Peace Corps

A quick thought.

I plan on serving as a Peace Corps volunteer next spring (or more likely, early next summer). This is very exciting. I have been told that--when placed--I will be an educational volunteer somewhere in sub-Saharan Africa.

It's not difficult for me to get excited about this. A foreign country; a new language; a different culture and way of life. It's a daunting adventure, and I believe I can grow and learn a lot from it (as purely self-serving as all this sounds).

The humanitarian aspect appeals to me as well, but it's not what ultimately attracts me to the Peace Corps. I want to help people living in tougher circumstances and growing up with less opportunities than myself. But I approach this with a cynical pragmatism. I'm entering a completely different culture, full of determined people who live and work in effective ways that they've developed over time. While I can offer help, and I can try to help facilitate change (to things I know), there's not much else I can do. But that's ok. I'll work hard. I'll try to be a partner; and hopefully I can teach useful things as much as I can learn them from the new setting.

What makes me uncomfortable, however, is that I will be an English teacher. I don't qualify as an agricultural volunteer; nor do I as a urban planning volunteer. I don't even fit too great as a Math teacher. So, teaching English is my ticket to another nation.

Teaching English feels a bit neocolonial to me. Why English? Why not Arabic (the most widely spoken language in Africa)? Or Swahili? Why not a pan-African language? What makes English an absolute necessity for kids in rural Africa to learn? Sure. English is the reality. If you want to go into business. If you want to travel. If you want to lift yourself out of poverty, learning English sure seems like a useful tool to help you do this. Chinese or Hindi would be smart too, but English is tried and true over the past half century. Entrepreneurial people from developing countries learn English. Yet in the back of my mind, I feel like naive well-minded Europeans of decades past. Teaching the native my language because it is superior to their indigenous pidgin tongue, and because it is ultimately the only way for them to improve themselves. Why should I be reaffirming this reality?

Of course, I don't think it's this simple. It's what you make of it. I don't have to (and won't) treat it as a neocolonial venture. I'll be teaching more than English. Educating in a broader sense. Helping kids learn how to learn. And lamenting the need for big change isn't what's needed. A sober look at reality, and an approach that blends incrementalism and pragmatism is the key.

Nonetheless, I do feel a bit uncomfortable about the central premise of my service.

All of this, however, has been a long wind up for my main point. I read something in Foreign Affairs that helped to assuage my fears. In his article, "Africa's Capitalist Revolution," Ethan B. Kapstein writes that in recent years Africa has urbanized tremendously. Now, more than 30 percent of Africans live in cities--below the world average (which I'd peg at 50%), but still twice as urban as two decades earlier. As Kapstein writes, "the shift from rural to urban life is crucial for galvanizing economic development because cities bring people with goods and ideas together with those who have capital" (121-2). In short, urbanization brings different peoples into close contact and into business together. Urbanization allows for networking, and it also breaks down tribal barriers that remain rigid as long as separate people stay separate. And it also helps break down "patrimonial exchange relationships" (122) where local chiefs control the economic interactions of others.

Tied to this urbanization of the continent, has also been the proliferation of technology throughout the continent. Cell-phone usage in Africa has increased tenfold since 2000--more than any other region in the world. And Internet usage has grown tremendously as well, with the number of people with Internet access quadrupling since 2000.

This is where I want to step in and help. I want to help close this "digital divide" (122) between Africa and the rest of the world. I want to help bring Internet access to young students in rural areas. I believe that Internet access can help catalyze a similar process that urbanization helps catalyze. I believe the Internet can galvanize economic and educational development. It can expand people's world views, breaking down tribal barriers, and facilitating economic and intellectual growth. It allows for access to (yes, porn, but also) integral information from all over the world. It can help teach sexual health to young teenagers, so that young men and women have safe sex; it can give news about world events, so that a rural student can see the world beyond their own home; it can give farmers access to market prices, so that they can sell their prices at greater profits. Technology (--specifically the Internet--) can act as the great teacher and the great democratizer. And this is where I believe I can help. I can try to help bring increased Internet access to students, and I can teach students how to navigate the web productively. I can help teach them practical ways to use the web to learn. And for older students, I can help them learn how to use the web to improve their economic well-being.

The Internet isn't just purely a good thing. And it's not something every culture will immediately welcome. But ultimately, I think it can have a positive impact on the education and economic development of people. That's my pitch.

This is a volunteer vocation that excites me. And although I know I must be cynically pragmatic, I'd like to try to make it a part of my experience abroad. I can't expect that people will want this, and I can't expect that I'll have the resources to enable it. But if the circumstances are right, I'll work hard towards it.