What am I doing here?

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

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

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

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

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

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



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



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




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



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

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

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

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

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