Don't Look At Me

In my last post I mentioned looking.  Only briefly, but it’s in there with the things we know we’re going to remember from service (and perhaps the things we’d like to forget but can’t): stares.

The staring. Blank looks. The stares.

We get stared at.  It’s a fact of Peace Corps life. We’re foreign, we stick out, and it isn’t considered impolite here to stop and enjoy a spectacle.  The interesting thing – the problem – is that there are lots of different kinds of looking, and they aren’t all harmless.

This all has made me think about a narrative writing workshop I attended a few weeks ago in Kigali. One of the PCVs from my training class co-hosted the workshop with her mom, a professor of gender studies and English lit.  The goal was to develop strategies for teaching Rwandan students how to write, not just coherent sentences, but full-blown stories, poems and monologues.  We modeled a number of activities we discussed. We wrote poems and stories together.  We also wrote monologues about our lives as PCVs and performed them for the group. Mine was about looking.

I considered posting my monologue here but never went through with it.  I was worried that it was too personal for a blog since it sort of has to do with sexuality.  But now, weeks after the fact, I realize I really do need to post it.  For one thing, the other volunteers who’ve heard it have told me to put it on my blog.  For another, I think that it speaks to a really common feeling amongst PCVs.  So here’s my monologue.  It’s called “Don’t Look At Me.”

I miss feeling attractive.  Of all the things I miss about being about being home in America, it’s probably the thing I miss the most.  I miss putting on a nice outfit and a little makeup and going out and having people look at me.


Not that people don’t look at me here.  When I pass by a group of young men in the street they almost always look.  But it’s a different kind of looking. It’s an aggressive kind of looking, a rude and invasive looking. Mouths open, eyelids lowered, almost like hungry animals. It makes me feel less like a person and more like a warthog amidst a pack of hyenas. Sometimes – most of the time – I don’t think they even see me. They see that I’m a girl and they want me to know that they could take what they wanted from me if they really wanted it, and that’s all. There’s no appreciation in those looks.


In my village, I don’t wear nice outfits. I don’t even wear mascara. I wear long skirts, clothes that hide my body. When I’m out in public I try to keep my face cold and blank, walking with purpose, as uninviting as possible. Part of it is propriety; in Rwanda, “good girls” don’t decorate themselves and I want to respect that. But I also don’t want to be attractive here. I don’t want to do anything to encourage those blank, hungry looks or the threat behind them – that like a warthog to a carnivore, I’m meat for the taking.


I miss the looks I used to get in America.  Sometimes – most of the time – those looks were appreciative.  They were also more tentative, waiting for an explicit invitation. I am not meat and I am not for the taking. I wish people here understood that.

Woo!  That was heavy.  A few more days left of reflection.  I’ll continue to post updates.