Things are starting to come together

My last day in Kedougou before returning to site was a very relaxing day. I waited at the regional house until our Pular language teachers arrived with a Peace Corps driver. It was time for our three day language seminar during which two other volunteers, a language teacher, and I would stay at my ville for the duration and we'd have language class there. One teacher was with my group and the other teacher was meeting with a different group of volunteers who were going to stay at the regional house. When the teachers arrived, we loaded my bike on the roof of the car and we headed out to Matakosi. It was almost dark and the driver was in a crazy rush and was driving really fast around the bends and turns and I got so car sick! We finally turned onto my road and we were traveling through narrow roads and driving under short branches. But we made it, finally, and my family and my village was so confused as to why I had brought 3 people with me. I had tried to call the one person in ville who has a landline but he didn't answer so I had no way to inform my family of their arrival. The teacher, Djeba, was able to explain everything more fluidly, seeing as she is a native Pular speaker, and we gave my family a stipend for the days they would be there. We unloaded my bike from the roof of the car and the front wheel wouldn't turn! Despite my slowly subsiding nausea, I was able to take the wheel off and put it back on and it became unstuck. I would do a more thorough inspection the next day. After my more thorough inspection, I discovered that the front break wire got destroyed so whenever I try to use the front break, it locks in place. I tried to fix it but to no avail. At least I have my back break, and that's the one that's important... and Peace Corps is sending a new break wire for me.
After a very informal class the following morning, we decided to walk out to the weekly Tuesday lumo for a bit of adventure. We brought back sweet potatoes and the following evening we cooked sweet potato fries and popcorn. My village had never had popcorn before and it was hysterical watching the kids gather around me while holding this giant bowl filled with kettle corn. They would reluctantly try one or two kernels and their faces would light up and then they would go back in with both hands to grab a giant handful! So, basically, I decided to try planting a few of the kernels in my peppiniere. If they grow it is going to be my new marketing scheme for the women in my village. Everyone at lumo sells all the same snacks, meat or fish balls, beignet (fried dough - sweet or with and onion sauce), and frozen juice. There is far too much competition for anyone to be competitive so it would be so great to bring in this new product with no competition!! The rest of that week was less eventful. I went to a Muslim baptism (which happens when the baby is 8 days old and they name the baby) in my village with some ladies and they carried a giant bowls of corn kernels on their heads and they delivered the corn and then they danced for the mother and then we all ate a bowl of greasy rice.
That weekend, I ran 13 miles for my training and it felt great and then I decided to get started on the land preparation for the school garden. I worked really hard for two days despite everyone in my village telling me I would get sick... and guess what... I got sick! I had a fever for 3 days, so in addition to just feeling miserable and having to fend people off and chase chickens out of my garden, I had my village telling me, “see, I told you that you'd get sick because you work in the sun”. What I wanted to say is, “well ACTUALLY I'm sick because the kids pee and poop everywhere and you cough and sneeze on food and your wipe kids snotty noses with your hands and don't use soap, much less antibacterial soap.” but I don't quite have the language skills to convey this, nor would they understand anyway because they are mostly uneducated and even if they had been educated, the schools don't really teach science.
While being sick felt miserable, it turned out to be quite productive. I couldn't do physical work so I started reading a book on permaculture called Gaia's garden. It started to inspire some really cool ideas of what I could do with the school yard. Right now the school looks like a deserted prison with a cement mosquito pit in the middle. I've decided that I am going to try to create an edible forest garden. Then ideas and information just started coming to me with out me having to even go out to look for it. I became very curious about native and forest plants and just as though the universe knew what I wanted, I started to see villagers with leaves, logs, and fruits from the woods!! Every time I saw a new plant, I would ask about it's Pular name and what they do with it. It's incredible how many dry season fruits there are in addition to medicinal plants and plants used for furniture! Whenever I keep seeds from a “bush” plant, the people in my village look at me like I'm crazy and they ask me why I would want to plant something when they can already find it in the woods. Now, my thought is, if you can plant it closer to your house, why would you want to go into the woods to harvest rather than have it right there at your finger tips? It's a concept beyond their understanding, which seems strange given the Senegalese inclination to do as little work as possible.
I recovered 2 days before Christmas so I decided that biking for 3 hours to Kedougou was not the best plan. I walked out to the road to wait for the bus and I figured I should at least make some headway so I decided to walk until the bus came. After about an hour and a half, I was regretting not having my bike. Walking defeated the entire purpose of my not biking and I was feeling really good so I decided to keep walking. I walked for another few minutes and some ladies came out of the woods with giant buckets of cotton that they had just finished harvesting. I walked with them for a while and from the side of the road I hear, “Kadjatu! Kadjatu!” I veered to the side of the road to find out why these people knew me. One woman in her late 30s said, “do you remember me from the baptism?” She reminded me that she had told me that she wanted to be the wife of my host brother. I remembered her now. She introduced me to an older man and woman who were sitting with her and it turns out that the older couple are the parents of one of my host brother's wives!! ANNDDD... they were also going to Kedougou (also waiting for the same bus that I was waiting for)! I was a little tired so I decided to wait with them there and to practice Pular. We were sitting under a Cheekee tree which happens to be one of the native bush fruits that I had just learned about a day or two earlier. I was picking the delicious cheekee fruit like the little kids do and they were all laughing at me and teasing me about it. I also found a very large seed on the ground. It turns out that this is another type of bush fruit and my knowledge of local fruits only continued.
The bus FINNALLY arrived and we made it to Kedougou. The first thing I did when I got to the regional house was weigh myself. According to the scale, I had lost close to 25Lbs since leaving the U.S. Most of that occurred only in the last 2 months since I moved into my village hut. After that, I excitedly meandered into the kitchen hut where we have a blackboard where we write notes and list the names of people who have packages at the post office. My name was on the list and it said I had 4 packages!!!! I had been expecting three of them from different people (which took about 6 weeks to get) but that 4th package was a complete surprise! There was another volunteer who had packages so later that day when the post office reopened (it was closed for lunch) we went to go pick up our packages. The first three that I opened were exactly what I had expected and so so exciting... and right before Christmas! I received all kinds of edible goodies and toilet paper, and coffee, and my new solar charger, and my new tent, and underwear, and facial wipes and it was all so perfect. The fourth package made me believe in Santa Clause. The package slip said it was from my mom's cousin who had sent me one of the three packages that I knew about. I didn't recall her saying anything about a second package and there was a BCBG sticker on the box. I opened the box and it was an incredibly beautiful and INCREDIBLY expensive black dress, brand new, price tag still on it... from BCBG, in case that wasn't implied! It was a size 6. Of course, I had to try it on, especially with my new body that I wanted to show off. All my clothes are too big. All my pants are falling off (thank god I brought belts) and what I had been thinking about more than anything (other than my forest garden at the school) was new clothes... that fit! The dress fits me PERFECTLY!!!! Not only that, but the “West Africa Softball Tournament” -W.A.S.T.- in Dakar was coming up and I even had a real occasion to wear it! Here's a link to the dress... http://www.bcbg.com/product/index.jsp?productId=11979263&cp=2939729.3126135&parentPage=family&clickid=cat_leftnav_txt&parentPage=family .
My first thought, after trying on the dress was, “Santa MUST exist.” My second thought was, “did my cousin Ilana (my tokara as they say in Pular - a term of endearment for people who have the same name) really mean to send me this incredible dress?” Later that evening, I see her online. I was almost reluctant to ask about the dress out of fear that she had put the wrong package slip in the box and would ask me to send it back. I thought maybe she had bought it for her daughter and it just ended up in the wrong place, but I gathered up the nerve and I thanked her for the box of goodies and then I asked, “did you mean to also send me that beautiful dress?” She says, “what dress?” Now, the Senegal postal service is not what anyone would qualify as “quality” service. I've had many volunteer friends tell me about many packages that they've never received because packages frequently get lost in the mail. It didn't occur to me that someone else would be at the other end of those lost packages... in this case, I was at the receiving end of someone else's lost package! Senegal customs has a habit, it seems, of checking the packages and then mixing up or losing package slips. So I speculate that Santa told them to take the carbon copy of my package slip from cousin Ilana and put it into this other box to which they had lost the package slip because Santa decided the dress was actually meant for me... I'm SURE of it!
After Christmas, I had another two productive weeks back in village before the All Volunteer Conference and W.A.S.T. (The West Africa Softball Tournament that I mentioned earlier). I spent two long days in the sun measuring the entire school yard so that I can try to transcribe it onto a digitized drafting program to make a virtual forest garden to show my village (eventually). I learned more about native plants and spent more time talking with my counterparts about potential projects. My counterpart, Galle, and I went around to all the villagers to whom my ancien had distributed crop seeds. For every kilo of seed given to a farmer, they are expected to return two kilos from their harvest. Unfortunately, this was a bad year for many farmers. The rains came late and their harvests died. For others, they had problems with pests eating their entire bean harvest, and others planted their corn seed by the river and the river flooded and destroyed their crop. Others had seed to return but failed to store them properly so are now infested with boll weevils and therefore unplantable for the following year. Peace Corps does not penalize farmers if they cannot return seed due to environmental factors, however, if they simply did not plant the seed, or decided to eat it instead, they obviously cannot return the seed (to fault of their own) but we simply won't extend seed to those farmers the following year. I asked my counterpart what people do when their crop fails. He told me that they then have to buy grain for the year. I asked how they have money to buy grain and he explained that they'll slaughter a cow and sell the meat. Senegalese villagers love having their cows around (despite the fact that they constantly complain about cows eating their crop and knocking down fences) and they are always reluctant to slaughter them... much to my chagrin, but in times of emergency, they have them as a form of insurance, essentially. On a good note, however, this mostly failed seed collection attempt, has shed light on the problems that many villagers face growing crops and has led to some smaller scale and more pertinent project ideas, such as proper seed storage techniques and other natural pest control techniques. Now I have some time away from village to get training and have a good time and to let the foundation of all my ideas fester and develop into more solid ideas as I head off to “All Vol”, “W.A.S.T.”, and “In Service Training”.
Stay tuned! There's more to come!!