A short reminder that the following opinions expressed are my own and are not representative of the Peace Corps, the American government, so on, so forth. This is a recollection of my experience as an American living abroad in response to the recent presidential inauguration, which I personally am damn happy with.
On the evening of January 20th I rushed down the road in Seronga, heading the opposite direction people would normally expect from me at that time of day, and as dusk approached, an odd time of day for me to be outside altogether. After generally busy days working the fields, people here have little to do in the evening other than relax outside their huts and track each others movements. As usual, most of my village called out to me as I speed walked down the dirt path.
“Lorato! O Ya Kae?” (where are you going?) They inquired after we went through the usual rigamarole of greeting. “Obama!” I shouted, pointing to my (or really, Brent’s, now mine through the fact that he left it in Gabs and I haven’t seen him again) “Barack Obama is my homeboy” T-shirt. “Ay-hey” they replied.
I arrived at my nurse friend’s house and called “Obama” as a greeting through the open door. He immediately changed the channel to the one that was airing the inauguration. As I watched the cameras scan the crowds on the mall in DC, tears sprung to my eyes.
Obviously, I have been here long enough that there have been plenty of things to have made me homesick. Family and friends are marrying, having children, holidays are passing, lives are changing. The daily annoyances of living in a place like Seronga have gone from making me think of home every two minutes to finally being accepted parts of daily life that rarely conjure up the thought, “Things are NOT like THIS at home.” I find I’ve generally come to miss the people from home more than the places or orchestrated holiday traditions, the pomp and circumstance of this or that uniquely American occurrence.
But as I sat down on that couch, with my coworkers, some of them slowly arriving from next door to share this moment with me, and the National Anthem played, I felt very, very sad. Don’t get me wrong, I was thrilled with what I was seeing, which was the inauguration of the first president I have voted to elect (the other two elections for which I’ve been eligible to vote I spent the post election weeks in deep depressions of confusion and dismay). It had been fun to show my co-workers my absentee ballot and to teach them about the American system of voting, and to assure them that despite the fact that the ballot was going through the mail it would still get to the right place and would be counted, and to reassure them of the integrity of our election process (a tougher feat in light of our last two elections).
It was powerful for me to express to them that in my mind it has never been about Obama being a black American specifically, (although I am happy for the barriers it will break both in the United States and the rest of the world’s viewpoint of us) but rather that I can honestly say that in my mind he is without question the best man for the job, a man whose energy I have long admired, and whose public presence and expressed attitudes towards issues I care about (including the Peace Corps, to which he has pledged not only his support but vowed to try to double in size) has caused me to feel a sort of hope and faith in my government I haven’t felt in years.
I was bursting with pride at being able to witness such a positive moment in US history. I have begun to identify with and proudly publicly acknowledge my American heritage for the first time in a damn long time. Every time I’ve traveled for the last 8 years in countries around the world I’ve been asked at least once to defend Bush and his administration, and more than once I have not corrected people when they wrongly assume from my grating Minnesota accent that I was Canadian. For me this is a nice switch.
Watching such an American event from Botswana was a surreal experience, and reminded me of sitting in a small hostel in Venice and watching the statue of Saddam Hussein fall in Baghdad, trying to piece together the Italian newscasts to decipher if it was Americans or Iraqis pulling it down. Or living in London sitting around the TV in the common room of an international student’s house struggling to explain Colin Powell’s presentation on the Weapons of Mass Destruction. It was really nice to be sharing an American example of us doing something positive and forward moving rather than trying to simultaneously understand and explain something the rest of the world views as harmful or wrong.
It was really moving to share with my Batswana friends their first experience of seeing an American president being inaugurated (I was told this was the first time the inauguration had been telecast in Botswana), a president they consider to be their brother or their cousin, “an AFRICAN American”, something that bonds me to them in their eyes in a new and meaningful way. Since living here I’ve learned that in traditional and patriarchic societies people often see their leaders as the “fathers” to the people. This is very true of Botswana. As consensus is also the rule of law in this land, many people from my village can’t understand how I could come from America and not agree with Bush’s policies, as he is “my father”. Due to my inability to explain this phenomenon, I was extremely relieved to put that particular argument aside for the more productive one of whether Michelle looked good in that goldish colour.
Throughout the course of the broadcast I was able to identify some of the landmarks of DC, and discuss the similarities and differences in our governments, election process, and monuments to former leaders. I explained the significance of Obama using the same Bible that Abraham Lincoln had used as he was sworn in. The inauguration opened up the door for a lot of interesting chats on American history and it’s relation to Africa that may not have come up otherwise.
Despite the fun and excitement of the night, I was incredibly homesick. I was texting with my mom, commenting on Aretha Franklin’s headpiece and the stuttering during the actual swearing in. The tears slipped down my face as Obama commented in his speech about the people watching from “a small village in Africa like the one my father was born in”. I felt lonely despite being surrounded by people, as it is weird to be so far from the States when something so significant and joyful and unifying is happening there. I have to say that it made me more homesick than I was having been away from home for Christmas, Thanksgiving and New Years Eve combined. I yearned to be near someone who fully understood and appreciated the significance of the event in the way that only an American could. That being said I have enjoyed reading all the post election coverage as the magazines have rolled in through the post and am excited to be looking forward to the next few years of being an American abroad. I realize that it is the enterprising visions of the type of man we have just made our president that made this experience I am having as a Peace Corps possible for me, and I am thrilled for the prospects of the future for Americans abroad. Hell yeah USA!!!
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