Locals Perspective

Lauren and I in the prison ha

“Oh yea because you live in the muzungu prison.”  Frequently the locals that we meet on our cultural adventures or through our placements or just hanging out around town will ask us to go for a drink or go to a playing of local music and just about every time we have to say no because through the CCS program we have a curfew of 10pm whenever we’re sleeping at the CCS house.  This is in place for our safety because in certain parts of town, like the beach or in certain neighborhoods, late at night there is a considerable amount of drug use.... buuuutttt 10pm seems a little ridiculous when someone who CCS knows and we know from working at placements with ask us to a cultural event and we’re not allowed to go (and this is coming from the girl who had an 11pm curfew the summer after her freshman year of college because mommy and daddy didn’t like that I was dating a boy 4 years older).  I totally get the safety aspect, it was one of the reason I choose the CCS program, because I knew that it would be a really safe way to travel by myself and would hopefully ease some of my parents’ worries.  But when they start calling it a muzungu (which means white person but is in fact used as a not very nice word most of the time) prison it seems like there is a bit of over-protectiveness going on here.

This idea that we are so separated from the community also seems to hinder CCS’s whole purpose...to create a community where cultural exchange is easily feasible and there is a shared absorption of the locals culture as well as the sharing of the volunteers culture.  But let’s face it, TIA (this is Africa), as one local put it so eloquently and if we’re not going to get the full experience what was the point of coming all the way here.