He was to have been my greatest ally. He became my greatest nemesis: the Benedict Arnold to my George Washington; the Judas to my Jesus; the Darth Vader to my Obi-Wan Kenobi, if you will. To date, this man has terminated or sabotaged every single project I started in our shared village since my arrival. Prepare yourselves, Dear Readers, for the long afore-promised lengthy tale, and observe the sad (and painstakingly detailed) list of
Herr Direktor’s heinous crimes against his fellow man, i.e., me:
- July 2006, My First Visit to Village. I was still a young trainee, not yet sworn into service as a gallant volunteer of His Majesty’s Peace Corps, alone in Africa for the first time, for a 24-hour visit to the village I was to soon call my home for the next two years, seated at a roadside drinking establishment, temporarily abandoned by the villager who was supposed to be my guide for the duration of my introductory sojourn. My grasp of the French language tenuous at best, and my knowledge of the local language, Gulimancema, nonexistent, I was feeling somewhat vulnerable. A man I had never seen before sat himself at my table, facing me. He took a good look at me and nodded, then a look at my drink and sneered (I had ordered a soda, rather than the beer I was craving, out of courtesy to my hosts, since I was not certain whether this was a predominantly Muslim village) and ordered a beer, after which he lit up a cigarette and proceeded to ignore me. 15 minutes or so passed, at which point my drinking companion turned to me and irritably demanded, “Why aren’t you talking? You should talk more.” I apologized politely and explained in my halting French that since I was new here I thought it was best for me to observe and wait for people to talk to me. This failed to impress him, and we sank back into silence. It wasn’t until a few minutes later, when another bar patron greeted my companion as “Monsieur le Directeur”, that I realized the man sitting across from me was the village’s school director, the equivalent of a grade school principal, and the official I was to work most closely with during my assignment as a Peace Corps volunteer. I then hastily introduced myself, and the great man forgave my tactless failure to immediately deduce his identity with another gracious nod.
- November 2006, Idealist Project #1: Student English Club. I had been a resident of the village for two months and, although I was supposed to spend the first three months there in a strictly observational role, was anxious to start justifying my presence to my neighbors. The goal was simple: once a week I would instruct students from the primary school’s most advanced class in simple English phrases for greetings and presentations. I informed the school director and parents of my intentions several weeks before the club’s first session, and asked permission to use a school classroom after-hours as a meeting place. The school director said he wasn’t certain if he could spare such a space, and, being the important man he was, delayed giving me an answer for weeks, until finally I decided to hold the first meeting under my house’s hangar. The class was a tremendous success, with several of the students quickly mastering the English I taught them and demanding more. Flushed with the righteous triumph of having educated the children, I visited the school director's house that evening to inform him of the results. He listened impassively to my enthusiastic review and plans for future sessions, then smiled broadly and told me I had to cancel the entire venture. His rationale was ingeniously simple: the students were his charges, and it was his responsibility to teach them French; if I taught them another language simultaneously, it would surely upset their French skills! Innocent enough, unless you consider the facts that: a) he knew of this project well over a month before the first session, and could have at any point told me to halt preparations; and b) I chose to work with the most advanced students for the precise reason that their French skills had already progressed to a point that they could hold conversations in that language, and their studies now focused in other areas. The school director still held a trump card, however, in that he was a government-appointed functionary, and I was merely a volunteer consultant. Well played, Herr Direktor. This battle is yours.
- January 2007, Idealist Project #2: Girls Theater Club. I am a thespian by training, and a promoter of female empowerment by assignment. It follows naturally that for my next foray into do-goodery I would create a theater club for young women, in which they could creatively express their concerns and interests. Once again, I informed the school director in advance, and although he offered no support he gave his passive approval, indicating he would only need a list of the names of the club’s participants. A week later, after having delivered the required list to Mein Direktor, we held our first meeting of the club. I was dismayed to see that less than half the girls that had signed up showed for the session, but we went forward with the activities anyway. Half an hour later, the girls were just started to relax and participate in the games, when suddenly the great educator himself roared up on his moto (hint: think pimped-out vespa). The next five minutes were baffling to me: the girls, all of them, immediately split upon his arrival. Several fled behind my house, and two—I discovered later—hid in the darker corners inside the house itself. I didn’t have time to speculate, because I was busy greeting my distinguished visitor—his presence at my house a shock, as he had not taken the trouble to visit for well over three months. He didn’t stay long, once I explained that the girls were no longer present, and it was after his departure that I discovered one of the oldest girls hiding behind a bookshelf in my house. Hysterical, she made me promise not to tell the director she had been at the meeting. She then described how the good director had, behind my back, approached each and every girl on my list, threatening them not to attend. He had intimidated them by warning that their grades had better not slip if they participated in the club, and then for good measure he gave them all extra work in addition to their regular studies. Das schwein! This explained the sudden drop-off in my club’s participants: the girls were all too terrified to attend. So much for club attempt #2.
- February 2007, Brilliant Solution #1: Intervention. It’s true: I tattled. I informed the Peace Corps Country Director of the goings-on in my village. Realizing that a direct confrontation with the school director over his saboteur activities would just escalate the conflict, I turned to the 3rd-party system, in order to see if someone else might politely request of the man exactly WHAT THE HELL WAS HIS DAMAGE. In the following weeks, our Country Director visited the village, and then the GEE (Girls’ Education and Empowerment) Program Director, in order to open bilateral talks with Das Direktor. Ah, but our man was crafty! He expressed bewilderment of a most profound nature in response to their queries, as well as a general confusion as to what exactly I hoped to do in the village (apparently our many discussions of my goals for the past several months had failed to enlighten him). In refusing to recognize that there was any sort of conflict, the school director easily avoided any sort of confrontation. A cautious truce was established, in which it was agreed the school director would choose whatever project I was to work on, rather than my initiating of my own accord. In effect, my colleague became Mein Führer.
- March-May 2007, Idealist Project #3: Student Theater Competition. Cajoled by the diplomatic efforts of my Chamberlainian Peace Corps superiors, the school director decided to call upon me to exercise my theatrical skills once again, this time under his control. It appears there was a primary school theater competition taking place in the area’s provincial capital, and our academic dictator had determined to place his school on the map by winning the event. He prescribed the guidelines under which I was to labor, and I set to work at once, writing a play for his students that emphasized the importance of hygiene and nutrition in daily African life. This I could have dealt with, had Mein Direktor possessed the civility of keeping his requirements constant. Instead, each week some new alteration would come up: the theme of the play would change (requiring a rewrite of the script); the number of students allowed to participate suddenly dropped to 10 (necessitating my immediate firing of 20 enthusiastic little actors); and the date of the competition itself was forever changing. The last of these trials was the most frustrating for me, for without a set deadline I could not arrange a practical rehearsal schedule with the students. There was also the small matter that our school-turned-theater director was supposed to attend the rehearsals, in order to help with language difficulties and approve each scene, but after the first meeting he dropped all pretense at interest, instead departing to the local bar to get drunk with his friends. We continued in this spirit of cooperation for a couple months, me rehearsing with the students, and him not giving a rat’s ass, with periodic intervals during which I would attempt to persuade him to reveal the date of the competition. With the school director a non-entity at rehearsals, it fell upon me to encourage the students, spurring them with promises of visiting the provincial capital (most of them had never left the village before). Finally, in May, on the eve of the weekend the school director had promised me we were going to the capital (while disregarding my frantic questions of how we were going to provide transport and housing for the students), the man told me the competition had again been “delayed”—or, rather, he had again neglected to find out the date and had made one up—and the competition would not take place until mid-June, when I would be in the United States on vacation. He assured me he would attend the final rehearsal to inform the students of this change, and of course reneged on even that small promise… so I had to tell the students that the promises I had personally made, about them leaving this weekend to visit the big city, were broken, and that I did not know if or when we would compete. That night I lost nearly all of whatever credibility I had built among the students; too many broken promises and last-minute changes.
- Present Day: La Résistance. I no longer give any credence to what this man tells me. For some reason still unfathomable to me, he is determined to destroy whatever efforts I make to work with the village’s children. Shortly before I left for the US in June, I managed to arrange a last-minute, but well-received, presentation of our play for the villagers—at my own cost—and organized an award ceremony for all my student participants. This act bought me back a little standing in the village community, along with word of how Herr Direktor has personally mucked up every activity I’ve begun. The villagers are not stupid, and they are well familiar with the director’s arrogance. The situation as it stands now: I await word each week of whether this man will be reassigned to the village for the coming school year; if he returns I have requested from my superiors a village transfer. There is no point spending another year in passive-aggressive battle with someone who should be appreciative of my presence. And if he is replaced by a new director, I will happily stay in my current assigned village, doing my best to work in cooperation with him or her—but as a partner, not a subordinate. I do not avoid school directors, but I do deny them my essence.
