What am I doing here?

Why am I here? Lately I've been seriously questioning my Peace Corps experience and I'm working on re-evaluating my goals and action plans. I'm back down to my Christmas weight (woo hoo!) and my goal of being able to stay in village for 3 or 4 week stretches instead of 2 week stretches has been shattered by my mental and emotional inability to handle being there for that long. I love my village but two weeks of eating, sleeping, breathing, playing, working, in Pular while also immersed in a very different and very taxing culture feels like an eternity!!

I excitedly went back to site after a wonderful and productive cleaning day at the regional house with all the volunteers. It was so nice to rearrange the regional house and clean up odds and ends as we prepare for a batch of 9 new volunteers who will be moving down here in May. The house is so beautiful and organized and we have 4 new beds! I was ready to get back to site and I wanted to bike but as it turns out, I was getting another staph infection on my left butt cheek... of all places (just a skin infection... not as bad as it sounds and the cure is simply to keep it clean and take a prescription). It's easy to cure but it certainly hurt to sit for a few days and my family and I had some good laughs about it.

When I arrived at site, I went to check on the kittens and I was warmly welcomed and they both tried to jump right onto my lap when I noticed a red thing hanging out of Kaani's butt!! I was horrified and I had no idea what to do! I live hours and hours away from the nearest vet and Senegalese are very unsympathetic towards the plights of animals (unless it's their cows because those are their bank accounts). I called up the Peace Corps doctor to see if she had any advice. Now, of all the things on my list of things I thought I would never ever do in my life, this was probably very close to the top. She suggested that I put on medical gloves and push her intestines back in and give her cirpo meds... so I did. Unfortunately, it didn't work. I wrapped this cat up in a towel and started wandering around village hoping to find a sympathetic soul who could help me figure out how to humanely deal with this cat who's intestines were repeatedly falling out. I received several general (and very unhelpful) reactions. 1st) They were laughing at me because I was upset. 2nd) They would ask me why I was carrying around a sick cat. 3rd) They repeatedly would tell me that she would get better (of her own accord, magically I guess.). 4th) They said, “she's going to die” just as a statement with no follow up of any sort. 5th) “Why don't you keep her in your room until she dies?” Or 6th) “Why don't you just leave her in the woods?”. I was hoping I might find someone who might help me more humanely euthanize her or at least someone who might take her into the woods on my behalf so I wouldn't have to be more emotionally distressed than I already was and people don't understand that by my abandoning her in the woods, it is essentially killing her in the least humane way. There was not a single helpful person. Crying, guilt ridden, and carrying this sick cat, I brought her to the woods where I left her. I did not know that I had it in me to be so inhumane, but I could not bring myself to euthanize her.

Throughout the next two days, I focused my energy on spoiling my other kitten to try to ease the guilt and it was finally starting to subside. I had spoken to my mom about Passover and she had given me an assignment to send a picture about what “freedom” is. I had a great and surprisingly productive day. I worked with the women in their gardens when I had finished watering my own. In the morning, one woman asked me if I could get a chain link fence for them because the cows keep coming in. That was an exciting moment! There is no way that I will consider unsustainably raising funds for an expensive fence that would last maybe 4 or 5 years (AT MOST) but it gave me the perfect outlet to explain live fencing... which is permanent and the only expenses would be tree sacks. A fellow Kedougou volunteer in my group has been working with a trainer from an NGO called “Trees for the Future” and they were easily able to add my village to their list of places to do trainings. We'll see if it actually works out.

Walking back through the woods that evening I was on an emotional high. I had a garden going and I was finding potentially motivated work partners. My village's needs and desires were starting to display themselves and the mile walk through the woods was becoming an important part of my daily routine. That evening was when I realized my “freedom”, the forest. It was something I had known in the U.S. and it is something that I knew when I arrived in Senegal to the extent that when we had our placement interviews, I was able to convey to Peace Corps in my first week in country that the woods are an important form of therapy for me. Camera by my side, I was taking pictures of the woods to send to my mom and enjoying my alone time in wonder at the incredibleness of the woods and life.

I was barely out of the woods and still a little ways from the village when I thought I may have heard some yelling and shouting far far off in the distance. The birds were particularly loud too so I dismissed it as just the birds being noisy and kept daydreaming about forests and got lost in my thoughts again. I took a few steps further and realized that the yelling and shouting was not only real but was getting louder and I jolted out of my daydream and looked up and thought, “OH SHIT!”. There was a giant fire that I could see above the trees while still in the woods! Fires here are a very common thing because everyone burns their fields, but this fire was too big to be the standard field burning and the shouting and yelling made it unmistakably different. I rushed over as quickly as possible and initially it looked as though the fence were burning down and I was worried that they were trying to stop it from spreading. As I got closer and closer, I realized that it was a neighbor's house!! The entire house and backyard were completely burnt to a crisp. The entire village was frantic and the women were working hard to pull water from the nearby well, filling their buckets to pour onto the fire to put it out as quickly as possibly. The women would hand the buckets off to the men would would pour the water onto the burning ground and the women would rush back to refill their buckets. I happened to have my watering can with me because I had come right from my garden and I did what I could to contribute to putting out the fire.



Standing by the well, waiting for the well bucket, I noticed one young woman who looked about 20 years old. She was working so hard to pull water and helping all the women fill buckets. Her shirt happened to say, “your life is in MY hands”... in English. People here have all kinds of crazy shirts and they never know what their shirts actually say or actually mean. They buy shirts because they think they look “cool”. The symbolism of this young woman working to hard to put out this fire and the connection with her shirt was completely lost on her. She was just helping without even a clue that the writing on her shirt could relate to the specific actions of the day. Her shirt gave so much life to that statement in a way that I had never appreciated before. I tried to get a photo of her shirt but I couldn't.



It was a sad day in Matakosi. No one was hurt but the family lost everything. I have never lived so close to subsistence and people don't have a lot to begin with, but what little they had, they lost. Watching the entire village work together to put out this fire was in itself an incredible experience. I have never seen a community like this before. This group effort to help the life of a fellow friend, family, and neighbor is something that I realize is lacking in most communities in the U.S. and it's something I would love to find when I return to that side of the ocean. Just to add some comic relief to my already crazy week, my host brother brought this sick cow to my front yard the following morning and tied it to a pole outside of my house. By 11:30 that morning, the cow died.




By the following morning the entire village had already begun the process of rebuilding the hut. The men left early in the morning to cut down grasses in the woods for the roof and other men started bringing in buckets of dirt to start rebuilding the walls. The men have most of the earlier tasks such as bringing the grass, bamboo, and dirt and building the walls and roof while the women spend the afternoons cooking lunch and making tea for themselves and for the men. When the structure of the house is complete, the women mix clay with manure and water and cement the floors with it. Within 5 days of the house burning down, the structure of the building was already complete – walls and roof – done! It was a truly inspiring process.



Anyway, this is why 10 days in village feels like an eternity especially since on top of all this, I am constantly confronting constant harassment and pestering and the heart breaking truth of women being second class citizens. Being particularly sensitive after those three major events, I was more in tuned with and more strongly affected by the comments made and lack of empathy shown by Senegalese. Among the many events that acutely tugged at me this week, A) I woman came up to me and asked me why I wasn't sleeping with my host brother because his wives are away for a few months B) My middle aged host brother told me he wanted to marry and “lie in his room with” a 13/14 year old girl who was sitting right across from us. And C) I watched little kids run around with sticks beating bats to death which they then fry and rub the ash in their hair.

What is my life?????!!!!!!!

Audrey II has evolved and spawned in Senegal... (and if you don't get the reference, then you probably don't watch enough musicals).

These last two weeks felt like a year. It's really hard to get projects started in village right now. When I arrived back at site after such a long time with only a short 4 day interlude for a funeral, I was surprised at how refreshing it was to be back and also how different the village seemed. Pular somehow seemed clearer and I felt like I was able to communicate more clearly, which is strange after barely speaking a word of it for almost a month! The day I returned, it turned out almost every one in my compound went to Neenefesha for some festival/dance show. Only my host dad was there so it was nice to have some quiet time to clean my room and get settled in, especially since there were two kittens that will now be joining me (at least temporarily). I was exhausted and I left my bike in Kedougou so I had to carry heavy buckets of water repeatedly because I had abslutely no water in my hut. After a nice bucket bath, I played with some of the kids who hadn't gone to the festival and my host dad caught me up on the events that I had missed. It turns out that while I was gone, including my counterpart's husband's death (which I knew about), both of my brother's wives left for Tamba while he is still in Matakosi. It turns out that during the dry season, as the cold leaves and as the “starving season” approaches, many Matakosians leave to find work in Tamba (usually as vendors of some product). I also learned that my male counterpart, in addition to being out of town, has a two week old baby and his wife and all the kids (including the newborn) were back in village. I asked one of his daughters when her dad would return and she didn't know.
Everyone who had gone to Neenefesha returned that night after I had already gone to bed and in the morning I reseeded my backyard plant nursery. In the afternoon I grabbed my notebook and waterbottle and set off on a nature walk through the woods to help me reacclimate to village life. About 10 kids started following me on my walk. They were eager to help and join me and one kid grabbed my notebook and another my waterbottle and we headed into the woods rather aimlessly. Every time I saw a tree or plant that I didn't recognize, the kids would tell me the Pular name of it and if it had any uses and I would write it down. We veered onto a side trail that I wasn't familiar with and we walked through a beautiful field that will in a few months become a rice field once the rains arrive. Soon we came to a dried up, seasonal river bed. We walked in the river bed and followed it for a while. The kids started scrounging around the ground for these dried up little red or yellow fruits that they call kuukuu. We all snacked on a bunch of them as we rested for a little bit before continuing on. It soon started to smell really bad so I was teasing the kids and telling them that they smell bad and should go shower (they were not as ammused by this as I was). Soon we found the culprit. Underneath another kuukuu tree further down the river bed was a dead monkey. It was very sad and morbidly fascinating. Eventually, as we continued on in silence until the riverbed met up with the trail again and we took the trail back to the village.
During another wonderful visit with my female counterpart (who I love and admire) a few days later, she told me that I could use her garden space by the river bed. I was excited to finally feel like I could do something. A group of 14 women have garden beds fenced in by the Thiokoy river about a mile away from Matakosi. These motivated, hardworking, women walk to the river to water twice a day, often with buckets of manure that they carry on their heads. Because the cows are hearded daily to the river to drink, the women frequently complain about cows who climb the very steep and very deep riverbanks, break the fences and demolish their gardens... some years multiple times a season. The cows here are like mountain goats! It is too late to try to establish a live fence barrier this year, but for now, the women have built menacing dead fences with thorny branches. My counterpart's garden had been completely destroyed by the cows right before her counterpart died and any surviving plants died in the subsequent weeks without having been watered. The other women who have been going to their gardens twice a day have huge plots with beautiful, giant heads of cabbage and lettuce, massive bitter tomato plants, and beautiful onions. I have ths opportunity to start a demo garden from scratch, which on the one hand is great because it means that I can set things up however I want, but on the other hand, I am behind and the hot season is coming up and the women will be ending their gardens in a month or two when they complete their harvesting. Many volunteers and Peace Corps staff have recommended demo gardens to demonstrate the benefits of the techniques that we are encouraged to teach. We would have a control plot, prepped the same way that the Senegalese traditionally would and then an experimental plot where we ammend one element. For my nursery, I decided that I would demonstrate double digging with manure and ash. Because I only planted my seeds about a week ago, my babies are just barely in the germination stages and so far it is hard to tell if there are noticable differences. Also, despite the menacing cliff that they have to climb up and the thorny fence that they have to some how penetrate, they still manage to get into my garden. Luckily, my seedlings are so small that the cows lost interest and left before any real damage was done... but it is also very likely that now, while I am here in Kedougou, the starving cows will return to ravage whatever little I have.
Meanwhile, throughout the last week, I did my best to help around the compound – cooking, cleaning, etc. as usual. One evening the kids asked if I would join them to go collect firewood. We walked a short way into the woods and the kids and I were gathering whatever dead pieces of wood were lying around. As I was gathering a few sticks together, I noticed a crazy, alien looking plant. It literally looks like it comes from outer space. At first I thought it was some strange type of mushroom but it hasn't rained in literally months and I realized that it was clearly photosynthetic. It has a strange bulbous head and dark purple leaves with white polka-dots all over it. I tried to pull it up from the roots but the thick green and white stem broke off. I tried again with another two and I couldn't get the root up. I gave up and decided that I would bring it back and ask my male counterpart who had FINALLY returned from wherever he had been. I showed it to him and he told me to throw it out and wash my hands with soap because it was toxic. A few hours later, the kids came rushing excitedly to my house with some strange thing in their hands. They had dug up a root for me to see it! The root looked like a really giant and really fat cross between a potato and turnip... just as strange as the rest of the plant.
We had scheduled a cleaning day at the regional house for today so that the house can be clean and organized when the new stage comes in for volunteer visit. The compound looks spectacular, btw! I was ready to go Friday morning. Since I didn't have my bike, I was planning to walk the 10 kilometers to Neenefesha and catch a ride with the Neenefesha bus to Kedougou. I watered my garden and prepared to leave but as I got back, there was all this commotion and and people had come into Matakosi from various towns around region. It turns out that Friday was the 40 day aniversary of the death of my host dad's brother and they slaughtered a sheep for his widdowed wife. I decided I would stay for lunch of oily rice and sheep and then a few women who had come in for “Tzadaka” (Hebrew speakers I'm sure recognize this word) were also heading to Kedougou to catch the Neenefesha bus so I would just go with them. The women who I went with all speak Pular but they are really Jahankes and their last name, I'm not even a little bit joking, is Dunfakha. The Jahankes will frequently greet people by just saying their last name so it's really funny hearing people greet eachother with, “Danfakah” and then reply, “Danfakah”. Before we left, the women bought honey that my host brother had collected from some wild bee hives in the forest. While this wild bee honey, is one of the most delicious foods I have eaten in Senegal, I feel it is morally and ecologically irrisponsible to destroy wild bee hives (especially since the bee population is on a very problematic decline) so I hope to introduce my village to bee keeping. This not only would create a reliable market, but it would also draw the bees away from the wells which would be such a relief! I have been stung multiple times simply trying to pull water.
Overall, things are looking up and moving in the right direction. Now back to house spring cleaning!!