Happy Birthday to me

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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!