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A Long Way From Home
A Stratham, NH Woman Finds Her Way in West Africa

By Rebecca Perkins
SeacoastNH.com Exclusive

Wait, what am I teaching again?

This phrase keeps running through my head on a hot morning as I stand beneath a thatch roof in a dusty compound. Glancing at the sheep chewing in the background, I hold up a red bill from our training game and ask, "Bi, naata la?" This bill, how much is this one?

I am met with blank faces, some guesses. "Dix mille!" Ten dollars.

Sigh. "Deetdeet. Naata la? Keenen?" Nope. Nobody knows? Anyone?

I turn and write on the chalkboard, one that is so old and weathered that the black surface resembles peeling paint. I scratch out a "20" and turn back around. Another question:

"Benefice ci chapeau, naata la?" How much is the profit, then? I hold up the same bill. A bunch of faces stare at me hopefully, but nobody says anything. I point obviously and make goofy faces at a young girl in the front row, encouraging her.

"Vingt mille!" She says, giggling at the white person trying to speak her language.

"Voilà!" I say, smiling and turning back to the chalkboard. I let my face fall for a minute, my mind racing. This is going to be a long day.

It was never obvious I was going to end up in the Peace Corps. I spent most of my life right here in New Hampshire. I grew up, worked in my mom’s restaurant, went to college. I love the small towns of New England, the windy country roads and the fall foliage. My family and friends, however, didn’t seem surprised when I called them shortly after graduating from college.

"I’m going to Africa!" I said. My mind turning with images of dark desert expanses and women in bright tunics. "I’m going to be a Small Business Volunteer in West Africa for two years!" I said the phrase as if I knew what any of it meant. Maybe grass huts? Lots of insects? Some terrifying disease that would send me home?

"We all knew you’d find some way to save the world, Becca." The well-known parody of my career. Maybe it was obvious.

I graduated from Dartmouth in June 2004 with a major in Comparative Politics and a minor in International Economics. As graduation drew nearer, I was trying to find the best way to start my career…without knowing exactly what that career was. Saving my tiny slice of the world came somewhere close. Late in May, I was accepted into a few different grad school programs and the Peace Corps. Great choices, ones I still felt overwhelmingly lucky to have.

I sat down with one of the administrators at my college who had been in the Peace Corps in 1994. "What do I do?", I asked.

I’ll always remember the clarity of his response. "It’s a no-brainer. You will never get another opportunity like the Peace Corps. To live at that level, live inside of another culture like that- it’s amazing. And Peace Corps is the only program like it. But it’s your choice."

As the Peace Corps says- "Life is calling. How far will you go?"

So I went. Packed up my bags with what I thought I’d need in Africa for two years, which included few clothes or electric appliances. Lots of medicine, and a big journal. I flew down to Philadelphia for three days of prep, and met the people I’d be spending two years with. Then they bussed us up to JFK, and one Wednesday night we took off for Africa.

CONTINUE to read Letter from SENEGAL