Rich White Girl's Guide to Senegal and Environs

Going, going....

2009-10-30T03:09:00.000-07:00

It's been a full week in Dakar, me wandering through the Peace Corps Office with my check-list in hand, marking off the various administrative tasks and getting the right people to sign on the lines. But it's all done now! I turned in my completed Close of Service packet, and now (well, as of November 1st officially) I am an RPCV. "Returned Peace Corps Volunteer", for those who haven't been using our strange jargon for two years. It is anticlimactic, which I suppose is to be expected. Why should I feel any different just because I officially finished my service? It's one of those things that will take time to sink in. But already, as I enjoy pizzas and sandwiches and good wine and short skirts here in Dakar, the village lifestyle seems almost dreamlike. Did I ever really pull water from a well? Did I walk barefoot in a peanut field? Did I sleep in a mud hut? I KNOW I did these things, but they are so unlike my current reality. The whole thing is rather surreal. Still, it is satisfying to know that I accomplished all the paperwork so fast.

This will be my last blog entry, since soon I will no longer be a rich white girl in Senegal...I'll be a relatively poor one in the USA. Peace Corps was a grand challenge. It was difficult and frustrating and rewarding and most of all eye-opening. I've learned that you can adjust to just about anything, and that learning knows no limits. My village was wonderful to me, and I won't forget them, though that might not translate to me sending gifts and money as they seem to hope. And I hope they will remember me fondly, as well. I will miss all the good friends I've made here, and the amazingly supportive PCV community. I'll miss the Kaolack hosue library especially! And the special feeling of being so different, so noticeable on the street or in the dance club or on public transport. I dreaded sept-place taxi rides and cramming into alhum busses, but I think I will feel nostalgic even for sweating in such crowded autos. It's just been such a unique, uncomparable experience! I know it has changed me.

Paris is a moveable feast, as Hemingway said, and I know that to be true. But maybe Senegal is a moveable bowl of ceeb u jen. And in the future, maybe, I can come back and feel again the connection that will always exist now, between me and Senegal, and especially with that little village of Keur Ali Gueye, existing discreetly and warmly in its spot in the Kaolack peanut basin.

Leaving

2009-10-22T13:21:00.000-07:00

I have left the village for good. It happened at 5:30am. I sat on the charette with all my things, moving away into the murky pre-dawn. I had spent the days previous walking around the village, saying goodbye to everyone, and popping inot each compound one more time. It was very calm and easy. People were appreciative; they said all sorts of nice things, thanking me for staying all two years and for the work I did and for being friendly with everyone in the village. For me it was odd to think that I wouldn't be doing that ever again. The whole thing hasn't set in yet, that I'm really and finally leaving. I have read over 150 books. I have attempted many diverse projects. The village is using hte latrines my friends and family gave money to build. My last lunch with the family was okra mafe. For dinner, millet with fish. They appreciated the gifts I brought. And it all ended with left'hand shakes (different from the typical right'hand shake. Using the left hand means you hope to meet again) and watching a horse trot along the dirt road into the dark. Now that it's done, I am having toruble thinking of things to say...this blog has gone way downhill! But leaving was bittersweet. I'll think about it for a long time. I am both ready and nervous to be home.

Applying myself

2009-10-11T04:17:00.000-07:00

This is my last weekend in Kaolack! I plan to do the final village stretch for a full ten days, to say good bye to everyone in the surrounding towns that I have worked with, and to visit with everyone in the village before I go. I bought gifts for the family - school bags for the kids, fabric for the women, a nice briefcase and address book for my counterpart - and a bunch of kola nuts for the village elders. How strange, to be leaving soon....I can't quite wrap my mind around it.

Close of Service - so soon!

2009-09-28T05:56:00.000-07:00

I spent the past couple of days reviewing my service, via the writing of reports I have to turn into Dakar. It is strange to list, one by one, the various things I have done over these past few years. So many of my projects didn't last, but I tried a lot of different activities. And some of them - the latrines, of course, and the school paintings, and the vetiver grass, and the Bookmobile - will actually continue to improve peoples' lives for awhile at least, in whatever small ways they can. In three more weeks, I'll head to the capital for my final medical review and administrative paperwork. And then it's done.

Ramadan finished last Sunday, with a huge lunch of village "sauce". This is kind of like a beef stroganoff: chunks of meat, lots of diced onion, fried potatoes, and macaroni, all cooked together in an oily dish that we scoop up with bits of mud-oven bread. It was greasy and delicious! After lunch I walked around the village to each compound, to say "bahaalma ak" - to ask forgiveness for whatever I might have done in-between Korite's. This is a nice tradition. We did it after Tabaski, too, and I love the feelings of peace and goodwill I get from wandering around, greeting people in this way.

The rains are still not done, though they have tapered off a little. Still, not reliably enough for me to trust the Bookmobile on these washed-out dirt roads. I think the next time it goes out will be with my project replacements. Two year-in Volunteers are taking over the Bookmobile, and I think they're going to do a great job. Everyone wish them luck!

Some peanuts are ripe, and people are getting ready for the big harvest which is just around the corner. The beans I extended are producing like crazy, as they always do for farmers who properly weed their fields. One guy has four rice-sacs full of dried beans! From only a kilo that I gave him! Sometimes, little successes like that make my whole week.

Mud

2009-09-19T03:42:00.001-07:00

The rains are ridiculous this year! Here the millet, corn, and peanuts are nearly ripe, and it's pouring almost daily! All the dirt roads are now mud pits. In Kaolack, entire roads flooded up to the knees in places. Truly it's something. People are worrying now that too much rain will hurt the harvest, cause moldy grain etc. I'm worried because I want to do one more Bookmobile run before I leave, but until these roads dry up it's just not possible. So everyone pray for a speedy end to these crazy rains!
In more exciting news: I am going home in a month!!! Just bought my tickets. One to Paris for a week, then home to Seattle. It's something of a countdown here now, but I am keeping more or less busy, fantasizing about crepes and Mexican food all the while...

Rain and Ramadan

2009-09-06T07:12:00.000-07:00

The month of September is notorious for erratic weather, and so far it is living up to expectations. It is the middle of Ramadan, so no one in the vilage is eating or drinking anything from sunup to sundown. They wake up at 5:30am to eat a few spoonfuls of "funde" - millet porridge - and then wait until around 7:30pm to drink a cup of coffee, a glass of bissap, and maybe a loaf of heavy village bread. The days pass extra slowly for me, since there is a low energy level all around. I spend a lot of time reading. Crops are slowly ripening, but not quite ready to harvest yet. Meanwhile, the rains have made cell phone service uncertain, and Internet nonexistant in Nioro.
A few days ago something happened to add some spice to this Ramadan schedule. In the evening, rain and speeding winds started to arrive. Before long there was lighting, heavy downpour, booming thunder right overhead, and the wind roared against my thin aluminum door. I lay in bed listening to the storm.
The next morning, when I tried to open my back door, I found all my millet-stalk fences lying on the ground. When I opened by front door, I encoutered an entire tree right on my steps! The storm had torn it down. Several of my backyard trees were snapped in two, and the family's fencing was all plastered to the earth, the fenceposts pulled from their holes. But our compound was lucky. Some peoples' roofs blew away; some older huts collapsed under the pelting rain. Almost all the village trees had some damage. Plenty of people are now missing walls.
It took a full day to put up all the fences, clear out the fallen timber, and salvage bits from where they had been scattered. Still, Keur Ali Gueye was fortunate in my mind. Despite all the destruction, most houses are still more or less intact, and miraulouly, no one was hurt that I know of.

Coumba ting-ting

2009-08-21T02:47:00.000-07:00

My favorite rainy season bird has come again! In Wolof they call it "coumba ting-ting"; I think it may be named the Senegalese fire finch, but I'm not sure. In any case, I love to see them perched on the dark green millet stalks. Every time I see a coumba ting-ting I can't help but smile. They are so shocking to the eye! Their head and breast are perfectly black, but their neck and sides are a vivid, almost electric red. They just pop out of their surroundings like neon. and when they fly; it is only short distances, with a funny jerky motion accompanied by trilling chirps. Whenever I go out to the fields nowadays, I keep my eyes open and watching for that flash of vibrant crimson in the millet.
Village life is going on as usual, ndank ndank. All my prep work is done, since at this point the seeds I gave out have either been planted or they haven't; the nebedaye trees put into the ground or else they have already been made into leaf sauce. So I stroll around, taking notes on the state of the fields that I'm monitoring, weeding a row or two when I feel like it. The kids stay out working all morning, and sometimes the afternoon as well. Soon, though, that will stop, because Ramadan is coming again. It could be any day now. They are just waiting on the moon to decide when to begin the month-long fast. Last year during Ramadan I painted the maps and murals in the school. This year I think I will just enjoy the village, and maybe try to get some end-of-service paperwork out of the way.

Gerte tella nor

2009-08-07T09:14:00.000-07:00

At last, full rainy season again! The bean seed I gave out is all seeded and sprouted, and so is the rice, corn, and soprghum. I didn't hand out any millet seed or peanut, but those are growing too, and looking beautiful. The millet is dark green and lush, while some of the early-ripening peanut varieties ("gerte tella nor") are already showing their charming yellow flowers. In my backyard I have intercropped two rows of corn and beans, and out behind my fence I tried to create a thick-mulched no-till garden of beans and bissap, with an intensive nebedaye plot. But after spending an entire morning weeding, thinning, and successfully making the garden look wonderful, I went out that afternoon and returned to find....no leaves on my bissap. They had been eaten by goats. I was so angry! But futily so, because there is nothing to be done. Little goats can get through even the barbed wire fence that is around my field, and the bissap was just too tempting for them. My only hope is that it will recover fast enough that the next time they come around, it will be big enough to get not entirely defoliated. Bah! Meanwhile I am enjoying the return to field labor. It's not hard for me, since I can take a break whenever I want, but people work all morning, and oftentimes all afternoon again, bent over at the waist, weeding up and down rows of peanut. I like to weed a row or two nd then walk for a bit to stretch out my back. It is physically demanding work. People who grow up and work in a village like mine get very strong, very young. Not like me! But I love the shock of a cold rain every other day or so, and the touch of warm soil beneath my bare soles as I do my little share of fieldwork.

Dr. Seuss in Wolof

2009-08-01T03:37:00.000-07:00

Reading aloud to a remarkably respectful group in a village near Foundiougne.

It has been a long time since my last blog post! I haven't been busy, exactly, but somehow the time got away from me anyway. Things in the village are going, ndank ndank. People are farming, and most have seeded what I have them. I am more hands-off this season because there are so many other things to do, and besides the village is occupied with other activities, such as constructing their new mosque, which got financed from somewhere. There's a big green sign in Arabic no doubt explaining it, but of course I have no idea what that says. Many of the young men spend all day there, building, and of course there are also fields to be tilled. It's a busy season!

I just finished a long but satisfying week with the Bookmobile. Finally a little money came through so we were able to do another run, and it went extremely well! Actually, not all of it went smoothly. Because of the rains, the soil is soft, so almost once a day the heavy truck got stuck in the mud. It went in DEEP, and we had to solicit help from whoever happened to be nearby to dig out the tires and get the Bookmobile back on the squishy path. Our poor chauffeur exhausted himself every day just driving on these questionable bush roads, dodging potholes and maneuvering around bumpy deviations. On one memorable occasion, he exclaimed: "This road doesn't have potholes - it has wells!" Which is practically did. So our truck is feeling pretty battered. I'll recommend that from now on the Bookmobile only run in the dry season, when it can't damage anyone's field (that was a loud and intense situation) and the ground is packed, so it cannot get sucked into the dirt. I am just grateful that we got around to all the villages, and back to Kaolack again, safely and in mostly one piece.

Despite automobile difficulties, though, the program went smoothly. We left 150 books in each of four villages, checking them out to anyone who could write their name. Everyone loved it! We got such amazing welcomes everywhere we went. The villages cooked us tasty meals, and provided overnight accommodation (organized by their Volunteer, usually) as their contribution to the project. Meanwhile, we spent a day in each, distributing books and reading stories. One of the biggest hits was Dr. Seuss' "The Foot Book", which was fun and easy to translate into Wolof. Also, "Tikki tikki tango", that story about the little Chinese boy with the too-long name that I remember from my own childhood. They loved that one! Things were calm and people really seemed thrilled to have the Bookmobile in their villages. Seeing kids clustered around a book in the shade, looking through the pictures or sounding out French words, was reward in itself.

Still, I am exhausted from the terrible roads and constant break-downs. So, a weekend in Kaolack, then village time again, then another Ag conference, then back to the village again. Alhamdullilah!

Planting 2010

2009-07-17T11:46:00.000-07:00

The season got off to a slower start this year, but by now it has established itself enough that people are well into rainy season work. Peanuts are sprouting again, along with delicate fields of tiny corn and millet like blades of grass. The farmers I gave seed to are slowly sowing it; the other day one man seeded his corn, and another his beans. No sorghum has been planted yet, and there are many more kilos of beans waiting, but there is time. This year I'm working with farmers in three villages, so I'll be doing more coming and going, which will be nice. Plus there's the Bookmobile to wrap up before I go! Hopefully we'll do another run in a week or two, now that a little funding has come in.
Now that it's rainy season, the horses are especially skinny, since they are working extra-hard and are out of good peanut fodder. The mares especially, since they are often nursing a foal as well as pulling a plow. Soon the grass will grow, though, and they'll have fresh greens to eat. But the birds are coming back! I remember how beautiful and various were all the birds of rainy season last year, and this time around it is the same. There are so many colors and species of birds! From tiny, bright finches; to iridescent starling-like birds; to shocking blue; to white and black striped birds with curved red beaks; to large brown-and-black ones, boldly colored. There are also butterflies. They like my flower bush the best, and congregate there in all their fluttering beauty. In the evening, crickets and toads compete to dominate the night noise. In the puddles in the road are minute wiggling tadpoles waiting to join the song in a few weeks.

Dad & Becca's Visit, plus rain

2009-07-11T12:04:00.000-07:00

Dad and Becca waiting for a charette in Nioro, before heading to the village.

It's a much slower rainy season this year. Hopefully it will pick up soon, because the little baby corn and peanuts are thirsty! But Yallah is in charge of all that. I have been rushing around Senegal with Dad and Becca. We had a lot of fun, though it was a whirlwind! A couple good days in the village, where I extended all my seed. Focus this year on beans, with some corn and rice as well, and I am working with my village, as well as a nearby one where we hope to place a Volunteer soon, and a very progressive farmer in Nioro. Afterwards, we spent a good day at Keur Bamboung enjoying the beauty of the mangroves. As a nice surprise, the hotel invited a fantastic drumming-and-dance troupe there on our last night. They were amazing! Then a nice dinner in Dakar, drinks and some live music. A quick visit to Senegal, but a fun one. Now I am trying to do some more Bookmobile preparation and then head back to the village! I do miss them, not to mention that the agriculture work season is finally picking up. Now, too, many people from my stage are heading home in mere weeks. I'll be finished in three months...it's strange to think about. But there is plenty to be done before then.

chez Dakar

2009-06-24T08:32:00.000-07:00

The Close of Service Conference in Dakar concluded this afternoon, and it went really well. We discussed all the things I had been wondering about, like the work environment at home, how to use Peace Corps in our resumes, what needs to be done administratively to finish our service, and how to communicate about Senegal to everyone in the USA. Our conference leader was really great. She kept us involved and interested in the sessions, and I for one learned a lot of important things in a short space of time. Meanwhile, it really IS good to be back in Senegal! My visit home went so smoothly, with no real culture shock at all, and the re-entry here went just as easily. Right off the plane, into a taxi I go (after bargaining in Wolof, as usual, to a reasonable price) and into the market downtown. And it felt GOOD to be here again. Truly! I admit that was a bit of a surprise, but it does, and I am so lucky that I am honestly delighted to be here still for a few more months. Now I know that home is still there, and Senegal and I still have things to teach each other before I go.
My wonderful counterpart - who I appreciate immensely because he is such a motivated worker and generally awesome guy - has called me twice glowing because such good things are happening in the village in my absence. They're working on constructing a health hut near the school, which will get stocked with basic medications and staffed by a trained "matrone". What little cement was leftover from the latrine project is going to that, and the work is happening! A nearby doctor promised to train the matrone (like a nurse-midwife) for free if the village did their own construction work, so hopefully he'll keep his word and Keur Ali Gueye will have a little health post of their own right in town. Also, the USAID project to spray rooms with pesticide has happened again, along with distribution of free mosquito nets for kids. Your tax dollars at work! He was really excited to tell me about how smoothly that went as well.

Who says you can't go home?

2009-06-12T22:45:00.000-07:00

I'm home for ten days, for my brother's university graduation. And it is AMAZING! How even to describe it? There wasn't the culture shock I was expecting. Some things have changed, but not enough to make me feel disoriented. Seattle seems even more beautiful than ever, a veritable paved paradise, liberally splashed with thick groves of evergreens. There are flowers blooming and robins nesting. It is so lovely! When I see the familiar curve of the Space Needle, or the emerald patches of growing things dotted throughout the city, it feels so natural, as though I never left. That's how I feel I can describe it. Not surreal, not even startling in contrast to life in Senegal. Because when I am here, my I am ONLY here. When in Seattle, eating the food I love and being with my friends and family in this comfortable environment, it is the only kind of life I can concretely imagine. All other ways and places of living are like a fantasy, only half-real. And the same goes for Senegal. When I'm there, pulling water at the well, eating millet from a communal bowl, speaking Wolof, THAT is the only kind of existence that I can viscerally imagine. Both times, in my head I know that this isn't so. When in Senegal I know that in the USA there are people commuting to work on smooth roads, buying $100 sundresses and eating burritos, but these are like imaginary things, too unfathomable to be true. Likewise, while here in Seattle, I know that not so very far away there are people bathing in murky well water, who are excited about finally having a latrine for their family, who are eating (really pretty unappetizing) rice with peanut sauce... but it seems so impossible that such things could be real, when my experience is so completely unlike it. So that's how it is. Like two different worlds sharing the same small Earth. But in any case, it is wonderful to be home.

A taste of success

2009-06-01T12:10:00.000-07:00

A girl hoping to check out a book from the Bookmobile.

The kitchen smells amazing at this moment, because my friend Kyle and I are making dinner. There are green beans with ham simmering, garlic mashed potatoes, and two kinds of guinea fowl: fried (by Kyle) in cornflake breading, and roasted (by me) with carrots and potatoes in a marinade of tamarind and Worcester sauce. I wanted to try guinea fowl, which are so funny looking with their bald heads and droopy-looking bodies. But they can dart away as quick as a flash, and are much less common than chickens. Anyway, I have never eaten one, nor have I ever killed an animal by myself. So I decided to kill two birds with one stone...well, one bird with one knife, actually. Which I did. Killed it, bled it, de-feathered it, cleaned out the insides, cut it up, and now I'm roasting it. If the smells are any clue, it's bound to be tasty! And though I didn't ENJOY killing the bird (or doing the messy work of preparing it, either), I feel a kind of satisfaction having done it, the way I'd planned to.

The big news today though is that the BOOKMOBILE went on it's first test run! To my village and my friend's village. All things considered, the event went pretty well. The kids loved that big red truck, all full of books. In each village, we were able to check out about 150 books, but had to stop there so as not to overwhelm the Peace Corps Volunteer who has to keep track of them all. The titles and name of who checked it out are written in a notebook, which we left in the village where the book is in order to know who has each book at any given time. We read aloud some children's stories, and taught some interactive songs, which were a big hit. There is still some work left to do on the truck (the shelving had been badly installed, so we'll have to have it fixed) but we are slowly checking those things off the list. What fun! The Bookmobile is finally on its way, and it looks like the program will be wonderful for these village kids.

But now the water is out in Kaolack again, which is a bummer. Our bean seeds finally came in, though, so when I get back to the village tomorrow I can start telling farmers how many kilos of seed they'll get, and hopefully even see some fields now before the rains come.

Thanks to Florence, Colorado!

2009-05-29T12:51:00.000-07:00

Michelle Sylvester Scholarship is finished for the year, Alhamdullilah! All the paperwork is in and now all we have to do is wait for the committee to pick the winners. Finally, some seeds have arrived - no rice seed yet, but beans, corn, and sorghum, so I can start telling farmers what they will have from me for this rainy season. Last week the annual Gamou was held in Keur Ali Gueye; apparently it happens every year around late May, but last year I missed it. They set up a huge tent next to the half-finished big mosque, and hung it will all sorts of portraits and posters of Baye Niasse. The young girls all bought white pants suits, which they asked me to paint with Baye Niasse's classic three-quarter pose. I see this depiction of the marabout everywhere, on car stickers, on tee-shirts, on keychains, painted on the walls of telecentres and boutiques. He is a very famous religious leader; my whole village is Niassene - followers of Baye Niasse. So I did my best to sketch his face on an ever-increasing pile of snowy boubous. In the end I got pretty good, and could do it in under a minute. Then I made the girls (they asked me, but I refused, so they could take some credit for the work!) paint over the lines in black oil paint, so the image stood out. In the end they looked awesome! The Gamou itself was quite an event. People from several surrounding villages came to listen to the recitations and speeches, and the entire town put on their best clothes. The older folks sat under the tent with their prayer beads. The leader of the village's Koranic school was the host; he killed tree cows for the two meals that day! So we ate delicious greasy rice and rich meat-flavored cere. There was melodic chanting all through the night, though I ended up going to sleep after dinner. It was a nice village experience.

And coming into Kaolack has been great this time around! We're putting the Bookmobile together for the test run this weekend. Hopefully it will go well, unlike the Dakar fiasco. So far everything seems to be good. This time Kaolack had wonderful surprises waiting for me. FOUR packages: two gifts from home (full of delicious food! Now I can pig out!) and two HUGE packages of children's books from my friend in Florence, CO. How wonderful! We put them in the Bookmobile today and they really enrich the collection. I chose three of those for reading aloud to kids this weekend, and I think they'll enjoy the stories. So THANK YOU Florence Public Libraries (and Robin, you especially)! You've definitely made a great contribution to the Bookmobile! Wish us luck on this test drive.
Next, we need to get our hands on an old card-catalog. Anybody got one lying around? :)

Time, fast and slow all at once

2009-05-19T04:58:00.000-07:00

Thank goodness I've made peace with my bike seat since last year. I've had to bike somewhere almost every day this past week, bumping along the sandy bush paths, past the occasional nomadic Pulaar camp (they are so cool! With vast herds of cattle, sheep, and goats, they set up tents in the empty fields so their animals can graze on last year's crop residue. The women sometimes walk through the villages, selling curdled milk. And I love the way they drive their donkey charettes - no reins at all, three donkeys hitched abreast, and they steer by wacing a stick on one side or the other to indicate which way the donkeys should go. It's impressive!), and swatches of black ash, occasionally still smoking, from where farmers gathered stalks and weeds to burn. I've been biking so much because of the Michelle Sylvester Sholarship, which is done every year throughout Senegal. (You can go to the SENEGAD website to learn about it: http://senegad.org/ ) For me it means going to two neighboring towns and working with the middle schools there. Six girls are chosen from each school, and they all need to write an essay, have a teacher recommendation, and a personal interview. That gives me a chance to see what their home is like, too, because the scholarship is supposed to go to girls with excellent grades AND a striking financial need. Of course, this year I am reminded that good grades are often the result of a comfortable family situation. I visited quite a few beautiful compounds for the interviews this year. But in each town, there are always a couple girls who stand out, with their excellence in school in the face of financial difficulties. This year the process was easier, because I knew what I was doing, but also more difficult, since now I have been working in these towns and so gotten to know some of the families, and had to remind them that in this case I must be entirely impartial when choosing finalists for the scholarship. Luckily there is a committee in Dakar who will choose the eventual winners - a 30,000cfa scholarship, plus a certificate of achievement - to spare us Volunteers drama from the families of those who didn't win. Anyway, there are only a few more things to do for the scholarship on my end, which means another two or three bike trips to and from the towns. I can do it!
One might think that with actual activities going on, it would be a busy week, but time has a way of dragging here even when there is lots going on. I also finished two books, including "The Omnivores Dilemma", which was very good, thoug not quite applicable to my lifestyle here. It shows that Americans, assuling we "are what we eat", are primarily corn; whereas I feel mostly comprised of rice and millet nowadays. I am currently working on a novel called "Iceland's Bell", which is also extremely well-written and interesting. Thank God for the Kaolack library. I've read books I never might have heard of otherwise.
In less fortunate news, a cat killed my gray chicken, so now there are only two: Lucy and Studly Dudley the rooster. No chicks yet. But I can report that chickens are not at all traumatized by the death of a compatriot. On the contrary, they had no problem pecking at the bits of feather and gristle that the cat eshewed. Chickens, I believe, have absolutely no sense of their own mortality. Which is a good reason to eat them.
More cyber lessons this week! I asked the kids if I could distribute their e-mail addresses to perspective pen-pals, and they said yes. No guarantees of when or if you'll get a reponse, but they would love to hear from the "waa Amerique". Here are the e-mails I have:

Omar - diopomar14@yahoo.fr
Penda - avenir.gueye@gmail.com
Pape Souleymane - papesouleymanediop@yahoo.fr
El Hadji -elhadjisamba18@hotmail.fr
Masse - fansgambie99@live.fr
Malick - batman22@live.fr
Aissatou - fanselhadjidiop@gmail.com

There they are! More kids come to the lessons sometimes, but these are the ones whose e-mails I have at hand. Tomorrow we'll practice attaching a webpage link in an e-mail. Wish us bonne chance!

You win some....

2009-05-11T00:56:00.000-07:00

The Bookmobile being worked on by Fatik mechanics. Photo courtesy of Lauren from Buttercup Farms.

Well, Saturday was a series of unfortunate events, one after another, all day long. When one thing goes wrong, it can be very upsetting, but when tons of things go wrong, at a certain point you just have to throw up your hands and laugh at the absurdity of it all. Here is the abbreviated story:
After two days of rushing around town, making sure everything was ready - paperwork, checks in the hands of the right people, new battery, spare tire, and lights for the truck, driver and sept-place hired, books secured with rope and nails, posters made, donation cards and box prepared - everyone went to bed as early as they could. We woke at five the next morning to start off. The truck, with its two drivers, had gone off before us, because the sept-place drives much faster. At first it all went fine. We had music playing to keep us awake as we drove into the murky dawn. But then, just inside the town of Fatik, we spotted the Bookmobile on the side of the road with it's hood open. Stopping to see what was up, the drivers told us it was dangerously overheating, and they didn't want to risk continuing on in that situation. There was mild mayhem for awhile as people cursed the mechanic who hadn't fixed the truck the way he'd said, and we debated what to do, waking poor Mm. Viola up at seven to tell her what had happened. Eventually Kate asked if a mechanic in Fatik could be found to take a look at it, and a motorcycle was sent to bring one. He ended up being a very nice guy, but we waited for nearly three hours there while he removed the radiator, had it cleaned at the gas station, and put the whole thing back together. Meanwhile, it was nearly ten, and the event was due to start at eleven. We'd left so early to avoid Dakar's heinous traffic. But it was not looking good. Still, around ten we had the mechanic paid and crossed our fingers that the Bookmobile would be okay. On the road again!
But the moment we started back on the main road there was a clunk, a dragging sound, and our sept-place driver exclaimed that HIS car had just broken down too! Our bad luck was starting to seem comical at this point. Meanwhile, the truck was not 100%, but we decided to keep trying. So the others stood there waiting for a new sept-place, which had been called in from Kaolack, and I got into the cab of the truck, hoping to get to Dakar before they did. It was just not meant to be. The truck overheated every two kilometers, and finally the drivers said there was nothing else to do besides go back. The new sept-place still hadn't reached Fatik, so we waited for awhile, and when it finally came I hopped in. By this time it was nearly noon; we were an hour late, still hours from Dakar, and with no Bookmobile either. Since we'd lost so much time, we pulled into Dakar in the middle of lunchtime traffic, which is practically stand-still. This gave us the opportunity to buy some cashews for breakfast from vendors who stroll up and down the lanes between the vehicles, but in the end it caused us to roll into the event at nearly 3pm. Most people had already gone home, and though the ladies who had organized the Bookmobile station with us were sympathetic, there was not much anyone could do. We set up our story-reading corner, which had been our planned kids' activity. But since most of the kids had gone home, and there was no beautiful big red truck to intrigue them, we had few customers. The donations table was vacant; only a few people were left to come listen to us talk about the program. In the end we got a little money that had been collected on behalf of the Bookmobile some time ago by a member of the Dakar Womens' Group, and a couple handfuls of spare change from people on their way home.
In short, the event was a total failure. But, I suppose we learned some useful things. For one, the Bookmobile is NOT ready to go around to rural villages until its engine is properly fixed up. This was our test drive.

Ndank Ndank.....ndank.....

2009-05-06T13:43:00.000-07:00

The backyard chicken project: Lucy the red hen, Gertrude the gray hen, and Studly Dudley the rooster.

I bought a rooster at the louma. Having proven that chickens WILL lay without one, I decided that little baby chicks are just too adorable to resist, and I want some in my backyard. Plus, the roosters in my compound are ugly so I wanted to purchase a handsome one who can hopefully breed better chickens in the whole quartier. The result: Studly Dudley. Four dollars worth of strutting, crowing male chicken. And he is a good-looking rooster, isn't he? No eggs yet, but when they happen again I'll have adorable chicks to look forward to!
My pepiniere finally sprouted, only to be attacked by the aforementioned poultry. But I found a way to fence it in using old broom-like dry stalks of weeds, which makes a thick barrier around the pepiniere. Then I laid a piece of old mosquito net on top, and so far that seems to be working well. This year I want nebadaye for the whole town!
The kids at Internet class are progressing quickly. They all have e-mail addresses now, either Hotmail, Gmail, or Yahoo (since there's a silly daily limit on all of those) and they are practicing sending messages back and forth to one another. The next thing they all want to do is search for "correspondants" from other countries. Anybody want a Senegalese penpal?
Days in the village are slow this time of year. There is really nothing going on. Though in the evenings I've taken to helping some of the neighborhood kids study, by asking them questions about their lessons, to test how well they retained the information. It's all in French, which I'm the only one who speaks French in the village, so I try to help them out. But it is frustrating because some can recite the information, but have no idea what any of it means. So I try to have them explain it in Wolof afterward (rather, I explain it in Wolof) and ask the questions a couple of different ways, to try and help them learn what information goes together. There are a few star pupils, which is always encouraging. But one student makes me sad. I know he's very bright, he can speak French fairly well and is extra-quick with numbers. But he simply cannot read. I think he's probably dyslexic, but of course they don't have any resources to work with those kinds of children here. So what can he do? Struggle in class and, despite his smarts, probably not get into middle or high school.
Now I'm in Kaolack, where I have to work like mad to put the finishing touches on a Bookmobile fund raising event that will be held in Dakar this weekend. It's exciting that the Bookmobile is finally getting near completion, and I think it'll be a fun day in Dakar talking about books. But I need to get to work and make this all happen before Saturday! Luckily the fantastic people at 10,000 Girls have done most of the tough stuff already. I just have to confirm the details.

Hot

2009-04-27T10:37:00.000-07:00

The hot season has arrived. It's miserable in the afternoons, when even the wind is hot, like a blow-drier. Last wednesday I got caught in a dust genii while on my bike, a mini-tornado of hot, dusty wind. Fun! Not much village news to report. I seeded my pepiniere, but it has not yet sprouted. Just today, after a series of delays, I finally got to start contacting principals for this year's Michelle Sylvester Scholarship, for middle school girls. It went really well last year, and was both fun and rewarding, so I'm looking forward to meeting 2009's candidates. Yesterday I finally brought out some coloring book pages I've had stashed in my hut for months, dug out my bag of crayons, and hosted a mildly chaotic colorng session on my mat beneath the shade of a couple of neem trees. The kids were all screaming and coloring, having a general good time. And today I saw one drawing taped onto the wall of one little boy's mom's bedroom, which was cute. Finally, too, I brought my tape over to the school so that I myself could tape up the world maps which have been sitting there since Mom's visit. Now, at last, kids can study geography properly! Otherwise, not much to report. It's just HOT.

Bookmobilerific!!!

2009-04-20T09:35:00.000-07:00

Me standing in front of a FINALLY FINISHED Bookmobile.

It's happened at last! After over a year of hounding the mechanic and scrounging for funds, the Bookmobile has been completed! Shelves are installed along both walls, and everything is painted bright red. Today I worked with a volunteer from Buttercup Farms (the group in the US who sells 10,000 Girls products stateside) to label the shelves and start sorting books. We have at least these groupings: Very easy English picture books, Easy English picture books, Medium English picture and story books, Advanced English books, Teacher's materials, Easy French books, French novels, French comic books, French textbooks, French grammar books, and a few books in other International languages. This coming week, hopefully, girls can get to work sorting and loading the books into the truck. How exciting! It's finally happening!
Meanwhile, I need to start planning fund raising and attention-getting activities in Dakar, so we can collect enough money to run the program for a year. Now that we have books, a painted, revamped truck, and volunteers ready to work, all we need is cash and we're on the road!

Two more weeks

2009-04-14T06:59:00.000-07:00

After being very sneaky, I managed to catch this photo of mother and daughter at a wedding, watching the bride being blessed by the village elders.

My as-yet-unplanted pepiniere. I'll seed it with mostly nebedaye when I return to site, along with a little jitropha, and some flamboyant trees.

School is still out, so it's been awhile since Internet classes, but they're sue to start up again next week, once I'm back from our annual Agriculture Conference in Dakar. Which will also be good and an opportunity to eat tasty food. I realized, once again, how desperate my body is for nutrients, when I put away two brochette sandwiches last night. A single sandwich is half a baguette, roasted meat, french fried, tomato, lettuce, onion, and spiced mayonnaise; I ate TWO of those without pause. Wow. But, as I think on it, my caloric intake is so little, as every day I eat maybe a cup of rice, and another cup of millet, along with scraps of fish or vegetable or a little peanut sauce, and that's pretty much it. With the exception of the bad cookies I buy to stave off munchies on occasion. But soon it's mango season, which is a healthier way to indulge my sweet cravings. And now that school is back, I can get started on the Michelle Sylvester Scholarship, which will keep me busy. And better yet, in just a couple months the rain will come, and there is nonstop activity in the rainy season. My focus this year, I hope, will be on upland rice and beans, plus finishing the vetiver grass demonstration fields.
This week I finished preparing my pepiniere, which is a small tree nursery. Hopefully I can convince people to make ones of their own, too, as I have more sacks, but in my personal backyard I have 150 sacks stuffed with half-and-half sand and sifted manure. Next week I'll seed them and water them all, so hopefully every family can have at least one more nebedaye tree, which provides extremely nutritious leaves for "mboom" sauce. That will go well with everybody's new latrines!

Lucy Lays an Egg

2009-04-05T11:13:00.000-07:00

Perhaps the highlight of my week is that Lucy the red hen is finally laying! No eggs from Gertrude yet, but two days in a row now Lucy has hidden a tiny, pointy-topped cream-colored egg somewhere in my backyard. If only it were pink I could pretend I was hunting for Easter eggs. But as it is, I cooked both those up and they were delicious! This was after showing them to the family, who refused to believe me when I claimed that female chickens will lay just fine without a rooster. I said in the USA there are whole yards full of only hens, which lay just fine, but they shook their heads and said, "Oh no, Senegalese hens are different! They need a rooster!" In fact, as we confirmed this week, they do not need a rooster. But baby chicks are so cute I might buy one anyway.
In other news, the REALLY hot season has set in. Everyone is miserable in the afternoons, and I copy everyone's example by spending all day sprawled out to try and escape the heat.

Little Things

2009-03-29T02:19:00.000-07:00

The date carved into the lid of a completed latrine in my counterpart's compound.

Solar cooking last week; there was an impromptu dance party inspired by this fish sauce.

My host sister coaxing a kite up into the air.

There are some weeks that pass so quickly, and others that merely drag. It's the slow season here now for me. Not much is happening that I can properly consider "work". So what am I up to? Every week or two, I'll buy ingredients for solar cooking, though I can't do that too often so as not to make people jealous. It's the windy season, so the kites left here by visiting students last year have made a popular appearance. When they get up to the end of their string, the entire village can see the kite way up in the air, high above the thatched roofs and mud-brick walls. It's a swooping, bright spot of rainbow color in an otherwise featureless blue sky. And I can't help humming the song from Mary Poppins, under my breath, when I wind the string and get ready to send it up. Once a week, I do the mini-library thing with the school, lending books to kids from a trunk of Viola Vaughn's Bookmobile books. Twice a week, the computer class with the Nioro students. We're learning to do Google searches now. Next month, hopefully, I can start my pepiniere, and the plan is to organize the women's group (or some other organization in the village) to dissipate that knowledge. Maybe even be a little money-maker for someone. But progress, as usual, is ndank ndank. And, I am annoyed because I want to start work on this year's Michelle Sylvester Scholarship, the one for middle-school girls, but because of this ridiculously long spring break, it will have to wait until mid-April. Baaxul!!!
Probably the biggest news in the village is the latrines, which are being completed super-quickly. Since taking the money out of the bank to buy the materials, I haven't done anything at all, which is precisely the idea of a Peace Corps Partnership. My counterpart has supervised all the cement and iron distribution, keeping careful track of it in a notebook, and people have dug their holes, molded their bricks, paid the masons to line the pits and put the lids on. Really, it's all happened incredibly fast, and people still rave about how pleased they are to finally have enough latrines for a healthy village. All thanks to you wonderful donors! The thirty-seven latrines will be completed by the rainy season, which is awesome, awesome news.
The other day there were two weddings in neighboring compounds, so I (along with everybody else) was running back and forth between them all day, escorting the brides with the parade of women (the brides with their faces and heads completely covered by an opaque white shawl), sitting while the wedding was blessed by the men elders, and enjoying the greasy rice lunch, the boombox music (Akon, of course) brought in from town, and admiring the brides, their faces lavishly made-up, their hairdos towering, with 1,000cfa bills pinned into their thick curls. I briefly considered taking photos, but considering the mayhem that's caused (especially among the children) when I bring out my camera, I chose to try and describe it with words instead.
And my chickens have become more friendly, too. Gertrude and Lucy now run to me when I stand on my back step and cluck, because they know I have handfuls of grain for them. Luckiest chickens in the whole of Senegal, maybe.

Election Week

2009-03-21T05:37:00.000-07:00

This week (the last two weeks, actually) have been full of election events, as local politicians advertise their platforms in preperation for tomorrow's election. It's the mayors, I think, and the Presidents of the Communaute Rurale who will be elected, which means it's a big deal for villages. So most people's focus has been on that. I've been shelling peanuts, because 'tis the season. But on Wednesday, and this afternoon again, was the kids' computer class and they're doing fantastically well. Plus they're having fun, which is important too. If they continue to improve their typing today, I might let them get online. It's fun teaching an Internet class! Yesterday was a fun day, too. The family I gave my solar cookre to has been gradually perfecting its use, but it doesn't cook things in time for lunch. So I bought a kilo of fish, some tomato paste, bouillon, pepper, kani (which is piment), a few little onions, and oil, and we put it all together in a pot to make fish sauce for "cere ak jen". The solar cooker had it ready by the afternoon, and it was delicious! I ate almost half the bowl of "cere" (that's the millet dish) that night, it was so tasty. But even better was the fact that the family did the whole thing themselves. They're now the village solar cooking experts! And, in other fantastic news, the mining company donated some wood for the Bookmobile, so shelves are being installed now. Hopefully soon we'll be able to shelve the books in the truck and really get started.

Douches, Porridge, and Computer skills

2009-03-15T08:50:00.001-07:00

These are what I call the "Halfway Trees". If you pass these, you're halfway to Keur Ali Gueye from Nioro du Rip! Still got about four kilometers to go, though.

At the louma last week I succumbed to an impulse buy: two chickens, one red, one gray. I named them Lucy and Gertrude, tied them onto long strings, and set them loose in my backyard. To go along with them, I mixed up some grain of millet, sorghum, corn, and peanuts, to supplement the bugs and whatever else are out behind my hut. Like many impulse buys, I find myself wondering now what ever inspired me to buy such a thing, but here in Senegal you don't purchase a new coat or a pair of boots, you buy hens. So now they're mine. The consolation is, I got a good deal - only 1,500cfa each (the kid after me bought his chicken for 2,000! HA! I got a better price!!!), and hopefully in a little while they'll start laying eggs and I can have omelettes in my hut. If not I suppose we can eat them. I would worry about getting attached, because after all, they are my animals, but chickens make very unsympathetic pets. Too much loud squawking and terrified running around to really make you feel warm and fuzzy. But Gertrude and Lucy are now my very own, irregardless.
Otherwise, my week has been occupied with time-filling activities. The latrines are coming along splendidly. Everyone is doing the work at their own pace, but quickly. Pretty soon everything will be finished! It's really fantastic and people are as enthusiastic as ever about having family latrines. It will make the rainy season, especially, more tolerable. I, meanwhile, inspired by the seminar in Dakar, went into two classes to talk to kids a little about basic nutrition, and later on, the women from three different neighborhoods organized themselves to learn how to cook a rich porridge that's good for growing children. I brought the ingrediants, and gave insructions while they prepared the meal. It is so easy and accessible, too! Just a half kilo of millet flour, a kilo of peanut butter, some kind of fruit (I used baobab fruit once, bananas another time, and suggested squash, mango, or papaya as other choices or, if nothing else, at least nebedaye leaves! They're amazingly high in vitamins), as well as 100cfa each of sugar and oil. While the water boils, mash up the fruit, add the peanut butter, oil, and sugar to the fruit mash; when the water is boiling you mix in the flour until smooth, then add in the peanut butter-fruit mash, stir it all together, and voila! A delicious, nutritious, simple breakfast for young kids. The important part, of course, is that it combines all the necessary food groups, so carbohydrates, protein, fat, and vitamins are all together in good proportion. That's a hard concept to teach. But we've had fun making porridge and the children find it delicious, and all the ingredients can be found in the village, so hopefully some women will prepare it on their own.
The last thing is a project I just started, inspired by the fact that this year ten teenagers from Keur Ali Gueye passed the test into middle school, and are now studying in Nioro. Which is fantastic news, especially as four of them are girls - the first time that has ever happened. But in this day and age, education only get you so far if you don't have basic computer skills. So I decided that I would teach them how to type and use the Internet, by biking down to town twice a week and holding little classes at computers rented from the local cybercafe. The first class took place this Saturday. The kids were late, which made me angry, as I was offering to pay out of my own pocket (well, it's Uncle Sam's money, really) to teach them these important skills, and they were lounging at home! But the one girl who made it there first, and the other two students who finally showed up in time for a taste, really enjoyed it. They won't be late next time. My plan is to work on typing and using the keyboard until everyone can write paragraphs with proper capitals, punctuation, and indentation. Then, we'll go online! Inch'allah. But I'm excited because it's fun to teach something that I truly know, and even after a single lesson they're already catching on so fast. I have a feeling it could be a very rewarding little project.

Gamou Kaolack

2009-03-09T14:36:00.001-07:00

A neighborhood girl getting her hair braided for the Gamou. Most of that is "meche", which is hair extensions, to thicken and lengthen the hairdo.

The Gamou Kaolack - a huge religious event for Niassene Muslims (the sect to which my entire village belongs) - is today. Last year I stayed at home and enjoyed the serenity of a village with practically no children, and only a few sedate adults relaxing under the trees. But this year I decided to tag along and share in the excitement. So I crammed into an auto with dozens of other villagers this morning and we cruised off to Kaolack. Many of the cars we passed were blaring religious chants from loudspeakers on the roofs, but I'm grateful that ours didn't have such accessories. As with many holidays, my Gamou mostly consisted of sitting around a lot, then eating an enormous lunch of greasy rice. I'd hoped to go to the mosque with my host family, but they were insistent about my getting back to the Peace Corps house before dark, so they bundled me onto a charette and waved me off before going back to do the celebration part of the Gamou. But preparations leading up to the Gamou have been impressive. Almost everyone has new clothes, the girls have been putting in elaborate braids, the women applying black henna to their feet. Kids are as excited as if it were Christmas Eve - a trip to the big city, where there are ice cream sellers (only 50cfa for a small cone) as well as delicious, protein-filled lunches, visiting relatives, and a break from school. And rumor has it the late-night program at the huge, beautiful mosque in Medina Baye is wonderful as well. It only lasts a day, though. So tomorrow I'm headed to the louma in Nioro, then back to the village, to scrounge up ways to stay busy the remainder of this hot, dry season.

Transport Strike

2009-03-04T06:47:00.001-08:00

People are stuck in Kaolack. Some have been here since Monday. I just got in yesterday, hitching a ride with my boss after his visit to the village. He was impressed with the progress of the latrines, and our hopes for pepiniere season. But, I had hoped this would be a quick trip to town, to get to the bank and the post office, then home; but I ended up having to stay here today too because transport is very scarce and even less safe than usual. So here we are, eating yogurt and papayas, fiddling with our chores and complaining about the strike that despite being inconvenient, is not nearly as bad for us as it is to the dozens of Senegalese who are waiting on the sides of the road for a ride home. At least we have a place to sleep and cook. Who knows if people have spent the night huddling on the roadside? Strikes are bad. And the timing is difficult, because this weekend is the Gamou Kaolack, a huge religious event for followers of the marabout Baye Niasse. My whole village, being Niassene, are planning to attend. Hopefully things have settled down by then. In any case, these are the realities of life here at the moment. Rice is expensive, work is tough to find, and the hot season is setting in. Everyone gets grumpy when it's hot.

Some village photos

2009-02-28T09:25:00.000-08:00

Brick-lining a new latrine. All that's left is the seat!

Working the press, to make peanut oil. The resulting peanut grounds are a heavy cake which is nutritious for animals. Plus you get tasty locally-produced oil.

This calf was surprisingly docile; they caught it specially for the picture, but it was sleeping near the market all morning.

A lady sorting peanuts in her courtyard.

Full Circle

2009-02-24T02:44:00.000-08:00

Now that I'm in my second year here, I'm experiencing the repetition of life lived cyclically, following the seasons. While I was on vacation the women peeled and dried all the bissap from their field; now there are sacs stuffed full of bissap waiting for the government to come and buy it. The safest storage place, of course, is my backyard, which is now stacked high with fat plastic sacs. Out with last year's millet pile, in with this year's bissap! But thinking back, I remember how important it was to my village adjustment, those first few months of my being there, to sit with the women for hours, popping those bright red fruits off their seed pods, listening to their chatting as I gradually filled by bucket with bissap. And after that came peanut season. Now it is here again,and my fingers are re-learning the technique of snapping a nut against a stone or a wooden stool; the one-handed shelling which contributed to an ever-growing pile of nuts and shells; the taste of dried peanuts (the little shriveled onces, actually, are more flavorful than the perfect-looking ones.); the familiar flaking of skin off my thumbs from the constant friction of finger against peanut shell. Oh, peanut season! Of course here every season could really be called peanut season. Life revolves around peanuts, or the money they bring in. Now, too, people are building and repairing houses, and all the families are in various stages of latrine construction. There are three-meter deep pits all over the village, and some are already being lined with bricks. Then the masons will come to construct the seat on top. Everyone is thanking me for bringing the latrine project to the village, but I have to remind them that I didn't do a thing! It's all the people who each gave what they could, eventually funding the project in its entirety, who really need thanking. Without you all it never would have happened!
Being back in the village is wonderful. It feels so familiar to me now, almost as comfortable as home. I even welcome the flavor of millet "cere" with fish or leaf sauce. You can get used to anything, and even come to enjoy it! And I've got plenty of things I hope to do in the near future: a little nutrition seminar for the kids, through the school, to learn about the food groups. Continuing the library. Starting pepinieres. Teaching a group of young mothers how to make improved porridge for their children, with millet flour, peanut butter, some kind of fruit, a little oil and sugar, which can combat malnutrition (we learned that in Dakar). And encouraging everyone in their latrine work. There's plenty to do! And there are some things I'm working on out-of-town, too, such as the Bookmobile, and helping get a girls' group going in a town near a friend's site, and hopefully working with some other Volunteers to create a leadership camp for young women, to be held this summer.

WAIST 2009 - a Weekend to Remember

2009-02-18T04:40:00.000-08:00

Me and two Kaolack friends, with our team TROPHY!!! Note the awesome plaid shawl I'm wearing. It fits the winning theme.

I'm on my way home from Dakar after a fantastic WAIST weekend! For those who didn't read my blog last year, WAIST is the annual softball tournament (the West African Invitational Softball Tournament, in fact) which takes place during President's Day weekend. It is a huge event for ex-pats and Peace Corps Volunteers all over West Africa. The fabulous Dakar community opened their beautiful homes to us, sharing their tasty American meals, hot showers, and luxurious beds with us deprived village Volunteers. It is always a shock to walk into such a house, sit down at a table with such wonderful food, and experience the familiar shock of warm water from the shower head; all things familiar, yet after so long a hiatus, remarkable. This year the tournament itself was huge! Almost all the Peace Corps Senegal Volunteers were there, to play or support their regional teams. There were also teams from Mali, The Gambia, Guinea, and Mauritania. The Mauritanians are known to be serious softball players. The themes and costumes were hilarious as always. Kaolack chose "Braveheart" as our theme, so everyone was running around wearing tartan-print kilts, screaming "FREEDOM!" or "MacKAOLACK!" as the mood took us, or the ever-popular "Cesspool!", a nickname for our lovably dirty regional city. I, of course, was on the cheer squad, because I'm not particularly "sportive", but our pitcher played in a plaid miniskirt, people were running bases barefoot or in flip-flops, and there was plenty of good cheering (or heckling, depending on the opposition!) as the situation required. We all had a fantastic time. And, here's the really exciting news: for the first time in many years, Kaolack won a trophy! Third place, beaten by the Senegalese national team, and Mauritania, but it was a BIG trophy nevertheless! All tartan-clad people were wildly celebrating that final evening. Being third place means we beat all the other Peace Corps Senegal teams. Kaolack is officially the best softball playing region in Senegal! Needless to say, we do other things pretty well too.
The day after WAIST's celebratory dinner and dance, we had a conference at USAID to discuss work opportunities, and sector goals and summits. I co-lead two discussions about latrine construction, since that is an area of big interest for many Volunteers, and so important to peoples' health. I also got to attend a good refresher course on seed-saving techniques, and an inspiring seminar about creating good nutrition from local sources. Yesterday I called Omar Gueye and he says the cement, iron, and wire arrived safely to the village, and has been locked in the storage room. Already he's molding bricks to line his latrine, and other folks are doing the same. Fantastic news! Now all that's left to buy are wooden slabs to serve as covers, and wait a few weeks for construction to be finished, and then thirty-seven families in Keur Ali Gueye will have their own latrines right there in the compound.

Buying cement, writing proposals

2009-02-09T08:11:00.000-08:00

This is the view of a sunrise, taken from my back porch step. I’ve decided that the color of the light at sunrise is golden; everything suffused with a shimmer of gold. In the evening, at sunset, the light is lavender.

I’m in Kaolack for a few days, doing city chores, of which here are many because I’ve been vacationing. But it feels great to be back! I had a wonderful vacation, saw a lot of fascinating places and got to spend all my savings on an unforgettable experience, but I’m tired of travel. There is no such thing as a relaxing trip in West Africa. I want to get back to work, be in my village element again. That won’t really happen, though, until next week, after WAIST in Dakar, after the All-Volunteer Conference, and after I’ve finished all the things I need to be in Kaolack for. Today, the “responsables” for the latrine project came up, and met me at the supplier. Since the money came through I’ve been feeling a little jumpy – no one likes two million cfa sitting in their bank account! – so I was relieved to put it where it belongs. My counterpart confirmed the materials to make sure it was all they’d ordered, and reviewed the prices. The supplier drew up the receipt. I went to the bank (chauffeured there, actually; how fancy) to withdraw several enormous wads of cash. But now the money is where it should be, in the business’s lockbox; and the materials are where they should be, en route to the village; and the work is moving along splendidly according to everyone. It’s really happening so efficiently! I’m delighted. And I hear from them all that everyone is “content na lool”: very happy.

So now I’m in Kaolack to do more Bookmobile stuff, and also research and write a proposal for a grant to fund a summer camp, and do several other things in town. Then I’ll bake some treats for the SENEGAD bake sale – it all goes towards funding girls’ empowerment activities, including the scholarships – and it’s off to Dakar for WAIST!

Digging Douches

2009-01-31T10:26:00.000-08:00

We had a whirlwind trip to the village and lots of things are going on! The Peace Corps Partnership was entirely funded, thanks to everyone's generous donations. Thank you, thank you! While I was on vacation, the money arrived from Washington D.C., and the very evening I got into the village my counterpart was holding a meeting to explain the project, who it came about, and the steps everyone had to take. The very next day, the two men in charge of measuring the space for the latrines went around the town, marking off the area. By day two, people had already begun digging. One of my nearest neighbors had done two meters in only one day! They're really excited. As my counterpart says, the people of my village have been wanting to build latrines in their compounds for nearly ten years now, and finally - because of this Peace Corps Partnership - they can do it. On their own, they've organized a mason to help with the technical parts of latrine construction, such as building the seat, and everyone is doing their part to collect the materials they need for their family's douche. Next week we'll meet in Kaolack to buy and transport the materials, so everyone can start making bricks. It's so exciting! And everyone is so pleased.

Return to Senegal

2009-01-26T08:28:00.000-08:00

It feels ridiculously good to be in Senegal again. We saw so many marvelous things, stayed in so many unique places, but in the end I'm happy to be back and settling into the Kaolack rhythm I've come to know so well. Pissy cab drivers, enthusiastic post office staff (what? No gift from Togo for THEM?!), and my favorite cyber cafe, all waiting for me as if I had never left. On our way back from Mali we passed through Tambacounda, where I had never been, and then headed south to Kedougou. It was my first time there as well, and what a different feel Kedougou has from central Senegal! It rightly deserves the reputation as being the most beautiful region. Even now, in the dusty dry season, you can tell how lush it must become after the rains. The place is thickly forested, and has low mountains in the distance which probably turn stunning emerald. Arwen and I climbed up a ridge to look down over the tree-covered plain, and to marvel once again at the tiny villages perched on top of the rocks. But our big adventure was a 30kilometer bike ride on a dirt path to a gorgeous little town, right at the base of some craggy mountains. There is a waterfall hidden in the cliffs, tumbling down over a hundred meters to splash into a chilly pool. Further downstream, women and girls wash their laundry in the little creek, slapping the clothes against river stones to beat out the stains. After admiring the lovely waterfall, we hiked up to the top of the cliffs to find it's source. You can go right to the edge, where the water flows down, all the way to the forest floor. There were also caves of red rock, really convoluted and fun to explore. We even saw some wildlife there. A whole colony of bats in the cave, startled by our presence and agitatedly flitting back and forth, then reattaching themselves to the ceiling with their feet. Also, a troupe of baboons. On our climb up we heard them barking, and later on we surprised the troupe in their crossing of the river, and got a close look at them! It was very cool. Plus, on top of the mountain, you get to see the entire village spread out below, and the stunning geography all around. So, after hiking in the environs of Kedougou, I feel like I'm back in the flatlands again.
Now I'm rushing to complete all my chores in Kaolack, so I can gte home to the village! But apparantly all the mass-transportation drivers are on strike today and tomorrow, so I may have to wait until Wesnesday to finally get there. Oh, Senegal.

The road to Timbuktu

2009-01-19T02:49:00.000-08:00

After Dogon country we went to a town called Sevare, right next to Mopti. Our goal was Timbuktu, but we were told at the last minute that we needed special Ambassadorial permision in order to go there, because of the travel alert for Northern Mali. So....we were in Sevare. Which was a great place to be stuck, because we stayed at a hotel called Mac's Refuge that was just like a slice of America. Mac himself presided over the family-style dinners, passing around bowls of soup, salad, bread baskets, asking who would like more. It was easy to forget that we weren't invited guests, the atmosphere was so welcoming. Highly recommended! But, in the end, we got approval, and Arwen and I got into a packed Landrover bound for Timbuktu. It was definitely worth the trouble! The town itself is mostly a jumple of curvy streets, mud brick houses, dotted with heavy wooden doors studded in silver. These buildings must have been magnificent when they were new, with every entrance gleaming silver in the sun. There were tons of othr tourists there, and I had forgotten how pleasant it is to feel lost in a crowd, not standing out all the time. The market was neat, because besides the usual vegetables and spices, there were vendors selling slabs of desert salt. It looks like quartz, glittering white salt, one of the reasons for the city's past glory. And perhaps the highlight of our visit was a camel ride into the Sahara, to visit a Tuareg camp. Watching the sun set, red-gold, over the sand, while feeling the peculiar rolling gait of a camel, with nomads' tents spread out across the dunes...well, it was a surreal experience. And I learned a piece of desert wisdom that I think applies to all: "s'eloigner les tentes, s'approcher les coeurs". Which is so true! The same as "distance makes the heart grow fonder". And there was so much beautiful Tuareg handicrafts for sale: jewelry and leather, all sorts of things, that it was impossible to resist. We've had such smooth travels, seen so many fascinating places. This is a great vacation!

Dogon country

2009-01-12T08:08:00.000-08:00

Just a quick response to our Dogon country trek. It was awesome! We hiked across the plateau, down the cliff, along the bottom (where we got to visit the old Dogon buldings, tucked literally into the face of the cliff, and the tiny Tellem houses even further up), then up the falaise again. We stayed at campements with our guide, who was fantastic, a really nice guy. They fed us well and the scenery here is breathtaking. If ever in Mali, a couple nights in Dogon country is an experience not to be missed!

We made it to Mali!

2009-01-09T01:36:00.000-08:00

Yesterday we left Ouagadougou at dawn, and continued until dusk in a series of rickety busses and cars, but we made it to Bandiagara! Our glimpse of the Dogon country, an austerely beautiful landscape of red rock, viewed beneath a golden sunset, was tantalizing. I can't wait to start trekking through it. But I will miss Burkina Faso. We visited some sacred crocodiles, watching them snap at the sacrificial chicken we bought, and crouching down above one's tail for pictures. They're smaller than one might suppose, but those jaws look powerful. And they shut with an alarming SLAP! on whatever bit of chicken it could reach. That was our main "tourist activity", but we spent a lot of time walking around Ouagadougou, admiring the enclaves of actual, real art (hidden among the tourist trash. But we did manage to find some gorgeous, unique bronze sculptures! They're made by forming the statuette in wax, then covering that with clay, firing it until all the wax melts away, and pouring molten bronze into the resultng mould. They're really special) and eating good food. What I will always remember about Burkina Faso is how impressed I was by the women there. They do everything! At least a third of motorcycle drivers are women, sometimes a big mama in her boldly-colored traditional outfit, head scar and all; sometimes a young girl in blue jeans and high heels; occasionally even a mother zooming along, revving her moto with a sleeping baby tied to her back. It's fantastic! Women just don't do that in Senegal, that I have noticed. And we were stopped on the road by a female gendarme, welcomed to the bank by a female security guard. Just little differences, but they made a big impression on both Arwen and me. Burkina Faso strikes me as a country that, at least judging from the capital, is moving fast and in the right direction.
But now we're in Mali! And I'm so excited to see it. People have been fabulously warm and welcoming so far, as is usual anywhere in West Africa that I've been, and the buidings are interesting, flat-topped affairs made of red, red earth. How will the Dogon cliff houses compare to Togo's fascinating "tatas", those fortress-houses near the Benin border? They're unlie any other house in the world, made only by this single ethnic group. Each tata is a two-story home, with a single small entrance in front, leading into a room which is designed so there is a staircase, but next to it a dark space where inhabitants could hide to ambush an enemy. Upstairs, a kitchen area, then an open roof, with sleeping rooms shaped like squat circular huts, accessible by a round hole. To get in, you have to slide yourself backwards through the hole! And in the corner, a grainery, raised so high up that vermin would have a hell of a time getting in, and with seperate compartment for each kind of grain. The roof provides a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view of the surrounding area, a dry plain with a backdrop of stunning hills. And out in the front of each tata are a cluster of tall earthen mounds, which are guardian ancestors of the house and the people in it. Everything made exclusively of the local clay dirt, and wooden branches for support. Those were the tatas. Now for Dogon country!

End of Togo, beginning of Burkina

2009-01-05T02:53:00.000-08:00

We said goodbye to Togo yesterday morning early, on our way to catch a bus to Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, at the border. I had such a good time in Togo! Not only hanging out with Arwen and the other Volunteers we met, who were all amazing, but also enjoying the differences, but subtle and obvious, between the two West African countries I've visited so far. Some highlights were the beautiful area near the Kabye mountains, where Arwen lives. Also, the handicapped cooperative near Niamtougou, which makes spectacular art, especially fabrics. They had adorable clothes for children, as well as bags, jewelry, some all hanging batiks, greeting cards with a tiny batik painting...I bought two meters of gorgeous fabric, with it's distinctive handmade batik print, which I think I'll have made into a dress. On New Year's day (they celebrate the first here, not midnight of the 31st) we went back there for their fundraiser dance party, which was super fun! It's so interesting to me, too, that the music tells you how to dance. When you hear the music, your body wants to move a certain way, which makes the Kabye "chicken dance" (as Arwen calls it) work so well, and makes my Wolof dancing look silly. But in my village you can really only dance that way to match the beat. Anyway, it was fun to give Togolese dancing a try. In Dapaong, we visited a women's co-op that makes beautiful hand-woven bags, blankets, tablecloths, and other things. I couldn't resist a spacious purse from there. And it was neat to watch them at work, weaving the bright colors into a pattern. They also make nice-smelling soap with shea butter. So many hardworking people! Those are the ones I like to help out.
And then, yesterday, we rode the bus all the way to Ouagadougou. It's a very clean, fairly calm city from what I've seen so far. Of course, that could be because we stayed at the centre d'acceuil which is run by nuns and located right at the entrance of the cathedral grounds of the archdiocese. But last night we found an "American bar" called showbiz that served the most delicious croque madame with lettuce and tomato! And this morning, a lady on the street was selling real avocado sandwiches! And so we feasted.

Ala Fia: Christmas in Northern Togo

2008-12-28T08:57:00.000-08:00

I'm having a wonderful time in Arwen's village. Everyone has been exceptionally welcoming to me, they've served special food for the holidays, and I've been able to observe Arwen doing her work and interacting with the people she's been living with for a year. We got in on Christmas eve, and early the next morning we got up, put on our complets, and went to church with her village counterpart. The church is a very basic cement box, with open grillwork for light and air, but inside I experienced one of the best Christmas masses I can think of. There was so much amazing music, from singers and a small group of musicians playing traditional instruments. The sermon was long, but very good, in both French and Kabye (the local language), all about hope, thankfulness and working for peace. Throughout the congregation, the feeling of sincere happiness was palpable. It was such a wonderful sensation, I felt swept up in it. At a certain moment, they had an offering, and invited people up according to the day of the week on which they were born, which apparantly holds great importance in this culture. There was dancing, greeting, and all around good spirits. Everyone was dressed well, and the women especially were striking in their beautiful complets, some with braids or wire head-dressed, most with shaved heads, which I think it a very attractive look.
Later, they served us "fufu", boiled yams pounded into a sticky paste, and served with sauce. The sauces are much spicier here, but bearable, and I like the taste of fufu! "Pate", which is a grainier dish made of ground corn, is not nearly as good. But so far what we've eaten has been pate (which is cheaper to make than fufu) with a sauce on the side. Then we ball up a bit of the starch and dip it into the sauce dish. Since it was a special occasion, we also had spaghetti, and once or twice a dish called "watchi", which is sticky rice and beans with hot tomato sauce. Since I arrived during the grande fete, we've had meat for several dishes, but Arwen says this is not common; she explained that usually they put leaves in the sauce to add nutrients and flavor. The area of the village is gorgeous. At the base of some low mountains, it it covered with trees of many kinds, including palm trees, which are particularly picturesque at the foot of the hills. A truly lovely spot.
I can't forget one thing that has marked my Christmas here: tchouk. "Tchouk" is a home-made alcohol, kind of like beer, but not really. They serve it in little calabash bowls. Arwen and I have been offered a lot of this! It's not bad, but after a couple calabashes I'm pretty done with tchouk. Anyway, Togo is so different from Senegal, and I am having a fantastic experience here.

I go to Togo!

2008-12-22T10:16:00.000-08:00

At last, after ridiculous delays that pissed off an entire planeful of people headed to Abdijan or Lome, I got here. To be welcomed by Arwen looked gorgeous in her Togolese complet. It is beyond wonderful to be visiting such a good friend on her home turf! This is a quick blog. My first impressions from one afternoon in Lome: humidity, greenery, palm trees and grass everywhere. No horse or donkey carts, only lots and lots of motos. In the market, almost exclusively women selling their goods. Beautiful women with short-cropped hair, so practical in this hot climate, and really more attracive than mounds of fake-hair braids. And the colors that never get old. Wax-printed fabrics (called pagne here in Togo) in all shades and patterns, piles of jewelry, food, decorations, and lots of Christmas gifts! Yes, Christmas is coming, and people are buying their Santa hats in the Lome marche.

Making soap and seeing friends

2008-12-19T04:08:00.000-08:00

Yesterday we finally got to do the soap-making seminar I've been planning for awhile! The girls' group in the village has been buying and selling soap for a couple months now, and I offered to pay for the trainer to come if they wanted to learn to do it all from scratch. They were delighted by the idea, so I found the trainer, set a date...and had to whange the date...had to change it again...saw no materials or preperation....was getting worried. But yesterday morning, they pulled it off. We picked up the trainers in the nearby town in a charette, and set up shop in the courtyard by my hut. The girls were put right to work with dull knives, making soap shavings, while the trainer explained the different kinds of soap they were going to learn. In the end, they did it two ways: making soap from scratch with lye, oil, and water; and also extending commercially-made soaps by melting them down and adding water with only a little lye. The extended soap is cheaper to do, but the lye-and-oil soap is more flexible and can be higher quality, depending on the oil. So, we had a fun day stirring pots of boiling soap foam, or beating the oily mixture into a thick batter, then pouring it into improvised moulds to set. The soap hardened enough by that afternoon to cut into bars. Then, I tried to explain to the girls how they should keep track of how much their ingrediants cost, in order to set a price for their soaps and make a profit. They had a really good time making the soap, and I they have a pretty good grasp of basic economics, so I'm looking forward to continuing this little project when I get back! Our next challenge is to find the perfect soap recipe for maximum profit and saleability.
But in the meantime, I'm going on vacation. This is the only big, out-of-Senegal trip I have planned, and I can't wait! I fly out to Togo on Sunday to meet up with my very good friend, Arwen, who I haven't seen for a year and who'se been serving in Togo since I arrived here in Senegal. Then, together we plan to travel up through Burkina Faso, through Mali, back into Senegal before she flies out again. It's gonna be great, right? And best of all, I'll get to be with a friend for Christmas.

Tabaski take two, weddings, and solar cooking

2008-12-15T02:10:00.000-08:00

Last Tuesday was my second village Tabaski experience, and this year it was more fun, since I understood what was actually going on for the most part. The first day, I dressed up, covered my head, and went out with everyone to a shady spot behind an ancient tree. There, for probably an hour everyone prayed, led by three village notables who stood up front, their heads and shoulders covered by a cloth. I sat in theback with the women, as I usually do, and enjoyed the atmosphere of serenity. Once the prayres were over, we greeted each other with a "baalma ac", responded by saying "baalma ala", which means roughly, I think, an apology for anything one might have done wrong the previous year, and acceptance of the apology. Then a round of blessings for health and happiness. I also got plenty of blessings for my work, for going home safely to the USA, for having a husband and male children. Amen! Though I was sure to specify that I would like girl children first, anyway.
After prayers they killed the rams, which I managed to peek at this year. It is not so gruesome as one might think, but the blood does spurt everywhere, and the most disturbing part of it is probably the sheep's death twitches, though his throat is already cut. Anyway, meat is not for the squeamish. To butcher the rams they hang them up by the hind legs from a tree, peel off the skin (which they just discard; I would htink it could be used for something) and remove the entrails (which they do eat, after a thorough cleaning), then chop up the muscle meat. It's really interesting from an anatomical point of view, to see hoe the animal is put together in all it's layers. And of course, once the butchering is done, the cooking begins. This year, once again, I was put in charge of onions. I will probably smell like onions for weeks. But, they're supposed to repel flies, so I don't mind. The menu: day one - sauce with meat, onions, fried potatoes, macaroni, and lots of oil, sopped up with chunks of bread; day two - "cous cous", which is actually tiny vermicelli noodles, topped with meat and onion sauce; day three - mafe farine (a kind of tomato sauce thickened with flour) and meat, over white rice. Pretty tasty stuff.
One might think everyone was tired of meat after three days of eating sheep, but not so! The past several days have been full of celebrations, practically one a day. There was a good harvest this year, which means people have some money, and that has resulted in a lot of "noos" (fun times) in the village because of weddings. I've been to three in as many days! The young brides' husbands sent them beautiful new clothes of crinkly, shiny bazane, heavy with embroidery. They also sent mounds of food: onions, potatos, rice, vermicelli, chickens, and goats. And when there's meat and fancy clothes, there's a party! I've been in charge of the onions, as usual. But the result is that there have been a lot of oily, delicious meals lately in celebration of these weddings. None of the girls have left the village for their husbands' homes yet; this is one of the many steps that comes before that, involving giving of gifts, clothes, food, and other amenities. During these celebrations I have no idea what the men do. I never see them. But the women cook, and laugh, and dance, and talk long into the night.
Another thing I'm experimenting with is solar cooking. I brought a simple solar cooker with me, thanks to a neighbor, and last eyar kept it in my hut, telling people they could borrow it to try whenever they liked. But I noticed that once family asked more than all the rest, so after the rainy season I decided to outright give it to them. Then, because people are leary of risking their expensive food in a solar oven that, in their view, may or may not work, I decided to buy ingrediants every week or two to try cooking Senegalese food in a solar cooker. So far, with this family, we've tried mafe, white rice, and tchou. They were extremely dubious at first, but willing to try (it was my money, after all) and the results have been fairly good. Cooking rice without steaming it first was a big concern, but it turned out well, only we didn't put in enough water so it was a little crunchy. Both sauces, the mafe and the tchou, cooked perfectly in the heat of the sun, but they weren't ready in time for lunch, so only the children got to enjoy them with their late-afternoon half-meal before dinner. Still, everyone's interested in the solar cooker, and hopefully once they've seen it in action, they'll try it for their own cooking as well as mine.

Pictures and stuff from Mom's visit

2008-12-06T03:55:00.000-08:00

It's back to the village for me after Mom's wonderful visit. I'm still coming down from the high of great food, relaxing days, and of course having a friend around all the time. But now it's the season for threshing peanuts, and Tabaski is coming up again. Everybody's days are spent in the fields, holding huge bowls of peanuts and chaff high in the air and pouring them out so the grass blows away in the wind. People are shelling their peanuts, selling them to the boutique, and otherwise life is back to the way it was when I got here this time last year.
Tabaski is on Wednesday, and my counterpart just went to buy a sheep in Dinguraye. The moms have their hair braided, and tomorrow we plan to do henna on our hands and feet. Time for noos! Then, the girls' group has invited (well, I invited, on their behalf) a trainer to come teach them how to make soap in the village, so there's that to look forward to. Also, the books are definitely in circulation! I'm arranging to be availible two days a week for return/check-outs and the kids are loving it. Even though they can't read most of the English words, they can still enjoy the pictures and learn from them. So, things are going well here in the village.

And now, some photos from Mom's trip!

The best tea in Senegal on Ile de Goree. He also voted for Obama, as you may be able to see from the sticker.

This Aby makes much better bean sandwiches than I do!

A special treat for me was a two-hour horseback ride in the savannah around Toubab Dialaw. So wonderful! Thanks, Mom!

Mom enjoying a nap in one of our beachside hotels. This is the beautifully decorated Sobo-Bade, which reminds me of Hobbiton.

Our last name on a pirogue.

Walking with a tailor in his fabulous shirt, in Palmerin.

You can barely see her, but here is Mom in our awesome treehouse! The Lodge des Collines de Niassam was perhaps the best hotel I've ever been in.

Me buying vegetables from the same guy every week, at the louma in Nioro.

The family portrait.

Mom and I and all of our stuff in a charette to the village.

Me in a St. Louis cafe. Are we still in Senegal? It's hard to say in this picture!

Letters, visitors, and packages from home keep us Volunteers sane. Thank you, maman!!!!

Things to be Thankful For

2008-11-29T04:28:00.001-08:00

Mom and I were on Ile de Goree on Thursday when we encountered a Thanksgiving surprise: Jen and her parents were there as well! So we enjoyed a fantastic dinner together (seafood, not turkey, but it was delicious anyway!) They're just starting off their trip, where Mom and I are finishing up. I hope they enjoy it! We've had a truly amazing time. I attribute the luck we've had with travel to our gris-gris, specially selected to ease our voyage. Best 1500cfa I've spent in Kaolak for a long time! Don't leave home without one! Anyway, smooth travels and good times all round. Since we left the village, the primary focus of our trip has been food. I have eaten SO MUCH good food this past week! It's gonna be a long way to fall back to cere ak basi. But, I have a lot to do before going on my official month-long vacation to Togo, then Burkina Faso and Mali with my friend Arwen...I'm excited, but trying not to freak out too much prematurely! After waving goodbye to Keur Ali Gueye, Mom and I went to Palmerin, which was perhaps the most beautiful place I have been in Senegal yet. We stayed in a resort hotel which had built our room literally into a huge baobab tree. The trunk fomed one wall of the bathroom, there was a terrace for breakfast encircled by powerful branches, and the room was cradled high atop the thick trunk. Really, it was a stunning place, full of birds who landed on the lagoon, and other rooms tucked away in corners on the property. The food there was entirely haute cuisine. Wonderful creations using local ingrediants that were just delicious. Light lunches with plenty of vegetables, and perfectly prepared meat and fish. We did a kayak randonee in the mangroves, where we saw all sorts of beautiful birds; pelicans, flamingos, cormerants, and so many others that I don't even know the name of. Even if you're not a birdwatcher, Senegal forces you to appreciate the variety and beauty of birds - there are so many, such diverse shapes and colors, you can't help but notice them! My favorites are these birds that look like black starlings, until they turn to catch the light, and you realize that they are in fact shimmering blue, their feathers sparking as they fly off, when you notice that they also have a graceful long tale which only spreads completely when in flight.
We also had four relaxing days at the beach of Toubab Dialaw. Good food, a calm atmosphere, and the ever-present sound of waves rolling onto the Atlantic shore. Our hotel there was adorable, too; they had decorated it all with shells or smooth sea stones, with curving alleys and low thatched roofs. It looked like a Hobbit village! One day we walked all the way from Toubab Dialaw to Popenguine, which was pristine coast all the way to this town called Ndiayne, where all of a sudden we encountered children using the beach as a toilet and people dulping their garbage onto the sand, right next to the fishing pirogues waiting to head out to sea! Really gross. But, we survived the nastiness and made it to Popenguine, which is as gorgeous as ever. Still, if ever I appreciated the importance of lartines, it was on that beach of Ndiayne!
Then, a fabulous overnight on the Ile de Goree, doing the museums all the next day and wandering the island. It really is a lovely place, full of bright colors, cobbled streets, and billowing bougainvillea everywhere. Now we only have a day left before Mom flies home, and I return to eating millet daily. Last night, though, we went to a bar called Just4You and ende dup at a concert of Les Frères Guissé, who were AMAZING!!! They were really excellent. A unique sound, and they kept the crowd animated the whole time. What a treat.

Mary Kay Comes to Senegal

2008-11-19T05:15:00.000-08:00

Me and my two host moms showing off our new Mary Kay products. Don't they look pretty with their lipstick!

Mom's visit has been going so well so far, it's almost hard to believe! That last blog post was by her, of course, in case you thought I'd started talking about myself in third person. We started our trip in St. Louis, which was absolutely beautiful. Lots of old colonial buildings, fat horses pulling urban charettes, and three days of delicious food. We ate our money all right! And it tasted so good! Then, a trip to Kaolack (which was cleaner than usual, thank goodness. The sewage has begun to dry out not after the rainy season) to shop and hang out with the Volunteers, and then the highlight of the trip so far: Keur Ali Gueye. It has been such a full, happy week in the village! Everyone was beyond delighted to meet my mother, so welcoming and excited. She bought tea and sugar, which we distributed to every compound, so the whole village could partake in the fun, but also brought vermicelli and five fat chickens for a neighborhood feast of pasta with chicken-and-onion sauce. We ate well there too! The family really showed their culinary skills for the special guest. We've had chicken twice, a wonderful tomato mafe with fish balls, and vegetable-rich ceeb u jen all week. Plus, there has been work to do! I distributed about thirty books yesterday to kids who all crowded into my hut. I'd filled a trunk from the Bookmobile stash, to start a loaning library in the village, so people can get used to the idea. It was even more of a hit than I expected! Especially with the older kids, who were in competition for the few French books, which went especially quickly. But even the English ones with pretty pictures (and really, a picture is worth a thousand words, right?) went like hotcakes. I explained to everyone that the book is theirs to enjoy AND PROTECT for two weeks, and then they must return it and may choose another one. The test will be when I return, to see how many I get back. But they're out of my hut and into people's hands, which is the whole idea anyway. I've also been working with the girls' and women's groups, setting up a soap selling business. They want to make their own, so I found a trainer and set a date for after Tabaski, which hopefully she will keep. They know the materials they have to provide - cooking supplies, regular peanut soap, ash, neem, sticks for stirring, etc. - and I already bought the lye, which is sold in the Kaolack market. Mom and I also got gris-gris for safe travel there, which so far have served us well! No problems on the road to report, exept for dust.
Also, of course, the gifts from the USA. Each of the kids got something. One of the biggest hits was a little whirlagig flower on a stick, the kind that spins when you blow it. My host dad got a fancy Leatherman, which he will no doubt put to good use with all the repairs he does, and each of the host moms got a pretty beaded ring, and a Mary Kay lipstick. Everyone loved their gifts, and it gave me special pleasure to hand out the makeup, which my good friend in Seattle sells. Really, nothing brigthens a woman's face more than a little lipstick. Which is ironic since I haven't worn any for nearly a year! Maybe on Tabaski....
Wish us continued good luck and good travels, we're off to the beach before Mom heads home!

And a very important postscript: I see that more than a thousand dollars has already been donated to the latrine project! Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU everyone who has contributed!

She has a place in Africa

2008-11-18T03:30:00.000-08:00

She has a place in Africa. My daughter. She has a place in Africa where everyone knows her name. The minute she opens her outside aluminum door the day begins with all its greetings - the coming and going of the children, the head of household, the neighbors. She then walks to greet the important people in the village - the Imam, the Chief, the oldest grandmother, the chief's 3 wives. Finally she can begin her day. No matter where she goes she is called to, "Abby-Gway!" "Abby-Gway!" As we walk down nearby roads, as we walk past huts, the well, as we walk through neighboring villages, they know her name. Abigail is frustrated by the relentless greetings, the time it takes to honor each household or individual with a greeting, sometimes even sit to repeat the salutatory exchange. A repartee of the same greetings/blessings and then the same questions about your health, family, did you sleep well, the weather - with a rote answer for each before gently moving on. A time honored way to show respect and community. She lives in a 10x10' hut, no electricity, no running water. It is the ultimate camping experience. Except that it is her place for 2 years. She has a comfortable bed, though, with the mandatory mosquito netting all-round, made from foam rubber. At the end of the day we are exhausted although it doesn't always seem like we've done too much. But the days are just packed! With greetings, drawing water from the well, maybe 2 hours in the fields schucking maize or cracking peanuts, then there might be wash to do, or a discussion with the older women about their soap business, the girls giggling about some teenage thing, a discussion about the midday meal - or you may begin helping with that: plucking a chicken, peeling the vegetables, washing the rice. Then the heat sets in; it's 2pm now. And November. And November is nothing compared to May. But you will see people lying down on mats now. Waiting for the meal to be ready. The sounds of schucking peanuts, or pestle hitting mortar, children laughing, children crying, children singing. There is always sound. She has this place in Africa.

A busy week

2008-11-04T06:12:00.000-08:00

First of all, whoever gave that first 100 dollars towards constructing the latrines, thank you very, very much! You're awsome.

It has been a very busy week for me. Which feels good, but is also stressful! I've been running back and forth to Kaolack working on things for the Bookmobile. Our truck looks fantastic, but we are still trying to find financing and materials to install the shelving. I set a date to pick up some more books in Dakar in a couple days. I just bought ten big metal trunks to store books in, which the paticipating Peace Corps Volunteers will distribute in their villages. Now that we have those, the books can get out there even though the truck is not complete. Mme. Viola Vaughn was honored with a ceremony last week, celebrating her nomination as a 2008 CNN Hero. Kind of a big deal! The US Ambassador was there, as well as the Peace Corps Country Director, and many other important people - local and regional officials, work partners, media, etc. Two of my good friends brought their girls' groups, who are working in conjunction with 10,000 Girls. It was completely amazing to watch them speak in front of everyone, many as confident as any American kid used to public speaking, some shy but trying so hard and doing a fantastic job. This program really helps girls blossom. They have so much confidence and spunk! It's really quite wonderful. Yesterday I gave out the other Michelle Sylvester scholarship to the middle school girls who won in a nearby town. Everyone is so grateful for that, even though it is such a little thing; but it could make a big difference in a girl's success in school this year, now that she doesn't have to worry about finding money for supplies and inscription fees. I'm also working iwth a fledgling young women's group in the village, who is buying soap for 125cga in Kaolack, to resell for 150cfa, to get a small profit. Its good practice, but I found a lady who can train them to make the soap themselves from scratch, so I hope to hook them up sometime next month. Now I'm in Kaolack again, having to run around like crazy to get a few more things done before my Mom comes to visit. The entire village is ecstatic that she's going to spend several days there. It should be an adventure!

Latrines

2008-10-31T10:28:00.000-07:00

There comes a time in many development workers' carreers when they start to ask for money. That time, for me, has come! After a series of meetings, talking with my counterpart, hashing out plans, writing a proposal, getting it signed and sent to Dakar for approval, at last my Peace Corps Partnership application is online. Here's the address:
https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=685-108
Basically, a Peace Corps Partnership is a way for folks at home to donate money directly to a specific project. My proposal is for latrines. Here's how it happened: my counterpart came to me asking whether I may have an idea how to get funding for building latrines in the village. At the moment, very few families have a latrine in their compound. They simply go into the bush, usually at night. Just before the rainy season, my counterpart built a latrine behind his house. It's a very simple design: a hole in the ground, a hard-packed seat set over wooden poles, the top reinforced with the little cement leftover from patching my cracked hut walls. He's hoping it will last a couple seasons before collapsing under the rains. Meanwhile, the neighbors come over to our compound all the time to use it! They'd love to have latrines in their compounds, too. Behind every home is an open area where they tether the animals, maybe have a hutch for chickens or ducks - the perfect place to install a latrine. My counterpart was very excited when he heard about the possibility of a Peace Corps Partnership. If we collect the money, he will be in charge of organizing thirty families throughout the village to build their own latrines. Ideally this will happen right before the rainy season, when people have plenty of time to collect the sand, gravel, and water they need for construction, and to do the labor. My counterpart has the technical skills and the community connections to get it done; what the village needs is the money to buy enough cement and iron bars for thirty latrines to be built. With these materials, the latrines can be built well enough to last. One of the few families who has one built it this way, and they say their latrine has lasted over ten years! It's an instant imrovement to village health, especially for the children. And, as I've said before, there are a LOT of kids!
Any amount you can give would be a huge help. Whatever small things I manage to accomplish are tiny drops in the bucket of this village's development. Building latrines would be a splash!

Peanuts, encore

2008-10-21T02:55:00.000-07:00

The goat kids have taken to sleeping in the shade of my doorway. They don't move even when you step right over them!

Life has come more or less full circle for me. When I arrived we were deep into peanut season; now, again, life is full of peanuts! There are seriously mountains of peanut plants piled in peoples' compounds, or in the fields. Most of the day can be occupied sitting in front of one of these green hills, pulling out the plants one by one to strip them of their nuts. The other day I spent a total of six hours "xontent gerte" - that's pulling peanuts. It's calm, repetitive, brainless work that I find strangely soothing. For the most part, the millet harvest is done now. Charettes loaded with millet stalks now traipse into town; the stalks will become new fences before long. Behind my family's compound is an enormous stack of millet, as tall as I am! My host father says we'll eat it all, but it sure looks like a lot of millet to me. Still, I guess it does feed about twelve people, twice a day. The girls and young women get a workout pounding the grains into flour, sifting it, and going through all the other steps of preparing "cere", the grainy cereal we eat for dinner and breakfast. At first I hated the taste of millet cere, but it's growing on me. And I'm getting pretty tired of rice.
So, this past week I've been pulling peanuts mostly. But I took a day to harvest my sesame, which is ripe now. I had to cut it and stack it upright on a piece of cloth, because the little seed pods will burst open and spill sesame seeds everywhere. So, now they're mostly contained in a bucket and hopefully I won't lose too many. Yesterday, I biked to Taiba Niassene to give out the scholarship to the winning student from last year. The principal of the middle school was delighted that I came with prize money for a promising young girl, and she seemed equally pleased (though shy) to accept the 30,000cfa and her winner's certificate. To the three other finalists I gave a letter of recognition, that hopefully they can present later on to show that they were indeed one of the top four female students in their school (at least, according to me, who read their essays, teacher recommendations, and did an interview with each of them). I didn't know what else to say besides congratulations, and tried to emphasize that this scholarship is designed to reward girls who are serious in their studies, and to help those with limited means to continue their education; hopefully I managed to get some of that across in my mangled French/Wolof.

Photos

2008-10-14T06:03:00.001-07:00

Some photos for your enjoyment! Comments below each one.

Sometimes, you have to bail the boat so you don't sink in the mangroves.

Baby goats are the devil's children - they get through any fence and eat all your crops! If only they weren't so adorable.

This stuff is known to you as birdseed; to me it is dinner.

My host sister cutting millet in the field.

I snapped this picture of my neighbor as we went to the fields.

This is a whole lot of sweet potato, and some bissap, and a cashew tree and basil in a neighbor's garden.

CNN Heroes

2008-10-12T04:09:00.000-07:00

Here's a bit of exciting news! Viola Vaughn, the lady who runs the NGO "10,000 Girls" has been nominated as one of the top 10 Heroes by CNN. This is a HUGE deal, because now there will be a bigger feature on her and the program. If you forgot, 10,000 Girls is the program that hosted the girls' English/democracy camp. They're the organization I'm helping to start the Bookmobile. In my friend Kate's village, her girls' group started a huge bissap and cashew cultivation project, that will be linked to 10,000 Filles product transformation project in Kaolack, which will produce teas and other goods for export. Also, Mme. Viola runs an excellent program in the city of Kaolack that caters solely to girls who have been struggling in school, as well as a successful entrepeneurship program. In short, she's an amazing lady who has done an enormous amount of good throughout this region of Senegal. And now, there is a chance to help her out for free! You can vote for her on CNN.com. Thanksgiving, I believe, is the final announcement of the winning Hero for 2008. So if you think she deserves it (and I sure do!) check out her work and VOTE for Viola Vaughn!

Here's the address:

www.cnn.com/heroes

A village Korite, and the Harvest

2008-10-06T08:52:00.000-07:00

Korite in Keur ALi Gueye was very different from the one I experienced in Thies. In the village, everything is so communal; there's not a party if tons of people don't show up. In Thies, I remember, my host family killed probably half a dozen chickens and cooked up huge plates of yassa - onion sauce - over rice, served with chicken meat, for the family and a few guests. For Korite in the village, they killed a cow and the various families all went to buy a couple kilos of beef. Then, we all cooked the same thing, like we did for Tabaski: a meat sauce, heavy with oil, made with onions, fried potato slices, macaroni, and seasoned with plenty of mustardand vinegar. The men went off, as they tend to do, to eat the meal together, and afterwards the women of the neighborhood gathered in a courtyard to share bowls of the sauce, to be sopped up with bread. Everything shared, everyone participating. For them, Koritewas also a day off, and the very next morning people were back to work, because now the harvest is really beginning.
Every day now there is some kind of work to do harvesting the crops. The past few mornings, after breakfast, I've headed out to my host family's enormous millet field to pick my way through the flattened stalks, searching out the candles and slicing them off with my new "goban" - my knife for cutting throughmillet stalks. It's quick work, once you get the hand of it, and we've managed to hack our way through maybe a quarter of the field in two days. The result is two huge stacks of millet, laid out on beds of dried leaves in the midst of the field, which will be gathered up later and stored in my backyard. It's really a lot of millet. Known to youas birdseed; known to me as dinner. Meanwhile, the peanuts are ripening quickly as well. I've made several trips back and forth to a couple peanut fields, to do my part in collecting them. The nuts are sold in big sacs, and the leaves are kept, too, to be dried into hay for horses during the coming dry season. When I filled my water bucket full of peanuts and had them counted out (measured by the comato can), I found I'd gathered 10 cans-full, which, being given 25cfa a can, came out to 250cfa. That's about 50cents! The next day I only filled seven cans, and made 125cfa. The peanut owners are insisting on paying me, just like everybody else, but while it's nice to be treated the same as everyone, I'd rather not take their money. Luckily they don't usually have it right away, as it comes in only after they've sold the crop, so maybe if I don't ever mention it again they'll forget the 250cfa... if not I'll have to spend it on tea and sugar to give right back to them.

More beans and millet

2008-09-30T08:28:00.000-07:00

Beans are everywhere still, which delights me. Some farmers have started paying back the beans seed I gave them, which mostly performed well, so I bought an old oil jog which I cleaned and dried thoroughly. Now I'll stash the beans in there until next year so the bugs can't get in. Meanwhile, our millet is also ripe. People are heading out to their fields, which have gotten so tall the stalks have begun to fall over. Millet is a very satisfying crop to grow. From tiny seeds that become bright green, tender shoots of grass which you'd never believe will ever grow big enough to feed a sheep, much less a person, come these towering plants with many tillers, heavy with grain, soaring over peoples' heads as they walk along the muddy path through the fields. Now, it's all falling down, being ripped up by the roots and laid in orderly rows by the men and older boys, while everybody else comes along with a half-moon knife to slice off the candles and arrange them into stacks. So, the inevitable sounds of women and girls pounding millet are returning to the village. Tomorrow is Korite, celebrating the end of Ramadan, so soon we'll be working hard again and well-fed, so everyone will be happier. There will be some things to miss about the fasting month, however. Waking up before dawn to down a couple spoonfuls of funde is NOT one of them. But, sitting in the cooling evening, waiting for the call to prayer which announces the hour of breaking fast, then enjoying a hot mug of coffee, a cup of bissap, maybe a handful of bread, is very nice.
Just yesterday I went with everybody to a peanut field, one of the earliest to be harvested. It's quite an all-day affair! Almost all the women and children were there with buckets, pots, and bowls, which they filled with peanuts from enormous piles of uprooted plants. We pulled them up before settling down to "hontet", or snap off the peanuts from their stems. For a tomato pot full of these fresh peanuts, the field owners will pay 25cfa. So, it's a good way to earn a little extra money, and get some peanuts to take home too. My host sister pulled enough peanuts to buy herself a new pair of sandals for Korite; my little brother slacked off and only made enough for a lollipop. I didn't bring my own bucket, so I just helped whoever I was sitting with, so I'm not sure how many pots I had. Next time I plan to keep count and see how much my work is worth!

I love beans

2008-09-23T05:05:00.001-07:00

Here is a funny picture of some Agriculture Volunteers, with a sign exemplifying our raison d'etre ici.

I've spent some very nice afternoons in the village, picking and shelling beans. There's beans all over the place! Black ones, red ones, speckled ones, white ones (which are the kind I distribute) and they all need to be shelled. It's easier to shell them if they're a little dry, but not TOO crunchy, and the beans inside are still moist but starting to harden. But, you get everything from shriveled, bone-dry pods to plump wet ones, and I love shelling them all. Finally, again, there is work to do with my hands! It's a fantastic feeling, to have a pile of beans before you, and work at it gradually until the job is done. The feeling of absolute finality is the reward, and it is wonderful. The beans themselves are tasty and now appearing more often in our meals, which I am delighted about. Perhaps the tastiest meal I've had with my village family was rice, lightly oiled, cooked with dried fish, beans, and a few vegetables. So yummy! And much healthier than plain rice.

Progress

2008-09-15T05:36:00.000-07:00

At last, the bookmobile truck is nearly ready! After three months of stagnation (me going to see the mechanic; me seeing that no progress had been made on the truck whatsoever; me yelling at the mechanic; mechanic swearing he will start right away - this cycle repeated many times, to the point that everyone at the mechanic's garage knows my name) the truck has been mostly repaired. It's an old delivery vehicle that we are transforming into a moving library. So, sliding windows were installed up top to provide ventilation and light. Just recently they painted the truck bright red, with cheerful white lettering on the side: Book Mobile, it says, "Books for the Community", along with the 10,000 Girls website address and logo. On the reverse side we plan to put a quote: "Educate a girl - pathway to Paradise" in four different languages: Arabic, English, French, and Wolof. Hopefully that turns out well too. Then, just a few more mundane repairs to do, and the installment of shelves to store the books, and we are ready to hit the road!
This afternoon I am in Kaolack, with a script written in French and Wolof of the story "The Frog Prince". The Kaolack Volunteer has a weekly radio show, and this week I agreed to help him out. There have been a variety of topics: health/nutrition, American culture, local-language shoutouts (for those Pulaar and Serere minorities!) and, now, story hour. The story, in French, is followed by a summary in Wolof (I did my best, though I don't know how to translate concepts like "princess" oe "bad fairy" in that language...hopefully people don't get too confused), and encouraging people to seek out books on their own. Unfortunately, books are not readily availible. There are little "librairies" selling whatever random texts they may have come across. Also, deep in the Kaolack market there are vendors with tables of books for sale, everything from old school textbooks to American novels left behind by God-knows-who ages ago. However, these are often expensive, the selection sporadic, and not easy to come by. Some schools might have small libraries, and there is a collection as well at the Alliance Francaise. But, for most people, books are a rarity. Just this weekend, we spent two days doing an intensive cleaning of the house. We ended up culling all the magazines older than 2007, which made a huge stack outside our front door. Just last night, walking home after buying sandwiches, we passed by a group of maybe twenty young men engrossed in our old magazines. Every page was gone by morning. Reading is good!

Fasting

2008-09-09T04:44:00.000-07:00

Every morning one of the women knocks on my door before six, to wake me up for an early meal before dawn. We all stagger over to the bowl, half-asleep, and eat spoonfuls of watery millet porridge - "funde" - in the dark. The morning prayer usually comes around this time, too, which I usually don't get to hear because I'm asleep. I can't eat very much so early, so after a few bites I'm ready to go back to bed for an hour or so until the sun starts to rise over the top of my millet-stalk fence and people begin going about their day. Long gone are the days I used to recline in bed until ten on the weekends; now I'm up around seven, and if I'm feeling lazy I may stretch it ti seven thirty, but my "sleeping in" is not impressive. I feel like I should at least be up and about while little girls are already starting their morning by pounding millet into flour, women are pulling water, and people are busying themselves with chores. Anyway, after that pre-dawn breakfast there's nothing to eat until 7:30pm, when the prayer calls us again to break the fast. During the day no one eats or drinks anything. They even spit out their saliva so as not to swallow it. I do not do this. Instead I sustain myself with water when I feel thirsty, or a small candy to tide me over the hungry times, though of course I don't do that in front of anyone. Fasting isn't very hard at all when you drink, but I can't imagine how difficult it must be to have no water at all in your system. And I don't care to find out. Somehow, despite the fast, life goes on in the village. The women pull just as much water from the well, morning and afternoon (though how they're even moving beyond noon is beyond me), and people do light field work in the morning if there is any. But, things do move somewhat slower than usual. The daily market doesn't start now until 5pm, when it used to be going by 11, but no one starts cooking until late during Ramadan. On my last trip to Kaolack I bought a game they call "Lido", a four-color game with rules that I still find baffling. The version I got has pictures of Senegalese music stars, but there are also ones with soccer players or marabouts; there's a lot of variety. It is, incidentally, the only board game I've ever seen in Senegal. "Lido" gets a lof of action these days, as people finally have time to relax. Most of the farming is done; we're just waiting for harvestime. Beans are already ripe, and I've been collecting them from the various fields to weigh and calculate how productive that plot was. For the most part the beans produced high yields, and people are glad to have them now, when money is tight and they can add a nice protein boost to a rice-based meal. Plus they're delicious. Corn, too, is ripe. At the louma the streets are lined with corn, and kids strip the husks into threads to practice braiding. In the evening after breaking fast we've been roasting cobs on a charcoal brazier, until the kernels are black. The corn is not sweet or juicy like I'm used to at home, but it has a heavy, earthy flavor and a pleasing texture. I really enjoy nibbling on blackened corn before dinner. Our fast is broken with a cup of hot coffee or kinkiliba tea. My basil is a favorite with the neighborhood, because people like to mix it with the kinkiliba leaves when boiling the tea. It adds a nice aroma and you can really taste the basil. I give out a lot of basil leaves, and those who planted their own from my mother plant's cuttings are using it too. Along with our hot drink is bread, if the family can afford it, which is not usually. If there is, though, that's the first solid thing I've eaten since liquidy funde hours and hours before. Also, we get a cup of cool bissap juice. Then a little while after dinner is served, which is a rice dish, not millet cere as usual. So far the food has been very tasty, which is good news as it's the only meal of the day!
Ramadan could be an excruciatingly slow time of year for us Peace Corps Volunteers, but I managed to stay busy this week by finishing up the paintings at the school. Now each of the four classrooms has some colorful scenes, painted by myself and whatever kids I could round up. Besides the room with the maps, there is now a room painted with domestic animals, and two with scenes of village life and learning. Only a few touch-ups to go - I plan to paint a Senegal flag in each room, too - and we're done! The school looks great, and everyone who has peeked their heads in has been delighted. Hopefully the teachers like it too, when they come back for the start of school next month.

Ramadan, take two

2008-09-02T02:05:00.000-07:00

A closeup of the sesame blossoms. Aren't they pretty?

I'm at the Nioro louma today with a sack of millet, which my host mom asked me to sell for her. Millet has not yet ripened, so it's last year's grain, which we're lucky to have plenty of. Prices should be pretty high anyway. With whatever money I get, she asked me to buy half a kilo of "gejj" - dessicated fish, usually on the bigger side, which have been split open and dried into thick slabs - and "ketchax", which are smaller fish, also dried and salted, but to a kind of flaky, oily consistancy. If I have any money leftover she wants some cloves to put in the coffee. Ramadan has come again, which means breaking fast in the evening. Nothing special happens to kick off the month. Last night the prayer went longer than usual, and people cooked a special dish after dinner, but that was it. This morning no breakfast, except for the kids. And no lunch. The big question on everyone's mind is whether or not I am fasting. And the answer is: kind of. I don't plan on eating anything all day, so I can break fast with the family at sundown. But, if I'm thirsty I'll drink. People kind of chuckle when I tell them this; it's not real fasting, they say, but they understand that Americans are pansies and don't really expect me to fast anyway. The fact that I am doing it at all is surprising and, I think, they appreciate it. But it will make for long days. No food or drink between sunup and sundown! Only no doubt I will cheat and have an occasional (okay, a frequent) piece of candy and a drink of lemonade in my hut. The crops are ripening, though, and some will be ready for harvest during the month. That will be exhausting.

Why my blog is boring

2008-08-30T06:27:00.000-07:00

I've realized that my blog entries have become less rich, less detailed and interesting lately; compared to how they were during training in Thies; or my first few months at site. The reason for this, I think, is that I"m used to it all. Riding along in a rickety white minivan, hurtling through potholes and getting out to push this questionable vehicle through the mud, is no longer a noteworthy event. I don't feel thrilled or overwhelmed as I navigate the narrow aisles of the weekly market, walking past ladies selling cheap jewelry or cosmetics; guys with tables loaded down with betteries, pens, and other miscellania; louma pharmacists vending dubious pills of unknown composition. I find myself - loaded down with several kilos of vegetables, beans, or perhaps some dried, salted fish - wandering in search of a beignet seller or a girl with a bowl of frozen bissap juice bags on her head. And this is normal. Passing carts pulled by bony horses, their tales rubbed raw from contact with the wooden boards, no longer shocks me as it used to. Stepping over piles of litter and dark puddles of unknown muck, while wearing flip-flops, is not a frightening activity. Herds of sheep or frolicking families of goats, ownerless cats or dogs, all picking their way through the garbage for a snack, is a daily sight. Even the bright colors have become second-nature to me. Shocking orange and pink print fabric, worn perhaps as a figure-hugging complet, blends in with the many other striking colors and scenery that I see, every day, every week. So, inevitably, I notice these thigns less. They cease to be noteworthy for me, and thus do not get mentioned in this blog, and therefore are not passed on to you all. In my head I know that the USA is not like this, and that even mundane aspects of my life here are meaningful for those who don't live them, but it is hard to remeber what is worth recording anymore. I get excited by flowering sesame plants, for God's sake! Tree saplings make me clap my hands and when I get greasy rice for lunch it is a big deal. I am pleased when it rains enough to fill my buckets so I don't have to pull water from the well. That's what the Peace Corps does to you. I have no perspective on the world anymore. Is this blog even interesting? I find ripening millet to be interesting! But as I said, I am so far gone now that I have forgotten what's worth writing down.

Putting Keur Ali Gueye on the Map

2008-08-26T09:55:00.000-07:00

My neighbor Wanna painting the names on the countries of the world.Last week Wanna came over to help me paint maps on the school walls. With the inevitable flock of children clustered around the door, studying our every move, we painted in all the colors of the countries of the world on one wall, a map of the African continent on another, and a large map of Senegal on a last wall. It was a fun project! Though not improved by the breathing in of paint fumes and the use of a mysterious mixing chemical, which may or may not have been turpentine. Anyway, the walls of the school look beautiful! We wrote out all the country names and labeled everything and, though there are some tiny inaccuracies (which we fixed as best we could, drawing lines and erasing borders) the whole ensemble is colorful and really exciting for the kids. They took off singing the Senegalese national anthem as we painted the country map, along with the occasional refrains of "We Shall Overcome", which I still hear often from my visitors' and my song teaching adventure. Now one whole room of the school is bright with maps that the children can study during their breaks, or during class, I hope. The plan is to use the remaining paint to put murals on the walls of the other classrooms. At the moment the school is very bland, so unlike what I remember from elementary school, with colorful posters, paintings, quotes, and art projects hanging everywhere. So murals will really improve the atmosphere.
And now, the millet is above my head! It's starting to produce "candles" - the long, thin heads of grain - though now they are in the flowering stage. It is a deep kind of contentment, walking next to a towering field of heavy-topped grass, hearing the wind rustle through the leaves, and know that this is our food. Corn is producing ears, though not ripe ones yet, and the beans are absolutely fantastic. People are already harvesting and eating some of the dried pods! I have on occasion pilfered a green pod, too. Tastes like fresh green beans. Though I am growing fond of the many ways Senegalese find to prepare black-eyed peas too. Also, two small cashew fields have been planted and are doing well, and one farmer (with my help, but only a LITTLE help!) has planted a live fence of thorny tree saplings around his orchard. Yay! That's EXACTLY what we want to see! The women are beginning to weed the bissap field, too, which will no doubt occupy our days for several months once it ripens, as it did when I first arrived in the village last November. And Ramadan is coming soon. When it arrives, I will have been here a year - a lunar year, since it started the day after I set foot into Senegal.

The Daily Grind

2008-08-12T03:38:00.000-07:00

Farming goes on daily, which means lots of bending over at the waist for weeding. Just yesterday my host brothers and sisters and I finished up on my host dad's big peanut field, so they were feeling pretty good. I spent a blessedly cool afternoon weeding in a few other people's fields, just to keep busy. Though it's hard on the back, there is something inherently relaxing about monotonous physical labor; you can let your mind wander and you complete the repetitive task, row by row, back and forth across the field. I am getting better at it, my body slowly growing accustomed to straining different muscles, but I still lag far behind most everybody when we're farming. There have been three good rains this past week, so the soil is heavy and damp. The crops look really good for the most part. Some of the corn is stringy, because the soil is not rich enough to support it, and farmers didn't add fertilizer (probably most could not afford to buy it) but the peanuts are thick and growing taller - they are the priority crop in this area - and the millet is puffing out into thick, many-tillered bushes. Hard to believe just a few weeks ago it looked like tender blades of grass, scattered tenuously around a huge brown field. Now you can't see the ground in most places, for the concentration of sprawling millet leaves. Cowpeas are so far the most satisfying crop for me to watch. They're so quick to mature, one farmer already has green pods starting to develop! We'll be cooking beans in no time.

Contrast

2008-08-04T02:44:00.001-07:00

Just for a bit of perspective: a photo of the same classic baobab tree,
in the rainy season and the dry.

Pretty crazy, huh? A little bit of water really awakens everything here! I've spent the last few days in the village working. Yesterday morning I bent over at the waist for three hours, weeding a peanut field. It was backbreaking work, and I am SO much slower than the local children, who toil seemingly tirelessly and thoroughly, though I'm sure their backs must ache just as much as mine. The peanuts are looking great now, sprouting lovely little yellow flowers, like mini snapdragons. Who knew peanuts looked like that? The day before yesterday my host father killed a big male duck, so I spent the morning plucking and cleaning it for lunch. If you'd asked me a year ago whether I could see myself ripping out feathers from a decapitated duck, moistened with hot water to loosen the follicles, and would be bloodying my hands holding it to be chopped into bowl-sized pieces, and savoring the taste of rich organ meat, I would been unable to imagine myself doing it. But now, that's a special event in my life. And duck for lunch makes for one happy family.

Busy, busy, busy

2008-07-29T04:05:00.000-07:00

Some photos:

A working mother taking a quick break from ploughing.

Introduction to a skit at the girls' camp.

One of the campers, reading on the dock. Beautiful area by the mangroves near Sokone.

Learning about Martin Luther King, Jr. His "I have a dream" speech was translated into French in these booklets, along with other information about the Civil Rights Movement. If you want to learn more about the program that put on this camp, go to 10,000 Girls' website: http://10000girls.org/

It's been a fabulously busy three days! The bus from Kolda dropped me off near

Kaymor, where I spent the night with Kate. We slept until 9:30, a ridiculously late time here in Senegal, but we were so tired after the Ag meetings! And sleeping in just one day is incredibly refreshing. The next morning I wrestled with vetiver grass, which was the reason I'd gone to Kaymor. Vetiver is a kind of grass that is very hardy, with a fragrant root system. It's supposed to work well when planted in water erosion sites, to catch the fleeing topsoil that would otherwise be washed away. It is, however, difficult to get out of the ground, as I discovered after sweating and hacking at the stuff with a machete. Still, I got enough to bring home to Keur Ali Gueye, and worked with a couple farmers transplanting it in their fields, perpendicular to the eroded ditches. They're flimsy little sticks now, but if all goes well they will plump up, spread out around the central piece, and inch'allah make an effective blockage that will make it so they can farm between the walls of vetiver, increasing the useful area of the field. That's the theory, anyway. The farmer who'se working on neem pesticide solution has kept it up, which is great, and his beans are bushy and green. Though I attribute that to his farming skills more than my neem solution. Tis also the season to outplant trees. I've gotten pretty militant about it, because the common refrain here is, "Later, later, we'll do it later," which gets me very worked up until I'm insisting, "No! Leegi LEEGI!" which means "now, RIGHT NOW!". It doesn't get me very far, though. However most of the vetiver got in the ground, and just yesterday I assisted at the planting of a twelve-tree cashew orchard. Not very big, but it looks so pretty and well-spaced. I hope they survive! At least better than the poor papayas. Probably five, maximum, have survived outplanting. The major killer being goats, of course. C'est la vie. My little test plot, however, looks fabulous. ECHO's basil and sesame seeds shot up and are growing nicely. Here's ECHO's website, too: http://echonet.org/ They're a great resource for us Agriculture Volunteers. For the moment that's all, but my goal before the end of the week is to outplant ALL my trees, and hopefully organize the two farmers who want live fences to drive charrettes to Eaux et Forets in Nioro to pick up their thorny species, and visit all the fields of Peace Corps ISRA seed. Can I do it? I think so! But I should really stop being so American. A "to-do" list, trying to check off things as they happen, can only end in tears here in Senegal.

Democracy Camp & Ag Summit

2008-07-24T09:59:00.000-07:00

It's been a busy couple of weeks! And I've only been able to spend one full day in my village since last Monday, because the activities have been taking place elsewhere. But my little demo plot is growing well, everything sprouted nicely, so I'm excited to get back to it. Visiting the fields is more fun now, too, because everyone is out there working most of the day. I'm learning to weed and thin with the "ngosi", a hand tool, which is laborious but effective. Finally, there is enough green material growing for animals to graze, so I hope our poor, bony horses start to fill out soon too. They're working just as hard as the people! Anyway, last Monday I took two girls from the village to Kaolack. The same program I'm working with on the bookmobile (10,000 filles) was putting on a five-day camp to discuss democracy, human rights, and gender equality. The camp was led entirely in English, by a group of college students from Goshan College. They did an awesome job! Though the village girls obviously don't speak English well (most not at all) we helped organize tables to mix them in with girls from Kaolack who did, and thus get the information translated. Kate and I were the two Peace Corps Volunteers there. Our role was to advise the students when they had questions about the activities they'd planned, and to be a translation resource if the girls had questions that needed answering in French or Wolof. The camp consisted of discussions, in which the girls participated fabulously well, and also games and activities. Some educational activities were writing mock political platforms (If I were President of Senegal...), and designing a flag representing democracy, and poetry writing on one of the Universal Human Rights (one girl wrote a stunning poem, in English, about how humanity transcends national boundries and differences in skin color; it was so good! Really blew me away.), and a collage project addressing stereotypes of women (these turned out amazing, too) there was also reading articles about Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr., and talks led by the very educated Mme. Vaughn (founder of the NGO) about what Islam teaches about gender equality. There were ice-breaking games, too, and possibly the highlight: group skits about womens' rights, all done in English, with the girls helping one another to understand. The skits turned out wonderfully! The girls really enjoyed it, and I could see them blossoming and gaining confidence each subsequent day of camp. It was a totally alien environment for so many of them, but they got so much out of it, really learned a huge amount, interacted with one another, and had a great time. One of the best things for me was Wednesday evening, when we built an American-style campfire. Somehow they'd found marshmallows in Kaolack, and bought butter cookies and chocolate spread. Thus, we introduced 30 Senegalese teenagers to the deliciousness of s'mores. Oh, they loved them! And I'm sure it was the first time any of them roasted a marshmallow over an open fire. After the gooey dessert, we had story time. Kate recited versions of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" and "The Three Little Pigs", which I translated into (pretty awful) Wolof as "Fatou and the Three Hyenas" and "The Three Little Chickens and the Big, Bag Dog". I think my imperfect language skills made the girls laugh all the harder. The stories were acted out by the Goshan students, which was hilarious! Everyone had a marvelous time that night. In short, the camp was a huge success.
As I write this I am actually in Kolda, a city to the South of The Gambia. We just finished our last day of the Sustainable Agriculture Summit, which was a really useful three days of discussion about the agriculture program, reviewing the project plan and going over possible activities for the rainy season. Kolda is very different from the area I'm used to. It is lush and green, covered with trees, and the melodic sounds of the Pulaar language are more common here than Wolof. The huts in the surrounding villages are round, with thatch roofs reaching halfway down the sides, so they look like fat toadstools. I think it's adorable! And though corners are handy for propping up things like bookshelves and beds, I rather envy the Kolda Volunteers their novel circular huts. Going through The Gambia to get here was an interesting experience, too. It took around two hours, border to border, which included waiting for a ferry to carry us across the river. I had a tasty grilled chicken sandwich at the dock: grilled chicken, macaroni, fried potatoes, lettuce, tomato, and ground black pepper, all for only 500cfa. A marvelous treat for only "temere"!

Farming

2008-07-12T04:21:00.000-07:00

It's been a busy week! We had a couple good rains the past few days, which means more trips out into the fields. By now most of the crops are big enough that almost everybody has a role to play. The machines are still at work, troweling the ground to pull of stubborn weeds and cover seeds with dirt, but there is also work to be done by hand. In the morning, everybody who can hold a handhoe heads out into the fields to dig around each individual crop, row by row, raking away weeds and grass. I've managed a row or two, but it's an exhausting, tedious task; bent over at a 90-degree angle, scraping away in the soil. But, it's good to have things to do! After the first nice rain I finally seeded the test plot in my backyard. I planted mint in one of my tires, and also a plot of beans near my concrete douche, and also cabbage, onion, collard greens, beets, and bissap in my garden. Nothing has sprouted yet, and it maybe never will; I am not an experienced gardener. But I thought I might as well try. Out behind my house, in the area reserved for me by my counterpart, I am practicing a no-till farming technique. Only working the ground where I'm seeding is the idea, leaving all the rest at Nauture's mercy. So I have a few rows of beans, come corn in zai holes, and four short rows of sesame. The seeds came from ECHOnet, an excellent organization that is a resource for lots of agriculture Volunteers. Also, I transplanted some of their basil. Basil grows fabulously here! And it smells so good too. Now one of the test fields is being treated with neem-leaf solution as a pest repellent, twice a week, and we're going to thin the millet test plot tomorrow hopefully, so people can observe what thinning method produces best. Once the corn grows to knee-height we'll plant the cover crop, lablab bean, in-between rows. It's supposed to serve as a green manure and protect the soil, as well as supplying edible beans. We'll see how all that goes. But, meanwhile, the evenings are cool, the mornings dewey, and I'm enjoying my time walking to and from the fields.

Slowly, slowly

2008-07-08T02:43:00.000-07:00

It's been a pretty dry week, though people are still seeding and working the ground. Now the crops must push up their tender sprouts through a crust of cracked, dry mud. About half of the farmers I'm working with have seeded their Peace Corps improved seed; one corn field is shooting up nicely, and the beans of course look great. They're easy to please. However right now it's mostly men and work animals in the fields. Only a few are big enough for the women and girls to go in with their hand tools to weed. So I mostly wander around, poke about in the dirt if there's something I can help with, and stare indulgently at the baby crops. I'm waiting for one more good rain to settle the soil, so I can seed my own little backyard garden and demonstration plot of zai holes, out behind my hut. But, there are things to do. Yesterday I accompanied my pilot farmer on the first neem solution application to his beans, and tomorrow we'll thin his corn. Soon, the women's group will plant their bissap field. My recently-seeded cashew pepiniere looks wonderful! They're really taking off, popping boldly up out of their little black polysacs. Around the first week of August they'll be ready to outplant, and I have several people interested. Of course, there was a lot of interest in the papayas, too, but after all were put in the ground, maybe only four or five have taken. One of the big problems is goats. Despite talking myself hoarse and giving suggestions for protecting the trees, they are very likely to be beaten by the sneaky goats. Goats are a depressing fact of life in Senegal.
One interesting thing that happened this week was a wedding. Earlier in the blog, I described the event where a young women left the village to go to her husband's house. Well, this is the flip side of that: a new bride coming into the village. She is the second wife of a man in my neighborhood, and it was very interesting to watch the ceremonies. I barely understand any of what's going on, but I do my best anyway. This time, the women got all dressed up accompanied the bride around the quartier to greet the imporant people. She had her head and face covered with a heavy, ribbon-embroidered cloth, which was held by the first wife, who led her new co-wife to and from the houses. Later, the women got to work cooking lunch and dinner. I contributed by chopping probably two dozen onions, which involved slicing my thumbs signifigantly, and my skin absorbing the scent of onions, which still hasn't worn off yet. But it was a tasty sauce! Meanwhile, the bride and the first wife were in another compound, getting dressed and made-up. We went there in the afternoon, where both women looked stunning, with elaborate hair and sparkling eyeshadow, wearing fantastic clothes. Then, the neighborhood women started singing as they escorted the two along the road, towards their house. It was a slow procession, but not serious; there is always a lot of joking, arguing and laughing in any village event. Coming to the husband's house (he, by the way, was somewhere else entirely during these whole proceedings; I have no idea what the men do on these occasions) there were clothes laid on the ground, which we walked on, as the bride was formally welcomed home. In the evening, of course, was dancing - my petit pagne is a celebity at such events, and I was forced to dance around a few times to show it off. The next day, the bride was led to the well (once again, with her face covered, guided by the first wife) to symbolically wash her laundry; the day after that (again dressed in her most beautiful clothes) she pounded millet. All daily activities in the village, made ceremonious because it's the first time she did them in Keur Ali Gueye.

Wet

2008-06-29T12:04:00.000-07:00

I awoke this morning to find that my village had become a swamp. To backtrack: since my last dramatic installment (the wind that blew my roof off, with enough rain to soak my bed but not penetrate far into the soil) there has been no rain to speak of. The fields waited, dry, and the men and boys returned to relaxing. There were many cloudy days, but no rain. Then finally, the day before yesterday, it happened. It was the late afternoon when the clouds started gathering in earnest, congealing into heavy, bruise-colored clumps low on the horizon. That day, the village children paraded through the streets, singing - so I was told - to bring on the rain. And it woked! At the beginning, there were only a few timid drops, and people went on with their chores, pounding millet and stripping nebedaye or baobab leaves for dinner as usual. But graually, the rain gathered force, until it came at last in an impressive waterfall that ran in thick rivers across the packed ground. Thunder and lightning added drama to the already-thrilling scene; the excitement in people's faces was contagious. Everyone grinning from ear to ear, whether they were dancing in the shower (like many of the giddy children did) or just sticking their heads out the door to watch the droplets fall from the straws of the roof. I stared out at my backyard, which gathered water at a surprising rate, washing swiftly over the grassless ground, over the flimsy green trunks of my recently-planted trees, and splitting to avoid my compost pile. After the main deluge had reduced to a tolerable trickle, I went outside to join the neighbors. Everyone was standing around on bits of high ground, watching the water run downstream towards the fields. My counterpart was so excited, he called me over and grabbed my arm to point out into a field behind the village, where we could see the sheen of water gathering. My host mom was laughing; many of the kids ran in wrapped in towels from where they had bathed in the downpour. Nothing but happiness all around. The frosting on the cake, for me, was yet to come. Only minutes afterward, the sun burst out from behind the westward clouds, creating an enormous, gorgeous rainbow in the east. It was a perfect arc, touching the ground on both sides, with all the colors bright and beautifully clear. One of the most flawless rainbows I have ever seen. The rain came again that evening, and the next day people headed out to the fields. I, too, went to work, visiting the nine farmers to whom I gave improved seed to test this season. I made sure to distribute the seeds last week, so everyone has what they're assigned, and they saw my germination tests so they know what to expect in that regard. Dotted all over the land were sillouettes of people, walking behind seeding or tilling machines, or urging on their work animals - horses, cows, and donkeys. I visited some of the fields that will be seeded with Peace Corps seed this year, so I can make notes about their performane during the coming season. But most people are busy with sowing peanuts at the moment, as that is their primary crop. Last night, then, came the real deluge. It rained so hard and so long, it filled up each of my buckets half-way! This also created huge expanses of standing water in the lower parts of the land, along the roads and in the depressions around trees. Walking out this morning, I heard the humming of frogs, who have appeared in legions overnight, and saw the puddles all around. Everywhere I walked were tiny, spring-green shoots pushing up through the wet sand. Birds fluttering and chirping everywhere! As I said, when I went out this morning, it was no longer into the dry Sahelian brush; it was a vertiable wetland. Now the real work starts for us all.

Photos and friends

2008-06-18T03:28:00.000-07:00

Note: these should really be looked at up bottom to top; they were added in reverse. Enjoy!
Hugging a majestic baobab tree in Toubakouta.
Heather and Adam enjoying the lunch they bought for the village. Noos yu bare! The goat was cute, and also delicious. Very oily meal; they used seven liters.Janet Lane comes to Senegal! Her new book, "Emerald Silk" was excellent. It has now joined the hallowed shelves of the much-frequented Kaolack house bookcase. Like to read much?My counterpart filling a shift in one of the village boutiques. I think it's time for me to display some images of a few of the fabulous people I work with. These are my two good friends Kate and Wanna, making lotion in my backyard:

Home is where the Hut is

2008-06-18T02:48:00.000-07:00

It's funny, but actually I am more at home now in a village, carrying a bucket of water on my head, than I am in Dakar where there is television and restaurants open late. Coming back to the village after a long series of outside activities made me appreciate anew the unique place it is, and how lucky I am to be having this experience. There really is nothing else like it. As I walked the seven kilometers from Nioro to Keur Ali Gueye, I passed fields newly tilled, and the few patches of fallow land are covered in a fuzz of emerald grass. All these are signs that the rainy season has officially started. This was announced to me in a rather shocking way late Sunday night, when a storm of thunder, lightning, wind and rain began to rage. At first I felt cozy in my hut, but soon, I began to feel a dripping coldness, and realized that there was a huge leak in my thatch roof - right over my bed. The rain was really coming down, and the gale was blowing hard, so I really could do nothing but get up and watch my mattress become drenched by the steady stream of droplets from the ceiling. By the time it was over, there was only one relatively dry spot; the rest of the bed was completely saturated. As we discovered in the morning, the wind has blow off the top of my roof, creating a sizeable hole. So, we tied the straw down with ropes, and I bought some plastic lining that we'll install today. Hopefully that should keep me dry for the rest of the season.
The morning after that big storm, all the men and boys of the village gathered their seeding and tilling machines, hefted sacks of peanut seed onto carts, and hitched up all their horses and donkeys. All day there was a stream of the going to and from the fields, seeding this year's crop of peanuts. It's all done by manpower, with a significant contribution from the horses, cows, and donkeys. The village is pretty much cleared out by every male over the age of five until lunchtime, when they finally come home to rest in the heat of the afternoon. I have yet to try my hand at plowing or planting, as my time has been occupied in the village with a variety of little projects: visiting the gardens where two farmers want to install a live fence (we'll plant it after a few more good rains, inch'allah), monitoring my germination test (the millet came up fantastically well, the beans too; corn did fine but sorghum is pretty pathetic) and planting trees. With the help/hinderence of the inevitable mob of children, we have outplanted about ten papayas, a few nebedaye, some "dank" (a rather dry, bland, fibrous green fruit with a huge pit), and my host father wants to plant the jitropha along the side of his backyard field sometime soon. I have also put a tree every few meters along my own backyard fence which, when they grow big enough, can be used as posts to tie the fence to. At the moment people use dead wood, which often falls down, as we discovered during another windstorm. Two whole sides of my millet-stalk fence blew over that time. Also, the NGO Tostan is doing a project with twenty village women to start up a savings-and-loans club, so that is an exciting new thing to observe. As the rain arrives, too, so do the mosquitoes. Therefore, it's time to start combating the inevitable malaria. Several programs are in place to attempt to reduce cases of the disease: a group will come through the villages to spray rooms with insecticide that is supposed to last throughout the rainy season. Another group will hand out coupons for free mosquito nets to mothers of children under five, which they can pick up at Postes de Sante in surrounding towns. Hopefully I can also do a formation on making neem lotion, which acts as a repellent. In addition to that, I must soon distribute the improved seeds to my village's chosen farmers, and start monitoring their fields, as well as setting up demonstration plots of new techniques to try. So, there's plenty going on! Also, the bookmobile project is getting going. I have meetings coming up about that in the next few weeks as well. As soon as the rains come, so does the work! It feels really good to be back in the village, though. I missed it, and always come back with a really positive feeling. Everyone is excited to see me, and I them; for now, this place is my home.
My annoying foot infection came back once I returned, though, so I'm still treating that. However, having it means I got a great insider's experience of traditional healing practices. My host father was very concerned about it, so he first gave me a red, white, and black thread to tie around my ankle, "to help pull out the infection". This was followed by two mornings of murmuring, spitting, and waving his hand over the wound; also, chewing up "nettattue" (I have no idea what this is; they look like little brown seeds, and are used in cooking) and patting the slimy mixture around the spot, "to draw out the fluids", and finally drinking several rounds of tea made from a leaf he brought me from the bush. Anyway, thanks to those treatments, continued hot soaks and antibiotics, the thing seems to be on its way out finally. I won't be the one to say those healing efforts didn't help it along!

Oh yeah

2008-05-31T06:20:00.000-07:00

I almost forgot: in other news, I am experiencing my first skin infection in Africa. It sucks. I don't recommend it. Mine involved a large, puss-filled abcess on my right heel. However, soaking with warm water, frequent washing, four-a-day antibiotics and antibacterial ointment - liberally applied - seem to be doing the trick. Just thought I should inform everybody of that delicious fact. Let's hope it gets back to normal soon.

UPDATE: it's all good. Mostly cleaned up, though still pretty ugly. Thank goodness for erithromiacin.

Back from the village

2008-05-31T06:04:00.000-07:00

We're on our way to Toubakouta after a four-day stay in the village. It was really neat to share my little slice of Senegal with two good friends, though it involved a lot of translating from English to Wolof. This wasn't too hard, though, considering it's mostly greetings. Heather and Adam bought a goat as a gift for the villagers, and this turned into quite the affair: buying rice, oil, seasonings, onions, and vegetables to cook a huge lunch. And, of course, slaughtering the goat. A unique experience for me and my American guests, who are used to seeing our meat shrink-wrapped instead of in the dirt with its throat slit. The meal was delicious, though, and the villagers really enjoyed it. Perhaps the highlight of the visit was a totally unxpected event. Going to sit with the teachers one evening at the school (the only people in town who can speak any English, besides the kids who sometimes know, "How are you? I am fine.") a teacher from the neighboring village came over. Maybe he asked for a song, I don't remember, but somehow we got to singing "We shall overcome." A song I haven't sung or heard probably since elementary school. The teachers loved it! They insisted we sing it again and again, write down the words, and teach them the tune. The visiting teacher from Keur Abibou was especially enthusiastic. He invited us to his class the next day to teach it to the students. So, we woke up and walked the half mile or so to his village, and stood up there in front of an excited classroom full of children, and taught them how to sing "We shall overcome." The teacher was so into it, he had us stay and go over the song many times, teaching it line by line, and having some children sing alone, to make sure everybody learned it. The kids were adorable, and they learned the words pretty well too. It was really a unique and heart-warming experience. Of course, after doing it there we had to subsequently teach the song to every class in Keur Ali Gueye (it's my village, after all; I have to give them special attention) which meant our voices were pretty sore by lunchtime, but it was worth it.

Friends Visit

2008-05-26T04:46:00.000-07:00

Heather and Adam are visiting me and we're having a great time! I'm trying to make it a quasi-authentic experience in Senegal. I guess I don't really know anything else. We packed into a big white mini-car, threw their bags on top, battled our way into sept-places, broke down on the side of the road once and brushed our teeth with neem sticks while the driver deftly changed a flat tire. We spent a fabulous day in the sand dunes of Loumpoul, a tourist desert where we slept in a low tent held down by sand, wandered the beautiful dunes, and rode a camel. It was awesome. Today we explored the Kaolack market, hitting the "fuggi jaay" (used clothes stands, where all the tee-shirts that could be sold absolutely nowhere in the United States make their final appearance), the rice sac-bag sellers, the jewelry ladies, the bissap and bui vendors, the fabric merchants. We passed by the hall of hanging, smelly meats that breaks probably every health code in the world, and the nearby fragrant spice corner, the vegetable stands, the piles and piles of mangoes for sale everywhere. It's neat to see Senegal through fresh eyes. I appreciate it all the more now that I am showing my friends around. Those in the know say Senegal is "Africa lite", because it is quite developed in comparison to many West African countries. Especially Dakar, land of paved highways, pedesrian overpasses, and streetlights. Hehe, while we were wandering downtown Dakar we were offered a cage full of live finches for sale, and a baobab in a pot, as well as the usual artwork and snacks. Everyone we've met has been extremely friendly and helpful so far, for which I am grateful. Tomorrow we'll head to the weekly louma in Nioro, and from there hop on a horse cart to the village. Real Senegal at last!

Dakar Again

2008-05-21T03:02:00.000-07:00

I'm in Dakar for the first time since WAIST, and it is a whole different view of the capital. Last time I spent all day hanging out with Volunteers on the softball field. This time, I've had to negotiate the city on my own getting to and from various meetings and accomplishing the chores that can only really be done in Dakar. On Monday I went to the American library for training related to the bookmobile. There are a lot of really good ideas, but we're still waiting on more books, a vehicle, and of course funding. But it's definitely moving along and I'm really excited to see it progress. Being here again, in the big city, is incredibly refreshing. I can see how one might be seduced by Dakar. It is an energetic city, growing by the minute: new roads, streetlights, resuaturants of every kind, elegant people. In some ways Dakar is very westernized, but still retains its unique Senegalese flavor in the colorfully-painted, overpacked "car rapides" cruising to all corners of the city, the street vendors of every ilk, and the occasional herd of sheep or cows on the roadside. Dakar is loud and dirty, exciting, full of possibility. I'm taking advantage of my time here to eat many pasteries and chwarma sandwiches, and to dress well. I cannot say how refreshing it is not to be a spectacle! I'm so used to shouts of "Toubab!" from those in villages and small towns, even Kaolack, but here in Dakar I am one of many, and it feels wonderful to be anonymous again.

Happy Birthday to me

2008-05-13T01:01:00.000-07:00

The daily charette selling fish. This is a healthy, beautiful-looking horse, unlike many.

When I turned 21 I was in Paris. My host family celebrated with a bottle of champagne and a delicious meal, then I went off to write my paper for finals. When I turned 22, I was in Colorado, finishing up college and wondering what on Earth I would do after graduation. On Friday I turned 23 in Senegal, and I went to the Magal Prokane. The Magal is a huge pilgrimage to Prokane, the natal village of Mamejara, the mother of an important marabout (though which one I forget). I met a few friends there and we wandered around the bustling market, similar to the weekly louma, only bigger, and with a higher concentration of religious paraphernalia: pendants with the faces of marabouts, posters, etc. It was cool to experience such an event, and everyone was really very gracious to us - lending a friend and I skirts and headscarves so we could go into the mosque, pointing the way to the well where Mamejara pulled water, the tree where she pounded millet. But as usual whenever I'm in a crowd here, it feels kind of funny, like a game of "spot the toubab", or like one of those pictures in the comic section of the newspaper, that maybe have a fish in a tree, or a fork growing among tulips, and the caption says "Five things in this picture do not belong." Yeah, if you took a picture of me, in Senegalese garb or not, I'd be the discrepancy you'd circle. One of the many things I'm slowly getting used to.
Anyway, as there has been a long blog-silence, you're probably wondering what I've been up to. Well, the girls' scholarship application has been finished and submitted; we'll know the winners in August inch'allah. My little pepiniere looks fabulous, with sacks full of little papayas, mangos, tamarind, nebedaye, and a bunch of others. I've even convinced a couple villagers to start their own, with the goal of planting live fencing when the rains come. Yay! The biggest problem I've had with it so far is the toads. They like to burrow into the wet sacks and ruin all my work. Not quite sure what to do about them. Peanuts are all done by now, for the most part, so when I hang out with the women it's to undo braids, drink tea, or occasionally prepare edible leaves for lunch or dinner sauce. There's been a lot of construction lately, which I like to do. At first people thought it was weird that I enjoyed the "tabar" - hut-building is men's work - but they're used to it now, and even invite me to come help out when a mud hut is being built. I definitely don't do as much work on it as they do, but I like getting my hands dirty and slapping wet dirt onto the bricks once they're laid. Plenty of the new houses in Keur Ali Gueye have my fingerprints in the mortar. Last weekend the Kaolack region had a meeting to try and formulate a distinct plan, with goals, for our region's development, and how we can work together across sectors. It was intense, but went really well. I think we're really getting somewhere. The meeting was held in a beautiful campement near Sokone, a town on the mangroves, where I demysted. It's good to get out to other parts of the country as well sometimes.

Some Like it Hot

2008-04-22T03:05:00.000-07:00

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.

Work!

2008-04-11T04:43:00.000-07:00

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!

Mr. Toad's Wild Ride

2008-04-04T08:39:00.000-07:00

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.

Easter in Senegal

2008-03-24T06:28:00.000-07:00

This is a very dated picture of me and a few other Volunteers, at the WAIST party. Don't we clean up good?

It's Easter monday so, of course, we have yet another "jour ferie". Although less than five percent of the country is Catholic, everybody gets the days off. Also, last wednesday was the "Gamou" celebration of the prophet Mohammad's birthday. Almost everyone cleared out of my village to go to Kaolack for the event, which left only a few of us in an unusually quiet Keur Ali Gueye. They all came back wearing fancy clothes, new jewelry, and toys for the kids. Noos yu bare! Meanwhile I have finally got a little tree nursery started in my backyard. Hopefully I will eventually have a hundred baby trees to outplant in the rainy season. I also plan to have sacs and seeds available to the villagers, if they want pepinieres of their own. We'll see how that goes! Mango season is starting, too, which makes me very excited. I love mangoes. There will be a stash of them hidden in my hut. The trees are shady and beautiful, with the heavy fruits hanging off in all stages of development. It's so exciting! Yesterday of course was Easter. It was an awesome time! I went to a friend's town, where four of us congregated to celebrate. Celebrations are of a significantly different caliber here. Ours involved going wallowing in the shallow salty river nearby, cooling off in the heat of the afternoon. Dinner was another highlight of the day. We bought a ton of vegetables at the market: lettuce, carrots, eggplants, tomatoes, onions, and green peppers. These we sauteed lightly, then simmered in spaghetti sauce with a little salt and pepper. The spaghetti we bought had bugs living in it, but, we shook out most of them and boiled it anyway. Extra protein, right? Boiling sanitizes everything. For the side, we mixed a green salad in a bathing bucket. Ah, Peace Corps gourmet! The dinner was truly delicious. We wound our fingers into the piping hot spaghetti, tipping our heads back to dangle it into our mouths. With fresh village bread we wiped up the chunky vegetable sauce, and we took handfuls of salad, dipped it into an impromptu oil-and-vinegar dressing (vegetable oil; cheap red vinegar) and it was amazing. Laughing and chatting all night, eating real, good food - these are the essentials to a fabulous evening. Happy Easter to all!

Random thoughts

2008-03-12T04:01:00.000-07:00

I will take this opportunity to write out some of the many, seemingly-insignificant details of my life that, when taken as a whole, turn out to be surprisingly interesting. Here we go!

Names
The Senegalese people are big into names. They are very important. Everyone is named after somebody else, and some people play important roles in the lives of their namesakes. In terms of family names, there are running jokes between certain ones. I'm still trying to figure them all out, but for example, some people when they hear my last name of "Gueye" will say, "Oooh! Gueyes like to eat!" It's pretty funny for them. That being said, there are very few origional names, and it's difficult to figure out who is who because they have the same names (first and last) as everybody else, only perhaps in a different order. Anyway, here is an incomplete list of common first names in my area. If you live in my village, chances are you or one of your many siblings has one of these:

For Women:
Fatou
Aissatou
Penda
Xhadie
Amy
Awa* (Interesting fact I just recently learned: if twin girls are born (which happens rather often, surprisingly enough) they are always named Awa and Adama. That might explain the unusual prevalence of those names.)

For Men:
Ibrahima
Moussa
El Hadji (This is the title given to men who go on the Hajj, or pilgrimage, to Mecca. I don't believe it is technically allowed to be passed on to others, but here it is anyway, resulting in many, many men and young boys (namesakes) named El Hadji who never have (many never will) made the Hajj)
Papa/Pape (I find this name hilarious, especially when a little kid has it; for obvious reasons)
Abdullaye

Fun words in Wolof
In my opinion Wolof is not the prettiest language in the world, but it has plenty of fun words to play with. Here are a few of my favorites:

"tigadegie" - meaning peanut butter - pronounced tig-uh-deg-ee
"jafe-jafe" - meaning problem - pronounced jaf-eh-jaf-eh

I guess that's only two words. But they're funny ones! And now my least favorite word in Wolof:
"xalis" - pronounced ha-leese - meaning money. I hear it way too often.

The shirt off my back
One of the annoyances I deal with on a daily basis is being asked for things. Not just money, though there is plenty of that, especially in town, where there are a seemingly inexhaustible supply of big-eyed, ragged "talibe" - street boys - begging for food or coins. Also not including the frequent requests for me to take so-and-so (their baby, their husband, their son, themselves) to the United States. Despite frequent earnest repetitions of the fact that I cannot get visas for anybody, they'll have to go to the embassy in Dakar; or, when that gets old, joking that my checked baggage isn't big enough to fit them inside, this is a constant and predictable question. I am resigned to responding to it regularly for the next two years. No, what I am talking about is an aspect of the village culture that is very difficult to get used to, and that is that people directly ask for what they want. Example:
"Give me your bracelets!"
"You're going to the boutique? Buy me a lollipop!"
"Your skirt is pretty. Won't you give it to me?"
Mostly, these are said jokingly, and can be brushed off more or less easily, depending on the intensity of the request. It's best to use humor, if possible, and then it just becomes one big joke and everybody laughs. But, after being asked for the sixth time to give somebody my shirt, I get sick of it and the creativity of my denials descreases signifigantly. Being a naturally nonconfrontational person, I am every day putting on an act by meeting such events head-on. Just ignoring it or trying to change the subject will not work; it must be battled through to the end. This can be stressful and exhausting. But, it's part of life for me now. And no, I will not give you my hat.

Working for Peanuts

2008-03-07T08:16:00.000-08:00

If you had asked me this time last year what I would be doing in March 2008, I would not give you the one-word answer I have now: peanuts. Yes, peanuts make up the majority of my days' activities. This is what the women of my village are doing now, every day, morning to night. Shelling peanuts, sorting peanuts, threshing peanuts, storing peanut seeds, cooking with peanuts...I'm sure it goes on! The pads of both thumbs and forefingers are rough, callused from hours of cracking the shells against a hard surface. Often the women will dampen the peanuts to make them easier to shell, but the sheer volume of them - bathtubs-full of peanuts! - overrides such efforts. Peanuts also offer social opportunities, which I enjoy. In the afternoons, women will bring their peanuts (side note: peanut shelling/threshing/sorting, etc, appears to be exclusively women's work, like so much else) into the shade of a big old neem tree, spread out their plastic mats, and talk together as they work. Often, we'll all pitch in a little money to buy tea and sugar, or packets of powdered milk, which they sweeten with mint candies and drink in the little tea-shotglasses. The Senegalese tea ceremony is very interesting. It involves slowly boiling the leaves in hot water, adding measured sugar, and frothing the liquid back and forth between a pair of cups several times, to make a foam on top; then, it is quickly consumed with a series of slurps. Same goes for the minty milk. Now, a story of the life cycle of a peanut, as I understand it: first, they are shelled (a sharp snack against a rock or wooden stool will do the trick; experts get a two-handed rhythm going on, which I am trying to emulate) and then the nuts and shells are put back in the bucket to be threshed. This means they are shaken so the lighter shells move to the top, where they are scraped off; this is repeated until only the nuts remain. The shells are later used for cooking. Next, we spread the peanuts out on trays and pick through them. The pretty ones are destined to be seeds for next year. Those that are cracked, shriveled, or misshapen will be made into "tigadegie" - peanut butter, the base of several sauces. These are also the ones that will be weighed and traded for fish, or other foods, at the boutique or traveling horse-cart salesman. So, that's what we do!

On the road again

2008-02-20T06:02:00.000-08:00

I'm back in Kaolack after a heinously cramped, four-or-five hour sept-place ride from Dakar. But, it is very good to be back where I know the ropes, and I feel comfortable in my (rather disgusting, but familiar) surroundings. I just had a surprisingly quick and painless trip to the market, where I picked up gifts for my Wolof family: new knives and powdered milk for the moms, tea and sugar for the dad, and new spoons, pens and notebooks for the kids. I also grabbed a petit pagne for myself. These are sheer pieces of fabric that go under the normal pagne - wrap skirts - of a complet. When women dance, they whip open the two flaps of the pagne, to reveal whatever they're wearing underneath, be it panties, a petit pagne, or nothing. I'm excited for the next dancing event, where I'll spread my skirts to flash the petit pagne. It will definitely be surprising and will make them laugh. If nothing else, laughter is something I feel comfortable sharing anywhere in the world. But first I must to the post office, and the bank, then I'll pick up some tasty cocunt beignets before hopping in a route taxi home. Only 150cfa, and if you're lucky you won't be sitting on some guy's lap in the front!

WAIST 2008: Dakar, Senegal

2008-02-17T15:17:00.000-08:00

Kaolack's part in the annual West African Invitational Softball Tournament ended today. We played some awesome games - our team was really good! - but didn't quite make the finals. I did my part by cheering from the sidelines, wearing my bright red Kaolack team tee-shirt and yelling myself hoarse. Our region chose "toxic waist" as our theme; this is something of an inside joke, considering the volume of waste and general nastiness of Kaolack city itself, affectionately referred to as "the cesspool". So, the past two days have been full of softball, interspersed with frequent trips to the snack bar for (pork!) hot dogs, fries, baked treats, burgers, and other American deliciousness. One thing we Peace Corps Volunteers tend to do, whenever possible, is pig out on good food. Anything but ceeb u jen! Additionally, we had space to spread out, root for our favorite teams, relax, splash in the delightfully chilly swimming pool, and socialize. WAIST is an attraction for Volunteers from all over West Africa. I've met people serving in Mali, Benin, The Gambia, Guinea, and Mauritania. Plus, several groups of ex-pats, American and otherwise, who live here in Dakar. These people have been extremely generous to us. They've opened their homes to the Volunteers, so we all have places to stay, not to mention organizing all the games and events! It's really been a fantastic week-end. Dakar, it must be said, is not Senegal. Just like Paris is not France, and New York City is not the USA; Dakar is similar in that it stands alone, practically a country unto itself. Here are restaurants of every ethnicity, florist shops, clothing boutiques catering to every taste, shiny new cars, street lamps, trash cans, parks - all mostly unheard-of elsewhere in Senegal. Certainly a far cry from my quiet world several kilometers to the South, where people still go to the well every day for water, grow peanuts for a living, and there is no electricity. Dakar is dynamic; new buildings are going up everywhere, and the population is very cosmopolitan, with people of all walks of life and different heritages. Still, one is occasionally reminded that this is a developing country. Now and then, the smoothly paved roads give way to dirt. Horse charrettes can be seen trotting alongside sports cars, and street vendors hawking fruits or bean sandwiches are just as common as restaurants. The difference between the lifestyles of les Dakarois, and we villagers, is startling. It's not something you think about on a regular basis. But here are beautiful high-rise apartment buildings, while I live in a mud hut! Actually, I am looking forward to getting back to Keur Ali Gueye. There is a certain charm about living such a basic life, where needs are met but not exceeded, and time moves at its own pace. I passed my five-month anniversary, and I can't believe I've been here so long. The individual days are slow, but weeks fly by. Before I head back to the village, though, I'm going to enjoy my time here in the big city. And go dancing! We've had dance parties every night so far, and I plan to keep it up.

Chicken dibi-licious

2008-02-10T08:07:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I went with a couple friends for the "famous" chicken dibi of Thies. This place is, literally, a hole in the wall, with a roaring fire (fed by logs that spill out into the walkway, burning on one end) over which meat and chicken are grilled. Ignoring the many food handling violations it would have earned in the US, I and my two brave companions settled down and ordered chicken for three. (As a side note, this was misunderstood as three chickens; a delicious if costly mistake.) Fabulous music was playing in the background - Youssou Ndour, an excellent Senegalese singer - with a beat so catchy we wiggled in our seats, dancing around. At length our dinner arrived: an enormous platter with grilled chicken arranged around a bed of salad, all drizzled over with mustard and mayonnaise. We dug in with our hands, grease smearing our fingers, with sighs of pleasure at the deliciousness of the crunchy skin and perfectly cooked meat. Oh, it was amazing! I realize now that many of my most ardent blog posts revolve around food. Coincidence? Definitely not. We have one more week of training in Thies before an all-Volunteer event in Dakar. More good meals on the horizon!

Ile de Goree

2008-02-05T10:44:00.000-08:00

Happy Mardi Gras! I'm celebrating by having a nice dinner at a new restaurant in town, with free wi-fi Internet. How bizarre, to be using this fancy wireless computer here, with a guy selling nescafe from a cart strolling by, and kids dressed up in their best "yere wolof" for Mardi Gras. This past weekend I and three friends took a one-night vacation to Ile de Goree. It was amazing! We took a ferry to the island Saturday evening, at a time when most of the tourists were leaving for their hotels in Dakar. Ile de Goree looks like a town in Southern France, with its homogenous architecture of courtyard gardens, metal balconies, and red tile roofs. In the evening, quaint streetlamps came on, illuminating the narrow stone walkways - no cars on Goree, just pedestrians, which is completely relaxing. We had dinner at an oceanside restaurant. I'd forgotten how much I love the sea, the special smell of salt air and how relaxing the waves sound. Goree is a quiet paradise at nighttime; we strolled around, enjoying the peaceful atmosphere. The next day we followed crowds of tourists around to visit the island's attractions. Most famously, the slave house, which is veyr well preserved. The top floor is a tiny museum, once the old airy masters' quarters, built directly on top of the stone-walled cells beneath, where the slaves were housed. A door leads directly out to the sea - they called that, dramatically, "the door of no return." Goree also has a very nice little museum dedicated to Senegalese women, and another great museum covering the history of Senegal from prehistoric times, built upon an old fort. Of course, being a popular tourist destination, there was tons of art for sale (of varying quality) bombarding us throughout the day, all the way up the hill to the summit of the plateau. Bits of old military bunkers and defunct guns scatter the island as well. Several artists set up their studios in the empty cement buildings - an appropriate reclaimation, I think. For me a night on Ile de Goree was a heavenly respite from the stress of training, not to mention the constant noise. And I took my first hot shower in Senegal! Oh, it was so wonderful, it defies description! Needless to say my backyard bucket bath can't quite compare. But, now it's back to Thies and long training days. Today we practiced grafting trees. It's a fine art I definitely have not mastered.

Back in Thies

2008-01-29T09:30:00.000-08:00

It's odd to be in Thies again, after almost three months away. What struck me first was how beautiful it is! Especially in comparison to Kaolack, by no means the prettiest city, nor the most sanitary. Clouds of ever-blooming bougainvillea in shocking colors: red, orange, purple, and fuscia. Fresh paint on new buildings. No open sewers. It was a bit of a shock to come back to all that. When I arrived two days ago I went straight to the Croissant Magique, where I was wide-eyed as a country bumpkin (to the hearty amusement of the wait staff), pressing my face against the glass display case full of pastries. I'm sitting at a table there as I write this, in fact, using their free wi-fi Internet, and having just consumed a very tasty mille feuille. Almost as good as in Paris, though without quite the same ambiance. I'm back to being Fatou Diallo again, though this is confusing, as I've gotten so used to being Abbi Gueye. It's only for a month, though, and it's funny how much I've gotten used to village life. When I described to my family in Thies how I go to the well every day, how there's no electricity in my town, and folks eat "cere" twice a day, they gaped. Yup, I live in the boonies! For the first time since pre-service training, I've gotten to see the Volunteers who went to different regions. It was great to reconnect with friends, but a little strange also; now, our experiences are all different, whereas when we were last in Thies they were more or less the same. Some people have put on weight, some have lost weight. Several guys came back with impressive facial hair, and lots of us girls haven't shaved for months. I was in that group until yesterday's shower, when finally I shaved again - and it was great! Much more comfortable, though I'm glad I did the experiment.

The Best Dance Party in Senegal

2008-01-26T04:23:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I went to visit my friend's site in Koungel, a mid-sized town halfway between Kaolack and Tambacounda. He's starting up a girls' group, and as a commencement celebration they had a sabaar - a drumming and dance party. The young girls of the club were all wearing blue-and-white, matching complets, and we, as the token Americans, got choice seats with a full view of the dance floor. Unlike many so-called dances I've been to so far in Senegal, this one was awesome! The girls took off dancing right away, without any of the awkward, embarassed waiting that so often accompanies the beginning of dances on every continent. Their dancing is amazing. I'll describe it, but that really wouldn't do it justice. The girls hike up their skirts to their hips so they can kick, stomp and leap with their legs high in the air, barefoot and beautiful. Sometimes they spin suddenly in time with the drumming (at this party, there was in fact a discernable rhythm, which is not often the case) and usually to end their performance they'll execute - with flair! - a series of staccato hip thrusts. After awhile, the older women got into it too, and really showed off their moves. People wore everything from traditional complets, to tee-shirts and tight jeans. We were dragged from our seats, though not very reluctantly in my case, to do a few dances as well, to much laughter and applause. After dark (there was a break for dinner) we recommenced the party in earnest. The floor was never still now that night had removed all the daytime's shyness, and women of all ages danced their hearts out. Girls here do seem to have more fun. Occasionally one of the little boys would bust a move, and once or twice a grown man took the floor. They can dance - and very well! - but it seems for the most part they prefer to watch. And play the drums. The band was great. It was such a wild, energetic night! We danced until nearly midnight before stumbling off to bed, everyone giddy with all the fun we'd had. Without question that was the best dance party I've ever seen in Senegal so far.

Annoyed

2008-01-21T03:52:00.000-08:00

I wrote some beautiful long blog messages on my computer last night, saved them to a disk, went to a good cyber that can actually read disks, and discovered that my version of Microsoft Word (the new one, a Mac-lookalike...I don't get it. If I'd wanted Mac software I'd have bought a Mac! I want my old Windows!) cannot be opened here. So, I am annoyed. But I will try to recreate it somewhat. The day before yesterday I went to a baptism in the village. It was as much fun as you can have without electricity! Keep in mind that the definition of "fun" in the village is: eating meat. When I asked one lady what she liked to do for amusement, she got a huge smile on her fact and said, "I eat meat!" So, this is what we did. I spent most of the baptism in the kitchen - which is an outdoor area, where the animals are also kept, but which is spacious enough to accompdate dozens of women sweating over enormous cauldrens of rice. Cooking for an entire village is quite the undertaking; I contributed a few stirs here and there, and pounded spices and onions a little bit, but mostly I was relegated to watching the expert cooks scurry around, stirring the vats of boiling, oily water over smoky stoves. Peanut shells are the fuel most often used, which makes for a lot of smoke. And it gets hot in the kitchen with so many fires going! For breakfast at the baptism they prepared two huge pots of "ceeb u yapp" (rice and meat, very greasy and delicious) as well as three pots of "lakh", which is a kind of thick porridge that is served with yogurt on top. We all ate that until we we were stuffed. Meanwhile, outside the kitchen, the baptism itself was going on. I can't describe this as I didn't see it, except to catch glimpses of the colorful crowd as the family of the new baby paraded around. They killed a big ram for lunch, which we cooked shortly thereafter. The ceeb u yapp was prepared by heating oil in the cauldren, adding the chunks of meat, then once it has been cooked adding spices and enough water to fill the pot, and whatever vegetables are to go along with it. In yesterday's case, this was cabbage. Other typical choices are manioc, sweet potato, or squash. While this stew is bubbling, rice (once it has been well scrubbed to remove the most obvious bits of not-rice, which are inevitably found in the sacks here in the form of black grains, seeds, or even insects) is set on top in a sieve to steam. Only later, once the meat and veggis have been fished out and set aside, is the rice added to the oily water to cook. The men were served first - huge steaming trays of rice topped with the meat and cabbage - and then the women, but there was so much we all ate to the point of being stuffed and there were still leftovers! Noos yu bare. Also, a griotte - a traditional musical performer, who are a typical feature at big parties - was hired to sing and entertain. A dance circle was formed while lunch was cooking. It strikes me that the Senegalese are reluctant dancers. I stood outside the circle to watch, but mostly people just clapped along, while a few brave souls went into the middle to dance. They managed to haul me into the center, though, and I hopped around a little in what I hope was decent imitation of dancing, while everyone laughed and the griotte sang out my name. So, that was fun! And the women obviously enjoyed it; I saw them imitating me and giggling later on when describing my dance to the friends who weren't there to see it. Everyone dressed in finery to attend the baptism and eat the greasily delicious meat, and we all had a very good time.

My other blog post (see, I really had meant to make this a good one!) was supposed to be entitled: a typical day in the village. Fortunately my life is not so monotonous that I can honestly say, "this is what I do every day", but there is enough repetition that I can give a decent account of my everyday schedule. So, here it goes:

At 7am or so I wake up, and if there is food in my hut (like fruit or bread I bought at the louma, or snacks from home...hint hint!) I eat that for breakfast, with maybe a cup of coffee or tea. By 8am I try to be out of the house to make the greeting rounds: my family, the imam and his family, my grandmother, and the village chief and family. I might then go to the boutique to buy breakfast (if there wasn't any before) like beignets - four nice big ones for 100cfa - or biscuits, or maybe eggs. After breakfast and greetings are all over I take my bidons (big yellow jugs with caps, so I can't spill) over to the well. Sometimes I do this in the morning, but if not I am sure to go in the afternoon. Anyway, at the well I stand around and sometimes the women let me help pull water, but otherwise I wait around until they offer to fill my jugs, which I then ferry home on my head. Then, I wash my dishes fromt he day before and set them out to dry. Lately the primary activity of women in my village has been peeling bissap, so after their breakfast is done I typically join them in the shade of the neem trees to help with the tedious work of popping the hard cores from the center of the fruit. I've gotten quite good at it after all these weeks of practice! Meanwhile, it is also building season, so I have spent some mornings helping the men construct new houses. They use bricks made of mud - luckily the soil in Keur Ali Gueye is heavy in clay, so it holds together well - which have been placed in a mould and dried in the sun. Fresh mud (usually dug and mixed by young boys, in a big pit) is used for mortar. I've helped plaster together a couple walls, and also the base of a brick bread oven, which one man in my village is constructing. These activities take up most of the morning. Lunch (which is always rice of come form, either "choo" - fish and vegetable sauce on top of white rice - or "mafe" - thick, peanut-based sauce atop white rice - or "ceeb u jen" - rice cooked in oil, topped with fish and vegetables) happens between 3 and 4pm. I share the bowl with my two village moms and the kids, but they also give me a seperate bowl of my own to eat for dinner, because they always dine on cere - pounded millet - which I simply cannot stomach. After lunch I might walk around town a little, talking with people in their homes, or go to the well, or visit the schoolteachers, or relax at home. At any rate sundown is around 7pm. By 6:30 I like to be back in my hut so I can enjoy my daily bucket bath. I sponge myself off with cool well water, which can be a little brisk on these cool evenings, but usually feels very refreshing. After that the sun has set, and most people stay at home. I take this time to read or write in my journal while waiting for dinner, which is at 8pm or so. Once dinner is done, my family tends to go into their rooms for the night, so I do the same. There, I'll read by flashlight until 10 or 11pm - I could sleep for 12 hours, but I refuse to let myself do so! Bad for the health, though tempting, as when everything is silent except for the sound of the crickets outside, there is not much incentive to stay up - and then brush my teeth and lie down under my green mosquito net for the night. And the next morning, as the sun rises over my tree-filled backyard in true African splendor, I do it all over again, waking to the sounds of women pounding or the scrape of twig brooms sweeping the packed dirt courtyards clean.

Christmas break

2007-12-27T03:49:00.001-08:00

Christmas in Popenguine was lovely. It is such a treat to sit on the shore, listening to the waves rumbling against the sand. And church bells mingling with the Muslim call to prayer. My idea of a good time nowadays is a glass of wine and stuffing myself with food, none of which are rice! So I ate a lot, and it was fabulous. Coming to the regional house is an opportunity to be American for a few days, to cook my own meals exactly how I want, to speak English with people who understand the ideas I'm trying to express, to watch a movie or two, and detox. As well as go to the bank, the post office, the grocery store, the market, and a variety of other big-city chores that can only be accomplished away from my tiny village. Also, the full-length mirror provides the opportunity for a "state-of-the-union" look at myself. I look okay, though signifigantly less clean than I was back home on a regular basis. But it's funny, because I have only a compact mirror in my hut, so I sometimes go days without taking a real look at myself. We admire our appearance multiple times a day back home, and here it ceases to matter. Tomorrow morning I head back home. While it's nice to get away sometimes, I know I'm in a good site, because whenever I approach my village after a short time away I can't help but smile, and I quicken my pace when I see the little hat-shaped thatched roofs peeking out from behind the brushy trees. So I'm looking forward to that, but not the ride to Nioro. I try to take a 7-place taxi which gets me there faster than the mini-busses, though still it is never comfortable to be crammed into a car with six other passengers (plus a driver) dodging potholes and occasionally off-roading on the way to the garage. A run-of-the-mill public transportation experience!

Tabaski

2007-12-23T03:33:00.000-08:00

The Tabaski celebration started last Thursday, and went something like this: in the morning I woke up and put on my nice outfit, only to go outside and find that most people were going about their daily business in their same old everyday clothes, with the exception of the men and little children who dressed up to go pray. I, therefore, wandered around and chatted with a few people at the boutique, all the while receiving compliments on my clothes. "Yaangiy noos!" is what they said the most, which translates something as "You're having fun!" but seems to carry the underlying implication of "You have a lot of money so you can enjoy yourself and your clothes are also fabulous today!" Anyway, I went home and learned a new greeting: "baalma ac", which apparantly is what is said to people during Tabaski. Eventually, the parade of well-dressed people returned from prayer and gathered in a spacious courtyard near the chief's house. The men stood in front, while I found a group of older ladies and joined them in sitting on mats behind. There was a long spell of praying and chanting, most of which was incomprehensible to me, and before long people began to disperse. I got up to greet my usual crowd, when I realized what had been going on, because the carcasses of four rams were laying there with their throats slit. As I walked the short distance home, I passed several sheep in various stages of being slaughtered and butchered. It was interesting to observe how they do it. In the US our meat comes in pretty plastic packages, and we don't really know how it got there. How many people could pick out the flank of living the cow their flank steak came from? Anyway, the idea of high-quality steaks is pretty much unknown in the village. The meat was chopped up by the men into chunks compromised of all manner of bone, fat, meat, organ and gristle. There was some pattern to it, though - we ate the organ meats that first day, while the haunches were saved for Friday's lunch. Anyway, once the meat was prepared I joined the women in the kitchen. We made a series of peppery soups with bits of meat and slurped them up, all while working on the chef d'oeuvre: a thick sauce of meat, onion, fried potatoes, macaroni and oil, spiced with the usual bouillon. I contributed by peeling all the vegetables, chopping onios, and pounding peppercorns. The overall sense of excitement permeated everything. Everybody was in a great mood, laughing and snatching bits of piping-hot meat from the pot. I can't really describe how tasty it was in comparison to the usual monotony of mafe (a kind of peanut butter sauce) and rice. And protein, real concentrated protein was such a treat! Eventually, our sauce was finished, and we ladled it into bowls which were carried to the chief's compound. There, all the neighborhood women were gathered, along with dozens of loaves of bread. We waited for everyone to arrive, then dug into the meal, scooping up mouthfuls of the stew with bits of bread. You don't savor a meal here in the same way as back home. Instead, you "lekkal ba suur" - eat until you are full - which usually translates as eating as much as possible in as short a time as possible. It was delicious, though, and afterwards people relaxed and chatted for awhile before ambling home to shower and change. Here's where the pretty clothes come in! After sudown, around seven o'clock this time of year, everyone dressed up in their finest complets and boubous to go visiting. The moon being nearly full, there is so much light in the evenings a lamp is unnecessary; it's an enchanted time, full of moonshadows. Children wandered from house to house, collecting money for sweets or tea. They also accepted peanuts, corn, or millet. A small sidenote: the women will use these crops like cash; they will take a few kilos of peanuts to the boutique, weigh it, and exhange it for other goods such as spices or rice. Also, a man comes by in his horse charette every day and he will exchange fish for any of those grains, which are later resold in the market. The overall feeling of Tabaski for me was a cross between Thanksgiving, Halloween, and Christmas, though all of course considerably less commercialized than their American counterparts. In other news, it is now bissap season in the village, which means that the women go out into the fields to harvest the fleshy blossoms (which are actually the fruit of the plant, not the flower, though they look like a flower and not a fruit) and then spend all afternoon peeling the bissap off its core. I usually join in this venture, which is relaxing in the repetitiveness of the action. It's also a good opportunity to listen to the women and talk with them. I get along really well with the women of the village, and it's nice to spend time with them. The bissap harvest was put on hold for Tabaski, but will be starting up again soon. To dress myself up for the celebration, I put henna designs on my hands and feet, which was super-fun! I think I'll do henna just for "noos" later on, because it looks cool but doesn't last too long. Anyway, that's about all. I have had probably as much meat in the past three days as I'm likely to see the entire rest of the year, and soon it will be back to businss as usual. Christmas at the beach with the rest of the Kaolack crew is next on the agenda!

Waiting

2007-12-07T08:48:00.000-08:00

I now have something of a routine, as I've been in site for almost three weeks. Mostly I don't do a whole lot. In the morning I greet people, and maybe go to the boutique to buy some beignets (a lady named Amy, one of the boutiquiers, makes them fresh every morning - millet beignets are delicious!) and hang out with the family. Sometimes I stay at home and read, sometimes I wander the village and chat with various families. Lately, almost everyone clears out of town for the day, to sift through the earth for stray peanuts. The women are especially adament about this. They want the extra money to buy new clothes and meches for Tabaski. "Meches" are hair extensions that the women weave into their own short hair, to make long braids. It's a lengthy process, and in the afternoons almost all the women in the village can be seen sitting in the shade, braiding each other's hair. Tabaski - a big Muslim holiday - will be celebrated soon, shortly before Christmas I believe, and involves killing a sheep (in rememberence of Abraham, who killed a ram instead of his son) and apparantly new clothes as well. I do not have new clothes or meches, but I think I will bust out the old Korite outfit and take lots of pictures of everybody looking their best. Meanwhile, time passes slow in the village. In terms of actual work I have none, except what I make for myself. Due to the water shortage in Keur Ali Gueye, I thought encouraging people to have small container gardens makes more sense than a large-scale gardening project. So, I have three tires in my backyard, planted with collards, onions, and carrots respectively. We'll see how it goes. People don't seem too impressed so far. They are impressed, however (and a little bemused) that I insist on going to the well myself every day to draw water, instead of letting my little sisters do all the work for me. I carry my two yellow tubs to the well and wait my turn to step in and add my meager muscle to the pulley rope, drawing up water. The women laugh, but I refuse to give up, and lately they've been saying, "Abbi men na!" - Abbi can do it! - which is clearly a big surprise. I only fill the 20-liter tubs a little over halfway, but I carry they home myself. On my head. Actually, it's much easier to do that than to haul them home by hand; my back is much stronger than my arms. Anyway, as you can probably tell, I'm quite proud of myself for doing the work. The one break from the daily visit to the well came last weekend, when I was sick for the first time. This is not fun. I stayed in bed for two days, feeling wretched, but after that things got better, and now I am back to normal. Well, as normal as someone raised on American food can be while existing on a Senegalese diet. Each Tuesday, I head to Nioro for the market to buy vegetables. It's a busy place, as people from villages all around go there once a week for their shopping. Also it's perhaps the only time I will ever be mistaken for being Japanese; there are some Japanese volunteers there as well as Americans, so children's shouts are split between "toubab!" and "japonais!". A refreshing change from the norm. Otherwise, I spend my time hanging out in the village, talking to people and trying to get a feel for what activities they may be interested in. Already I have found some families with whom I am comfortable, so I go there often to chat. Sometimes we drink sweet tea, which is quite a ritual in itself: they heat a tiny teapot on a brazier, fill the pot with tea leaves and sugar, and cook it until it's very concentrated. Then, then fill a shot glass and proceed to pour the tea in a high arc from one glass to another, back and forth, creating foam on the top. By the time it's actually served the tea is thick and heavily sweet, hot, and you slurp as you drink it. Tasty, though terrible for the teeth.
I forgot before to post my new mailing address. I love mail! Here it is:

PCV Abigail Fay
BP 2089 Ndorong
Kaolack, Senegal
West Africa

The guys at the post are really nice; they're used to Volunteers.

A new home

2007-11-22T07:45:00.000-08:00

Well, it's really started now. I am installed and (mostly) unpacked in my own place, in my new hometown. How to describe my first week there? I don't know even where to begin! So I'll stick to straight-up description. I now live in a hut, a pretty spacious one, in fact, and a backyard "douche" area that is fenced with "sakhet" - village fencing, which is dried stalks wired together so you can't see through them. Mine, though, are old so there are a couple small gaps, which means I try to bathe at night, which feels so wonderful anyway. Back to the hut. It came equipped with the following: a bedframe and a set of shelves where my clothes and books are now piled, several cracks in the cement wall that I will need to fix, a brand-new lock on my aluminum front door, some nice wall paintings done by the previous Volonteer, and two cats. My cat's name is Lola - also a souvenier of the girl who lived there before me - and her grown kitten "doom u Lola" (Lola's child). These two charming felines have made themselves right at home with me. Their favorite activities are tripping me by winding around my feet when I'm trying to dress, climbing onto my lap when I'm reading, hovering around the lunch bowl and occasionally trying to steal the fish, and eating lizards on my floor. At least I have no rodent problems! However, my hut is a favorite hiding place for frogs, who try to come inside to escape the heat of the day. I end up chasing several of them out in the mornings; they like to hide in the corners or under the bed. My backyard is actually really nice! My "toilet" is discreetly located in the midst of several bushy plants, some with flowers, one a producing eggplant and one normous basil bush. When I go out there the scent of basil welcomes me. Also, there are a few baby fruit trees (mango and guava) which I water each evening with the water I have left over from washing myhands or bathing. It's not too soapy, and I hate to waste it, and so far the plants don't seem to mind.
My new name is "Abbi Gueye", which is super-easy to remember since it sounds exactly like "Abigail", so I lucked out there. And my family is great, too. I live in the compound of my counterpart. My hut is one of five: one for each wife, one for the dad, one extra (or visiting kids, I think) and mine. We share the courtyard with fluxuating families of chickens, ducks, goats and sheep; next to my yard is a space where hay is piled and two horses and a donkey are hobbled. There's a cashew tree in the middle of it all where my dad ties his charette when it's notbeing used. The livestock only slightly outnumber the children, however. Xale yu bare! Of all ages and sizes, they are everywhere, all the time, and mostly adorable, though also very curious. It's commonplace for me to see crowds of kids staring into my hut, or following me to the boutique, or sitting on the mat where I am. It's cute, really. So, my week has been a little crazy, as this is the first time I have really and truly been on my own here in Senegal. I spend lots of time each day walking through the village, chatting with different families (trying to get them all straight) or sitting down to have a cup of tea with them, or help harvest peanuts from the mountains of plants that are scattered all around the village. This is the major activity at the moment. Everywhere you go peanuts, peanuts, peanuts, with women and children crouched around the edges of the pile, reaching in to grab a plant and pulling off the nuts. They do this all day long, and when all the nuts are gathered they sell them in town. It's not physically hard work, but tedious and so far never-ending. Yesterday I went to a peanut field for the first time to see how the harvest is done. My dad hooked his horse up to a kind of plow, while the kids (and I) hurried ahead to pull up bean plants that had been planted alongside the peanuts. The machine digs up the plants by the roots, and it's slow work. Once they've been uprooted, women followed along behind gathering the plants into piles which will be easier to collect and load onto carts to take into the village, where the peanut pulling will happen. There's something very satisfying about working in a field, sweating alongside everybody else and getting your hands dirty, seeing the fruits of your labor slowly increase before your eyes. It gives a real sense of accomplishment.
Mostly, though, I've spent my time wandering aorund, greeting people and introducing myself while trying to orient myself in my new home. It's a mid-sized village, with enough amenities to keep everybody happy. A man with a cart comes through every morning selling fish, and there are two boutiques and a tiny vegetable market. In the center of town is one well, very deep. The women pull water in the morning and evening, when it's not too hot, and carry full buckets of it on their heads. I've tried this but it's so hard! I'm determined to learn, but mostly they just laugh at me and somebody takes my bucket for me. I will do it myself at some point, though! It will take practice. The first time I took a bucket home I got soaked, so now I use "bidons" (yellow tubs with handles and lids) which are more convenient anyway, though also heavier. Everyone has been very nice to me so far, and I'm slowly making the rounds and meeting them all. Each morning I must greet the imam, the village chief, and my grandmother - luckily all of whom live near my hut. The rest of the day I divide among my family and the neighbors, sometimes talking, mostly helping with the peanuts and letting the fast-paced Wolof conversation roll around me.
This experience is different from anything I've ever done before. Nothing I have accomplished thus far in my life really could have prepared me for it, but I am happy to be here. There's so much to do! At the moment I am in Kaolack again. The Volonteers of the region are gathering here for a bonafide American-style Thanksgiving dinner at a restaurant in town. I'll stay here one day, then take a sept-place car down to Nioro du Rip and walk (or, maybe, hop on a horse or donkey charette) back home.

Kaolack

2007-11-12T08:51:00.000-08:00

Here is a picture of the Sustainable Agriculture group, with Youssoupha our tech trainer. He is awesome - he bought us ice cream to celebrate the end of training! I am writing this from an internet cafe in Kaolack city. As you may have surmised by now, I made it safely here with all my things. So far I am loving it! I feel very lucky to have ended up in the Kaolack region. There is a real sense of community among the Volonteers here, and there are a lot of us, so it is hard to feel too nervous or lonely. Our regional house is small but still there's plenty of room for us to relax, which is a high priority for everyone now that we are done with training. Now, we make our own schedules. At the moment, the house is cluttered with people's stuff - suitcases, water filters, stoves, mattresses, all tossed into semi-orderly piles around the place. These will gradually diminish as people are installed, one by one, in their sites. I will be among the last; the Peace Corps car is picking me up on Friday to take me to my new home. I haven't had much time to mull over this, thankfully, since we have kept busy since our arrival yesterday. Kaolack's claim to fame (among its other charms, which I'm sure I will learn during my stay in this region) is that it can boast the second-largest covered market in West Africa. It is truly an experience unlike any other. The market spills out into the streets, with garish items for sale on every corner. There is some organization. It seems like the used clothes are sold in one area, fish in another, and vegetables in a third. There is even a "gris-gris" market. Gris-gris are a popular fashion statement among Volonteers. They come in many varieties, from what I can tell mostly involving a string or leather thong with beads or something hanging off, and they can be enchanted (I don't know if that's the right word...blessed, maybe?) to provide protection. I think you can request them for specific situations, too. Somebody mentioned once that a Volonteer ordered one specifically to get a good grade on the LSAT. Every little baby I've seen has one around their fat bellies, and sometimes in necklace form as well. I haven't bought one for myself yet, but if I'm anything like the rest of my Peace Corps coworkers I too will soon be walking around with gris-gris hanging off all my limbs. We new Volonteers are in the midst of our installation shopping spree, buying all the things we think we might need. As I know next to nothing about my site, I'm trying to cover all my bases. So far, I bought a few buckets, some plastic bowls and plates, a couple chairs, cooking pots and utensils, mugs and cups, a village broom (dry grass stalks bound together at one end; they work so much better than plastic brooms!), a woven mat, a mattress with foam pad, a gas stove, a strainer, sheets...and the rest slips my mind. I have a lot of new things, but I think now most of it has been bought, as the rest will need to wait until I actually see my hut and know definitively what I need. One of the cultural aspects I dreaded most before coming here was bargaining. Not being a naturally pushy person, I didn't like the idea of having to battle down a price, especially not knowing what the proper price should be. But - surprise! - I like it! Probably I still end up paying more than I should for some things, but bargaining is easier and much more fun than I ever imagined. You just greet the seller as you would anyone else, then ask them how much it costs. If you don't like the price (and I've heard some outrageous ones in just two days. Two-thousand cfa for that second-hand tee-shirt? You must be joking. Four hundred, maximum.) you tell them another one, and they'll drop a few cfa that way, but often you have to pretend to lose interest and walk away. Then, if they've decided they want your business after all, they'll hiss to call you back and you start bargaining again until you finally get the price you want. I feel so grateful to have learned Wolof, too. Everybody speaks Wolof and they are usually so surprised (I'm not good enough with the language yet to say they are impressed) that I can communicate, it makes talking the price down easier. I wish I could describe the bustle of the market. The narrow alleys, people crowded on all sides selling and buying, some carrying spectacular things on their heads, and everywhere loud colors jostling for supremacy. It's a sensory adventure, both good and bad, the bad mostly having to do with smells I'd rather not mention. But there is a spice section of the market, too, and walking into that fragrant street made me realize how exotic and wonderful this place is. There is a lot still to learn about Kaolack, but this is my regional capital so I will come here fairly often. Breakfast today was a bag of millet beignets and a chilled sack of bissap juice from a street vendor - so delicious! My plan this afternoon is to curl up with a book or maybe watch a movie, and basically gather myself for more excitement that will inevitably come when I venture back into the vibrant marche tomorrow.

It's Official

2007-11-10T08:23:00.000-08:00

The papers are signed, selections of the ceremony shown on national TV, and the boubous packed away. As of yesterday when I swore to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States, I am a fully-fledged, no-more-skirting-around-with-beurocratic-lingo Peace Corps Volunteer. We all dressed up in colorful clothes - mine is really pretty, a complet in tan-colored wax with big, bold designs in brown and red, but I can't put the pictures up yet because this Internet cafe has no disk-drive. Anyway, it was a nice ceremony. They kept it short and sweet, which everyone appreciated, as there was a buffet afterwards. A note on buffets: in the US, people are very good about standing in lines. We understand that if somebody gets there before you, the proper thing to do is wait for them to be served, and as long as the person behind you also follows this unspoken rule, everyone will get through the buffet line without incident. Forget about those rules. Americans are the easiest people to take advantage of in a foreign buffet. Everyone else is fighting for a place at the bar to order a drink, barging through your neighbors to reach a plate of hors d'oeuvres, and all-around jostling for position. Meanwhile, the polite Americans placidly wait their turn on the outskirts, until they get thirsty enough to be unnaturally pushy. It's amazing! I probably stood in the same place for half an hour waiting to get a drink, while some people were on their third glass. I learned my lesson afetr that and mobbed the poor servers carrying trays, along with the others who had clued-in, to grab snacks. Depsite the atmosphere - every man for himself in this buffet - I had a wonderful time. The food was delicious, and contrary to the actions of us all madly grabbing at it, there was more than enough. I stuffed myself silly, knowing that it's going to be a long time before I eat such wonderful things again. Mini-hamburgers, tiny cheeze pizzas, tomatoes stuffed with creamed shrimp, chicken dumplings, and the sweets: jam-filled crepes, fudge brownies, and creme puffs. Oh, I'm salivating again! The party was at the Ambassador's residence in Dakar. A very elegant place, though unoccupied at the moment, as apparantly Senegal is between-Ambassadors. Afterwards we did more paperwork (with the government, theres always paperwork involed) and headed back to Thies for a little relaxation before enjoying a big dinner with our host parents. That was the end of our stage, and the last time all 39 of us will be together until IST in February. Some people left this morning. My taxi is heading out tomorrow at around 6am, so I spent today packing up my things. They barely fit into my baggage, and I have a lot of loose stuff now: the medical kit, water filter and bulky mosquito net issued by the Peace Corps, as well as my bike. At the moment it's hard to imagine how all my stuff will fit in a single 7-place taxi, but I'm prepared to be amazed because tomorrow I and two others are sharing one to Kaolack. There, I plan to go shopping for things to "make my hut a home". It'll be fun!

Naatango = counterpart

2007-11-04T07:57:00.000-08:00

By popular demand, here is a photo of me in my red outfit, dancing (all alone, don't I look cool?) at the tam-tam. I have to say, I really love reading everybody's comments and stories from home. It's inspiring to be writing for such an appreciative audience! For those writing me letters and/or sending packages, I'll post my new address as soon as I have it, which may be awhile, as this is my last weekend in Internet-available Thies. But I'll do my best. Now, onto the blog post!
This week was probably the most stressful so far, as our counterparts came from all over the country to meet us and have a two-day Peace Corps crash course. My two naatangos from Keur Ali Gueye arrived last Wednesday afternoon, and left just yesterday morning. That meant two and a half days of discussions in broken Wolof, awkward pauses, and trying to make sense of the people I'm going to move in with next week. Actually, I'm very lucky. My counterparts are extremely motivated and, as I am the fourth Volunteer going to my site, they kind of know how Americans work. However, with that experience comes high expectations, which I hope I can meet. They were friendly, though, and sound eager to help me integrate into the community, so though it was a little nerve-wracking I am excited to be heading there soon. It's hard to believe training is almost over! Providing I pass all my tests, the swearing-in ceremony will be held this Friday in Dakar. Apparently it is played on nationwide television. Yay. But I bought some pretty fabric and gave it to my sister the tailor, so I should at least look fabulous! It's going to be difficult not to spend all my living allowance on new clothes, because the fabric here is so beautiful, and the outfits are amazing. Hopefully in a village setting the temptation to buy new clothes will be easier to resist. Meanwhile, I am really enjoying being a homebody in Thies. My sister and I have the routine of cooking dinner together every night, and she gave me recipes for some of my favorite dishes. I'm going to miss this family! They really welcomed me and made me feel a part of their home. At least I will be able to visit in February, when we come back to Thies for in-service training. There are lots of things about this little city that I will miss. In just a few days, I'm off to the mysterious unknown! But, I have some good books, just barely enough Wolof, and a great sun-hat, so I'm ready for anything.

Popenguene

2007-10-27T10:04:00.000-07:00

Last weekend we had a brief getaway at the beautiful beach of Popenguene. We all piled into an al hum (they are basically small busses that will pack in as many people as possible. It's pretty amazing; usually there's at least one guy hanging off the back holding the door shut, and our struggled when going uphill, but we made it!) and headed out of Thies for the first time. After the craziness of training and constant existance in a bustling city, unloading into a quiet town with an idyllic stretch of beach was like walking into Paradise. As soon as I dropped my stuff off I got into my bikini and it didn't come off all night! The breeze felt so good on my bare skin, which usually sweats all day in clothes covering it from shoulders to calves, and the ocean was refreshingly cool during the day, and felt warm at night. I bobbed around in the waves, enjoying the freedom of being away from everything. Needless to say we had a wonderful time! One of the coolest things I saw was a group of fishermen on the beach, hauling in a net. It was maybe ten in the morning, and there was a huge group of people there helping to pull the net in, which was writhing with fish. They flashed in the sun, almost blinding. Once onshore, people grabbed armfulls of the dying fish and tossed them into sorted piles. The smaller ones went to the cluster of sea birds that hopped on the sidelines, waiting for handouts. After the mini-vacation, I felt totally refreshed and had a really good week. I reached the minimum language requirement, which is nice because now I can concentrate on improving rather than just making the grade. Somehow, the days positively flew by this week! I don't know where the time went. Lots of other Trainees are going to Dakar this weekend, but I'm staying in Thies witht he family. My host sisters braided my hair again this afternoon, and it feels so good to have the wind blow across my scalp instead of feel the sweat pooling on my neck. Tomorrow my sister is going to teach me how to cook ceeb u jen (rice and fish), a traditional lunch of Senegal.

Kaay Fecc

2007-10-18T12:17:00.000-07:00

I am writing early this week since the Trainees have organized a trip to the beach this weekend, so I don't think I'll make it to an Internet Cafe then. This week has been good. We did several field trips to villages surrounding Thies, to practice Wolof and interact with the farmers. I know my language skills need a lot of practice, and despite the fact that people don't always understand me and I speak with terrible grammar, I really enjoy taking a break from the classroom to study in the real world. The big event this week was a "tam tam" dance organized by the trainers. We invited members of our family and some people dressed up in their Korite outfits (the only ones most people have, besides the clothes we brought from the US) to dance. The dancing here is hard to describe. As best I can tell, it is a group of drummers jamming, and the dancers try in effect to anticipate what the drums will do next, and match the rhythm with movement. This is not easy, as the drumbeat changes all the time! Also, I have news: the stereotype that Africans are dancing all the time is not true! The beginning of our tam tam was just as awkward as any American high-school dance, with people sitting on the sidelines staring at the empty floor. Finally, a few brave souls got it started, but we never once got everybody up to dance, and there were definitely more Americans shaking it than Senegalese. However, most of us didn't look quite as impressive as the few young women who hiked up their pagnes and danced in aerobic style. They leap up into the air, stamp their feet, wave their arms...it's really impossible to describe, but it is really intimodating to watch, because I could never move like that! One of the most striking things about the dance party were the colors. People came in a varity of clothes, but the Senegalese are not shy with colors. Some wear neon green or yellow, and look amazing in them, with the contrast of their skin. Others choose more subdued maroon or tan. Mix it all with the various shades of American - I wore red-orange, another girl green, one bright blue - and there is a complete artists' pallette, plus a few colors that never would appear in nature. I love the bold patterns of the fabrics, and the many styles of clothing. Really it can't be described, or even shown in a photo, though I took a few, which I willpost when I get the chance. And I would like to point out that I danced alot, sometimes all alone, and it was a lot of fun! In case anyone was wondering, the "electric slide" CAN work with a Senegalese drum beat, but most people were lame and didn't join in. Oh, well, I'm no stranger to being the only one having a good time on the dance floor.
Now would be a good time maybe to describe a typical evening. They are very short! I usually get home from the center by about 7pm (it takes about half an hour, since I walk) and then I greet my family, ask how their day went, and set my stuff in my room. If I have homework, that is the time to do it because there is a little light left and while we have electricity, it is not always reliable. Usually, if we're eating rice, which we often do, I help to clean it. One of my sisters does the cooking every night, but I like to help. So we sift through the rice with our hands, picking out any small bits of grit, chaff or little bugs that might be there. Meanwhile, attracted by the light, there are often dozens of grasshoppers zipping around - of all sizes and types - as well as little brown beetles that crawl all over, but are harmless. After picking out the bad bits, we wash the rice two or three times by adding water to the calabash-bowl and swishing our hand around so all the grains get scrubbed. I never rinsed rice at home, though they say you are supposed to, but here you can really see how important it is. The water is definitely not clear after the rice is washed! Sometimes we have fish and vegetables on top, other times the rice is mixed in with the sauce, and twice we had a meat stew with peas that didn't involve rice at all; we scooped it up with bread. Mostly my family eats with spoons, though sometimes the older people prefer their hand. After dinner, we head outside, where they roll out mats and nap where there is a cool breeze. This is usually around 9pm or so. Depending on how tired I am, I'll stay and talk for awhile, though it is hard to find the motiation to stay awake when everybody else is lying on the ground snoozing! Usually I am in bed by 9:30, to write or read for half an hour before going to sleep, and I start all over again at 6am the next day. My constant background noise is prayers from the many mosques, and also the sound of roosters and sheep outside the compound. On my walk in the morning, I relish the peacefulness and relative quiet, because the one thing you can't escape here is the noise. But, I'm used to that too.

Onions, chickens, and a red dress

2007-10-14T03:36:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was Korite, the official end of Ramadan. I woke up fairly early (which is not unusual, now; what is very difficult is staying awake past 10pm! I feel like a huge loser, but I am so sleepy by 9:30 even, that all I want to do is go to bed. The family stays up much later, but they don't usually do anything like have long conversations, dance, or watch movies, and I can't bring myself to stay awake when all we are doing is sitting or lying around outside. It's something to work on.) so I could help prepare the meal. Clearly one of the highlights of Korite is lunch, which nobody has enjoyed for a month. In the morning, after breakfast, the men and little boys got into their fancy clothes and went to the mosque. The streets outside were full of these male groups in their colorful outfits. Meanwhile, I helped my host mother and sisters peel a mountain of onions and garlic cloves, which we later diced and made into a delicious sauce. My hands still smell slightly oniony, even though we washed with vinegar afterwards. After returning from prayer, two of my host brothers went out and came back with three or four live chickens, held by the wings. They made a huge racket, squawking and screeching, that was really horrible to hear. It didn't last too long, though, as they were taken behind the house and came back headless in a bucket. Later, my brother plucked them and handed them over to a sister, who fried them up in spices and oil. Lunch was couscous (Moroccan style, my preferance), with a thick onion sauce and plenty of chicken. Theoretically, during Korite people dress in beautiful clothes and go visit neighbors. This did happen, but not until late (though maybe it happens in the evening anyway, I'm not sure) because right after lunch a sudden rainstorm began. There was thunder and a veritable monsoon. Our courtyard began to fill with water, and lakes formed on the sides of the street. It poured like this for a long time, drenching everything not under cover, and flooding the dirt-floored compound. Luckily, nothing important got wet, but by the time it was over everything else was thoroughly soaked. This means I won't be watering my little garden plot this weekend! It was speculated to limit the visitors for Korite, as well, so I took a nap. When I got up, someone has swept the water from the courtyard and the puddles didn't look too bad, so a few of us changed into our outfits. My host sister, who is a tailor, made mine. It is a two-piece dress of rust-colored bazane, with a black lace trim. I think it's very pretty! After squeezing into my clothes (they're a tight fit, as is the style) I went out with my eldest host brother and his girlfriend to a friend's house, where we sat and chatted in an extremely comfortable living room while enjoying cups of monkey bread juice - guy - the fruit of the baobad tree. It's delicious stuff, almost like a smoothie. Yesterday I also tried two kinds of millet porriage, both sweetened, one with lait caille (like a thin yogurt) and the other stewed with peanuts and pieces of fruit. Both are tasty, but there was so much food, I couldn't possibly fit it all in! We definitely eat a lot here. I wonder how that will change when I get to the village. Anyway, that was my rainy Korite. It was good, though. And now that Ramadan is over, I will finally start to learn what Senegalese life is like the other eleven months of the year!

Sama Willas

2007-10-12T10:55:00.000-07:00

Today we were finally given our site announcements! I am headed to a village of about 700 people called Keur Ali Gueye, in the Kaolack region. As far as I can tell, I will be 7km from the nearest sizeable town (one you can find on a map of Senegal) called Nioro du Rip. I am very excited! It feels so good to finally know where I will be living for the next two years. Life in a small village will take some adjusting - even less privacy, no electricity, long walks to the market - but I am prepared to figure those things out they come. Needless to say, there will be fewer blog postings once I'm at site! That won't be for another month, though. In the meantime, we are still training hard in Thies. Tonight most people are going out to a restaurant to celebrate our new sites. I'll be there!

Business as usual

2007-10-06T08:58:00.000-07:00

It is just business as usual here at the training center. Class, culture, health, more class, technical, and lanuage class again. I have Wolof coming out my ears, though unfortunately not out of my mouth. Hehehe, I'm a genius - that is such an amazing sentance! Akon is currently playing in the background at the Internet cafe. The Senegalese-American (verdicts are mixed here as to his true naitonality) is ever-present; I hear Akon ALL the time. Luckily his music, from what I've heard, is pretty good. Though I wish I could listen to some Sugarland or something country once in a while. Really, though, Wolof is going well; slowly, but it's coming along. We finally did something agriculture-related this week: we tilled a little plot in the training center and sowed some crops to care for and observe for our next month here. We have millet, sorgum, corn, cowpea, and peanut, of which the millet and sorgum have already sprouted. They are just tiny green shoots at the moment, but pretty soon we wil have to weed and water them. Traditionaly, things are planted at the beginning of the rainy season, and whatever rain falls during those few months is all the water they get for the year, so it is important to have varieties that will finish their life cycle before it gets too dry for them. We visited a very neat, clean little village earlier this week to look at the ields in production. It was humbling, for me, to see how the farmers here have learned to grow food in, essentially, sand, or occasdionally clay. There is no rich, black soil here like we have back home. It is reddish, grainy and poor-looking, but nevertheless fertile. I have a lot to learn about farming here, that's for sure. Nothing is quite like the greeting we recievedin these villages. As our bus pulled up and we sweaty Americans spilled out, we were surrounded by children grinning and greeting us - I could respond to that, in part, with my clumsy Wolof - and then the women greeted us also, with huge smiles and excitement all round. It's something that just doesn't happen in the US, really, to have strangers welcome you and help you learn their lanuage, and really truly want you there. It is a good feeling. Today, walking with a fellow Trainee to the Internet cafe, an adorable little boy was goiing our way, so we started chatting (in French and Wolof) about little things - school, his family, our names. We just strolled off together, talking when we felt like it, and laughing a lot. That's the kind of thing that happens here fairly frequently. Some of the kids in my neighborhood know who I am now, and they'll call to me - "Fatou Diallo!" as I walk home. I regret that I don't have more time to spend with my host family. They are really great, but by the time I get home from training it is almost time for "ndogu" - breaking fast - and then I do homework usually, maybe sit with them for half an hour before dinner, and then it's off to bed. The weekends are my time with them, but also for myself, so it is tough to find the balance. Last week, I helped my sisters with the laundry. It's a grueling chore - they wash everything by hand, and scrub so hard the water makes a squelching noise through their fingers. I tried, but couldn't do it, so I rinsed and wrung out the clothes instead. They dry quickly in the sun, and then are ironed. I'm not sure exactly why they do this, but apparantly there are some flies that will lay eggs on damp clothing, which could hatch into larvae that burrow under the skin, but ironing kills them, which is enough to make me buy an ironing board! It's an old-style iron, though. They fill the iron shell with hot coals from the brazier, which they use also for heating water and other things. I'll have to try it sometime. Meanwhile, things are going well here. I am very busy! This Thursday our sites will be announced. It is exciting! I can't wait to find out where I will be for the next two years...

Training

2007-09-29T08:01:00.000-07:00

(Drying laundry at the training center....scenic, isn't it?)

We finally finished our first week of training, and it is a grueling schedule. We start classes at 8a.m., but I try to be there by 7:30 to eat breakfast (which is tea/nescafe/hot chocolate, and bread. WAY too much rahter nasty white bread.) and settle in before we get into the grind. Wolof lessons are tough - it's been forever since I learned the basics of a language, and I'd forgotten how much I disliked it. But, all things considered, it is going well. I can now greet people on the street: "Naga def? Naka waa ker nga? Alhamdullilah!" and that's about the extent of my language skills. We are learning to make basic sentances now, which I try to practice with the family, but that is slow going. However, I am optimistic that I will meet the minimum language requirement for the Peace Corps. Meanwhile, we are also learning come useful cross-cultural tidbits, which we are trying to apply in daily life. This is easier said than done, I find, but I am determined to try! Eating etiquette is fairly straightforward: don't take all the vegetebles, don't reach across the bowl into someone else's area, don't sprawl so nobody else can fit, and don't ever use your left hand! Right hand only. For pretty much everything. Which at least is consistant! I need to work on paying more attention to which hand people are using, though, and really concentrate on which one I offer; at home, whichever hand is convenient is fine, but here using your left hand could be considered very rude. I have more trouble with the rules governing people's interactions. They all still feel awkard to me, and I'm never quite sure when I should wander away from people I've greeted, or whether they are still including me in the mostly-unintelligable conversation...my family is great about this, and they help me a lot, but on the street it gets confusing. Speaking of streets, the Peace Corps gave us our bikes this week. I never liked biking at home, especially not on the street, and here I enjoy it even less! I always feel like I'm risking my life whenever I swing onto that bike, and especially when riding down the road, and unsure of what the many other vehicles are planning to do. It really is the most practical way to get from my home to the training center, though, so I will figure it out. This afternoon I walked home instead, though, and that was nice. A lot hotter, and it took awhile longer, but I felt signifigantly less terrified. So I may walk a few days a week from now on. This first week we focused on learning the basics of Wolof (many different pronouns to keep straight!) as well as some general information about Senegal's government and ecology, and a basic overview of what we Sustainable Agriculture volonteers will be doing. Nothing very hands-on yet, but hopefully soon we will get to start our own garden plots and learn some other useful activities to prepare us for work in the field. And in two weeks, we'll finally have our site assignments! It will feel good to know where I'll be going, and I am impatient to find out, as is everyone else. But there is plenty to occupy us in the meantime! No cell phone yet, though I will try to get one soon. But I have loved both letters I got - thank you Heather and Arwen!! People should write me more letters. This was kind of a boring blog post; there is lots to say, but as to my activities I spend ten hours a day in training, which leaves time only really for geting home, breaking the fast, relaxing for a bit, watching T.V., eating dinner, and then turning in while everybody else stays up until I-don't-know-how-late. So that's my life for now. In a nutshell, it's good.

Wolof chez les Diallo

2007-09-23T08:54:00.001-07:00

I am now settled into my new host family for the next two months. There are eighteen of them! Which, large as it seems, is not too unusual around here. They thought it was pretty funny when I told them I come from a family of six, and that's considered unusually huge in the U.S.A. I was only "Binta Faye" for those few days in my demystification village, and now I am "Fatou Diallo", until I end up with another (and this one I will finally get to keep!) Senegalese name in whatever place I end up. We break the fast now slightly differently: bread with butter, dates, and nescafé. The evenings thus far have been taken up with relaxing in the cooling air, chatting (or, in my case, listening to the still-incomprehensible conversation...in a few weeks hopefully I will be able to join in!) and greeting neighbors. At the moment, the womens basketball championship is on, so we have been watching that on T.V. in the heat of the afternoon. This morning I woke up at 5a.m. to eat a little, intending to try and fast today just to see what it is like. We ate a bowl-full of what is called "fundé". It is like a tapioca pudding made with balls of millet. I had some during demystification, but it was not quite as good as this, because it did not have the secret ingredient: lime juice! When you add lime juice it becomes irresisteable, and it is easy to understand how overindulgence could lead to a "jaay fundé" - big butt, which as I understand it is a positive attribute here, but still not something I aspire to! Incidentally, I didn't end up fasting today. They kept giving me food! I don't like to turn that down. As another side note, please excuse my spelling; we haven't started Wolof yet and so I have no real idea how to write it all out...plus this is a French keyboard and that further complicates things. Tomorrow, though, I start Wolof class! Already we learned a few key phrases and basic greetings in "survival Wolof", but now I'm in for the real thing. Not everyone is learning this language; there are several local ones being taught as well as French. Learning Wolof gives me no clue as to where I may be placed, since it is the most commonly spoken language in Senegal, so the suspense in mounting. While knowing French is very handy, and means I can converse with my host family pretty easily, as all the older members studied French in school, I am hoping it won't end up being a crutch I use when struggling with Wolof. Almost everyone here uses French to some extent, though Wolof is preferable; I'll just have to force myself outside of that comfort zone. From looking at my grueling schedule, I don't think I will have much free time during the next few weeks. We have something like six hours of language training a day! Still, I will try to write a few things when I have the chance. Also, I need to go shopping and especially have some shirts made! The ones I brought are just not suitable for this hot weather, and they tend to get dirtier than they would at home. Hopefully I can do all that this week, while studying, spending time with the family, and trying to stay sane in this new and very communal culture. There are so many wonderful things about Senegal, but none of them are really appreciable unless you get out of the American mindset. My host family is wonderful, and I hope I settle in and make some real friends among them soon. Only one thing annoys me about being here so far, and that is the word "toubab". Rough translation: "toubab" = "white person" = "person with money". Which I suppose is true (please refer to title of my blog) however HERE I don't want to be thought of as just another tourist. The adults don't say anything, they just occasionally stare, which I don't mind; it's the little kids who get very excited and will call out "Toubab! Toubab!" You can't get mad, really, because they are doing it out of innocence and interest in something new and unusual, and the word is not even an insult. It just gets old really fast. My new resolution, as of this afternoon, is to try and make a joke out of it. When a couple of kids called to me earlier today, I put a startled look on my face and said, "Toubab? Ou? Where? Je ne le voit pas!", while looking around in mock bewilderment. That got a giggle out of a couple of them, but only confused the others. Well, more on all that to come. I am headed home to the comparative luxury of my home for the next couple of months, to mentally prepare myself for tomorrow's Wolof lesson. Wish me bonne chance et bon courage!

Demystified

2007-09-20T09:36:00.000-07:00

I am back in Thies for awhile now, having survived (I'd like to say thrived) my demystification experience! My past four days consisted of me and another trainee staying in the hut of a Volunteer who is currently working with sustainable agriculture, which is to be my project also. It was really nice to finally SEE what we had been imagining for so long, and to recieve some concrete information! Everything thus far has been so vague, it felt good to experience something real for once. I really enjoyed the demyst, not only because now I feel more prepared for my next two years here, but also because it offered a long-awaited opportunity to actually relax and talk to other people one-on-one, which is hard to do in the bustle of the training center. My Volunteer host lives in a small village somewhat to the south, near a delta thich with mangroves. We took an evening boat ride through the swamp to birdwatch and admire the odd mangrove plants as they rose out of salt water. For the most part, though, we just hung out at her family's compound. As it is Ramadan, people don't do much during the day besides relax in the shade of trees, which we did along with them. Unfortunately, my "survival Wolof" didn't come in very useful, as I went to a village that spoke Sereer instead. So... "Salaam alekum" was as far as I got! But people are amazingly friendly, even if all you can do is smile and nod in response to their questions. Greetings take a long time here, and everyone was curious about us, which transformed a ten-minute walk into a half-hour confusing meet-and-greet of neighbors and friends. The last name "Faye" is apparantly Sereer, so people were delighted to hear that is it my last name as well. The moment we set foot in thr family's compound we were given village names. Mine was "Binta Faye", which at least kept part of my real name in it! There were probably a dozen kids running around all the time, from full-grown men to a tiny five-month old baby (who was absolutely the most adorable, chubby baby! He loved splashing around in a bucket of water, and had necklaces - gris-gris - around his neck and hips. Protective amulets, I believe they are, if my memory of the cultural air is any good...) and the two mothers seemed to always have their hands full. In the daytime we went to te fields and gardens to observe the crops (millet, rice, corn, and cowpea) and also garden plots though these were not too impressive yet. We were told gardening is more common during the dry season, when the harvest is over. One morning, decked out in farming gear of long pants, full-sleeved blouse and sun hat, we headed for a rice plot to weed. The dirt smelled amazing that day! It rained a lot while we were there, and the water in the soil brought all those good, earthy aromas to the surface to perfume us as we weeded. Around seven thirty in the evening the family broke their day's fast, and we with them. Though I didn't fast this year, the Volunteer I stayed with did, and I think this would be fun to do once I am settled into my own hut and my own family. I can see how it would really bring people together, to wait all day in anticipation of the meal. We broke our fast with a piece of village bread and a cup of coffee or kinkileba tea, and lots of water. This particular family has a well on their compound, from which they draw their water. Ours was filtered of course. After breaking the fast, the family prayed all together; except the littlest ones. Finally, around eight or eight-thirty, dinner was served. The food here is very tasty but mostly variations of the same basic dish: rice and sauce. We had fish atop the rice, and some small bits of vegetable too such as cabbage, manioc or sweet potato. Our host family gave us three Americans our own bowl, which we tried to eat out of in the traditional way with our hands. Mostly I made a mess, but maybe that's the idea! You have to kind of smear a glob of food onto your fingertips, then smash it into ball in your palm, and kind of roll it into your mouth...sometimes I succeeded at this, but usually I just licked it off my fingers without trying to make a ball, because it was way too difficult. It was so hot there that I sweated all day, and three showers would not have been too many! No shower heads for me, though; instead, a bucket and a scoop with which to slosh cool well water over my body. It is very refreshing to rinse off like this during the day, and especially at night. The water is a cold shock at first, but soon it just feels luxurious. And there is someting special about washing under the stars. I think it is finally beginning to hit me that I am in Senegal; it's taken long enough! The whole thing was just surreal at first. But there is nothing like an outdoor "douche" - a.k.a. hole in the ground - to bring you back to reality. This is not as odious as it might sound; though definitely something that will take some serious getting used-to. I am glad to be back in Thies, where I can settle in for a little while. What I really look forward to, however, is having my own space, my own hut where I can really make myself at home. That's still several months coming, but it's something to look forward to! I will try to write again later this week with more news. Gotta take advantage of this Internet access while I can, before they throw me out in the bush for good!