Meet Ba Allan. He himself would tell you, proudly, “I am the Peace Corps counterpart.”
Easy to say. But the follow-through is almost unimaginably difficult sometimes, and, far too often, I forget this. I forget to appreciate how amazing Ba Allan is. How lucky I am to have him as a counterpart, and as a friend.
Me and Ba Allan.
For those not familiar with Peace Corps lingo, a counterpart is someone in a PCV’s host community who works alongside the PCV, prodding people into action. Finding the right CP can make or break a PCV’s service, since any ideas for change – if they are to be sustainable – must come from within the community.
A good counterpart is very, very hard to find.
It takes a lot of guts be the person – in any community – to do things differently. To take a risk. To risk being a pariah.
That goes double for a PC counterpart introducing new (aka crazy) ideas to his friends and family in a place where culture and the status quo run deep. And working his butt off without getting a dime in the short term. (In the long term, we all hope that the counterpart’s new farming and business ventures will pay off.)
Like any good counterpart, Ba Allan is a respected leader in his community – one of those rare souls who actively seeks to make the world a little better, who sees learning as a lifelong process, and who isn’t afraid to shake things up a little. He was doing this long before I arrived.
Although he was only able to finish Grade 7, Ba Allan is one of the most educated people in Mfuba – the one everyone turns to for advice and help with translating government documents. He knows the value of learning. “Amasambililo tayapwa” (education never ends) is one of one of his favorite phrases. He is the only person I know here who helps his kids with their homework.
Ba Allan inspires me to be a better volunteer, and a better person.
He knows how to captivate an audience of any age, whether discussing conservation farming or record-keeping. He’s particularly amazing at teaching young people. Some of the best moments in my service have been spent watching him in action: busting out some song that the kids all love, getting teenagers to plant trees, or playing capture the flag.
Ba Allan teaching our Grassroots Soccer HIV/gender club how to plant moringa trees.
Ba Allan has a million ways of prodding his neighbors into action.
I sometimes lose faith in this whole “sustainable development” game, but Ba Allan never seems to.
“You are doubting,” he will say. “Don’t doubt.”
My biggest doubts, however, came not too long ago, when Ba Allan and I hit a rough patch in our relationship. I won’t bore you all with the details, but basically Ba Allan and I have very different cultural values and ideas about what development means. We see the act of giving, and the role of a rich American living in Mfuba village, in very different ways.
To be perfectly honest, Ba Allan drives me nuts sometimes. I am certain the feeling is mutual.
I’m prone to misinterpreting his sometimes cryptic way of speaking. Like all good Bembas, he likes to couch everything in metaphor and proverbs. Like all good Americans, I am great at ignoring subtlety and prefer to just get to the freaking point, Ba Allan!
Our mountain of misunderstandings and cultural differences finally caught up with us a couple months ago, and I found myself crying in front of Ba Allan and his wife, Ba Mary, confronted by their anger at me, and mine at them.
(It’s worth noting here that Ba Mary also deserves a shout-out, since, as Ba Allan likes to say, there’s no way he could be the Peace Corps counterpart without her. She’s the one who picks up the slack on their farm when he’s out teaching with me, who makes sure her husband gets food and clean clothes before heading to some workshop at some ungodly hour of the morning.)
I cried because I feared I would lose Ba Allan as a counterpart, and I don’t know how I’d be able to help our community without him.
Over the course of an afternoon, we patched things up. Now we’re slowly getting back to our old familiar hanging out and talking.
Ba Allan’s back to cracking jokes and sharing with me all his plans and dreams to improve life for his kids.
But I didn’t know for sure that I myself had moved on until just the other day. We’d been teaching in a village 12 km away, and this particular group began insisting that I “get their name out there” with local NGOs – basically so they can get a grant for some not-yet-defined project. Ba Allan admonished them: “Yes, and what have YOU done? Ba Terri got that NGO to come out here for the HIV testing event that you wanted, and she did all the work. Why are YOU not talking to NGOs in Kasama?”
In spite of everything, Ba Allan still had my back.
I could’ve hugged him. If only that were culturally appropriate.
As we rode home together, laughing about the day, I counted my blessings. I couldn’t ask for a better counterpart.
The Wanderer in Zambia 