostalgic expatriates alike are desperately trying to restore St. Louis’ primness, power and prestige. But as a Peace Corps volunteer, you may never meet these people. Especially as a volunteer who is concerned with his community’s nutrition, you may enter St. Louis at a much different angle--one less trod by ’Toubab’s. Far removed from the swimming pools, hotels and live jazz, you may explore and practice your Wolof in the far-flung, crowded neighborhoods of families and compounds that meet, if not, surpass your wildest expectations of urban blight, sprawl and destitution. If you thought you were a Peace Corps Posh Corps volunteer spared of poverty, think again. Sunny St. Louis, although a healthy deviation from your preconception of life in the African bush, will, no doubt, bespatter your white linens and gurgle in your stomach. Your sleeves will be tightly rolled up, perhaps not as you had imagined, pulling water from the well, but I promise, you will nevertheless find your black-hole. You will be up-to-your-head in opportunity to make a difference and for this, the bad news, it turns out, may be the best news yet.