Getting back on track.

So I'm back at the Kedougou regional house for a few days now. I faced my fears and confronted the 20some mile bike ride again since it had been such a traumatic experience last time. Apparently, the bike ride is not only possible, but it's actually quite enjoyable when you're not wearing a 20Lb backpack, when it's not the middle of the 95-100 degree afternoon, and when your bike tire isn't flat the entire 20some miles! When you don't feel like you're dying the entire time and the early morning mist is cooling you down, the views of the mountains rising on either side are spectacular. It was a truly wonderful 3 hour bike ride even without an ipod the day after a 9 mile run.

When I went back to my village after Thanksgiving, the first few days were frustrating. I had the very normal and cyclical questioning of my service. Every volunteer goes through it and wonders why they're here. My seedlings hadn't germinated (or so I thought), I couldn't speak Pular (I felt like I had forgotten everything), I missed my privacy and independence and nutrition and I had to get back into running because I had fallen behind a week on my marathon training and the list goes on and on.... but I knew I'd get through it.
I still went through the daily routine and tried to participate in EVERYTHING hoping to push past my homesickness. I went to the Tuesday market, which was fun at first and not so fun when I couldn't leave when I was ready. I was invited to another wedding... this time IN my village, which started to bring me back. It was not nearly as elaborate (nor as long) as the one I had gone to in the neighboring village but I still had some delicious rice and peanut sauce (as opposed to our less spiced and more liquidy daily peanut sauce and rice) and the women all came and sang and danced. There were no instruments this time. We were there for just an hour or two and as usual I was a child magnet. They were all asking me if I knew their names and they all wanted me to play with them, but I didn't have any spontaneous projects at the tips of my fingers so I tried to talk to them and just get to know them a little bit.
I still checked for seedlings every day and my mood lifted when one morning I looked at my tomato seedlings and there were some tiny green sprouts popping through the soil!! It motivated me to plant more seeds. I went to the woods with my bike and my large laundry bucket. I filled the bucket with dirt, loaded it onto my bike rack, and headed back home. I had the kids in my compound help me fill the tree sacks with dirt and wood ash and then they helped me plant tree seeds of all kinds. It was such a fun project and the kids loved it! Now, my strongest seedings are my eggplants which germinated from 4 year-old seed!!!
Later that evening, at around 8, the kids were all so crazy. I heard them all singing and dancing and clapping their hands and laughing. They were all having such a great time. I was tired but, of course, I had to go see what the commotion was about. When I got to the crowd of children, they were so excited that I was there. They asked me if I danced and I told them I did. They started chanting, “Dance! Dance! Dance! Dance!”. They started singing and clapping and they formed a circle around me and I danced. They cheered me on and laughed and it was so so so fun! After I danced, other kids took turns dancing in the middle of the circle. It made me realize how much I love my village.
Just as I was getting tired from singing and dancing, the nearest neighbor called me into their compound. I sat with the adults by the fire for a while and warmed up. It was probably about 70 degrees, but it felt a whole lot colder than that. I had a light sweatshirt on and I was shivering. It's so strange. When I told the adults that I was tired and that I was ready to go to bed, they told me I should wait for the kids to come back. They said something in Pular about leaves and stomach and I had no idea what they were saying. I thought they were maybe talking about eating some leaf sauce (which is another staple sauce) and they said it wasn't. When I asked what this was for, they pointed to a little 8 year old boy named Ibrahima who had been circumcised about a month earlier. The boys here are circumcised between 8 and 11 years old and they are supposed to pray for a month. I figured it was important for me to fight my sleepiness and celebrate the end of Ibrahima's time of prayer and see what this leaf thing is all about.
Soon enough, the kids all came into the compound and lined up along the fence. Ibrahima was sitting on a mat outside the hut. The kids warmed up by the fire first and when they were ready, they began singing and clapping again. The adults told them to sing louder so they were almost shouting and 3 boys who looked to be about 11 or 12 came into the compound and I then understood what they meant about leaves. Each boy was wearing cornstalks on his head and each had essentially a bush of leaves around their bellies that was so wide that they could barely fit through the gate! Whenever the kids would start singing and clapping, the boys in costumes would take turns dancing. Whenever I turned my flashlight on so I could see better, the adults would yell at me to turn off the flashlight. I think it's supposed to be dark and somewhat secretive. It was hysterical and everyone was laughing and having a great time. They said this celebration is called Kalifaafaa. Even the names of things are so wonderful here.
The next night, Kalifaafaa had given me the idea to bring out my ipod and portable speakers and have a dance party of my own. I played all kinds of music and the kids especially loved the swing music. I was spinning them around and we danced for a good 2 hours or so. The mood changed pretty abruptly when one girl fell. She didn't really get hurt but it was enough to end the dance party... and besides, it was dinner time anyway.
Getting back into the swing of things, I was really excited when my family told me I could go with them to harvest rice. The first day I went, I went with all the men. They told me they were going to “beat the rice”. I had no idea what that meant, but I knew it would be at the very least, an important and interesting experience. I walked with all the men after breakfast about a mile through the woods to the rice field. They have a fenced in area next to the field where they temporarily stored the bundles of rice (still attached to the stalks) that they had just harvested a day or two earlier. After watching the process of the men taking bundles of rice and literally beating the grains off the stalks using two sticks, I joined in. We beat rice for 3 or 4 hours until I had blisters all over my hands. When I got back, my Neene and Baaba were really upset and they told me that I have blisters because I was doing a man's job and I shouldn't be doing a man's job. It made me so mad! I told them that if I tried to pound rice all day like the women do (which I try all the time) I would have blisters on my hands too and it's no different than that. In addition to being an ag volunteers, we are all also gender and development volunteers as well. I'm sick of being told that I can or can't do things because I'm a woman and I'm sick of women who see me digging a garden bed telling me that they could never do that kind of work. Grrrr!!!
The next day, the women went to do “their” part of the harvesting. I went with them of course. One of my brother's wives and I went back to the same spot. We carried a bowl of lunch with us to eat there before getting started. We brought lunch with us because there was already a woman there who had already started so we shared lunch with her. The grains of rice were all now in a giant mound in the middle of the fenced in area on a cemented floor. We swept a small area so there was a clear spot on the floor and we took empty bowls and filled them with rice from the giant mound. We would hold the bowls above our heads and when the wind blew we would slowly pour the rice onto the cleared spot on the floor. The rice would fall strait down and the grass and dust would be blown to the side by the wind. It was actually really fun... at first. I was soon completely covered with rice dust, essentially hay particles, and got a mild hives rash. After we had been there about 4 hours, 3 little boys brought us a bunch of 50kg rice sacs and we started loading them with the rice we had just sorted. We filled thirteen of those rice sacks! We had just harvested almost 1450 Lbs of rice! It certainly helped me to appreciate the bland dinners of rice and chili powder a lot.
In addition to all of that, everything else is going well. I'm getting really into the marathon training and I'm proud of my first long run... the 9 mile run I mentioned at the beginning. I always run in the mornings and sometimes even before the sun comes up. I have my headlamp with me but one morning it wasn't enough and I tripped over a rock and scraped up my hands and knees. My family made such a big deal out of it when really it wasn't a big deal at all. MORE GENDER DEVELOPMENT WORK!! When my family told me that I fell because I was a woman and shouldn't be running, I was so proud to be able to tell them that, A) it's not a big deal B) I fell because I couldn't see, not because I'm a woman and C) when my teenage host nephew, Bubakar, had blood gushing out of his leg from playing soccer, no one said anything and that it is no different than that.
Until next time!!