The Chair is a Girl

In case you weren't aware, I'm required to learn French as well as the local dialects of Hausa and Zarma for my job as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Niger, West Africa. This is no small feat, given my less-than-average propensity for languages.

That aside, I was struck by something today as I was studying. In French, most words are assigned a gender. I was initially commiserating this fact as it makes learning the nouns that much more difficult, but it has social implications as well. Earlier today my dad pointed out that in casual conversation, if I were to tell him I was meeting "a librarian", I would say "le" or "la" instantly detailing whether this person is a man or woman.  In English, I would simply say I am meeting someone of that profession and leave it at that. The other party would need to ask the discriminating question if interested. Why, then, is gender of such import in this and other languages? Or perhaps I should ask - why the lack of interest in English? 

My dad further pointed out that in French (as well as other romantic languages) even inanimate objects are allocated a gender. I found this to be particularly interesting. Why is a chair (la chaise) "female?" Why is a desk (le bureau) "male?" A recent New York Times article by Guy Deutscher titled Does Your Language Shape How You Think? speaks to this question, wondering why genders vary for nouns such as "a fork" between German and Spanish. Check it out - I enjoyed it.

I think this is fascinating but I would like to come back to the social suggestions of having to reveal the gender of persons you discuss in everyday life. Of course, this information is naturally given throughout the course of most conversations. Yet I find it oddly constricting to be forced to give it up right away. Why can't a teacher be a teacher without being profiled as a woman or a man? Is this significant or have I gone off on some weird tangent? If you continue to follow this blog, you'll probably come across these sporadic posts every once in a while. Perhaps tomorrow I'll write about how the word for "divorced" in Zarma is the same as the word for "prostitute." I'd like to excavate those social implications! 

Le Premier - "Making Good"

What's incredible about the Peace Corps, or any government agency for that matter, is their phenomenal use of acronyms. From what I've garnered so far, I'm a PCV (Peace Corp Volunteer) preparing for PST (pre-service training) at the PCTS (Peace Corps training sight) and I am expected to begin assimilation with the HCN's (Host Country Nationals) ASAP (you get the idea.) I'm already suffocating in the language requirement of this job and I haven't left the country yet!

When I started this post with "What's incredible about the Peace Corps..." you probably expected me to say something else. It's true, I'm a recent college graduate, complete and equipped with strong ideals, glorious (and perhaps ill-conceived) fantasies about my role in the world and the will to make a difference.
Aha - there it is, that most sticky phrase. What does it mean, exactly, to make a difference? To me it has the potential to sound quite ominous, as if the change I'm bringing might be irrevocably negative. Sure, I'll make a difference - I'll make everything differently bad!

And yet, we all know this is not the common connotation of said phrase. And so I've decided to strike my fears and move forward for positive change, using the phrase "making good" which, while grammatically questionable, gets the point across.

This, of course, is assuming I make any sort of difference at all.

I've decided to name this blog after the infamous bush taxi, the most common mode of transportation in Niger and perhaps in West Africa. (See picture.) I remain convinced that the bush taxi must be some kind of manufacturing experiment, designed to determine how much sheer weight a given vehicle can hold whilst traversing desert dunes. The weight comes in all forms, of course; luggage, livestock and squirming humans all thrown in together. It seems indicative of our world, really - a modern version of Noah's Arc with two or five or twenty of every possible species combined in one small car. Bush taxi against the world. I'm exaggerating, of course, and I haven't even gone to Niger yet so this is entirely speculation. But in all seriousness, "fofo" means "hello" in Zarma (one of the dialects of Niger), and I like the concept of 'travel' and 'collaboration' between the unlikely suspects in a desert car and thus, voila, my blog title. (Disclaimer - I mean no disrespect to the bush taxi. I am actually looking forward to riding in one)

I recognize that so far the tone of this post is rather flippant, but I am truly excited to begin this incredible journey. After a year of applications and writing about why I want to join, the departure day is quickly arriving and I'm thrilled (as well as nervous). It's been a lot of talking and writing and I'm ready for some doing. I may regret those words come November, but I don't think so. I will feel many diverse emotions connected to this experience, but never regret.

As I say, I have not left the comforts of American society and therefore have very little to report on my West African adventure. The packing has yet to begin but the research is well underway; my findings will be posted shortly in the form of Lists about Niger where one can quickly absorb interesting facts about my country of service. At least, here's hoping.

G2G, BRB, TTYL (Just to compete for most outrageous use of acronyms...unfortunately mine take me back to some rough middle school years)

Phoebe