I’ll be honest, I am coming down in favor of conversation with people from other communities rather than conversation about them. I think that both are complementary and useful, but that it’s so much easier to talk about a foreign group than to engage them directly. I think that’s why so many Americans travel abroad and end up hanging out only in expat circles. It’s also true that many international students studying in the US only hang out with each other.

Jillian,

I’ve come to realize that the tone of this post must betray the point I was trying to make. I’m in favor of including links to peace corps blogs for the very reasons you point out. I’m not as insistent about it as when I debated the issue with Rmack years ago, but I still think it’s good to show inside and outside perspectives of a country (and to show rural areas where there are no other bloggers).

I do believe that they are talking WITH people, at least in Morocco, which is my only first-hand experience with PCVs. The PCVs blogging from Morocco are, in fact, often the only person in their town with access to a computer, nevermind a blog. Sure, the Moroccan blogosphere is good-sized, but the vast majority of its bloggers are from Casa, or Rabat, or Marrakesh. You will not hear a Moroccan voice online from Ifrane d’Anti Atlas for years to come, unless someone takes Rising Voices to the Maghreb.

I do think, of course, that PCVs and other Western bloggers do need to think carefully about the picture they’re presenting. When I was blogging from Morocco (GV quoting me was how I learned of it, incidentally), I chose to make my blog a news report, rather than a personal one. I never felt comfortable discussing my friends, or my students, or my family. That said, if someone else does, more power to them.

I think (at least in the case of South Africa, dunno about anywhere else) that when you live in a complex society, with the divisions along class and racial and language and religious and ethnic lines that we have, you’re never truly going to get a comprehensive sense of what “the South African” psyche is, no matter how many people you speak to.

Perhaps that’s why Leonard Thompson can give you the clear picture he does, becuase it is in the nature of academic writing to zoom out, and see the bigger picture; while us mere mortals scrabble around, mired in the issues. We live it daily, so sometimes we don’t see the wood for the trees. What a visitor sees as unique or idiosyncratic is actually just my daily life.

That said, though, I think one of the joys of living for an extended time in another country could be that there are things about your adopted country that never cease to make you smile. Living in Mexico , I loved that the joy I got from being able to buy most of my food on the street never dulled. I know tamales do not a national psyche make, but it did give my time there a measure of authenticity that I could never have found if I’d only lived in a walled ex-pat community, or read it in a book.

There’s also something to be said for leaving the place you’re from in order to get a better sense of it. Every time I travel I come back with a different perspective of “home,” and that, for me, is what I really value about traveling.

Now that I’ve lived here for a year and a half, I find that I too have a lot more to say about the place than my partner ever does. His days flow as they usually flow and he rarely takes time to explore new places here or observe his surroundings much. I think effective and interesting blogging from and about a location requires the ability to “stand away” from it a bit and give insightful observation from a privileged vantage, and that is something that seems to be much easier to do if you are always already on the outside/marginalised — like foreigners are.

Still thinking….