In this interview, you’ll hear from Matthew and Naomi Richards, Peace Corps volunteer couple in Senegal. They share what daily life looks like, the work being done, and how service has shaped their personal and professional growth. You’ll learn about housing, cultural differences, project work, language learning, and what it’s like to live and work in a new country as a couple. This interview offers a real look into Peace Corps service and what future volunteers can expect.
Table of Contents
- Volunteer Experience and Motivation
- Living Arrangements and Cultural Integration
- Surprises and Challenges
- Serving as a Couple
- Advice and Support
- Packing Tips and Language Learning
- Impact of Media and Final Thoughts
Volunteer Experience and Motivation
1. What do you do as Peace Corps Development and Health volunteers in Senegal?
Matthew
Hello, I am Matthew Richards, and I am serving as a Community Economic Development (CED) volunteer in the Kolda region of Senegal. The name of the town we serve is Pata and has a population of about 4,000. We are part of the fourth group to return to Senegal after the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, the CED program for Senegal was recently shut down due to budget cuts, but hopefully, my work experiences can still be helpful to those wanting to serve in other sectors or countries.
My community’s focus was on encouraging entrepreneurship, so I have spent the bulk of my time teaching entrepreneurship classes. I spent about 3 months preparing lesson materials in Fulakunda (a dialect of Pulaar), the local language, with the help of my local tutor. I worked alongside two counterparts who helped me orchestrate all 22 lessons across 6 months. It was a very challenging experience, but in the end, we had 15 students graduate and receive certificates of completion. Other projects I have worked on include digital literacy (e.g., Excel and Word), registering businesses in Google Maps, teaching English to Kindergarten students, and writing grants.
Naomi
As a Health extension volunteer, I typically work five days a week at my local health post. It operates as a small hospital and pharmacy. I work in the maternity section, doing patient intake, entering health records, and helping with events. I also work with the local health volunteers to do vaccination campaigns and mosquito net distributions at area schools and in the community.
During the school year, I host a health club with the local elementary school students and host a weekly class at the kindergarten. I periodically give health talks with a work-counterpart for women’s groups. The primary area of focus for my work is encouraging healthy behaviors for children under five and pregnant and nursing mothers.
As a third goal activity, I also have a school partnership with Reach The World and share about my life here with middle school students in America.
2. Why did you decide to join the Peace Corps and serve in Senegal?
Naomi
I wanted to learn about a totally different culture and way of life. I wanted to be useful and to share what knowledge and skills I have. Traveling and learning a new language with new rituals, foods, and a way of being was all very appealing to me. I have been in the past and am still mildly interested in future work with the State Department, and the Peace Corps is an excellent way to gain some experience in international relations.
Matthew
I had never travelled outside of North America; the Peace Corps provided an amazing opportunity to explore a part of the world that I would likely never see any other way. I was also curious to learn a new language – I have studied the basics of Spanish, German, and Japanese, but had never become fluent in a second language. Now, after almost two years of living in Pata, I can proudly say I am bilingual! One external factor was that we had been stuck at home throughout the COVID-19 lockdown, and we wanted to make a change and not take traveling for granted.
As for why I am serving in Senegal, I did not list a specific country of service on my application. Instead, I focused on serving in the CED sector and left the country selection up to the Peace Corps.
Living Arrangements and Cultural Integration
3. What is your housing like in Senegal?
Matthew
Because our host father is the mayor of our town, we are not allowed to stay in their compound, according to the Peace Corps’ policy. We have an independent home, although it is just a short walk from our host family’s house, since we share lunch and dinner with them almost every day.
Our home is constructed of concrete bricks and a concrete floor. We have a bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, and a storage room, which are all connected by an outdoor courtyard. Since moving in, we have added tiled flooring, painted the walls, built a garden, added locking interior doors, installed solar panels with a refrigerator, and plumbed in running water.
One of the many benefits of serving with a partner is being able to split the cost of home improvements between two incomes. We are blessed to have cold water from the fridge and clean water from our water spout. Unfortunately, we had to add shards of glass to the tops of our courtyard walls after someone entered our home by climbing the wall at night.
For breakfast, I normally purchase a sandwich from a vendor near the Mayor’s office. Lunch is normally mafe gerte(rice with a peanut sauce) or maaro e soble (rice with an onion sauce) or thieboudienne (rice and fish). There are usually some vegetables in the bowl, such as carrots, cabbage, or eggplant, and occasionally we will have chicken or beef. For dinner, we often have chere (ground millet) with a sauce poured over – if we are lucky, there will be some beans too. If we don’t have chere for dinner, it is most likely plain white rice with oil (called tentalu) or ground up leaves (called folere). During Ramadan, our family cooks special meals to break the fast.
Naomi
In our rural town, we are technically hosted by the mayor’s household, but we have a house in an independent compound, down the street from them. We eat lunch and dinner with our host family. We don’t have electricity or running water, though we recently installed solar panels in our home and a water system for our neighborhood. (This is very exciting as we no longer have to pull water from a well!) We tiled, painted, and furnished our house, which was a partial new build when we moved in. We installed doors and a few other safety features as well.
4. What moments or interactions stand out during your service?
Naomi
Life with my first host family had so many fun and memorable moments, from learning how to pull water from a well, to all the silly language mistakes, to gaining the affection of my five-year-old host sister.
I also stumbled through a family tree project with my host dad, where we could not for the life of us understand each other, but we somehow made it work, and I got enough family information to draw a comprehensive family tree for my language class!
Our first Korite holiday with new, local clothing and cooking all the food for the big meal was memorable for sure.
Matthew
Some moments that stand out to me from my service so far:
- I was trying to get my host-dad’s attention and failing. However, my host-mom heard me and called out, “Aliou, your son is talking to you!” I couldn’t help but smile hearing her call me their son.
- I was very proud when 15 entrepreneurship students graduated from our after-school program. I was also pleased to see how far my language had advanced.
- Having my parents visit us in our village was a surreal experience. It was very rewarding getting to share all that we had done in person.
Obviously, there are a lot of hard moments attached to any Peace Corps service; one type of interaction I had a hard time dealing with was when people laughed at our language ability, made fun of us, told us we were unable to speak the language, or told us we were unable to do a myriad of other things that we were trying to learn. Now we have better mechanisms for dealing with that sort of treatment, and of course, our language skills have improved immensely, but those months were difficult to go through.
All of our house projects – these were special because I accumulated a lot of vocabulary and met many new people. It can be difficult to get involved with other people’s projects for a variety of reasons, but I found that by starting projects of our own, community members would naturally ask questions or offer to help. This may have been the most helpful strategy for me when it came to integration.
Surprises and Challenges
5. What has surprised you most about living or working in Senegal?
Matthew
Before coming to Senegal, we had researched the food, climate, gender roles, living conditions, religion, languages, and cultural traditions, and most of what we learned has been true.
The thing that surprised me most in our community is the style of communication. The types of things people say to each other, and the volume at which they shout it, would be considered extremely rude to us, but here it is normal. If you really mean something, then you will shout. People rarely pose questions; instead, they make assumptive statements, which you can confirm or deny.
Many children remain silent in the presence of parents and elders of the community, even when asked a direct question; eye contact is often avoided as well. People do not say sorry. Meeting times are rarely held to, and often, Morning, Afternoon, or Evening are used as meeting times as opposed to scheduling a specific time. The list goes on, but for me, communication (even when you are fluent) continues to be the most challenging aspect of life here.
Naomi
I was surprised by the huge cultural gap between the rural and urban communities. Language, how people treat children, racial implicit bias, education, gender roles, etc., basically everything has a massive contrast between the two that I was not expecting.
I’m a little surprised that people are not that interested in what we are doing here in our small village. We are the only white people and only Americans many people have met, and they assume we are here to learn about them only, not to share any information or expertise, which makes trainings and work difficult.
As far as my work sector, I didn’t know at all that the previous French health system, leftover from colonization, has hugely impacted the way healthcare is conducted here.
6. What challenges have you faced in your work?
Naomi
Language and communication continue to be a big challenge. Because Senegal is linguistically diverse (over 36 recognized languages!), on any given day at work, I will try to communicate with many folks who don’t speak the local language I’ve been learning.
The work environment is stressful. Issues range from absent supervisors to lack of medicine, lack of respect for authority, or adherence to basic caregiving protocols: mostly due to under-education and a pervasive, culturally-fueled fear of change.
Leaving expectations at a minimum is certainly the key to thriving.
Matthew
One of the biggest challenges working in a rural town is managing my own expectations. If I expect the same type of work mindset with my host country counterparts as I would in the U.S.A. I end up frustrated and let down. The challenge is to adjust my expectations: meetings may not start on the agreed-upon time, communication requires more initiative on my part, and projects that were said to be top priority may not be treated with the same level of urgency as I would assume.
Overall, I have had to lower my expectations of what is achievable in the workplace. This means I have needed to find other projects, hobbies, and relationships to give myself a sense of purpose here.
It is difficult for most volunteers I have spoken with to feel a sense of worth or purpose during their service because of how different the work environment is here, and admittedly, the lack of communication and follow-through can feel disrespectful to us. It has taken me a long time (and I still have to remind myself) that respect is shown differently here and that one’s job may not be the most important task day-to-day.
7. What secondary projects have you worked on during your service?
Matthew
I would consider my secondary projects to be anything that falls under goals two and three of the Peace Corps, which are all about sharing culture. I hosted my 27th birthday party here, we carved melons for Halloween and dressed up, we showed our family how to swing dance, and we have spent a lot of time discussing politics, food, gender roles, sports, family dynamics, and other differences in our cultures.
I have found that there is not as much curiosity about where we come from as I had thought there would be. In comparison, when exchange students come to America, it’s always interesting to find out more about their country and how they are adjusting to life in the United States. However, here those conversations are less frequent, and so I try to take advantage whenever someone asks.
Lastly, I have partnered with Darien Book Aid to deliver books to our high school.
Naomi
Each activity I have undertaken falls under my LPF (Logic Project Framework), so I don’t consider any of my projects secondary. In reporting on VRG (Volunteer Reporting and Grants), some of my work falls outside the categories.
For example, I’ve done at least four anti-malarial medicine campaigns for children aged ten and under, and these fall outside the maternity and children’s healthy habits section, but do fall under healthcare, so I don’t consider it secondary.
We are waiting on a donated shipment of books from Darien Book Aid that we will be putting in the high school library for literacy and language learning.
Serving as a Couple
8. How has your experience as a Peace Corps couple differed from individual volunteers?
Naomi
As a couple, I feel we are at an advantage logistically and emotionally compared to our peers. When we are sick or injured, we have been able to care for each other without going through the struggle of trying to communicate, under stress, with the host family or other HCNs. We also have the added benefit of having a dual stipend, which has allowed us to pool our money on housing and community projects and gifts for our family.
We ended up being together for PST (Pre-Service Training) as well, which I thought would be a disadvantage when it came to language learning, but it turned out just fine. (We were in different language classes.) We are in different sectors, so we were mostly in different classes during PST.
As a woman, I know my single peers in their villages deal with lots of specific harassment and safety issues having to do with marriage proposals. As a couple, we are often grouped together and thought of as a unit, but as we have different places of work, I’ve not found this to be a hindrance to any of my projects. Single volunteers are on their own in their communities, so they are only known to their community for what they do. I think sometimes the community groups us together in that our activities are considered to be carried out by both of us.
During the two instances my husband needed to be transported to the capital city immediately for medical care, the Peace Corps was happy to have me go with him and stay in Peace Corps housing in order to assist with his recovery. In general, I think we are supported the same as other volunteers, but we are certainly considered a unit by Peace Corps staff as well, which doesn’t really have downsides in my opinion.
Matthew
Of course, serving with your best friend is going to make everything easier. Naomi and I had been married six years and known each other for eight years before entering the Peace Corps. It has helped us navigate the language, understand cultural expectations, plan logistics, provide aid when one of us is sick, and encourage each other. Thankfully, we didn’t experience any difficulties in the application process. During PST, we received our own room. The Peace Corps has provided us with the same level of support as any other volunteer.
Every day, we debrief about work, laugh about some silly animals, discuss news from the U.S., and help each other plan for upcoming work activities or Peace Corps changes. We share the ups and downs. I cannot speak for the experience of volunteers serving individually, but I know they don’t have that same level of support. I applaud everyone serving on their own – that takes a lot of courage.
9. How has being a couple affected your integration into the community?
Matthew
For individual volunteers serving in Senegal, they are constantly asked if they have a spouse and whether they would like to marry a Senegalese person. Surprisingly, I also get asked that question. Since Islam allows men to marry up to four wives, I have been asked if I will take a second, third, and fourth wife while I am in Senegal (I will not).
Integration as a male is notably easier than as a female. The gender roles for women dictate that Naomi should be at home cleaning and cooking me lunch and dinner, even though they know she works at the health post every day, and we pay our host family to cook for us.
Meanwhile, I am not expected to do any sweeping, laundry, or cooking; I am expected to sit and drink tea. People were surprised that we split the household work. Additionally, relative to Naomi, I experience less unwanted attention. But Naomi can speak more to her experience here.
Naomi
I don’t have kids, and I leave my house every day for work, so the married women in the village are often worried for me and confused about my lifestyle. It’s created lots of opportunities for discussions about my culture back home and how men and women typically interact in Western countries. As most, if not all, women in my community are married by my age, it makes sense to them to see me with my husband, but in not taking care of him in their traditional sense, I am very different.
Our affection and general respect for each other are foreign, as most married couples here don’t hang out together or even talk very much to one another. Traditional gender roles are the norm here, with women doing all of the household chores and childcare as well as working in the fields and selling items on the street to feed the family. As we split household chores, local women are greatly entertained by my husband doing the laundry and sweeping the house.
Our being a couple has allowed us to experience another dimension of culture here that I think would be lacking if we were single. We also get to experience two different sides of the village and recount and debrief every day on what we learned or found out.
10. What advice would you give to other couples considering Peace Corps service?
Naomi
We have lots of downtime between work and projects, so we don’t tend to run into any problems prioritizing each other and our relationship alongside our work commitments. As family is the most important thing here, our host family and work-partners are very aware that we are each other’s only family members in the country. If one of us is sick, it is perfectly acceptable to stay home to take care of the other.
Understanding that you, as an individual, are about to be under a lot of stress emotionally and could also be in for a physically trying experience is really important. It’s important to know what you do when you’re stressed and how you treat your partner during those times. You must be on the same team and cheering for each other’s success in work, language learning, integration, and just in general, trying new things, looking stupid, and being extremely physically uncomfortable while doing it.
We still do a weekly date night here in our little village! We found the tiny hotel at the edge of town that sells exactly one type of beer (sometimes cold!), which we’ll get two of if we can afford it, other times we split one, and we’ll chat about our past week and the one coming up. I recommend keeping up these relationship rhythms while at site, even if abbreviated from your norm.
Matthew
We have set clear work boundaries so that we do not feel overcommitted to our day jobs, since that is only part of our mission as PCVs. The workplace is also the most significant stressor, so we have found it best to limit our time there. We also use our personal business days to retreat every other month and spend two or three days away from our site.
I definitely would not recommend this service for couples who have been together for a short time, and I believe that is one of PC’s criteria for couples as well. There are many external stressors during service; you want to be sure your relationship can hold that weight. We were confident in our ability to cope with stress individually and as a team.
My last piece of advice would be for each person to come up with their own reasons for wanting to serve and not go simply for the sake of their partner.
Advice and Support
11. What advice would you give to future volunteers in Senegal?
Matthew
Here are just some tidbits:
- Find a way to incorporate protein into your diet (we bought protein powder in-country).
- Be ready to sleep outdoors.
- Use up all of your vacation days and take advantage of your personal business days.
- Take lots of pictures and videos of your service.
Naomi
Get ready for the heat and humidity! Seriously, pack items to combat the heat (AirTech, wearable cool cloths, breathable and durable clothes you can wear every day for months, and so, so much LiquidIV)
You will most likely live without reliable power, internet, etc., so be sure to bring a travel solar panel and portable charging devices. Please take the housing checklist seriously and don’t brush off any of the safety precautions that are mentioned to you. Get doors on all doorways and get locks installed properly. Be aware of bag-snatchers even in your small village.
The culture is centered around family and survival. Do all the things at least once; dance crazy at the baby showers and get your nails dyed and get your hair cornrowed – and then if you don’t want to sit for seven hours at yet another wedding with loud EDM music injuring your eardrums while lots of men stare at you: go home!
You are still you and a normally functioning person; if something feels creepy, unsafe, or off, don’t be afraid to set a boundary and call a cohort friend or PC to discuss it. You are here to help your community, and safety issues or situations that make you feel weird are impediments to that, so tell someone.
Before applying, know that you are going to a country where PC has been around since nearly the inception of the Peace Corps, and they run a very serious and robust program here. It is also a very visible program. You are expected to and supported to be able to do serious work every day in your rural community. Traveling anywhere and especially to other volunteer sites is difficult. Big note: Volunteers are not allowed to spend time in Dakar, the capital city of Senegal.
12. How did Peace Corps training prepare you for service?
Naomi
Pre-Service Training (PST) was a huge adjustment period and was the most helpful training period I’ve had from PC. It was exhausting due to information overload and stress about language learning, but it was also super fun hanging out with my cohort and finally being here in Senegal and doing the thing I’d been thinking about doing for so long.
Have fun and don’t stress because statistically, most people get sworn in just fine. Eat up if the training center food is good because you’re in for an awakening once you’re at site! (Only kinda kidding. Most, if not all, Senegal PCVs lose weight.)
In-Service Training (IST) and Mid-Service Training (MST) were mostly spent catching up with other volunteers and to learn about what they were doing in their sites. I suggest showing up with good questions and any ideas you might have for PC for future volunteers, as far as what could make you a more effective volunteer.
Matthew
Pre-Service Training (first 10 weeks in-country) – study, study, study, study. As soon as I had my language assigned to me (In Senegal, they divide volunteers into five language groups), I had my nose to the grammar book and exercise sheets. Everything stems from your language ability – integration, finding friends, discovering potential work projects, your safety, house improvements, self-confidence, motivation to serve, etc., so take your PST language learning seriously.
In-Service Training (midway 1st year) – During this training, I got to sit down with my supervisor and counterpart to brainstorm projects. This is where we outlined that entrepreneurship would be a focus during my service.
Mid-Service Training (after 1 year of service) – At this point in my service, the CED program had been eliminated due to budget cuts, so I did not benefit from this training.
Packing Tips and Language Learning
13. What would you tell future volunteers to pack—or leave behind?
Matthew
To Pack:
- Portable bidet
- Portable speaker
- Bring some sort of solar charger.
- Find a way to incorporate protein into your diet (we bought protein powder in-country).
- Bring earplugs! – a lot of strange noises at night
- Bring a fold-up phone tripod.
- Bring multiple pairs of cheap sunglasses.
We brought a solar power bank, not knowing whether our site would end up having electricity or not, and that turned out to be a lifesaver since we don’t have access to the power grid.
To Leave: Can’t think of anything, but we followed the packing lists online, and those proved to be very helpful.
Naomi
Paint and paint supplies, earplugs, crafting items, any kind of skincare you like, printed pictures from home, sturdy cables and phone and laptop cases, bluetooth speaker, planner, Kindle, Uno, quick-dry towel, and as much LiquidIV as (insert hot country name) customs will allow you to bring into the country. Follow the packing list for your country of service and look at Reddit pages as well. Look at the discounts you can receive at places like Merrell, Eagle Creek, and Teva for PC volunteers about to embark.
I brought a hammock that I have yet to use. Turns out there are not many trees in the desert!
Not packing necessarily, but I wish I had a folder of pictures on my phone of me before service, in my home, and community in America doing normal, everyday things. e.g., me cooking dinner, me doing lawncare, me washing laundry, etc., as some things are hard to explain to HCNs (Host Country Nationals) when the language doesn’t have a concept for a certain kind of food, or a machine like an oven or a microwave, or a vacuum.
It’s also been hard to convince people I don’t have servants in America (LOL!) and do everything for myself back home, so it would have been nice to have some evidence!
13. How has language learning been for you in Senegal?
Naomi
I found out I would be learning Pular after being in the country for one week. My language group was just two people with one teacher, and we met four or five times per week during PST. I think we had it good with a supportive resource family during that time and a fun language teacher. It also really helped to have each other to help learn the language with. Pular isn’t really written and doesn’t have accessible media or books in the language. It’s fairly simple in structure and repetitive in nature. I was very motivated at first and took Pular lessons in my community from a teacher who didn’t know English, and we made it work.
Most people at my place of work speak a different dialect of Pular (Pula-Foota), which is similar to but not quite the same, and was difficult for me as a beginner to understand. Forty percent of our village speaks a different language entirely, and the professional languages at work and school are French and Wolof, which I know just a little bit of each. My place of work was very confused and disappointed when I showed up in town, not speaking French.
For the first nine-ish months at site, it was really demoralizing getting compared to my husband, as his language abilities were definitely more advanced than mine. I would constantly get made fun of and ignored or told not try speaking because he could speak.
In the culture here, it is very much discouraged to practice or learn or look silly doing something that you don’t already know how to do. Very few people in our village were encouraging or let me practice speaking with them. This was one of those struggles I just gave up all expectations on. I’ve tried my best and am ranked as an advanced-low speaker now. I communicate and teach classes and have conversations with people.
I still get told that I “cannot speak Pular” because my husband “can speak Pular” because in the culture here, there must be a winner and a loser, and I am the latter. Oh well!
Matthew
In Senegal, you don’t know what language you will be speaking until a couple of weeks into PST. This is because they have to finalize site selection after they get to know you, and there are many different languages spoken across Senegal.
We were assigned the Pulaar, Fulakunda dialect, and I found that studying the grammar book helped me the most. Our language has only recently begun to be written (using French spelling), and I have only seen Pulaar writing one time in my community. So, we can only learn through the resources that the Peace Corps has created and by speaking with HCNs (host country nationals); another reason why we were unable to study until we arrived in Senegal.
Once we reached our site, I found that working on house improvement projects, such as my garden, helped me to integrate faster and exposed me to new vocabulary. Additionally, translating my entrepreneurship lessons into Pulaar with the help of my local Pulaar teacher aided my learning significantly.
Impact of Media and Final Thoughts
14. If you share content online, how has that shaped your service?
Naomi
I’m in my second year with Reach The World classroom partnerships, where an American abroad links up with a U.S. classroom to share about their life through a series of video calls and blog posts. It’s been a nice way to ensure I’m reflecting and writing about my experiences here with accompanying photos and videos. I recommend the partnership to everyone in the Peace Corps as a third goal activity, as it gives you deadlines and keeps you accountable for sharing your journey online, but it can also be curated to fit your schedule.
15. What final advice would you share with future volunteers?
Matthew
Serving in the Peace Corps and making it all the way to COS is a big challenge, so join Reddit chats, watch YouTube videos, read blogs, and really try to imagine what it will be like to be on your own. I have more hard days here than not, and a lot of what keeps me going is just the fact that I made a commitment and I want to stick to it.
On the other hand, get excited to meet new people in your group of volunteers, to learn a new language, to experience something unique, and to learn how other people think & live. And be sure to bring lots of books, movies, and comforts from home!
Are you thinking about joining the Peace Corps? If you’re curious about service and ready for something new, apply today. Like Richard and Naomi, you can live abroad, work with communities, and grow in ways you didn’t expect. Apply to the Peace Corps and take the next step.
The content of this post does not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Government, the Peace Corps, or Senegal Government.
