Oh yeah

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

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

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

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

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!