WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO BE NUMBER ONE?!

It takes a multitude of unfavorable circumstances to be the “number one hardship country” in all the Peace Corps worldwide installments, but that is the position we RIM volunteers have attained since the Chad program was suspended earlier this year.

What do we get out of the deal? We got two cool Chad PCVs who decided to complete the remainder of their service here. That’s good enough for me!

Of course, this kind of label is largely speculative, but just like a natty old goatskin, it holds water. It’s presumably based on several things: the culture (of noncompliance?), the poverty and squalid living conditions… not least of all the dearth of booze that makes similarly dismal places like Niger and Mali more liveable.

A year ago in training, I first heard that our program was notoriously challenging. The news hit me like a slug to the chest. Two years in le trou de cul du monde! What terrible luck.

Well, “who cares” is all I think now. I actually have come to appreciate many of the aspects that, at first glance, seemed so problematic. In a year, you can truly adapt to an amazing extent if you make a sustained effort and don’t mind making an occasional fool of yourself. Slowly things start to make sense, according to Mauritanian logic, and you begin to appreciate an alternate way of doing absolutely everything. At least that is how it worked for me.

‘Cuz two is not a winner and three nobody remembers.