An Internal Memo: De-Diversifying

The following, what today’s email opening incited, is pretty unrelated to anyone outside of PC Cameroon meaning it won't be read by the proper audience and shouldn't actually be published, and could also accidentally be viewed as offensive.  For the record though, I'm not anti-diversity.  I love diverse - like how can one pick her favorite jelly bean? I can't.  Here's where as a defense I want to use one of those sentences that somehow makes a person not racist, sexist, or gayist: "I have a black friend," "I work with gay people," "I come from a multi-racial family," or "I have a black, Jewish, gay, handicappable friend." At least one of these statements is true and therefore exonerates me from being thought to be in any way an ist.

Every few months, a subject line with “This Camerican Life” appears in my inbox and for about three point seven seconds my eyes widen and my heart quickens.  This Camerican Life! and fresh off the press!  Yes, please!  Understand that as a big fan of Ira Glass’ This American Life and because I live in Cameroon, this title is simply genius and I feel an overwhelming desire to read this must-be masterpiece of a newsletter! It will be glorious, and I must hurry and click open!  But then, like a flash flood, I remember it is Peace Corps Cameroon’s Diversity Committee's bulletin and drowning disappointment engulfs. 

Yes, yes, of course as a governmental agency we naturally have committees and like to sit solemnly upon their boards straight faced and laced.  There’s the HIV/AIDS Committee, the Environmental Education and Food Security Committee, the ICT Committee (yes, I left that abbreviated because I don’t know what it stands for – Internal Communications and Technology?  Ironical Conversationalist Trainers?...), the Volunteer Advisory Committee, the Education, Agro-Forestry, Youth Development, and Community Economic Developing Steering Committees…committees galore, all which seem to have a solid, good purpose, but for the Diversity Committee – a committee committed to helping support and create a network of resources for diverse volunteers…what? Why?  Ok, I know you think I am being insensitive* but come on, really?? For some unknown and irrational reason, a certain super-strength grumpiness takes over me when I think about the Diversity Committee, and then I feel the need to spit out an unnecessary and vilely written tirade on it.  I can’t be blamed for Elizabeth the Curmudgeon!  I must exorcise this demon dwelling within me, and apologies must be sought from the Diversity Committee!

I’m diverse, you’re diverse, he’s diverse, the cat’s diverse,

and all living in an unmanned universe!

That was my first attempt ever at poetry.  I’m sorry, I will never do it again.

So, firstly (or third full paragraph-in) I need to make clear that I have nothing against the people on the PC Cameroon Diversity Committee and those who support it – they are all very lovely.  Well, the ones that I know and of those, the ones that are lovely.  Honestly, I have a lot of respect for these hardworking volunteers who contribute to this quarterly (?) and who most likely use it as extracurricular fun via an accessible outlet.  Unlike most of the other committees, this one is volunteer organized and run – kudos – a support group for volunteers dealing with hardships of being diverse.  It is hard being different.  Ignorance and bigotry are widespread throughout Cameroon (and the rest of the world).  Often, volunteers must lie or hide certain things about themselves in order to avoid particularly awkward or uncomfortable conversations with host country nationals in fear that they will not be open-minded or well-received.  Sadly, it is a safety issue too.  However and realizing that it’s mainly out of my own ignorance, I still cannot see the importance or necessity of this group.  There is already a 'Peer Support Network' in place - to clarify, a network for peer supporting.  Each one of us as a Peace Corps Volunteer is diverse as that’s one of the big reasons we’re all here in the first place – cultural exchange -- and all will go through major challenges.  We land in countries and become the foreigners, temporary immigrants – we really are aliens saying “we come in peace.”  (Substitute a Peace Corps Volunteer for any big headed green alien in any movie and the story line will likely still hold strong.)  We are all the sore thumbs here.  We are together on this, why try to be separatists? 

Ok, fine.  You argue it’s a committee for supporting volunteers who are diverse within the community of volunteers (not in correlation with our outside host communities) and need a place to feel connected to others.  It is definitely not easy living in a developing nation for 27 months – there’s a lot time of feeling isolated and alone.  I get that.  So Mr. or Ms. Diverse Volunteer, I follow.  Over and out.  You just want to find some common, shared bond with a similarly diverse volunteer.  White females dominate the Peace Corps ranks.  I am finally not at all in the minority. 

…But still, I’m just brought back to my earlier question of really?? (I don’t know if my whininess is properly being heard.  It’s very high pitched and awful on the ears.)   Who gets to belong to this Diversity Committee?  A diverse person? A member of a minority? “Non-whites”, gays (little lesson: “non-trad” is the safe word volunteers use in countries in which homosexuality is illegal, like in Cameroon), Christians, Jews, Atheists, Muslims, orphaned volunteers, Dyslexic or ADD volunteers, age-advanced volunteers, tattooed or non-tattooed, Republicans, vegetarians, Gingers!, or those from Louisiana (look at me and my diversity!)?  Blah, blah, blah and bored.  That pretty much incorporates everyone (there’re only around 200 of us in this country).  Maybe if you are a twenty-four year old female from California, Democrat, from a very white nuclear family, you should be excluded.  We might currently have one of those – and it seems to me that she’s the one who needs her own minority/diversity club.  If only there was a Peace Corps Supreme Court, so I could (of course be on it, appointed by the beautiful powers-that-be, and get to wear a flattering black robe with appropriate grandma-style white dress collar showing) write an opinion calling this whole thing purely superfluous and unconstitutional! And yes, there’s a slight chance I’m being a little ridiculous, but again, not really my fault (Diversity Committee’s).  

We’re all so similar in having at least one of this or one of that in uniqueness that I want us all just to be diverse together.  Peace Corps Volunteers, individuals who went through a long application process and selected to do two years of living and teaching in sub-par living conditions, seem to have a lot more in common than not – a unified strength, I’d say.  Maybe this is all just a matter of the Diversity Committee's identity crisis and its need to re-brand itself as the 'The All-Americans Living in Non-America & Are Therefore Diverse Committee' - existing for all volunteers as a resource in dealing with expressing American-ness in a non-American context, and through that, extending teaching strategies on the subject to our host country nationals, who too should accept and promote the acceptance of diversity.  A win-win.  This way I could more quickly, with little-to-no anger, get the point of it.   

Yet, on second thought, I actually take everything previously stated back.  I don’t really care.  I enjoy getting worked up over little things, and then to no point, argue about them.  Plus, there’s a good chance that this all stemmed from a deep-rooted desire to be a well-tanned feisty Chilean-American who is diverse/exotic looking and who has an easier 'in' onto committees such as this one.  Truly, I am all for people having lots of freedoms and rights, even ones that I might think are silly or don't personally understand, including having a Diversity Committee, which actually hurts no one and might even help someone.  

Diversity Committee, today, you win (unless you want to take my advice and reorganize.  Then, we can both win!).  My chapeau's off to you.

* Into PC, Out with the PC:  One reason for my increasing in-sensitivities... here, physical attributes are used as clarifying descriptions – the fat one, the dark one, the big-nosed one.  Sure, every time I’m called fat I still feel like I just received a swift gut-punch, but remembering meanness was not the intention, I slowly recover.  (Every. single. time.)  I sometimes use “La Blanche” to differentiate or in speaking of myself.  One of the first questions after meeting a Cameroonian might be what religion you are.  In this other “world” in which we find ourselves living, things are not preciously politically correct anymore (never have been), and clearly I’m not being very “PC” or sensitive like a proper American should be, but after you join Peace Corps, a lot of that goes out the window with the daily showers, so apologies in advance (unless you read this last, then apologies now).