My 40 New Best Friends

Five days ago I remember sitting nervously around a bowl of cherries at a fellow program leader’s kitchen table. Our conversation kept switching with the tense energy of those with much to say but too many thoughts to clearly express any of them. Have we figured out housing for everyone? How much money do we still need to fundraise? What time are we going to start tomorrow? Have you emailed the group the address yet?

Now I look around at a sea of young faces, all different races, different backgrounds and with different reasons why we decided to spend our summer working to create ingenuitive grassroots solutions to Oakland’s most challenging environmental and social problems. Despite our differences, I can confindently say that there is not a single person in the room who I wouldn’t feel comfortable talking to and confiding in. Moreover, there are many people in the room whom I’ve told more personal things about myself than I have to friends I’ve known for years.

This story of immediate friendship might be written off as “cute” just as Summer of Solutions is often written off as just another “summer camp.” But in many ways, I believe that the community we are creating is a model for how the rest of the world should function. Imagine if diverse groups of people, from all different income levels and racial backgrounds, came together to really think about the problems that their community was facing and then worked together to solve those problems? Sound idealistic? Maybe, but if you truly believe as I do that at some point all of these smiling faces sitting around me are going to take the knowledge that they’ve learned this summer to become even better leaders in their communities and country then perhaps a solutionary world isn’t that far off in the future.

Creating Our Own Jobs

Next weekend I’m heading down south to celebrate my sister’s graduation from college. Although the festivities are sure to be merry, they are slightly tempered by the fact that she will be joining my class, the ”class of the great recession,”  and enter the labor force at a time when more than half of recent graduates have not be able to get a full-time, salaried job with benefits; nearly half of us find ourselves in jobs that do not even require a college diploma, and nearly one in 10 of us are unemployed. The worst recession in decades and the slow economic recovery has clearly punished those full of big ideas but short on work experience or skills.

And yet, as Rahm Emanuel famously said at the start of the Obama administration amidst the financial collapse,  ”You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.”

The dearth of employment in the formal work force has provided an opportunity for recent graduates to travel, volunteer or even take the risk of trying to create their own jobs. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal showed that a growing number of us are–at least temporarily–opting out of the labor force entirely, as measured by the drop in labor force participation rate among college graduates under 25. This summer, I’m joining that demographic as a volunteer program leader for the Summer of Solutions in Oakland, subsisting off of a meager stipend and the generosity of my parents.

While sometimes I wish I had the stability and salary of a formal job like some of my friends, most days I am incredibly exited not to have to sit in an office and instead have the opportunity to work at the grassroots level on the issues I truly care about  in my own backyard of Oakland. Summer of Solutions is a is a 2-month program that trains participants how to develop the green economy by creating hands-on, community-based solutions to environmental and social injustices. Throughout the summer, participants learn not just valuable leadership skills that will be useful no matter what they choose to do after the summer ends, but also how to make grassroots community change that integrates climate and energy solutions, economic security, and social justice.

For too long, I have been part of the youth climate movement that has been busy telling politicians what we don’t want–coal plants, factory farms, gas subsidies etc.–without showing them examples of practical solutions. Now, I am part of a new movement of over 250 young people around the country who are working in their local communities to create change under the umbrella of 15  Summer of Solutions programs. Although the program doesn’t officially start for another couple of weeks, I’ve already been impressed by the qualifications, enthusiasm and dedication of the other leaders and participants. While we don’t yet have specifics on all of the projects we’ll be working on since many of these depend on the group desires and community needs, we’ve already formed valuable partnerships with local organizations within our focus areas of food justice, clean energy, transformational media and thriving communities.

Of course, in order to successfully implement all of these solutions, we’re fundraising like crazy. We’re hoping to raise $8,000 in the next two weeks in order to provide stipends to low-income youth participants, subsidize food and housing for all program participants and purchase materials for our projects. If you or anyone you know wants to make a tax-deductible donation to support our program, please visit http://www.indiegogo.com/SoS-Oakland. Every penny really does count, particularly since there isn’t any administrative cost (remember, we’re all volunteers)!

Life in Freedom Land

Attending my alma mater’s graduation this weekend provided me with the opportunity to perfect my two minute summarization of my first year out of college that went something like “West Africa-Niger-no, not Nigeria-small village-loved it-al-Qaeda kicked me out-no, really, we were evacuated after a terrorist attack-went to Morocco-didn’t know what to do with my life-attended an Indian wedding-got a job-stayed four months-now back in Oakland for three months-got a community organizing gig for three months-after that?-maybe back to India.”

After looking a bit taken aback, my friend/professor/person whose name I really should have remembered, would inevitably ask me the question, “So, what’s it like being back in the U.S.?”

My answers varied at first, alternating between “America is really, really clean” to “everything is just so much easier in this country.” Finally, I decided on “strangely perfect.”

Coming back home gave me a small glimpse into why so many of the people I met abroad wanted nothing more than to come to this so-called land of the free. On the surface, America seems so perfect. Large shiny cars drive in straight lines on streets devoid of trash or stick-thin children; well-lit grocery stores sparkle with an abundance of fruits, vegetables and boxes from all over the world, perfectly arranged in one convenient location; fashionably-dressed people walk along wide sidewalks, some of them seemingly talking to themselves until a thin white cord snaking over up from their smart phone to their earphones comes into view.

In Niger, the only means of transportation was hopping on the back of a motorcycle for a terrifyingly fast ride wobbling through the sand or–and this was what I usually did since Peace Corps forbid us from the motorcycle joy rides–waiting endlessly by the side of the road for an ancient, overpacked pick-up truck that may or may not break down before reaching the intended destination. In India, my transportation options were overwhelming since the streets were forever packed with auto-rickshaws, bicycle rickshaws, motorcycles, cars and taxis, all of which clearly reigned supreme to mere pedestrians. Crossing the street was, quite literally, often the hardest part of my day. The few sidewalks that did exist were usually occupied by street-vendors, trash and children who surrounded me, gesturing to their mouths in the all-too recognizable sign of hunger. Knowing that the money would only feed the beggar mofia and do nothing to persuade these children to discontinue their lucrative begging profession, I usually swallowed hard against a sharp pang of guilt and hurried on.

Finding food in my Nigerien village was usually an all-day adventure, the most epic of which occurred one day when I had the audacity to desire eggs when they  were clearly “not in season.” Telling my friends that such a thing couldn’t be possible–chickens in America lay year-round–I spent an entire day, morning till dusk, going from house to house searching for eggs without any luck. Though that day ranks high in my list of absurd food scavenges, like everyone else in my village, I had to go to multiple houses and multiple stores just to secure the few basic foods I ate of onions, garlic, pasta and tomato paste. Finding most fruits and vegetables wasn’t even an option; they simply didn’t exist except for in the brief “cold” season of December and January. And my mother wondered how I got so skinny…

India, needless to say, certainly fattened me up but even with all of the vegetable and fruit vendors (or “wallas” as they’re called in Hindi) surrounding my house, shopping for food was still quite the endeavor. For one thing, there was never a set price and my pale skin automatically lifted me into a bargaining category far above what my meager internship stipend could afford. Arguing, feigning shock at price quotes and pretending to walk away usually got the price down to something at least near the normal price but it was certainly far more exhausting than making small-talk with the American supermarket cashier. The one aspect that I did enjoy was that I always knew what was in season because, quite simply, everything that wasn’t did not exist on the cart or (as I found out when I tried to buy a papaya in mango season) was horribly rotten.

While most aspects of my life seem to have become simpler since I moved back to the States, I’ve found getting dressed in the morning to be far, far more challenging. For one thing, I now actually have a range of clothes to choose from rather than the only African skirts or long Indian shirts that appear to be clean. Most woman in my Nigerien village seemed to be perfectly content to pair a brightly patterned skirt with an equally bright but differently patterned top and still walk around as though they owned the place. While Delhi was quite a bit more fashionable in the Western sense, it was still India and bright colors were not only accepted, they were encouraged.

The other day, in Portland, I counted the number of people wearing black jackets and jeans, stopping at 20 only because my friend told me he “got the point.” I’ve adapted to being able to show my hair after seven months of covering it in Niger but I still find myself staring at women wearing shorts and low-cut shirts that leave very little to the imagination.

Just as I’m becoming re-acquainted with my skinny jeans and short-sleeve shirts, I also am adapting to life in smart-phone land. Don’t get me wrong, I love having an IPhone again but it is a trip watching so many people walk down the street playing on their phones or mp3 players and then realizing that I’ve become one of those people. It’s a far cry from walking down the street in Niger where I always needed to greet each and every person I saw.

I know America is not perfect. I know that our public schools are failing, our consumption patterns are deadly and that our unemployment rate (particularly for my age group) is record-breaking. But man, its good to be home!

The Price of Pity

I just got back from the E3 Challenge Awards, an award ceremony to inspire self-reliance among NGOs that work in the disability sector. My company, Start Up!, partnered with ARUNIM, a market aggregator of products made by mentally and physically disabled people in order to create the competition. The speeches made by many of the winners and judges were fascinating. They really hit home on the point that “specially abled” peopled are just as capable of creating beautiful products if given the opportunity.

After the ceremony, they had a reception where many of the specially abled folks displayed their wares. Indeed they were beautiful and I wasted no time in finding things I wanted to purchase. At one stall, I asked a man with cerebral  palsy how much a hair gel product cost. After roping in a few people as translators (apparently my basic Hindi was slightly too basic), I found out that he wanted to give me the product free since it was only half full. Somehow I felt bad taking the sample and so I decided to purchase a Rs 45 bottle of aloe vera–figuring that my pale skin would need it soon enough. I didnt have change so I handed him Rs 100 and gestured for him to keep the change. His gnarled hands became agitated and I stood there confused, wondering if the price was more than I thought. Finally, it became clear: he didn’t want to keep the change. Unwittingly, I had just fallen into the pity trap that all of the speakers had warned against; even if unknowingly there was a part of me that wanted him to keep the change because of his disability. Eventually I got my change and walked away thinking about how sometimes its all to easy to believe in “dignified livelihoods” and other such buzzwords without actually living them.

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Mornings

Somehow three and a half months have gone by and it is almost time for me to head back home, for the first time in almost a year. While life in India has given me plenty of blogging material, most of my initial thoughts have tended to end up discarded in half-finished drafts that I can’t bring myself to return to. India is a confusing country, full of contrasts–beggars next to BMWs, crumbling temples surrounded by skyscrapers, modern looking women still facing century-old stereotypes. The more I try and pin down the “real India,” the more confused I become. So in my last 13 days here, I’ve decided to give up all attempts to analyze my surroundings and simply write about some of the strange and unique moments that fill my life here.

Just as many of my Indian friends warned me, Delhi is a city without a spring. My newly purchased peacoat was just as quickly discarded for a light-weight corta (long shirt) before my body could register that the proper response was now to sweat rather than to shiver. The imminent heat of the day has only made me more determined to enjoy the coolness of the mornings and so I find myself waking up at hours that confuse my much more logical housemates who find it enough to turn on the AC.

This morning I went running around Nizamuddin, a Muslim neighborhood next to the famous Nizamuddin dargah (mausoleum). It appeared that I’d found a patch of Delhi filled with my same love for mornings. Muslim men in long white robes and dainty white caps poured out of mosques, having just finished their fajr, or morning prayer. Other men gathered in hordes around pots of bubbling, sugary-sweet liquid, unwilling to start their day until they’d finished their chai. A few women in black burka’s edged their way around the crowd, one of them leading her daughter who was clad in a white hijab. Her daughter whispered to her mother and then gave me a curious glance. I waved and she blushed, retreating into the black folds of her mother. I smiled and moved on, breathing in the cool morning air and hoping that I could carry some of it into the chaos of the day.

Delhi’s Missing Women

The streets of New Delhi hum with a constant buzz of activity; auto rickshaws whiz between trucks and cars while food vendors yell out to potential customers. While there are few purchasable items that cannot be found in India’s capital city, one thing is noticeably absent: the presence of women.

One explanation is that there are simply less of them. The recent census showed that the current sex ratio is the worst in recorded Indian history with only 914 girls per 1,000 boys in children ages 0-6. The falling ratio is not a product of biology but rather of a culture where daughters are seen as an economic burdens, with dowry costs often exceeding yearly incomes. Historically, in India, it is the sons who inherit land, carry on the family name and provide for parents in their old age. Despite government attempts to criminalize sex-based abortions and offer cash to families that keep girls, Indian daughters continue to be culled from the population.

Another reason for the invisibility of women is safety. Delhi is notoriously unsafe for women with at least one woman physically molested each day and 42 reported rapes in 2011 alone. Particularly frightening is a recent surge of women being molested and even raped by their taxi drivers.

In 2008, my company, Start Up, partnered with long-time women’s rights advocate Meenu Vadera to fill the demand for a safe taxi service for middle-class women and expand livelihood options for lower-income women with the launch of Sakha, a cab service run by women for women. Start Up also worked with Ms. Vadera to develop a nonprofit  arm of Sakha, the Azad Foundation, which focuses on providing  young women from disadvantaged urban communities with  the training and support they need to navigate the formidable Delhi streets.

Sakha is more than just a cab company. As Ms. Vadera explains, “Driving is just an excuse, what we’re really to do is break an image and provoke a change in mindsets towards women.”

Although Ms. Vadera maintains that Sakha and Azad are still in the “chrysalis” stage, the organizations have undoubtedly changed many minds, both in the marginalized communities where they source their employees and among their customers.

Sakha’s COO, Nayantara Janardhan explains, “When the women come into the program they are so clearly downtrodden. The training strengthens them, gives them confidence and then they start earning and gain economic power—from an average monthly family income of Rs 3,500 to an individual salary of Rs 5,000-7,000 per month. They become the principal breadwinners in their families!”

Their clientele too is changing. Whereas once Ms. Janardhan found herself forced to persuade customers that women are capable of driving, now she has a waiting list for customers wanting to hire Sakha chauffeurs. In the future, Sakha hopes to expand to corporate tie-ups in order to ensure a steadier sense of employment for their newly licensed radio cab fleet.  To hire a cab or engage with Sakha, email Ms. Janardhan at nayantara.janardhan@sakhaconsultingwings.com.

Start Up is currently looking for other early-stage initiatives to incubate. For more information, contact Sahil Vasudeva at sahil.vasudeva@startup-india.org.

While India still has a long ways to go before women are widely recognized as valuable members of society,  innovative social enterprises like Sakha give hope amidst bleak statistics.

A Social Enterprise Idea

In between loud cheers as we watched India crush Pakistan in cricket, two of my Indian friends began talking business. Not business in the general sense but rather their businesses. Both of them were my age and both of them had already started two businesses. While they are both exceptional people–and about to go to Harvard Business School–they also are representative of a country well-recognized for its entrepreneurs, particularly in the social enterprise sector. As they discussed how things were going and the challenges of start up life, my American friend and I just looked at each other: we should start a business in Niger.

Both of us have recently spent significant time in Niger, myself as a Peace Corps Volunteer and Sarah as part of a study abroad program. We’d somehow fallen in love with the hot and dusty country and lately we’d been discussing ways of going back. Both of us want to go back in a more meaningful way than mere tourism; plus Niger isn’t exactly a tourist destination. Since getting to India and becoming immersed in the social enterprise world, I’ve become obsessed with the idea of starting a business that could help provide employment, education and food security to Nigeriens.

This is the idea we’ve been discussing:

1. The Problem- Given that Niger is an agriculturally-based economy located in what is essentially a desert, widespread famine is all together too common. At a recent  food security conference, practitioners from around the world came to Niamey to discuss how to meet the challenge of feeding a population of 15 million when the rains fail, as they have three times in the past seven years. Exacerbating the challenge of declining rainfall, Niger also has the highest population growth rate in the world at an average of 7 children per woman and widespread polygamy. As I discovered during my 7 months in Niger, malnutrition is often caused by a lack of variety in one’s diet—a vitamin deficiency—not by a lack of food. The problem is largely cyclical. If basic grains like rice and millet are in short supply and high demand—thus more expensive—less money goes towards a balanced meal. During a  food crisis, filling the belly takes precedence over finding vegetables for sauce. But the problem of malnutrition doesn’t just exist during food crises; even during the “cold season” when vitamin and protein-rich fruits and vegetables are relatively cheap and readily available, the produce is rarely taken advantage of due to a combination of a lack of knowledge and money.

2. A Local Solution-One of the first things that we learned during our Peace Corps training was the incredible nutritional qualities of a widely-grown tree in Niger called Moringa. A small tree, native to Northern India but found throughout the tropics, it contains 7 times the Vitamin C of oranges, 4 times the Vitamin A of carrots, 4 times the Calcium of milk, 3 times the Potassium of bananas and 2 times the protein of yogurt. Aside from containing more vitamins and  nutrients than any other food in West Africa, and possibly the world, it is a tree and once matured, it is capable of being harvested every few weeks.While in Niger, I read a blog post from a former Peace Corps Niger volunteer that gave me the idea of combining shade-dried and pounded Moringa leaves with kuli-kuli, a protein-rich peanut resin that is ubiquitous and inexpensive throughout Niger. Unfortunately, in Niger,  Moringa leaves are often dried in the sun or boiled in water that is then tossed out, both actions that significantly reduce the nutritional properties of the leaves.  On the day of the deadly terrorist attack which subsequently lead to Peace Corps Niger evacuation, I was putting the final touches on a community needs assessment report that included the idea of working with one of my village’s women’s groups to encourage them to add Moringa and kuli kuli powder to koko, a common millet porridge. The idea was that the fortified porridge could serve as a local alternative to PlumpyNut, a malnutrition supplement that is widely distributed through NGOs in Niger but often fails to reach the children it is intended for–i.e. after every distribution my village would be full of little girls selling PlumpyNut by the side of the road to older men who simply liked the taste.

3. The Revenue Model- If powdered Moringa leaf capsules can be sold on Amazon for $40, why can’t we produce Moringa and kuli-kuli protein bars in Niger to be sold in Western markets? Calling them “Lose2Give” bars, I wrote up a business plan with the following revenue model:

During the six month pilot, Lose2Give plans to produce 15,000 protein bars which will be sold at the market-competitive rate of $1.69 per bar, making a total anticipated revenue stream of $25,350. Anticipated costs include shipping, labor and packaging. Grandbelle International  provides shipping at a cost of $2.29/lbs; each Lose2Give bar weighs 1.6 oz making a total cost of $3,105 for 15,000 bars. At least initially, packaging will be outsourced to the Nigerien branch of the Shenzhen Oriental Plastic Packaging factory at a cost of $0.05/bar, making a total of $750 in packaging costs. Twenty Nigerien women will be paid $40 a month amounting to a total of $4,800 in Nigerien labor costs. Considering that the GNI per capita per month is $27 and that very few Nigerien women are employed in the formal sector, Lose2Give’s salary is designed to empower these women and put their families on the path to self-sustainability. In terms of the materials themselves: the kuli kuli, Moringa leaves and dates ( a locally available sweetner), the exact prices are difficult to estimate but should not amount to more than $200 per month. Lose2Give founder, Lisa Curtis, will be provided with a $75/month living stipend (based on Peace Corps stipend calculations) with a total of $450 for the six months. The other team member has offered to carry out the necessary marketing and sales tasks in New York on a part-time volunteer basis until the pilot phase has been completed. Of the remaining $9,305, 60% will be reinvested into the villages through nutritional trainings and workshop demonstrations designed to teach more Nigerien women on the proper formation of the protein bars and how to properly nourish their families. Successful graduates of the trainings will be given a small stipend to teach other women. Additionally, Lose2Give will work with middle school headmasters to provide scholarships for young women to attend high school. The remaining 40% of the profits will be invested back into Lose2Give for scaling operations across the United States and abroad. By relying on a for-profit model, Lose2Give will ensure sustainable and dignified employment to Nigerien women. Given their experience in Niger, the team knows first-hand the distrust that many Nigeriens feel towards NGOs, particularly given the long history of projects confined by strict grant regulations and timelines. As a social enterprise, Lose2Give is better positioned to react to market indicators, scale and provide a long-term investment in the well-being of the country.

So that’s the idea, now we need help. Finding the right distribution channels, both within Niger and abroad is going to be a challenge. Finding angel investors willing to invest in such an unstable region is going to be another challenge. If anyone has ideas, please let me know!

The Things I Shouldn’t Miss

It wasn’t until my sandal-clad toes were covered in a thick brown mud and my voice was tired from responding to greetings from all of the adorably dirty street children that I realized why I suddenly felt so lighthearted: I was home.

My new “home” happens to be Asia’s largest slum. Somehow I had managed to talk my three friends into spending part of our weekend vacation in Mumbai in the Dharavi slum with an interesting social enterprise called Reality Tours. The organization  aims to provide tourists (Indian and foreign) with a new perspective on these strange two square kilometers in the center of Mumbai that are home to close to a million people and turn over approximately $665 annually through small scale industries. In 2008, the congested mass of homes, tenements, workshops and alleyways of Dharavi gained fame as the setting of Slumdog Millionaire.

So why would something like this feel like home? Clearly, I’ve never lived in anything close to a slum and I probably never will. But the incredible industriousness, the welcoming attitude and the tangible community spirit reminded me so much of Niger that it was all I could do to stop myself from giving up my fancy apartment in New Delhi in favor of a small tin shack.

This is not to go the route of “oh look at these happy,smiling, poor Indians.” Only one in 1,000 local residents has access to a toilet and the area is prone to flooding, fire and disease. As we learned on the tour, many of the women can only go to the bathroom at night as they are unable to pay the small fee for the public toilets and, unlike children and men, it is not appropriate for them to just squat down wherever during the daytime. Additionally, many of the small-scale industries such as recycling and leather tanning produced noxious fumes that made it only too easy to imagine the type of damage the toxins must be wrecking on the bodies of Dharavi residents.

Recently, as Indian real estate prices have skyrocketed, the movement to bulldoze Dharavi has been gaining traction. According to an article in the Guardian, officials claim that the project could  generate £3bn that could be generated for the municipality while the profits for major construction firms could top £8bn. While I’m hardly an expert on the issue, the idea of tearing people out of the place where they live and work and putting them in large high-rise apartment buildings where they wouldn’t have space for their home-based work seems rather horrible and conducive to breeding drugs/crime. Slum-upgrading–as has been done relatively successfully in Indonesia–seems like a much better alternative.

The more I’ve read about the debate over the slum, the better I’ve been able to understand the debate going on in my own head as to my new life in New Delhi. Hypothetically, I should be overjoyed to now be living in a city where I have electricity, running water, internet and access to as many fruits and vegetables as I can stomach. In all honesty, I often miss my old life. Despite the fear that I sometimes felt while sitting in my mud house late at night in utter darkness,  I miss not having electricity. Without electricity people actually talk to each other. Instead of sitting in front of a computer, I spent my days walking around my village, greeting people and working on projects. At night I used to sit under the stars with a group of friends, drinking tea and chatting about life in Hausa. While I enjoy hot showers, I miss my daily trip to the village pump and the perpetual shock that my villagers felt when they saw me carrying water on my head. The internet is an amazing tool but it is also amazingly addictive. I miss having nothing better to do in the hot hours of the afternoon than write postcards and read books. Having access to fruits and vegetables still never ceases to amaze me but sadly my new city-girl life leaves me little time to cook.

At the same time, there are many aspects of my new life that I love and I’ve made some incredible friends just in the short time I’ve been here. But somehow I think that there will always be a small part of me that feels at home in a slum.

A Worm’s Eye View

“What your profession?” The small Indian man twisted his upper body to eye me curiously as I gripped the little auto-rickshaw seat tighter–I wished he would keep his eyes on the maze of trucks, cars and other rickshaws that were weaving in and out of our lane with Nintendo-like ease.

I could explain to him that I used to work for no money in a country he has never heard of living in what can only be described as “voluntary absolute poverty.” But that would probably only make him take his eyes off the road for even longer so, instead, I say I’m a student. He nods and turns back to the road. Although my knuckles regain their pinkness as my grip begins to loosen, my mind is still tense as I try to grapple with a question that I cannot answer.

I’m still not really sure why I decided to stay in India for an extra three months instead of going home and trying to get a job that pays a more livable wage. I’ve been reading a lot recently–the beauty of seven hour layovers–and I’m starting to think that my year abroad has been about attaining what the famous “father” of microfinance, Muhammad Yunus, calls a “worm’s eye view.”

“By attempting to equip the students with a bird’s eye view, traditional universities had created an enormous distance between students and the reality of life. When you can hold the world in your palm and see it from a bird’s eye view, you tend to become arrogant—you do not realize that when looking from such a great distance, everything becomes blurred, and you end up imagining rather than really seeing things. I opted for what I called the ‘worm’s eye view.’ I thought I should rather look at things at close range and I would see them sharply.” (Banker to the Poor, pg. 5)

Although I wouldn’t have traded my Whitman education for anything, I do think that I used to have a far less complex view of the world and how to “save it.” So what has my wormy existence abroad taught me so far? Well, probably more than I will ever realize but here’s a few things I’ve been thinking about lately.

1. People don’t value things that they get for free. Every couple of weeks an NGO comes into my Nigerien village and distributes malnutrition supplements such as enriched corn flour and Vitamin A enhanced cooking oil. Long lines of women surround the distribution center for hours. The next day, my village is full of those same women selling their newly acquired goods and using the money to buy their traditional staples of millet and rice.

2. Living off a dollar a day isn’t all that bad–depending on where you are. After doing a monthly budget, I realized that for a couple of months at a time I had lived off around a dollar a day. Well this does not accurately reflect the lives of my villagers since I had my medical insurance and rent covered by Peace Corps, upon beginning my life in New Delhi it struck me that it means something very different to live in absolute poverty in Niger as it does in India. Aside from the clear difference in quality of life (i.e. things are a lot cheaper in Niger), there is also a large psychological difference. When you can watch Mercedes and BMWs drive by your tin roof shack everyday, you tend to notice your deprived condition a whole lot more than if you live in a village surrounded by people with roughly the same income.

3. The poor know a lot more about poverty than any aid-worker. The longer I live in developing countries, the more I have come to believe that I know nothing about how to really help people. The list of failed aid projects that bedecked the streets of my village made clear that although something like a school latrine sounds like a great idea, if the community doesn’t understand why they should use  it then you’re going to have children regularly pooping on the dirt in front of the unused bathroom.

4. Competition is the major driving force behind innovation. Just as I loved using competition as a tool to encourage my English students to study, I think that competition can and should be used to provide social goods just as long as that competition is tempered by an equally strong social consciousness.

These observations have brought me to the conclusion that if I truly want to be of use to the world’s poor, I’m going to need a heck of a lot more skills. I want to better understand how markets work and how it can be not only possible but profitable to provide social goods to the so-called “base of the pyramid.” I’m hoping that my new internship at Start Up!, a company that works with social entrepreneurs to help them launch their own businesses, will give me a better idea of how this hip new “social enterprise” sector actually functions.

While I’m pretty sure that this still isn’t an easily explainable profession to those ever-nosy rickshaw drivers and I know that it’s going to be a while before I can find or create a job with decent pay, at least I now have a fun metaphor to describe how I spent my first year out of college.

Goodbye Niger

It was too green. The cows were too fat, the children too clean, the roads too well-paved. I turned to Mariah, my bus buddy on for the two hours from the airport in Casablanca to Rabat, the capital of Morocco.

“Are we really still in Africa?”

“I’m not really sure of anything anymore,” she wearily responded.

It had been four sleepless days since Peace Corps had announced that we were leaving Niger. Ten anxious days since terrorists with ties to Al Qaeda had kidnapped two French nationals only a few blocks away from a Peace Corps hostel. Two days since I had told my villagers that well, despite all my promises to spend the next two years helping them improve their community, I was going to leave them forever after a mere three months.

But, what a three months. Had it been three months in America, I might have gotten to know a few of my neighbors, maybe gone out to lunch with a couple of my colleagues, perhaps made some acquaintances. But this was Niger, a country just as hospitable as it is poor and Safo, a village that had welcomed me with a warmth that made its 100 degree weather feel cold in comparison. By the time I left, I knew the majority of my villagers and all of them knew me by name. I’d eaten meals with them, laughed with them and played with their children. I knew many of my colleagues at the schools, the mayor’s office and the health center–my three places of work–just as well. Two of the nurses, the accountant at the mayor’s office and I had become what can only be described as family. Of course, in Africa, everyone is family and so my village chief’s four wives also frequently reminded me that I was a part of their extremely large (60 children) but loving family. And then, not to be outdone, my neighbors across the street constantly insisted that I eat meals at their house since I was certainly a part of their family.

Just as hard as telling my many families goodbye was informing my colleagues that I would never be able to help them bring all the projects we’d imagined to fruition. Like telling Safia Bawa, the un-salaried president of all thirty-three women’s group in my commune, that I would never be able to help her with their microfinance projects. Telling Hassane Harou, the headmaster of the middle school, that not only could I no longer teach English, I wouldn’t be able to help make a school garden or lead a spelling bee. Telling Adamou Na-Iwoua, one of the staff members at the mayor’s office, that I couldn’t give him computer lessons to help reduce the burden of paperwork that his job entails. And then, finally informing my twelve year-old “colleagues,” my patient little girls that helped me clean my house and who are always down for a dance party, that I would not be there to watch them grow up or teach them how to write their names.

I thought Nigeriens didn’t cry. I was wrong. I thought I could be strong. Doubly wrong.

So now myself and 97 other former Peace Corps Niger Volunteers are in Morocco where we will spend the week in a “transition conference.” The goal of the conference is to help put the threadbare pieces of our lives back together and stitch a future. There are options: a transfer to another country (although there aren’t many of these positions), joining another training group that leaves in the next two months (this is also very competitive), going home and then re-applying for Peace Corps by filling out a much easier application or, finally, simply going home.

Making this type of decision right now feels a little like trying to choose a husband the morning after breaking up with the love of your life. Despite Niger’s relative unattractiveness, the intense heat, overwhelming poverty and ever-present sand, I’d fallen in love. While I have no desire to live off my parents for the rest of my life, choosing a new country or a new job seems like a massive betrayal. This is one heartbreak that’s going to take more than a sappy movie and a box of chocolate to get over.