Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Some Like it Hot

Me carrying water on my head. It's heavier than it looks.


Women pulling water at our well. It's quite a daily chore!

Just to clarify the record: it's hot here! I think every day gets over 100 degrees farenheit (I'll never get used to thinking in celcius; it's pointless to even try), which means I'm used to the way I look now with perspiration luminescent on my skin, and it's an average evening to sweat myself to sleep. But the odd thing is, I'm used to it. I who always hated extreme heat and cold, now consider it normal to bike along sandy roads in 100 degree weather. Life is weird. My bike seat, by the way, was designed by a sadist; it's really painful. This week has been a busy one for me. I just finished one school's scholarship applications, by riding out to visit each of the candidates in their villages, to see how they live and do a little personal interview. I really enjoyed speaking to each of them. These are truly inspiring young women who manage to get excellent grades while studying with the barest of amenities - no electricity to light their evenings, no running water, certainly not a balanced diet of brain food - as well as walking between 3 and 5 kilometers every day to school, and back again. Meeting girls like that makes me hopeful for the future, because if they continue to work as hard as they do, to get a real education, they will become the people who will change Senegal for the better. So, biking all over the department of Nioro, suffering my painful bike seat, to visit these students made up a majority of my week. I also visited a friend to see how her project of a cashew orchard is coming along, and to talk some more about the work I hope to do with a bookmobile. Finally, things are happening! My little tree pepiniere has sprouted, for the most part. I have some adorable little papaya sprouts, some jitropha that shot up like a weed (which, I suppose, it is around here, as well as a potential biofuel source) as well as nebedaye (a tree whose nutritious leaves are made into sauce), leucenia, and a few others. Hopefully they'll become hardy little seedlings that I can outplant when the rains come. So far nobody else has come to me for help with their own tree nursery, but I am continuing to talk to them about it, and maybe this week someone will get one started. A few women came asking me about my solar oven, too, so I will lend it out to them tomorrow to see how they like cooking with the sun. If it works well I'll have to figure out where they can buy them, or make their own.

Last week there was a wedding in the village. Well, not quite a wedding; there are various stages of getting married which I am not quite clear on. This woman already had her husband - and a baby son - but the ceremony was to send her off to live with him. I think he finally earned enough money to build her a house of her own in The Gambia, where he lives; until then she was still living with her parents. Anyway, the event was a celebration of all the things the bride would take with her to her new home. Everything was laid out in the courtyard: clothes, buckets, jewelry, fabric; all gifts from the villagers. Everyone dressed in nice clothes for the event, and one woman went to the center to display the gifts. She counted them out one by one: "One complet! Two complets! Three!" after each tenth item, she sang out loudly the number ten, and did a little dance, which was usually joined by one or two women from the audience. The bride ended up with something like thirty complets (matching skirt, top, & headscarf outfits), twenty pieces of fabric, thirty big buckets, fifteen small buckets, and I don't even know how many miscellaneous decorations and bits of attire and jewelry. After all the " baggage" had been displayed, there was a dance party. Though the entire village knew by then that I have a petit pagne (word gets around at the well; one woman finds out, they all do) it was the first time I really danced with it, and it was a huge hit. Everything I do or say is absolutely hilarious to most people here, especially when it involves me trying to fit in with my words or actions. The next day I was gone at a meeting in another village, but the bride went off to her new village while I was away. They all said she cried and cried, which I'm not sure whether that is a cultural expectation, or a true emotional reaction to the sudden changes and heading off into the unknown. Probably a little of both. Anyway, I wish her luck and happiness in The Gambia. At the very least, she'll look fabulous in all her new clothes, but that's small comfort when separated from everything she's ever known.

Friday, April 11, 2008

Work!



A common sight out my back door: herds of cows strolling across the dusty fields.

This week, finally, I have some work progress to report! On Monday a university student came to stay with me for a week. She's doing an exchange program in Dakar, and part of their curriculum is a visit to a village for several days, to experience life there. It was really fun to have a guest, though this involved a lot of Wolof translating. We brought a couple chickens home from the louma and the family was ecstatic. "Cere" with chicken broth is pretty tasty! She had an untypical village experience, though, because I was very busy this past week. On Monday evening I had a brief meeting with the president of the communaute rurale, who explained to me that there is a project in place to bring running water to villages in my area before the end of 2008. I hope that happens! Having a robinet would make life a lot easier for everyone, especially the women, who spend a lot of time hauling water to and from the well every day. Also, I seeded my pepiniere a couple days ago. It's a challenge to keep everything damp in this heat, but I made a shade structure with an old mosquito net and I water often, so hopefully things should sprout soon. I planted a lot of papayas because they supposedly like gray water, and hence can be placed in the bath area of compounds where they grow well. I also have a couple mangos, and a variety of shade trees and other various species. It's a real hodge-podge, but the real reason I have it is to encourage people to build their own pepinieres to plant what they want. Meanwhile the girls' scholarship is keeping me busy, biking back and forth to the two towns to speak with teachers and principals, filling out paperwork, etc. I still have several steps to go before the scholarship applications can be turned in, so the next few weeks should be pretty busy as well. It feels good! Also I've agreed to help start a bookmobile project with an NGO based in Kaolack, so I have plenty of work ahead to get that rolling. And to fill my free time, there's still peanuts in the afternoons!

Friday, April 4, 2008

Mr. Toad's Wild Ride

I woke up early this morning to catch the daily mini-car that comes through town on its way to Kaolack. There, emblazened on the windshield, was a sticker with a familiar face. Yes, it was undeniably the face of Osama Bin Ladin, in rather garish colors, right beneath the rearview mirror. On the passenger-side window was another sticker, of the singer Madonna blowing a kiss. She's a familiar sight on the vehicles here in Senegal. Nothing is without decoration; especially the big rigs and busses to shuttle people around. Common stickers (besides Madonna) are American flags, tigers, various marabouts - religious leaders - and whatever other random decals have made their way to West Africa. It's pretty amazing, really, to think of the life cycle of such a sticker. Or a tee-shirt! How numerous are the tee-shirts here from county fairs of ten eyars ago, cafes long closed down, baseball players no longer on the team. One could write a fascinating travel adventure story about a tee-shirt's journey from being freshly printed in the USA, to gracing the back of a talibe in Kaolack. Just goes to show how small the world really is.
Anyway, life in the village goes on as usual. The peanuts are finished for the most part, but I still get to crack a few buckets-full on occasion during my strolls about town. I'm getting quite good at it, though my poor fingers are destroyed. As another Volunteer pointed out, though, it's worth it because when I get home I can amaze the patrons of any blue-collar bar in America with my amazing peanut shelling skills. What do the people do when there are no more peanuts? Well, the women can be found sitting, braiding hair, drinking tea, and chatting. To be honest I'm not sure what the men do all day. They often sit under one of several shade structures scattered around the village. Talking? Planning? Philosophizing? I have no idea. Probably just sitting. When there is no school (and this is fairly frequent) the kids play together. Soccer is eternally popular, especially with the boys. The little boys also show amazing creativity with the design and construction of toy cars. They use bits of old wire for the frame, lids for wheels, strips of fabric to pull it along, and decorate the cars with whatever other bits of trash may be lying around. Then they'll tear down the street, pulling their cars, calling, "I'm going to Kaolack! Dakar!" One group, when I asked where their cars were headed, said, "We're going to America!" The girls, when they're not pounding millet for cere or doing other womens' chores, can often be found playing a kind of jump-rope/limbo game where two girls hold a string, which they raise gradually higher and higher as the girls in the middle kick their legs in and over it in a pattern. It gets pretty high! No wonder they can kick their legs to their shoulders when dancing. Impromptu dance parties are also common playtime activities among the children. If I find one I'll occasionally do a little shuffle - they love that.
Work goes slowly, but it goes. I have stuffed all my sacks and arranged them in a trench for an 89 tree pepiniere, which I plan to seed this coming week. Hopefully I'll have some nice baby trees which we can outplant in the village when the rainy season arrives. Also, I'm working with two "colleges" - middle schools - to distribute a scholarship to one female student in each school. College is the time many young girls are married in Senegalese society, and are likely to drop out. Offering a scholarship hopefully will encourage at least the winner to continue her studies into "lycee" (high school) and beyond. So, that's it! Mango season is now in full swing as well and I am delighted. Hiding in my hut I savor the delicious fruits, and suck on the pits for that little tang of tartness, and I save the seeds, hopefully to plant in my nursery. The bread oven I helped to build is finally in operation now, too, so early mornings I'll trek across town to buy a couple slender loaves of soft, fresh village bread.
Oh, why the finny title of this blog entry? Well, toads have made their home quite happily on the floor behind my water filter. When they're in an especially good mood during the day they'll croak happily, and suddenly, to make me jump. Also at night they like to sit on the damp roots of my two little trees - a mango and a guava - that I water twice a day. They hop across my floor, headed for the outside, at nightfall. I can't really get rid of them, so I deal with it. But I wish they'd at least eat some of the million ants that have made my floor their home. Those things bite and it stings like crazy.