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.

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!!

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!!

Adventures in my village!

Once again, I'm not entirely sure where to begin. My life over the last 2 weeks has been nothing but adventure after adventure. I moved to my village on November 11th and after that all the days blur together. I spent the first day or two going around my village and meeting everyone. The village has no running water or electricity so every night I sit outside with my family and practice my Pular and watch the stars. With literally no light pollution anywhere near by, it's incredible. I've seen shooting stars every single night I've been there. I spent a little bit of time fixing up and organizing my hut and backyard. My backyard has a cashew tree and a mango tree but unfortunately fruit season ended so I won't be seeing any fruit (or precipitation for that matter) for the next several months. Every evening I would help my Neene carry water to her “jaxatu” (bitter tomato) garden. During the day I spent most of my time those first few days playing with the kids (and toads and praying mantids), walking around, meeting people, pounding rice or corn, training for my marathon, and dumping toads out of my shoes.
I knew that the Tuesday weekly market was coming up and I imagined that I was going to be biking there. It is in a village called Chokoy which is about 7K from my tiny village called Matakosi (which has a population of about 200 people)... and thus the adventures really begin. My front bike tire had deflated some how during transport. I looked for a hole and I didn't see one. I went to get my bike pump to fill the tire only to find that it had fallen out in the car when I was moved in. The rest of Monday morning was a field day of teenage boys trying to use their Senegalese bike pumps on american bike tubes... which doesn't work, and despite my explaining WHY it doesn't work (half successfully in Pular) they continued to try it. Eventually they gave up and I followed them to another house and a guy there had a bike pump which worked!! I filled the tire and I thought it was good to go. Faster than I could have even imagined it was already time for the “lumo” as the weekly market is called. Neene and I ended up walking there so I didn't use my bike in the end but it had needed to be fixed anyway so that I could ride it back to Kedougou for Thanksgiving. I trailed behind Neene who is this wonderful, shriveled old lady with so much life and zest and love and walks at a pace so fast that I could barely keep up... all the while she was carrying a bucket on her head with such precision that she didn't hold on to the bucket the entire hour long walk. When we arrived, I found out also that she is sick too and still doing all these crazy things! At the market I was so overwhelmed meeting dozens of people and feeling exhausted. Neene wouldn't let me wander around on my own. She seemed worried about me buying things for elevated prices because I'm American. We stayed at the market until the temperature cooled off and then we went back home. This time we went back in a larger group because there were other Matakosi residents there who had left earlier in the morning to set up stands to sell corn. It was really nice because it meant that I didn't have to speed-walk behind Neene for another hour! As we approached Matakosi, I noticed that the new teacher had finally arrived! I thought it was important to meet him. I spent some time talking to him and practicing language and I told him about some of the projects that I was hoping to do with the kids.
The following morning I had received a text message that another volunteer was coming to stay for a night. I had no cell phone reception so I couldn't respond to her nor did I have any idea why she was coming or if her plans had changed since I hadn't responded to her when she had sent the text initially the day before. I informed my family so they knew and we'd see if she showed up or not. For now, I had other morning plans to keep me busy. Some of the people in my family said that they were going to the field. When I asked what kind of field, they said “tupe”. I looked it up in my dictionary but it wasn't there so it was to be a surprise. I brought my bucket because all the kids were bringing buckets and the men had machetes and hand hoes and we set off for the forest. I had no idea what I was in for. We followed the trail for about 20 minutes or so until we arrived at the river. There was no field there so I was very confused. I thought maybe we were getting water to bring to the field. Instead, the men with their machetes decided that this was the spot to clear for a field. They started chopping down trees and clearing brush. My heart sunk because I hate clearing forest. While most of the men cleared brush, two other men started digging two very large and wide pits in the ground. With my limited language skills I asked what they will be planting there and they said about 8 or 9 mango trees. They also said that they had planted mango trees last year in a different spot near a different river. I couldn't comprehend more details than this. As much as I didn't want to, this is their life and hence also my life, so I decided I'd help clear brush by dragging the cut branches out of the area and then I helped dig the pits. They ended up not clearing a very large area and it turns out that, at least for now, the pits were the primary focus. When the pits were done, the children and I carried our buckets about 100meters down to the river bank to fill them with water to fill the pits. We went back and forth until we were all exhausted. I had figured that they were filling the pits so that the water could slowly penetrate into the ground. Finally we finished filling the pits and I went for a swim with some of the teenagers in the river. We all just jumped in wearing our clothes. It was so refreshing, especially after working so hard. We got out of the river and I thought it was time to go home and once again, I was wrong. Everyone was talking really fast and they said that I need a stick because the cows are coming. I asked what we were doing with the sticks and I thought they said that the cows are going to drink at the river so I thought this meant that we were going to chase them away from the pits that we had just worked so hard to fill with water. About 15 uncomfortable minutes later everyone got so crazy and the guys started banging a metal bowl loudly and calling the cows to come. I was a little frightened as the cows came charging towards these pits and instead of guiding the cows away from the pits, we were guiding them towards the pit to drink and graze in that area. It was so crazy.
As the cows were all happily grazing, the women were guiding the cows with their sticks, the men were working on catching the bulls and tying them up. One at a time, they would take the bull, they would tie up all four of his legs and force him on his back. Two men held the cows legs and a third was holding the bull's head while a fourth had the most dangerous job of all. He would put a stick on one side of the bull's testicles and use another stick to whack the other side of the testicles. I tried to figure out the purpose of this seemingly torturous venture but my language is not good enough to understand the answer. I presume it is their very dangerous method of castration. It seems that making a tourniquet as they do the U.S. would be not only less dangerous, but it would be faster and less painful for the bull.
That evening, my friend Jackie did arrive! It was so refreshing to have some English time and to compare our experiences. It turns out that she was heading to Chokoy to meet two other volunteers to continue on to a waterfall. I hadn't known about this adventure and I don't have camping equipment (yet) so I decided I'd take Jackie to Chokoy and return home. Since my bike was fixed (at least so I thought), I thought it would all be a non-issue and all would go well. As we were starting out to Chokoy in the morning, I realized that all the air leaked out of the tire. I was only going 7K to Chokoy where I could get a new tube for my tire. I was struggling even to pedal and I didn't realize how much of that was due to the flat tire as opposed to just me being out of shape. I was frustrated with myself thinking it was just me especially since I'm running all the time but I kept going. As we approached the just over half way point I see this black thing flying out from the wheel and so I immediately stopped my bike and the inner tube from the tire wrapped itself around the bike. It's actually amazing that I didn't flip over my handlebars. I untangled the tube from the bike and took the tire off and left my bike on the side of the bike path. While Jackie rode on a head, I walked behind and she would pause once in a while so I could catch up while carrying the wheel with me. Finally we made it to Chokoy where I was able to buy a new tube for my tire and they also filled it up for me and it was good to go!! Jackie and I enjoyed a nice snack of fresh bread and sprite and water until Rob and Allan arrived. After Jackie took off with Rob and Allan on their adventure to the waterfall, I walked back to my bike, put it back together and I was good to go!
That afternoon and for the next day or two I spent a lot of time double digging a rather large 3X3meter garden bed in my back yard. My family and other villagers would come in to see what I was working on and I told them that I was making a vegetable garden. I learned that one in my village seems to have ever heard of eggplant!! It was such hard work because the ground was so compacted and there are so many trees in my backyard that it was littered with roots. I added ash and luceana leaves to my double dug bed to add some nitrogen and potassium. I think my family thought I was crazy for working so hard on my garden and for adding what seems to them random crap... I don't know how to say, “It adds nitrogen and potassium to the soil” in Pular so I just said, “it's good for the earth”. I found some large bowls that had been littered throughout the fields with no bottoms. I filled them with dirt and I planted seeds in there for my plant nursery. I'm not sure if any of the seeds will germinate since they are all 2-4 years old seeds that I brought from the U.S. Even if I get a few plants I'll be thrilled!
Sometimes the things that are mysteries to the people here astound me. The evening that I finished double digging my garden, I sat with my host dad who I can still barely understand and we were talking about how the sun rises in the East and sets in the West. He then said to me, “I know that the sun does this but I don't understand why.” So I'm trying to use my hands and broken Pular to try to demonstrate but my hands don't spin 360 degrees and all I can say is, “the world spins... like this”. I think he has no idea what I was talking about and to make things even more confusing, the word for “spin” is the same as the word for “swing”, but it was fun and the ridiculousness of the situation amused me to no end.
Around 4:00 that day as the temperature started to cool off, the women, children, and I put all our dirty clothes into buckets with our laundry soap, a towel and a clean change of clothes and we walked about 10 minutes to the river to do laundry! The novelty of how much I hated the inconvenience of bringing my clothes to the laundromat in the U.S. amused me. Inconvenience of doing laundry has a whole new meaning when you have to carry all your clothes on your head in a bucket and walk for 10 minutes to hand wash clothes in a river... That being said, what is more fun than going with a bunch of women and children to the river to wash clothes and play in the water and smack wet, soapy clothes against rocks to splash the nearest unsuspecting naked, bathing child? It was so much fun and everyone was laughing and having a great time and then we all bathed in the water before heading back. As fun as it was and as relatively clean as our clothes get, it made me contemplate how my standards of “clean” have changed so drastically. If I haven't worn an outfit 3 times, it's still clean so clean river clothes are the equivalent of spotless.
The following morning I went with some of the women in my family to harvest peanuts. We walked about 20 minutes to the field. It turns out to harvest peanuts you just manually pull up all the plants by hand. Peanuts are strange looking plants. It's hard work but it was actually a lot of fun! We all worked so hard. When I got back, I checked on my plant nursery and some baobab seeds that I had planted a few days earlier germinated!! I'm going to make a baobab bonsai tree for fun. My Neene came out to see my yard and she asked me if I wanted to go to a wedding the next day. Of course I did! I was all ready to go the following morning only to find out that Neene had left at 4 in the morning to go to a funeral of a man who had drowned in a somewhat far away village. We ended up going to the wedding the next day.
After a disgusting and unfilling breakfast of liquid corn, we walked about 40 minutes to a nearby village. I brought my nice Tabaski clothes with me so that I could change into them later. All the men were sitting around drinking tea and people were walking in from far and wide. The women were all in the cooking area with giant pots and bowls of water everywhere. All the women started cooking and I helped to chop onions. I was snacking on onions the entire time and it seemed like the most delicious thing I had ever eaten because I felt so nutrient deprived! Snacking on those onions was the most satisfied I had felt since moving to my village. After everything was finally cooking up, I was walking around village and suddenly there was a crowd of 30some kids surrounding me. I started talking to them and asking them their names and they started following me around. Some of them were eating oranges and I had them all give me their seeds. Throughout the next few hours kids would periodically bring me orange seeds and I left with 30 or 40 orange seeds to plant. Since I couldn't have an in-depth conversation with the kids, and they were awkwardly following me around, I started an impromptu project. I found a large plastic bag (which is never hard to find because people litter throughout their fields... it's gross) and I started going around collecting batteries to throw into the douche. I explained that batteries are poison and shouldn't be in the field because it's bad for health and bad for the field and soon all the kids were running around collecting batteries for me! I ended up throwing about 50 batteries in the douche that day. That was my first successful project and it was actually fun.
Soon enough it was time to change into our festive clothes and two men were playing small home made string instruments and a third was using brass finger things to use a gourd bowl as a drum. All the women paraded behind them through the village and everyone was dancing and having a blast. Some women were throwing scarves down in front of the women who they felt looked particularly beautiful... I guess in a strange way it was kind of like the throwing the bouquet tradition. We paraded and danced until we got to the hut of the couple. The couple kneeled in front of the door of their hut, the woman in a white veil, and the Imam stood in front of them and said some blessings and the couple entered the room. We had to leave right after that because it was dark already and we had a 40 minute walk back through the woods.
I was supposed to go to a rice field with my counterpart the following morning and then leave for my 20some mile bike ride back to Kedougou. My counterpart never came to get me in the morning so at about 10:00 I decided I would just leave. Unfortunately, my family wouldn't let me leave without eating so I didn't end up leaving until 11:30 so I would end up biking in the heat of the day. I biked the first 5k or so to the main road and had gone a little ways further to realize - surprise surprise - my tire was flat again! I got through the first hour and a half with no problems... but then the heat picked up, my backpack was starting to feel heavy, my dehydration started to kick in (despite drinking water), the flat tire got worse, there was no shade, and the hills started to get really bad. After that, I had to keep stopping every 10-15 minutes and push the bike up the hills. It was AWFUL!!!
I kept going; I was determined to make it. At about 2:15 or so I stopped at a nearby village to refill my water bottle at the forage and I chatted with the villagers for a little bit. They invited me to eat, but I knew that eating would definitely prevent me from finishing the massively awful bike ride. They told me I was about 15K from Kedougou. I continued on my way and passed a 4ft long metalic dark green monitor lizard and that itself made my journey all worth it and just another few minutes later I passed another volunteer who was waiting for a vehicle to Kedougou with the women from his village. He was taking them to the ciy to sell the goods that they make. It was refreshing to see someone I knew and he said that I was only 12k from the regional house. I was hoping that would give me a second wind to make it the last hour but alas.... it just wasn't happening. I made it another few kilometers and I started walking my bike. I figured that if I needed to, I could walk the rest of the way but with the flat tire situation I couldn't ride anymore. A giant yellow truck passed by and asked me if I needed a ride. At this point I was only 7-10k away from Kedougou but I took them up on their offer. They loaded my bike into the back and they took me the rest of the way where I got to see all the other volunteers and share stories and rehydrate. Now we are working on prepping our piturducken and the “pig” portion just arrived.

So that's my update. For now things are so new and so exciting. I imagine I will continue to have adventures and stories to tell... “Si Allah Jaabi” (if God agrees).

I hope all is well. I love receiving e-mails and letters so feel free to write!

E-mail: Kriegerilana@gmail.com
Mailing Address: Alexandra Ilana Krieger
B.P. 37
Kedougou, Senegal
West Africa

swearing-in!

Blog 5
So it's been a little while since I've written a blog. The last couple weeks have been crazy and I'm so ready to be done with training. Two months is a really long time to be living out of a suitcase. We've had to pack up and move our things more times than I care to count. Time is moving so fast and so slow at the same time and I'm using my mefloquine to try to keep track of the number of weeks we've been here... it's hard to tell some times.
Anyway, about two weeks ago we had our second language test. I was feeling really good about my language and I knew I had improved and when I learned that I tested at intermediate low for a second time it really brought me down. It upset me a lot and it was at the same time that we had our counterparts from our final villages visiting. It was so stressful and we had to move around from place to place and room to room and speak with our counterparts in our languages about villages that we hardly know anything about yet. I had a bit of a breakdown and I was feeling homesick and it all just snowballed into this crazy awfulness. The two days that the counterparts were here felt like an entire week. The same day that the counterparts left we all had a very rushed and very busy day trip to Dakar. We had a very rushed 30 minute tour of the area and then met many important people who spoke about mostly uninteresting things. It would have been fun if we had had some free time, but alas... The next day we had our first real weekend. We all ventured out to the beach and had a blast swimming in the ocean for a day and just bonding with each other and all the while dreading our return to our homestays for our last week.
Our last week of homestay was bitter sweet. I feel like I'm finally a part of my family and I am going to miss them a lot. They have started calling me Neene Adama, which means mother Adama... not in a Catholic Monastery kind of way though. In this polygamous society the children call the other wives Neene insert name here. The children have really started to see me as a mother figure and I love it. It wasn't the most eventful week because I spent so much time studying and practicing Pulafuta so that I could pass my test at intermediate mid but I did have a few adventures. One day I cooked pasta and tomato sauce for my family and they LOOVVEDDD it! While this is a dish that would take 20 minutes in the U.S., it took me 2 hours here! The pasta itself took half an hour because we cook “camp-out” style over hot coals and I was cooking a quantity that would feed 15 people. Simple meals are not simple here. Even tea is a long 2-3 hour long process. They cook the tea over coals with so much sugar it's disgusting. They only have two shot glass size cups that everyone shares and they have to make this foam by pouring the tea back and forth from glass to glass and it's rude to leave early and not drink it. It's awful when I feel like I'm in a rush to get somewhere and I'm being held back to drink the most sugary tea any American has ever had. I had another adventure with another volunteer on a different day. We had the afternoon off and we ventured a kilometer down the road to the “Tortoise Village”. It's a rehabilitation/breeding/tourist site for sulcata Tortoises. I love sulcatas and it was so nice to see them!!! They had different enclosures for different ages. I learned a really fun fact about Baobabs trees. There are two types of Baobab trees.... there's the Baobab Digitalis which has branches that look like fingers and there's the second type which is called the Baobab Sulcata. The Baobab Sulcata as it gets older has a hollowed out trunk like a sulcata tortoise shell. Senegalse burry important people in the hollows of the baobab trees. It's amazing to me!
Well anyway, this week is it! We're all back at the training center and we had our final language and tech exams yesterday. We're done with the hard part and next week we move to our villages!!! OFFICIALLY!! On Friday we have our swearing-in ceremony in Dakar where we are sworn in as official volunteers. It's going to be televised nationally. We all had special clothes made for the ceremony and my host dad made mine for me. There is SO MUCH EMBROIDERY that it's so crazy and so tacky and so perfectly Senegalese!
November 11th I will be moving to my village where I will have no electricity or running water. I will be 45kilometers from Kedegou City where the post office is. Letters are welcomed and expected. I will update my address on Facebook when I can this week. For the first month and a half after I move to my village I will be out of commission because we are not allowed to leave our villages for 5 weeks. I miss all of you.

Look out for my mailing address!!

Ilana

Demyst (the weeks are starting to blur together - Week 5ish?)

Hey everyone. It's been another long and yet amazing week. So as I mentioned before we all found out our final sites and were were prepping to leave for our regions for a few days. This process is called Demystification. Kedougou has been so talked up as the best region to go to (and it truly lives up to its reputation). We knew we had a long drive ahead of us. We were all ready to leave by 6:00 Monday morning but the driver was late (in typical senegalese fashion) so we didn't leave until 6:30. One of my region mates commented on the amusement of us all driving to Kedougou for 10-13ish hours facing each other. The sunrise was fantastic as we headed west in the back of a landcruiser with benches facing each other in the back of the car. There were 10 of us in the car... nice and cozy. We made a few short stops on the way and as we got closer and closer to Kedougou the scenery became more and more green and the grasses kept getting taller. It is currently the rainy season so right now it is green everywhere but everyone says that in the dry season there is NOTHING and then we will get to the “starving season” (towards the end of the rainy season when there is basically no food left but meanwhile it is fantastic).

We drove on the main road through Nokolokoba(?) park. In addition to seeing small children herding giant herds of cows, goats, and sheep, we saw monkeys and warthogs running across the road. There were also lots of beautiful birds too (including Gunea Hens). After we got to the other side of the park we saw a sign that said we were 50k away so it was only 3:00 or so when we got there. We approached the “city” of Kedougou. The sign for the “Kedougou Regional Compound” stared us in the face and the landcruiser pulled into the compound.

A lot of the other Kedougou volunteers were there to greet us, most of them in bathing suits or spandex shorts. They were sitting in buckets with cold water and beers in their hands. They all loudly welcomed us. Some were more willing to emerge from their buckets than others (due to their level of comfort in the buckets). We greeted every one and shook every one's hands and it was great. I thought it would take me forever to remember everyone's names. It was so exciting and so overwhelming and I immediately fell in love with the regional compound. It's basically a glorified camping site.

After our stuff was loaded off of the roof of the bus, we brought our things into the “Pepiniere” as they call it. There were many full sized mattresses set up with mosquito nets. We were told to choose a side of the bed and it didn't matter which or where. The Pepiniere was a semi enclosed area with a thatched roof which does a fantastic job of keeping things dry. I explored the compound and we have our own Kedougou disco hut. This place is magical and green and overgrown (for now) with hidden paths that don't even seem to lead anywhere. The volunteers also cooked all of us tacos for dinner and the various musicians were jamming out on their instruments. One guy can play the fiddle and harmonica at the same time. It was crazy!

My situation visiting Kedougou was a little strange because I did not have a set person I was really supposed to be staying with. The current volunteers found a volunteer who would be willing to host me but she is a health volunteer and was arranging a training that was going on all week every day on how to scan for cervical cancer (in French). I didn't have a lot of interest in attending that since it doesn't particularly pertain to my service as an ag volunteer and my French is not that good.

The first night we all stayed at the regional house. The next day, the other volunteers from my stage went with their volunteer “anciens” (those who are being replaced) and I got to hang out at the regional house and I got to hang out with the other volunteers who were in the middle of their service. In the afternoon I went with Melanie and Rob to their homestay because it was right down the road and it would allow me to see a site and practice my Pulafuta. Their host family fed us lunch and we all hung out in their family compound for a while. After that, we went back to the regional house and I put a few things together and I waited for Meera to get back from her cervical cancer training session so we could go to her homestay. It was dark by the time she was ready to go to her homestay. I borrowed one of the extra bikes at the compound and we rode about 10 minutes to her place and I had my bag on my back and the bike was falling apart. It was pretty awesome. I've missed biking and biking in the dark was certainly a new experience for me.

In the morning, we went early back to the compound so I could shower because two of the Peace Corps staff members were coming to pick me up for a day trip. We went to a site that was about 60K away and they all spoke Melinke in their village. We went to a master farmer site. A master farmer is supposed to be the model farmer for the area he is in. The volunteers who work with them create demo plots that use specific guidelines to demonstrate effective farming techniques. Every few months or so, each master farmer will have “open field days” where local farmers come from all over for a demonstration of these techniques and some of the atendees might be chosen as potential future master farmers. It would have been far more interesting for me if people at least spoke a little Pulafuta but they all spoke Melinke only. After the session we all met up for lunch at the farmer's village and ate a feast of rice, meat, and onion sauce. It was delicious. After lunch I went around the village talking to the volunteers and the few Senegalese who spoke Pulafuta (mostly just greetings) and collected Shea Tree seeds (because seeds are fantastic).

After getting back to Kedougou city I was exhausted from having been in the sun all day and the hour or two long drive each direction. Meera was also still really busy and had a lot of work to do after her cervical cancer training session that day so I decided to stay at the compound that evening. I felt guilty not practicing Pulafuta so one of the other volunteers (who started in March) invited me to go with him to Abdulai's restaurant and I got to practice conversing. It was hysterical and they were all laughing at me and it was quite fun. Senegalese men have a habit of asking me about my kele (which means boyfriend) or “gorko” which means husband. I try to tell them that I have a boyfriend in the U.S. just to get them off my case and they usually ask why I don't also take a Senegalese boyfriend. Some of the other girls suggested learning how to tell them they are ugly and that they don't find this offensive. They get the point and think it's funny. I think if I were in their situation, I'd find a white person telling me they are ugly pretty funny too.

I left again the next morning, this time to go to my village! We were supposed to leave early in the morning, but in typical Senegalese fashion the driver changed his schedule and we didn't leave until 11. I thought it wouldn't be enough time but it turned out to be more than enough time of super awkward “sitting around”. We had a quick 45K drive to Matakosi. From the main road, to get to my village we turned onto this tiny little path that looked more like a bush path than a road. It was barely wide enough to fit the car and it was a little worrisome but we fit. We had about 3K worth of driving on this path and as we got closer the weeds along the fences were taller than the fences themselves. It was some type of mint and the smell just permeated the car. It was so nice. The green was everywhere and the corn was everywhere.

The Meera asked a little boy near by to take us to the family of Ibrahima (my ancien's house... Frank is his American name). We got there and were greeted by everyone who was there. They seemed confused about me being there but they were still very welcoming. I just started asking everyone their names and it was crazy and overwhelming and I can't remember anyone's names. My host mom arrived a bit later after someone went to tell her that I was there. I asked her her name and she replied, “Neene” (which means mother) as a very matter of factly. I would not have known she was my host mom until she told me. So I met “Neene” and then someone went to get “Baaba” who showed up later in a green senegalese outfit and a machete tied to a string around his waist. He had just come back from the fields. He greeted me and then went to change into nicer clothes. Neene asked me and Meera if we wanted corn and they insisted that we have corn. They roasted a cob for each of us and then they kept roasting more corn and they insisted (over a course of time) that we eat 4 cobs of corn each! I felt quite full after that and we weren't sure if we were going to have time to eat REAL lunch there because we had no idea what time the car was coming back to pick us up. Senegalese tend to eat late lunches and we didn't want them to cook food we weren't going to eat. They did bring us a bowl of rice with okra sauce and it was a gross texture but tasted a bit like split pea soup. After eating we insisted that we were full and they insisted that we eat more and then we insisted that we couldn't eat another bite... (our very familiar pattern of insistence). Eventually the only thing we can do is put the spoon down and walk away from the bowl politely. We sat around a while longer and my Neene cooked an oatmeal type of dish that was salty and a little sweet and she insisted that we eat even more.

In the middle of all this, the Senegalese counterparts with whom I will be working arrived. I felt unsure of what to ask them so it was awkward and uncomfortable (in typical Peace Corps fashion). Meera is a health volunteer and was therefore also unsure of how she could help. I asked about the gardens and she said that the gardens are too far but eventually it turned out that they have a garden at the school which is right near by. I asked if we could go see it. Because it is the rainy season, they have not been working on their gardens; they have been working on their fieldcrops ONLY (because they are too busy apparently). It makes no sense to me at all. I insisted that they at least show me where the garden is.

We got there and the entire back yard of the school was completely overgrown. It was literally a field of grass. As we walked further back, one of my counterparts pointed out a baby banana tree that Frank had planted. They also pointed out a large cement basin filled with water. I think it was some attempt at some kind of well but it seems like a recipe for mosquitos to me. I had no way to ask Frank about it but I will get to talk to him later.

That night we all got back to the regional compound and stayed there for one last night before returning to Thies. It was hard to leave knowing that we have to head back to the sand for another month before returning to Kedougou but at least it sparked a renewed vigor.

Well anyway... this is dragging on. More next time.

Demyst (the weeks are starting to blur together - Week 5ish?)

Blog 4 Demyst

Hey everyone. It's been another long and yet amazing week. So as I mentioned before we all found out our final sites and were were prepping to leave for our regions for a few days. Kedougou has been so talked up as the best region to go to (and it truly lives up to its reputation). We knew we had a long drive ahead of us. We were all ready to leave by 6:00 Monday morning but the driver was late (in typical senegalese fashion) so we didn't leave until 6:30. One of my region mates commented on the amusement of us all driving to Kedougou for 10-13ish hours facing each other. The sunrise was fantastic as we headed west in the back of a landcruiser with benches facing each other in the back of the car. There were 10 of us in the car... nice and cozy. We made a few short stops on the way and as we got closer and closer to Kedougou the scenery became more and more green and the grasses kept getting taller. It is currently the rainy season so right now it is green everywhere but everyone says that in the dry season there is NOTHING and then we will get to the “starving season” (towards the end of the rainy season when there is basically no food left but meanwhile it is fantastic).
We drove on the main road through Nokolokoba(?) park. In addition to seeing small children herding giant herds of cows, goats, and sheep, we saw monkeys and warthogs running across the road. There were also lots of beautiful birds too (including Gunea Hens). After we got to the other side of the park we saw a sign that said we were 50k away so it was only 3:00 or so when we got there. We approached the “city” of Kedougou. The sign for the “Kedougou Regional Compound” stared us in the face and the landcruiser pulled into the compound.

A lot of the other Kedougou volunteers were there to greet us, most of them in bathing suits or spandex shorts. They were sitting in buckets with cold water and beers in their hands. They all loudly welcomed us. Some were more willing to emerge from their buckets than others (due to their level of comfort in the buckets). We greeted every one and shook every one's hands and it was great. I thought it would take me forever to remember everyone's names. It was so exciting and so overwhelming and I immediately fell in love with the regional compound. It's basically a glorified camping site.

After our stuff was loaded off of the roof of the bus, we brought our things into the “Pepiniere” as they call it. There were many full sized mattresses set up with mosquito nets. We were told to choose a side of the bed and it didn't matter which or where. The Pepiniere was a semi enclosed area with a thatched roof which does a fantastic job of keeping things dry. I explored the compound and we have our own Kedougou disco hut. This place is magical and green and overgrown (for now) with hidden paths that don't even seem to lead anywhere. The volunteers also cooked all of us tacos for dinner and the various musicians were jamming out on their instruments. One guy can play the fiddle and harmonica at the same time. It was crazy!

My situation visiting Kedougou was a little strange because I did not have a set person I was really supposed to be staying with. The current volunteers found a volunteer who would be willing to host me but she is a health volunteer and was arranging a training that was going on all week every day on how to scan for cervical cancer (in French). I didn't have a lot of interest in attending that since it doesn't particularly pertain to my service as an ag volunteer and my French is not that good.

The first night we all stayed at the regional house. The next day, the other volunteers from my stage went with their volunteer “anciens” (those who are being replaced) and I got to hang out at the regional house and I got to hang out with the other volunteers who were in the middle of their service. In the afternoon I went with Melanie and Rob to their homestay because it was right down the road and it would allow me to see a site and practice my Pulafuta. Their host family fed us lunch and we all hung out in their family compound for a while. After that, we went back to the regional house and I put a few things together and I waited for Meera to get back from her cervical cancer training session so we could go to her homestay. It was dark by the time she was ready to go to her homestay. I borrowed one of the extra bikes at the compound and we rode about 10 minutes to her place and I had my bag on my back and the bike was falling apart. It was pretty awesome. I've missed biking and biking in the dark was certainly a new experience for me.

In the morning, we went early back to the compound so I could shower because two of the Peace Corps staff members were coming to pick me up for a day trip. We went to a site that was about 60K away and they all spoke Melinke in their village. We went to a master farmer site. A master farmer is supposed to be the model farmer for the area he is in. The volunteers who work with them create demo plots that use specific guidelines to demonstrate effective farming techniques. Every few months or so, each master farmer will have “open field days” where local farmers come from all over for a demonstration of these techniques and some of the atendees might be chosen as potential future master farmers. It would have been far more interesting for me if people at least spoke a little Pulafuta but they all spoke Melinke only. After the session we all met up for lunch at the farmer's village and ate a feast of rice, meat, and onion sauce. It was delicious. After lunch I went around the village talking to the volunteers and the few Senegalese who spoke Pulafuta (mostly just greetings) and collected Shea Tree seeds (because seeds are fantastic).

After getting back to Kedougou city I was exhausted from having been in the sun all day and the hour or two long drive each direction. Meera was also still really busy and had a lot of work to do after her cervical cancer training session that day so I decided to stay at the compound that evening. I felt guilty not practicing Pulafuta so one of the other volunteers (who started in March) invited me to go with him to Abdulai's restaurant and I got to practice conversing. It was hysterical and they were all laughing at me and it was quite fun. Senegalese men have a habit of asking me about my kele (which means boyfriend) or “gorko” which means husband. I try to tell them that I have a boyfriend in the U.S. just to get them off my case and they usually ask why I don't also take a Senegalese boyfriend. Some of the other girls suggested learning how to tell them they are ugly and that they don't find this offensive. They get the point and think it's funny. I think if I were in their situation, I'd find a white person telling me they are ugly pretty funny too.

I left again the next morning, this time to go to my village! We were supposed to leave early in the morning, but in typical Senegalese fashion the driver changed his schedule and we didn't leave until 11. I thought it wouldn't be enough time but it turned out to be more than enough time of super awkward “sitting around”. We had a quick 45K drive to Matakosi. From the main road, to get to my village we turned onto this tiny little path that looked more like a bush path than a road. It was barely wide enough to fit the car and it was a little worrisome but we fit. We had about 3K worth of driving on this path and as we got closer the weeds along the fences were taller than the fences themselves. It was some type of mint and the smell just permeated the car. It was so nice. The green was everywhere and the corn was everywhere.

The Meera asked a little boy near by to take us to the family of Ibrahima (my ancien's house... Frank is his American name). We got there and were greeted by everyone who was there. They seemed confused about me being there but they were still very welcoming. I just started asking everyone their names and it was crazy and overwhelming and I can't remember anyone's names. My host mom arrived a bit later after someone went to tell her that I was there. I asked her her name and she replied, “Neene” (which means mother) as a very matter of factly. I would not have known she was my host mom until she told me. So I met “Neene” and then someone went to get “Baaba” who showed up later in a green senegalese outfit and a machete tied to a string around his waist. He had just come back from the fields. He greeted me and then went to change into nicer clothes. Neene asked me and Meera if we wanted corn and they insisted that we have corn. They roasted a cob for each of us and then they kept roasting more corn and they insisted (over a course of time) that we eat 4 cobs of corn each! I felt quite full after that and we weren't sure if we were going to have time to eat REAL lunch there because we had no idea what time the car was coming back to pick us up. Senegalese tend to eat late lunches and we didn't want them to cook food we weren't going to eat. They did bring us a bowl of rice with okra sauce and it was a gross texture but tasted a bit like split pea soup. After eating we insisted that we were full and they insisted that we eat more and then we insisted that we couldn't eat another bite... (our very familiar pattern of insistence). Eventually the only thing we can do is put the spoon down and walk away from the bowl politely. We sat around a while longer and my Neene cooked an oatmeal type of dish that was salty and a little sweet and she insisted that we eat even more.

In the middle of all this, the Senegalese counterparts with whom I will be working arrived. I felt unsure of what to ask them so it was awkward and uncomfortable (in typical Peace Corps fashion). Meera is a health volunteer and was therefore also unsure of how she could help. I asked about the gardens and she said that the gardens are too far but eventually it turned out that they have a garden at the school which is right near by. I asked if we could go see it. Because it is the rainy season, they have not been working on their gardens; they have been working on their fieldcrops ONLY (because they are too busy apparently). It makes no sense to me at all. I insisted that they at least show me where the garden is.

We got there and the entire back yard of the school was completely overgrown. It was literally a field of grass. As we walked further back, one of my counterparts pointed out a baby banana tree that Frank had planted. They also pointed out a large cement basin filled with water. I think it was some attempt at some kind of well but it seems like a recipe for mosquitos to me. I had no way to ask Frank about it but I will get to talk to him later.

That night we all got back to the regional compound and stayed there for one last night before returning to Thies. It was hard to leave knowing that we have to head back to the sand for another month before returning to Kedougou but at least it sparked a renewed vigor.

Well anyway... this is dragging on. More next time.

Weeks 3 and 4 The longest weeks.

Blog 3

Hey guys. These last two weeks have been crazy at the homestay. For the most part, we had a very basic and honestly, somewhat boring, schedule.... until the last few days. We had language class twice a day every day and then we spend the afternoons and nights with our families, struggling to communicate. Our conversations are pretty basic, “I like this food”, “Tomorrow I have class at 9:30” etc. The only difference from day to day, generally, is that I understand what they are saying faster and I can respond more quickly. I have a few new words each day that stick. It's coming along slowly.

My baby sister is no longer sick and I'm feeling more comfortable sharing out of the communal bowl. Every day it's still rice and more rice and usually fish. The fish is not filleted like it is in the U.S. so I end up swallowing bones sometimes. The few bites of fish that I end up getting are pretty much my only source of protein so I can't just not eat it. I miss vegetables and I miss variety of food but at least we have a little variety of sauces which makes me feel a little healthier.

So, anyway... on to the fun “atypical” days. About half way into our two week homestay stretch I started to bond more with my family. Now that I understand more, it's easier to have conversations and more importantly, “interesting” conversations. One evening, my host dad asked me to go for a walk with him and he took me to his sister's house and we watched the sunset on the roof (not in a romantic way...). It was so beautiful. After sunset we went back home for dinner and then we picked up another volunteer afterwards and we went back to the roof. We sat up the mats and rested under the stars. From the roof we can see the lights of Dakar and the lights from the hotels at Lac Rose. The roof is one of my favorite places I have been so far.

The next night the other volunteers and I and our language teacher and our host fathers and my host mother all went to the roof. Our language teacher and the other Senegalese were having a very long Pulafuta conversation about cannibalism and shooting stars. Apparently the Pulafuta word for shooting star is cannibal. Our teacher was trying to translate for us and we had no idea what she was talking about. The whole situation was very amusing.

After that our next few days were rather uneventful until our first real day off this past Sunday. Saturday evening my Baba said, (in Pulafuta) “Hey, tomorrow, you have the day off. Let's go to Gendouf. There are cows and goats and I'll show you some fields. Oh... and the town is on a mountain.” When I asked him how far the village is, he said that it's 2kilometers away... I was dying to find out how there was a “mountain” 2K away. We had a whole fun miscommunication about how we were going to get there. He said we could walk or take a donkey cart. When he said to walk, I thought he meant “bike”. I told him what I thought was “I don't have a thing with which to bike.” when in reality I told him that, “I don't have a thing with which to walk” (basically telling him I don't have legs). There was a lot of laughing and confusion and then everything was cleared up and all better.

The next morning after breakfast, we picked up two of the other volunteers at my site and started walking to Gendouf. It was so beautiful and so green and we walked past half a dozen baobabs and my host dad was showing me all kinds of different seeds and things and identifying plants. I'm surprised he knows so much about plants since he's a taylor and doesn't have a field. It was really hot that morning so the walk felt longer than it was. We got to the tiny village. I don't thing Gendouf has more than 500 people. Only one or two of the people spoke Pulafuta but we were still somehow able to communicate. I'm also pretty certain that we were the only “Tubabs” (white people) that this village has ever seen. They brought out benches for us to sit under a tree. We sat there awkwardly with all the kids standing in a circle around us staring at us. It occurred to me that this is what my village would be like. I had been hoping to go to Kedougou but if I end up anywhere in a small green village like Gendouf, I'd be more than thrilled. I could live in that village for 2 years and we're not even 2 hours from Dakar. It really helped open my mind.

So, after sitting around, my Baba said, “let's go to the field”. We passed herds of cattle and goats on our way to the field. We got to the field and it was a lemon/lime orchard. The smell of citrus was incredible. A few older ladies were sorting and bagging hundreds of lemons. An old man was also suddenly dropped and the wind picked up. We decided to pack up and head back to thethere helping them. He brought over a mat for us to sit on in the shade of the lemon trees. He and who I presume to be his grandson brought over a kettle and a gas stove to make some tea. They were about to set it up but they seemed hesitant. When I looked at the sky I understood. The sky on one side was bright blue with pretty white fluffy clouds and looking the other way, the sky looked black. These dark clouds were fast approaching and it looked as though it were about to pour forever. The temperature in the village dropped significantly.

The village has a lean-to so we crowded underneath it. The storm was underwhelming but it was so beautiful. It didn't storm as we expected, but we had a wonderful sun-shower for about 20 minutes and then it cleared up. The wind was so refreshing especially after walking 2k in the ridiculous heat. As the rain calmed down the villagers came out and sat with us. They made tea and roasted peanuts on the gas burner. We sat around talking for quite a while. Eventually the women went to go start cooking lunch and I sat with the men and we talked and drank tea. My Baba told us that Lac Rose was only 4km from where we were and we asked if we could go. He said, “it's possible” and he asked our friend from the orchard if he could take us on his donkey cart. He agreed. The village invited us to have lunch there so we would eat lunch and then go to the Lac.

After over an hour we were getting really restless and the rain had completely stopped. While we were waiting for lunch the guy who was cooking the tea (which is a very lengthy and involved process) was chatting with us in English. We learned that he is a Chemistry student in Dakar. He invited us to see his field and we welcomed any idea that would get us out of the chairs that we had been sitting in for hours at this point. As we walked through his amazing orchard filled with fruit trees of every kind of amazing fruit you could think of in addition to countless types of vegetables and beans and Hibiscus. We passed by a grapefruit tree and he picked one and gave it to us to eat later. We walked to this one tree that was unlike any I had ever seen before in my life. It had a yellowish-redish fruit and this giant funny looking seed looked like it was growing out of the top of the fruit. I picked the giant funny looking seed off the top of the fruit and kept it (and I also picked up a few more of the funny seeds from the ground) and we would try the funny fruit later. I'm excited to have the seeds to plant later at my final site. When we finished the garden tour we sat down in the village again and shared the funny fruit which was so delicious and so juicy but had the weirdest texture (almost like a cross between a sponge and a plum). It made our mouths feel really dry despite being extremely juicy. Needless to say we didn't eat very much of it. I think in the future I can see myself eating this fruit more often now that I know what to expect.

We sat around a little more (which seems to be a lot of what we do here) and FINALLY lunch was ready. We had rice and beans. It was nice to have the protein mixed into the rice as opposed to just a whole fish on top of the pile of rice. It was delicious and we went through our very familiar charade of, “Eat! Eat!” …. “but I'm full! Really! I'm full!” We were stuffed and my host father finished eating and we thought we were ready to go and he said, “we have to go have lunch”. We were confused but we obediently followed him to another family's house where we had to politely stuff a few more bites of rice and beans into our mouths before we hit the wall of WAYYYY too much food.

We followed my host dad and the old farmer back to his lemon orchard where the donkey was grazing and the cart was laying around. We watched as the old man struggled to tie the stubborn ass to the cart. The donkey was kicking and fighting and it occurred to me that it might not be the most pleasant ride. He finally got the donkey tied to the cart and the donkey tried to kick the cart off once and ended up with a giant gash on the back of one of his legs. It certainly stopped the donkey from kicking. The cart was ready to go and we all piled on. It was a much smoother ride than I anticipated. It was also quite beautiful. We passed through so many small towns and we waved at and greeted every one we passed on the way along the sandy road. It was such a great way to see what Senegal is like.

As we got to the lake, we didn't understand why it was called the pink lake. It wasn't very pink at all. I was surprised how big it was. It was much bigger than I expected. All along the lake were giant piles of salt that people were collecting. It occurred to me how ridiculous we must have looked; a bunch of tubabs and two Senegaleses men riding on a donkey cart along the lake. We got to the end of the lake and we passed a whole lot of tourists. They were all in groups on tour busses and walking from their overpriced hotels. I wonder what they thought of us tubabs riding on a donkey cart. We walked through one hotel that was lined with so many vendors. In my entire month here, I never felt like tourist until I started walking through the hotel. The vendors all tried to sell their sob stories about how their families were broke and I tried to speak to them in Pulafuta but they all spoke Wolof and none of them knew of or understood Peace Corps or the fact that I'm living as a Senegalese with a Senegalese family. My Baba laughed at me watching me try to tell these “fake” fruit and jewelry vendors in Pulafuta that I don't want that mango or necklace. On the other side of the hotel there were “sand dunes” and “camel rides” on imported camels. The whole thing seemed so ridiculous.


We got sick of being tourists and left pretty quickly. It was only about 4k back to Sangal Kam so we decided to walk back. It took a few hours. I thought we were going to walk back on the main road but we walked back on these quiet little sand roads through these little villages. We rested at one village about half way where my Baba had family. We were all starting to get tired by this point having had walked for hours and spent hours in the sun in many fields and on donkey carts but we trundled on. We walked through several mud pits and peanut fields and baobab orchards. My Baba pointed out a monkey that ran across the road and then we approached this one tree where a dozen children were climbing the branches like monkeys and a few women were sitting there roasting cashews. They called us over and shared freshly picked and roasted cashews with us. I looked at the tree and at the shells from the nuts and I realized that that strange fruit I had eaten earlier was a cashew tree fruit! And the seeds that I had were cashew seeds! I can't wait to have some cashew trees growing. Completely and utterly exhausted we trudged on and we finally arrived back in Sangal Kam.

After showering and unwinding back at the house, my Baba was sitting in the yard looking upset. I asked him if he was tired. He said his mother was very sick. I didn't quite know to what extent because she had been sick since I arrived. I rarely ever saw her because she was in her room the entire time. My Neene and my Baba's sister were her primary care takers and they bathed her and fed her in her room. She had only come out of the house for the first time a few days ago to sit under the tree. The children were playing around her and bringing her serees (which is a type of really sour fruit that resembles unripe green grapes). That evening (after the walk), I could barely stay awake until dinner which is never until 9:00-9:30 here. I went to bed as soon as I finished dinner. I woke up several times throughout the night and it was completely crazy at the house all night. My host grandmother was throwing up all night, people were in and out refilling buckets of water from the tap, and early in the morning they called a taxi to take her to the hospital in Dakar which is about an hour or so from Sangal Kam. All her sisters came from far away (near Mauritania) and all her children came from other parts of Sangal Kam and Dale Fore to pray for her and help take care of the house while she was sick. There were so many people visiting from out of town.

I had language class as usual and our first language test in the morning and in the afternoon I spent time talking with the family that was visiting. After dinner my Baba and I picked up the other volunteers and we went to the roof for a while and watched the stars. When we got back to the house all the mats and two mattresses on top of them were set up in the middle of the yard. It was like big sleepover. My Baba told me that Pati was coming back from the hospital around midnight and we were all anxiously awaiting her return. I went to bed and I woke up several times throughout the night with commotion and chaos again taking care of this woman. The following afternoon they had a taxi take her back to the hospital. At around 4:15, everyone started sobbing hysterically and I knew this meant that she has died. I was so upset and so confused and had no way of knowing for sure what was going on or what was happening but I knew she had passed away. I went to my language teacher and explained the situation and we all (the volunteers and my language teacher and I) went to the funeral at my house that night. The women all pray from home while the men go to the mosque. They Imam announced her death over the loud speaker and it seemed like the entire town of Sangal Kam showed up for the funeral. The women were sitting on mats around the courtyard of the house and the men were at the mosque except for Jubal and Cameron who were with us. Everyone was waiting for the body to come back from Dakar. Houssey (our language teacher) explained that normally if a woman dies, the women will wash the body at the house and if a man dies the men will wash the body. They decided for some reason not to bring the body to the house this time for some reason that I couldn't understand and I began for the first time to feel the deep inequality between men and women. The women are then not allowed the same closure that the men are when it comes to death. I am having a hard time processing this. Women are outright not allowed in cemeteries. The women were still expected to provide dinner for their husbands despite the fact that everyone was grieving and could barely function.

I had to leave for Thies early the next morning to meet up with all the other volunteers and I could barely stay awake. I waited until the entire town of Sangal Kam (except for family) had left and I fell asleep on the mats outside. Before my host grandmother died I had told everyone in my family that I would be leaving early in the morning for Thies and that we would have breakfast there and I was very clear that I did not want breakfast before leaving. When I woke up in the morning, I finished packing and was ready to leave for the bus and my family literally blocked the door because I had not yet eaten. They insisted that I could not leave because I had not eaten. I reminded her patiently that I would be eating in Thies but that didn't mean anything to her... “Just eat a little”. I was unable to leave until I had eaten. I am having so much trouble processing the fact that my host mom's mother-in-law had just died and she's worried about me eating before I leave for a place where I am going to be eating AGAIN when she should be thinking about her family and herself and figuring out how to cope. It's really frustrating and really hard for me to understand and there is so little I can do to help because of my limited knowledge of language and hugging is not a part of Senegalese culture.

We finally arrived at the training center in Thies and I was able to have some time away from my family to write about all of this and to try to process the last few days but as with most of our days, our schedules are jam packed with language and technical training and today was supposed to be the most exciting day of our pre-service training because we found out where we will be placed for our final placements. I've been feeling a bit subdued trying to process everything that had just happened with my host family but it was still very exciting. There is a large outline of Senegal painted on the basketball court at the compound. They blindfolded all of us and put us on the map where we will be going. I am going to Kedougou which I have only heard good things about. It is supposed to be amazing. It is the region “with mountains and forests and waterfalls and happy children” as one current volunteer told me. I'm pretty excited about it. We will all be going to our sites for a week in just a few days.
Well, anyway... I'll be sure to keep you updated when I have some more crazy stories.