There are toads in my tree sacks

It's good that I'm getting away from village for a little bit. I have a wonderful pepiniere and my poor plants have to face all kinds of hazards on a daily basis, such as children, chickens, and toads. My trees, which I've seeded in little black plastic bags that we call tree sacks seem to be the biggest object of desire for the children and toads. The children frequently wander into my backyard and on multiple occasions have picked up my tree sacks, which have tiny and fragile seedlings in them, and would just dump them upside down... (not intended maliciously). Typically, I would just pick up the child and carry him or her outside of my room and frustratedly try to rescue the seedling which has inevitably fallen on the ground. The Toads have a slightly different method of destruction. They just like the cool, moist soil so they jump in into the sack, and just kick the seedlings and dirt out in order to bury themselves. Again, typically a recoverable process, fixed simply by placing the seedling back into the soil (after first removing the toads who inevitably pee on my hand). The chickens, on the other hand, tend to leave my trees alone. They are more partial to my vegetable seedlings and compost. After a lot of work and creative planning, I've managed to cover my veggie plants well enough that the chickens leave them alone for the most part. I'm becoming rather partial to the little devils now that they aren't eating my plants. In fact, they are providing me with some additional benefits. When I was having a problem with an ant infestation, the little chicks had a field day and ate all of them! The ants here, due to limited resources, will eat anything and everything. I have seen ants carry off entire seedlings on their backs. The chickens also help me out with my mini compost pile. They turn it for me and eat the seeds. It's turning into a decent system. (Just a random ant fact... certain types of ants farm aphids by creating aphid habitats and then the ants “milk” the aphids of a sap-like substance that they excrete.)

Anyway, my family finally put up my new fence so I don't have to crouch every time I want to take a shower. The same day that they completed the fence, a Peace Corps employee came to Matakosi for a site visit. We basically just sat around and talked about how things are going in village and about potential ideas for projects. I got a ride with him in the Peace Corps car to the regional house from where I would continue my journey to Thies. I decided to take my time getting to Thies so I could see people and other regional houses on the way. Arfang dropped me off at the Tambacounda (Tamba) regional house. I spent a night there and met some of the other volunteers who live in villages near there. The following morning, I went with a friend in a seven seater taxi to the Kaolak regional house where Peace Corps had arranged to send two peace corps buses to bring volunteers to Thies. The Kaolak house has a reputation of being a horrible, horrible place with far too many people and far too much partying, but I have a lot of friends who are volunteers in the Kaolak region and I like free transport, so I wanted to go. When we arrived there, there were at least 30 volunteers there, many of them preparing to leave for the 6PM bus. Kaolak is only two or three hours from Thies so everyone was expecting to Thies by 10:00 at latest. I was scheduled to leave the following morning on the 6:00AM bus. I figured that the crazy partiers would get on the bus that evening and the rest of us would have a nice quiet, early-to-bed evening so we could get up early and leave. 6PM rolls by and we get word from Thies that the buses haven't left Thies yet. We figured that meant that they would leave soon and be there by 9:00. At around 7:30, we get another phone call from Thies saying that the bus had JUST left and is now on the way. What had not been previously taken into account is that it was also the first day of an important pilgrimage to the holy Muslim city of Touba, Senegal called the Grand Magal. This created a horrible traffic scene on all the roads for days! The partying volunteers realized that it would be at least a few hours before the bus got to Kaolak either way, so they played some very loud music on the roof. I knew that a good night's sleep was not in my future, so I decided to socialize and get to know the other volunteers. As a large group, they can get quite rowdy but individually there are a lot of really great volunteers. The bus FINALLY arrived at midnight!! I guess the traffic was not as bad going back because I found out the next day that they arrived in Thies by 3:00. After a few short hours of sleep at the regional house, people were already bustling around by 5:30. While the bus the night before was six hours late, our bus was half an hour early. The driver had some time to take a catnap and say his morning prayers before we left on time at 6:00. That's very unusual in Senegal.

The Thies training center was bustling with lots of familiar and unfamiliar faces and the Peace Corps staff were running around posting schedules and preparing tables for registration. The presentations were almost entirely conducted by volunteers with the exception of the safety and security presentation about the upcoming Senegal elections. There were several presentations going on at a time and we could choose which ones to go to. The presentations were basically summaries of a variety of projects that volunteers have been working on over the last 2 years. Some of them were incredibly inspiring and complex and some were such simple concepts that are so easy to implement anywhere at anytime. I tried to focus on going to the non-agriculture related presentations because I will get more than enough of that during the upcoming “in service training”. My favorite presentation to which I went was conducted by a health volunteer who has been working with his counterpart to create a medicine cabinet of all local forest medicinal plants. This is a concept that I had already been thinking about incorporating into my potential edible forest garden along with the delicious, edible bush fruits. All the presentations were so well done and I learned so much during those two days there. The second day of presentations they had sign up sheets for field trips. I went on a trip to an apiculture site to learn about the potentials of bee keeping in Senegal. It was fascinating how relatively simple the process of bee keeping is but unfortunately our time was limited so we were rushing to get back to the training center (at least I got a bottle of delicious acacia honey out of it!).

That same day, after the presentations were over, the Training center was so crowded and there were camping bags EVERYWHERE! We were all getting ready to go to Dakar for W.A.S.T. My bus wasn't scheduled to leave until the evening so I went into the Thies market to get last minute costume items for the tournament and prom. W.A.S.T., I mentioned in an earlier blog stands for the West Africa Softball Tournament. It is a weekend long event, a “real” tournament, with non-Peace Corps teams that we happen to participate in. Peace Corps volunteers from Senegal and the neighboring countries put together teams. The Senegal teams are by region and each region has a costume theme and everyone has to wear a costume during the games (which were all at different times throughout the day). My team's theme was baseball and a group of girls dressed up as the characters from a League of their own, for example. The other Senegal themes were “Suits”, “Boy Scouts/Girl Scouts”, and “South of the Border”. We were all there just to play and have fun and to make the tournament more lighthearted. Not a single Peace Corps team won but we were all doing crazy things like batting with a blow up pool floatie instead of a bat and none of us intended to win.

For three nights we had evening events planned for us. The first night we had a talent show and the Kedougou volunteers rocked the show! One of our musicians played a few folk songs and another musician wrote a theme song for our safety and security guy so that people can memorize his number more easily. Everyone loved it! The favorite act was a fire poi dance by a shirtless marine. If you're not familiar with fire poi, look it up on youtube. The following night I got to wear my gift from Santa! The BCBG dress. The prom theme was 90s prom/masquerade. There were of course people nominated for prom queen and prom king and they also scheduled a date auction where two guys from each region were auctioned off and all the proceeds go to the Senegal Gender and Development sector. The prom was hosted at the Marine House where the U.S. marines live when they are stationed in Senegal. It felt so good to dress up and wear my dress. The party was great and everyone was dancing for hours to a fantastic selection of 90s music... until drama ensued. It was like being back in high school! OH THE DRAMA!!! (Girls crying in the bushes and relationship types of arguments.) I thought that the party the following night at the Olympic Club would be a little less crazy because it wasn't hosted by the marines (who are notorious for supplying alcohol and making very strong jungle juice) and I thought, wrongfully, that people would have gotten the catty superficial-ness out of them when they were crying in the bushes. The Olympic Club party started out really slowly and calmly. It was quiet and fun and everyone was pleasant and happily dancing and chatting. As people started to roll in by 12:00, the level of tension rose and suddenly things seemed to just fall apart. People were starting to get crazy. I left at about 1:45 because I was frustrated when this girl in my region claimed that I did not give her money that I had given her to buy me a bus ticket back to Kedougou. I sorted things out with her later but in the end, I'm glad that she didn't buy me the ticket because it was empowering to travel through Dakar by myself with no knowledge of Wolof and my limited French. It gave me a sense of independence that is usually hard for me to find outside of Pular speaking regions. The day after the party, I heard SOOOO MUCH GOSSIP from friends about the Drama and tension that escalated literally to a point of destruction after I had left. There was about $200 worth of damage to the club! There were stories about girls going up to dancing couples and telling the guy, “ugh, you could do sooo much better than that” and other similar snide comments. Even more colorfully, there was a girl who punched a guy because he was talking to another girl. I was so glad I had left early! Overall, there were also several injuries playing softball, people being stupid, one taxi accident, and people just getting sick. I managed to avoid ALL the bad! As crazy as it was, it was still a blast and a nice change of pace from the quiet village life.

On the better side of W.A.S.T. weekend, everyone who wanted to attend signed up ahead of time to request a homestay in Dakar. All Peace Corps volunteers are assigned to stay with ex-pat host families. I was staying with a nice family from Virginia in a beautiful home and 6 other volunteers. Our family was so nice and we were all well behaved and good guests. They invited us to come back on occasions that we might come through Dakar. Not all homestays were as thrilled with their rowdy and obnoxious volunteers. My host family let us use their pool and I got to do laps every day for the few days I was there! I mean, I swim in rivers all the time in village, but swimming in a chlorinated pool where I could do laps was such a wonderful bonus! We also got to eat delicious food and wash our clothes in their washer and drier machines. My clothes and I were SO CLEAN! One day, while I was at the mall, I ran into the Senegal Peace Corps program director. We told him that we were planning to go to these public trampolines where you pay about a dollar for 15 minutes of trampoline time. He told us that we could just go with him to his house and use his trampoline for free!!!! He has a beautiful house and wonderful kids and it was a blast hanging out at his house. It's pretty cool because his kids all speak Pular and English fluently so I got to practice language with them too. After all the craziness of W.A.S.T., we, the Kedougou volunteers, were all ready to get back. Ten of us took the night bus back to the regional house. It was a surprisingly fast and surprisingly pleasant ride, although dusty.

We got into Kedougou at 10AM and it gave me time to prepare for some upcoming work events over the next few days. The following morning I left the regional house for a long bike ride out to several villages where I was going to meet a fellow volunteer, Rob, and his counterpart, Karamba, who works with an NGO called Trees for the Future. Karamba is working with us in Peace Corps to do trainings in villages to teach mango grafting, alley cropping, soil erosion prevention, live fencing, and other tree related agriculture techniques. Karamba has a huge work load and this year alone is working with 25 new villages on top of the ones that he worked with last year. In order to not overload his already overloaded schedule even more, I was thinking I'd wait until next year to introduce Matakosi to the program. Karamba asked me why I was waiting until next year and he offered to come speak to Matakosi when we get back from in service training (IST) in mid-February. Since he doesn't seem to think it will be too much of an additional burden, I decided to take him up on the offer. When I get back to site after training I am going to prep Matakosi and the neighboring villages of his arrival. The initial meeting is merely explanatory and he gives a detailed spiel on what types of trainings he has available. The actual trainings are scheduled for later. I can't wait to have someone explain the benefits of live fencing in fluent Pular. Whenever I try to talk to my counterparts about it, they look at me like I'm crazy; really, I'm pretty sure they don't fully understand what I'm saying.

I am so glad that I got to help out with this initial “tourney”. It was great for meeting people, seeing other villages, exercise, and practicing Pular. On Wednesday I biked to three different villages. I left the regional house at 8 in the morning so I could get to this village called Banding. Rob and Karamba were each coming from different directions and I got there at 10, before both of them. Karamba showed up on his motorbike only about fifteen minutes later. We got a phone call from Rob at around 11:30 that he was about an hour away. An hour went by and still no Rob. I went to find a pocket of cell phone reception to call him. He said his bike broke and he's trying to fix it. Finally, at around 2:00 he showed up. He told us the rest of the story about his bike. He was going around a blind turn and crashed into a cow… only in Senegal... full of unlikely hazards. Luckily he was okay and ready to continue biking the rest of way. Banding was the farthest out from Kedougou of the villages at which we were scheduled to meet, so we stopped at the other two on our way back to the city. The second village was not particularly memorable but the third village, which is only about six kilometers from Kedougou, was a Jahanke village rather than a Pular village. The language and culture is different than that of Pulars. I didn't think it possible, but the Jahankes seem even more laid back and more friendly. The most impressive element of this beautiful and laid back village was this dead fence that they had. It was like an impenetrable fortress (I wish I had had my camera). The journey was worth every one of the eighty-some kilometers.

I rested a little bit the next day because my body “did not agree” (as we might say in Pular). I worked on my last blog and then a group of us volunteers biked down the road to the Gambia River and we went for a swim before dark. As we were getting out of the water we saw some monkeys prance by and we discussed how amusing it would be if they had taken our bikes. Secretly, I wish they had; It would mean Peace Corps giving us new bikes. Alas... the monkeys did not take our bikes.

I left early again the following morning for another day of tourney. I knew there was a bike path out to Segou, a village which I had to bike through to get to Chiangey. There are volunteers in both those villages. Our first meeting was in Chiangey and then we were going to bike back to Segou for the second meeting. I was very proud of myself for finding my way to Segou on my own. It was a beautiful ride through the woods until it met up with the main road to Dendefellow. Dendefellow is the most famous town in Kedougou, at least from a tourist's perspective (and also from a Peace Corps perspective but for different reasons). It has a spectacular waterfall... which I haven't been to yet. Because of increased publicity, NGOs and tourists have pumped so much money into this town, the villagers don't understand why Peace Corps volunteers don't simply give money and disappear like all the other NGOs that come through. The last volunteer there left because it was too difficult. In addition to all of this publicity, the Senegal Peace Corps director was himself a volunteer in Dendefellow in the '70's. He has an adopted Senegalese son who received a private education and comes from a background of money. Senegalese who know him frequently look to him as the quintessential Senegalese dream of becoming rich and going to “America” when they don't fully understand that his father is an American “jooma jowdi” (which means owner of riches). Conversely, there are also many Senegalese who see him as an unmotivated outsider and hence do not like him very much for other reasons. Segou has an equally beautiful waterfall and not as much publicity from NGOs so in addition to being a physically beautiful place, has a much more pleasant character.

While I have not yet been to Dendefellow, when I arrived in Segou, I must have ridden through with my mouth open because I was so astounded by the beauty of this place. As you approach Segou, you are literally riding through a very narrow valley (not entirely unlike McConnellsburg, PA in the summer except with mangos and a chimpanzee habitat). For watever reason, climate or otherwise, the mangos are closer to being ripe there than anywhere else in Kedougou. Not fair! From Segou to Chiangey, there is a six or seven kilometer bike path through the woods. It's a truly enviable part of Kedougou. I mean, all of Kedougou is beautiful, but the people down south there on the Guinea border (literally) reeaaalllyyy lucked out. If you climb to the top of the mountain there, you can see Guinea on the other side. The meetings in both Chiangey and Segou went smoothly and we had a delicious lunch intermission of maffe tiga (rice with peanut sauce) at the restaurant shack in Segou before biking back to Kedougou in the evening.

The following day was another relaxing day and I was getting excited about my birthday which was coming up in a few days. I was about to watch a movie on my computer with some of the other volunteers at around 11:00P.M. before going to bed when I received a mysterious phone call from a Senegalese man. I did not recognize his name or phone number but there was a sense of urgency in his voice and I knew he was connected somehow with Matakosi. He told me that Mamajan died that afternoon. I threw together a day pack and prepared to bike out the following morning to stay there for a few days before having to leave again for IST. Mamajan lived in my compound and I knew he was very close with my family. I did not realize to what extent until the following morning; Understanding family connections and relations can be challenging in a new language when it feels like you meet at least 50 new people a day. I knew I had to get back village and be there for my family. Mamajan was the one person in village who I felt somewhat uncomfortable around. He was the one who posed the most gender biased comments towards me and was very critical of my attempt to challenge gender norms. He frequently told me that I should not run because I was a woman and that I was crazy for not wanting to get married. Despite this, I knew he had a good heart and meant all he said with the best of intentions. His death has taken a heavy toll on me, especially knowing what he means to my family, whom I love dearly.

I had been expecting an important e-mail from Peace Corps so I checked my e-mail before leaving early the next day for Matakosi. I found the e-mail and as I was getting ready to sign off when, of all people, my Ancien (who has been traveling around Eastern Europe since leaving Senegal) sent me an instant message asking me how things are in the village. The timing was oddly pertinent seeing as this important village member had just died the day before and my Ancien appears sporadically and unpredictably. I told him that Mamajan had just passed away and that was when I learned that Mamajan Diallo, who many call Bapajan, is the brother of my host dad!! I was able to give my Ancien the phone number he needed to call the family and wish them condolences. Right before leaving, I asked the guard at the Kedougou regional house what I should say/do for my family when I arrive. I didn't have much luggage with me, the wind was with me, and the ride to Matakosi from Kedougou is more downhill than uphill. About half way through the ride, a baboon ran across the road in front of me (which was just a little ray of light during a sad, sad day). After two hours, I was shocked because I had already arrived at the turn-off to my village! I'm still not entirely sure how I managed that. My last ride (although in the other direction) took me 3 hours. I made it to Matakosi in a total 2 hours and 15 minutes! My family was surprised but very glad that I was there. It was a comfort to both me any my family to be with them during this hard time. After getting settled in and giving my initial condolences, I gave more condolences. In Pular culture, the greeting you say when someone has died is, “be patient” and the reply is, “there is patience”.

Things were already pretty calm by the time I had arrived because the actual funeral had been the day before and I hate to say it, but Senegalese see so much death and sadly they learn to cope with it rather quickly, albeit with a somewhat defeatist attitude (typically claiming that Allah willed it). After spending some time with my family, my Neene told me that Boye Diallo's (my counterpart/coworker) husband was sick. Boye Diallo is a wonderful, sweet, and hardworking old lady who I am growing to see almost as a second mother in village, and her husband is a wonderful old man with no teeth and speaks so slowly and politely and pleasantly and is easily one of my favorite people in village. I stopped by my counterpart's house and she was sitting outside with her children. Her son lives in Matakosi and her daughter had come in from Tambacounda to help take care of Sadio. Senegalese have a tendency to hide emotion so they were smiling but I could see worry in all their eyes. Sadio was lying on a gatal mat, barely conscious. He looked like death. Boye explained that he had already been sick for almost a week. The Neenefesha hospital nurse had stopped by and diagnosed him with dysentery, a disease that I've only ever associated with the Oregon Trail game. This felt too real. Another volunteer had told me that when she had dysentery a few months earlier, the medication cure for it was cipromycin, a drug that is basically a relatively inexpensive miracle drug for most diarrheal problems. The medication that the nurse gave him was called captopril and I was unfamiliar with this drug and I was hoping it was some form of cypro. I returned to visit Boye each day hoping to hear some news that he was getting better. Sadly, I just received sad looks, a slight, reluctant nod, and news that he wasn't eating and could barely drink water.

I tried to keep busy for the four days that I was in village. My pepiniere, which my Neene had been working so hard to water for me, was doing very well. My plants were getting so big that I knew that I couldn't keep them in their containers much longer. I cleaned up my yard and re-double dug the 3x3 meter bed that I intended to use. I decided to make a keyhole garden and I marked out a path through the center of it and transplanted my plants. My fingers are crossed that the ants wont steal all my plants before I get back. It'll be a surprise. I managed to patch up all the holes in my new fence where chickens were still getting in. Hopefully they wont be smart enough to fly over the fence. If I have no plants left when I get back, I'll have plenty of time to start over and my garden bed is already set and ready to go for the next round.

Meanwhile, Peace Corps volunteers have been receiving messages that Peace Corps is forbidding us to travel to Dakar because of an upcoming ruling about who will be running for elections. The night bus to Dakar is the primary method of transport from Kedououg and is only available on certain days (the important date being the one on the day we were forbidden to travel and also happens to be the last one we could take before training starts). Our options are limited. We called Peace Corps and they told us that our only option was to take the night bus on Sunday and we would get off near Thies (before Dakar) and Peace Corps transport would pick us up from there. We had also scheduled two work days at the regional house for the agriculture volunteers for the few days before the night bus. We are working to develop the regional house into a massive demo garden using various techniques and live fencing, AND we had all decided to combine the work day with a birthday celebration for me.

I biked back to the Kedougou regional house after a long few days (the day after I finished transplanting and mulching with peanut shells that I had been saving for just the right moment). Goodbyes are always hard with Senegalese because you have to go through a full set of greetings with everyone you pass on the way before you leave and it takes half an hour (or longer). It was a much harder bike ride on the way back because I had stuff strapped to my bike, I was biking into the wind, and the last quarter of the ride is up hill, but I still made good time. I beat my 3 hour record by 10 minutes! Also, about half way through the bike ride, a man was peddling really hard to catch up with me and I didn't notice until he was ahead of me because I don't usually look behind me that often while I'm biking (trying to avoid potholes and such) and I was listening to my ipod. He stopped me and he had a green waterbottle that I didn't notice had fallen off the back of my bike!! It turned out that he was from Banding where I had gone a few days earlier for the meeting with Karamba. He had biked a good kilometer or two to catch up with me and I was going at a pretty fast pace! It reminded me that Senegal has a lot of redeeming qualities and some truly incredible and wonderful people.

It was such a relief to be surrounded by my friends and fellow Americans again. That evening, we had our agriculture meeting and planned our work day and everyone was talking about the delicious meal and dessert that they were going to be prepared for me. I woke up the next morning ready to work and rake some hay into a giant pile to make some compost. There was a plan to also pick up a donkey cart so we could shovel A LOT of manure to add to our compost pile. After a quick jaunt to the post office where I was told I wasn't allowed to pick up my package, I came back somewhat frustrated and ready to get started. The others were working on repairing old tools and I asked what I could do to help. I went with Rob to his family's compound in Kedougou because they have a donkey and a cart but unfortunately his Baaba was using the donkey, but the cart was there. I made some silly Pular jokes with his family about how I would pull the cart myself and then I laughed about how the Pular word Baaba (father) is very similar to the Pular word for donkey (Mbaapa) which is also different from Rob's little brother's name, bappa. With no success obtaining the donkey cart, we went back to the regional house where we found out that we didn't have enough tools for everyone to rake and chop grass. I offered to bike into town to get an extra rake but they only had the head of the rake so we would have to create a makeshift handle for it when I returned.

On my way back I received another mysterious phone call. Once again, about a death, one that I knew would happen at any moment but was hoping wouldn't. Sadio had died and I couldn't be in village because I had to leave for Thies. I did what I could to hold back my tears and express my condolences to my counterpart over the phone. I finished my bike ride back from town to the regional house and tried to get right back to work to keep me distracted, with notable success. We joked around as we raked grass and discussed the unrealistic and crazy ideas of all the things we could do with a cleared field, such as a mini putt-putt golf course; in fact, one of our fellow workers was using a golf club as a sythe (largely due to the limited tool availability) and it was very amusing. We raked all the grass into a giant mound about seven feet high and we were ready to go out in search of a donkey again to pull our cart. Eight of us volunteers walked down the road to Rob's house in single file like a bunch of crazy tubabs and we were prepared to all pull the donkey cart together with two people on each side (if we couldn't find a donkey), two people pushing from behind, and two people commanding directions and providing moral support. Luckily, our service as donkeys was no longer needed as the actual donkey was waiting patiently for us at his house. Rob's little host brother drove the donkey cart for us because we don't know how to. We walked along side the donkey cart to what seemed like an abandoned lot but is actually where a family keeps their cows at night. The cow graze by the river during the day so the lot was empty when we arrived. CJ said that he had collected manure from there before and that it shouldn't be a problem. We took our tools and starting raking and shoveling using any additional tools we could find and it was strangely so much fun (although dirty). We filled the donkey cart twice along with two wheel barrow fulls, all the while laughing and making “shit” jokes for a few hours. By the end we were all so gross and dusty and it ended up being a really good day. So, ironically, the best part of my birthday week ended up being, quite literally, “the shittiest”.

Now my friends are all cooking me a birthday dinner and a delicious chocolate cake!! I have some time now to process the death of this wonderful man.

For Sadio.