Damn bugs

There’s a certain point when you know you’re a real Peace Corps volunteer, and sometimes that comes when a project you put tons of time and care into fails. I came home from the regional house the other day for Christmas, and was extremely happy that I had brought home my guitar and finally had a chance to practice and play for my family here a little bit. Unfortunately, the first thing I noticed is that my entire garden was wilted and dead, guava pepiniere included. There were thousands of little insects running around, and then when I showed Arame what had happened, she was super surprised. She is generally responsible for watering my garden while I’m gone, and she doesn’t mind doing it, but she failed to notice that somebody has placed a large pile of peanut fodder next to my millet fencing by the horse stable, and the bugs were emerging from it and eating everything in their path. After hearing tons of stories from other volunteers about trees being demolished by goats and people failing to water their pepinieres, I feel that I can now contribute to the pool of Peace Corps failures and be initiated into our world of disappointment. At least I can be thankful that my diet is not dependent on my garden and I will still have dinner tonight. I can’t imagine what it is like for farmers who have their harvests demolished and nothing to sell or eat. Makes you think.

Another thought-provoking conversation: women in Senegal. Learning about women and gender roles here is an ongoing process, but the last two days were especially weird for me. Yesterday, I was helping Arame cook lunch by cutting onions and garlic for her, and I noticed an empty packet of birth control pills in the binoir next to me. I asked her who owned them, and she hesitantly said that she did, and asked if I knew what they were. I replied that I did and explained, and she was embarrassed, assuming that I wouldn’t be able to answer. After reassuring her that it is more than just ok, I explained that I thought it was fantastic and many women in America use them as well, and if she has any questions she can feel free to ask me. It is extremely liberal and forward-thinking for a Senegalese woman to wait until after 20 to have a child, then go on birth control to prevent from getting pregnant immediately afterwards, and I am very proud of her initiative. On the other hand, Hadi, my younger sister who is 15 or 16, has a child a year old, and I just noticed today that she was pregnant again. This is not particularly unusual, but it is sad that I can actually notice a real difference in both Diama’s and Babacar’s mannerisms and maturity levels both at a year old. Of course every child is different, but Diama is clearly learning more about the world at a faster pace than is Babacar, since Hadi is not nearly as attentive or caring of a mother as is Arame.

The differences in education level show as well; though Arame did not make it much past an elementary school level, she can read a bit and understands a little bit of French. I don’t know any other women at the top of my head that can read anything in Keur Andalla (aside from Oumi, but she is an outsider as well) and this became a topic of conversation today. Seey, my neighbor, looked at my book that I was reading today, and I asked her if she could read. She adamantly replied that she could not, so I asked if she wanted to learn. She basically replied “Sure, if you’ll teach me” so I told her there was a class in Saloum Diane for women to learn to read. She laughed at me and told me there wasn’t any time, she has to cook lunch and go pull water from the well every day, how could she ever think of actually learning something else? Meanwhile, Arame will occasionally pull out her old French books and study with me when I get up the motivation to review my Wolof books, and she keep telling me that she wants to go back to school and continue her studies despite having to raise Diama and cook and pull water just like all the other women in the village. Remember in my last blog post how I wrote about the differences in education level and how people can compare themselves to one another easily here? Case and point.

Anyway, tomorrow is New Years! God knows how I will make it till midnight seeing as I generally pass out before 10 here, but I’m sure I’ll figure something out. A group of us are meeting up in Toubakouta, renting out some rooms in a campemont, going out for a nice dinner and potentially jumping in the delta. Should be a good time- much different than the American version of the festivities, but fun nonetheless. Enjoy it everybody, and here’s to a good 2011!

Lessons learned

So I had this great blog entry going about my two weeks in Thies; what I learned, how I plan on applying it, what I did there, etc. But in the in the end, I really just spent two weeks being an American with other Americans. We went to restaurants, went to class every day, learned all sorts of interesting skills, but in the end, it wasn’t a particularly inspirational cultural exchange. I learned all sorts of interesting things in college, too, but you won’t find any blog entries detailing my new fact of the day from the last four years. Onto the village.

I am just about done spending a few days at site before I travel to Kaolack tomorrow for Christmas. Yes, I’m Jewish, but the idea of sitting at site while everyone is out partying just seems too depressing, so I will be sitting in the regional house enjoying ample free internet and kitchen space instead. In the meanwhile, I figured I’d write my blog entry at site, where I am surrounded by my inspirational African coming-of-age stories I know you’re all just dying to hear. So here goes.

At the all-volunteer conference, we got the chance to see the “universal nut sheller” in action. It’s pretty cool. It’s this crank-powered machine that will shell peanuts at the rate that 41 women can in the village by hand, thus saving time and allowing them to make a greater profit each season. Peace Corps was advertising it as revolutionary and able to really improve the lives of rural women who spend much of their free time next to little stools developing calluses. I came back to village with pictures to show Ousman and stories to tell. Then, yesterday, I was walking over to my hut when I saw some kid and an old-rusty looking crank-powered thing turning out a bunch of nicely-shelled peanuts into a sac placed clumsily underneath. It sort of reminds me of a fable I read in a Central American literature class in college- a priest gets lost in the woods and is captured by Mayans who are going to sacrifice him to the gods. Thinking he can outsmart them and trick them into thinking he has magical powers, he tries to tell them he knows the moon will go out at a certain time the next night since he knew about an upcoming solar eclipse. Instead, the Mayans sacrifice him while reading off a list of the previous, well-documented solar eclipses that have occurred over the last few thousand years. I’m glad my stakes for underestimation were not as high as that priest’s, but the lesson is the same. Don’t assume that people are innocent or lack knowledge by their socio-economic status or rural location.

In my case, I shouldn’t overestimate them either. Yesterday morning before going to the fields, my pregnant neighbor came into my hut asking me to read a doctor’s slip for her so she can know when she should go to the local health post for her checkup. The rate of illiteracy here is something crazy around 50% overall, but it is much higher for women and gets progressively higher as villages become more rural and isolated. Keur Andala is a strange place; while my counterpart is practically more educated than I am and can afford such novelties as solar panels and a tin roof, my uncle keeps asking me to buy him a cellphone, something even my pregnant illiterate neighbor owns and asked me to coordinate with my watch on the way out to the field yesterday. Apparently anything the white “toubab” owns is automatically correct.

This also changes my general perception of happiness in developing communities. Thinking I was a smart enlightened person before coming here, I assumed the general level of happiness here would be higher than I was used to; after all, people keep pointing to depression statistics in America. I have seen plenty of publications on how money actually can lead to unhappiness because it leads to a false obsession with material objects and a lower appreciation for the “little things in life.” In contrast, people have this idea that these small villages and tight-knit families are happy because they appreciate everything they have and work for. The large span of knowledge and control of money seems to crush this theory, for all intensive purposes. Now that people here are becoming less isolated and ever so slowly more westernized with their cell phones and Shakira’s “This is Africa” playing on the radio non-stop, people are more aware of what everybody else has and what they don’t have. Not that they are all out to cut themselves the way American media might lead you to believe, but at the end of a Sunday when my brother comes home from the market and I ask how his day was, he always seems to respond, “not so good- there isn’t any money.” So that’s my Peace Corps insightful story for the day.

On a less profound note, my quick life update: I’m slowly but surely starting to get into some real work here. My garden behind my hut is actually growing, I moved and rotated my pepiniere into a sunken ditch to hold in water and put berms around it this morning, and I’ve started visiting my uncle’s garden. He’s got a lot going for him, and it is a mini paradise with water and pepinieres galore- a regular nirvana as rural Senegalese communities go. The second time I went to visit it, though, I had a bit more time while I was helping to harvest rice to really observe some of his techniques, and I realized he could benefit from a lot of little changes- berms and terracing to help with water retention, pruning his mango trees a bit more, making some compost piles… there is work to be done. I’ve also spent a few days back out in the peanut fields, this time sifting through the dead plants and separating them with the wind. I’ll try to get a few pictures of that before the season’s over, but I wasted my camera battery taking pictures of the garden the other day. I’ll post those tomorrow. And PS, I figured out how to do multiple captions on google albums, so if you were curious about the subjects of my photos, now is the time to go back and look.

I’ll leave it at that for now. Hope everyone has (or had) a great holiday!

Much love from the west coast,

~E

An Intellectual Interlude

This past week, all of the volunteers in country and several volunteers from Togo, Niger, The Gambia, Mali and Burkina Faso gathered at the Thies training center to participate in the West-African All-Volunteer Conference and share best management practices from the field. Volunteers had the opportunity to present individual sessions, participate in workshops and round-table discussions, and see a few of the “appropriate technologies” that have been introduced to aid in development efforts. As a new volunteer, it was a fantastic opportunity to hear about many of the current projects, what made them successful or not, and pick people’s brains from around the country. I must say, after weeks of sitting at site, not knowing what to do or how to begin, it was an extremely refreshing and motivating experience. I attended a workshop on grant-writing in the Peace Corps, a discussion on GIS use in the field, various smaller sessions on project sustainability and environmental management, and learned a bit about projects outside my sector such as literacy and sanitation.

Some of the more interesting points I brought away included how to collaborate with NGOs and use multimedia as tools both in and out of the field. I will make sure to write a more in-depth post on development from a PCVs perspective, but I can definitely see an expanded use of technology in the Peace Corps network to start building a base of institutional memory and improve or streamline training sessions. For instance, volunteers have started using video and audio clips to help refresh technical skills of volunteers and train counterparts while carrying out a project or aid in communication when language barriers present a problem. Many volunteers now have radio shows that are pre-recorded and edited in collaborations at regional houses or in local cities, and digital on-line dictionaries help volunteers keep up-to-date on local language terminology. Every year, it becomes easier for more volunteers to have internet at site due to the proliferation of cell keys for laptops, and netbooks increase the portability and ease of that information. Most of the larger, more successful projects are conducted by volunteer cross-sector collaborations, so the benefits of easy communication, documentation and resources are clear. Some volunteers believe that having access to technology at site impedes community integration, but I believe that if utilized with an awareness of the culture and individual community, it will continue to be a beneficial tool to aid in development work.

But enough of that rant. I am currently in IST; our stage in-service technical training. We spend two weeks at the center specifically concentration on technical skills and project development, so when I go back to the village, I will really have more of the knowledge and ability to start small projects and begin to build my credibility as a knowledgeable community member. I am motivated to learn about cross-sector projects and how to integrate knowledge from different areas to really get everything you can out of a project. If I spend a lot of time and effort growing and installing a live fence, for instance, what will the benefits be in terms of vegetables grown in the garden and how will that benefit the village in the long term? A quick training on healthy diets, for instance, would encourage the villagers to consume some of those vegetables rather than selling them all for profit, or a marketing lesson would allow them to sell some vegetables at a higher profit and allow them to buy materials to make an even more successful garden in future years.

While all this is occurring in Senegal, it is the holiday season back in the States. So happy shopping people! I can’t believe that this time last year I was preparing for finals, planning ski trips and bundled up in blankets and jackets. It’s still hot here. That’s what happens when you live in the dessert in Africa. Not that I should have to ask for this, but make sure you all take plenty of snowy pictures for me! I’m pretty sure that a few good magazine spreads of ski pictures will end up in my hut before the end of the winter.

Oh, and PS: Happy Hannukah!

~E

first post from site

Blog Entry:

Hey lookie here! I’m updating my blog from site! My host family compound has solar paneling, and my host dad is patron enough to have a fixed line in the house, and he offered me to use it to get internet access once the AC/DC converter was up and running. Basically, I got sick of waiting and bought it myself as a gift for Tabaski and to provide myself with free electricity for the 2 years that I am here. It turns out the internet I get through the fixed line is quite cheap and faster than the internet in Kaolack since there are normally 10 or 11 computers trying to use internet at once in the regional house, so this is a pretty good option.

At any rate, I will be here for 2 more days, then I travel to Thies for our all-volunteer conference. We get two days of meetings about best-management practices in the field with volunteers from all over the country and a few from surrounding countries. Then, IST starts, and I have two more full weeks of sitting in class learning about agroforestry technologies. Ironically, I am actually super excited. It will be nice to see the rest of the stage again, be out of the village for a bit, eat training center food (it’s amazing the things you appreciate being in the village) and have a bit of fun. I also plan on visiting my homestay family and seeing how they’re doing, considering they’ve been calling me continuously since I left. It’s cute, but the fact that I haven’t really called them back on a regular basis makes me a bit of an asshole by Senegalese standards. There are a few times when I absolutely refuse to be part of Senegalese culture- calling everyone I know on a regular basis just to see if they’re doing ok is something I do not plan on doing.

I came to a realization though- being a PCV is strikingly like being an RA at site. Everyone is watching you all of the time, they see you as some form of authority figure but that does not necessarily mean they respect you, you are living “in a fishbowl,” you have to plan program and projects in your community, and you are responsible for presenting a good image all of the time to represent American culture. It’s also funny; I was remembering the weekly reports we used to have to fill out about our floors, and all of the questions still seem to apply: which new resident (villager) have you interacted with this week? What situations have you encountered and how have you followed up on them? What are you doing to keep yourself healthy and deal with stress? The list goes on. When all else fails and I am going crazy, I usually remember how in some ways, nothing has really changed. The sad part is, I used most of those comparisons during my interview for Peace Corps. I now realize why my recruiter decided I was a good candidate. Apparently, I said the right thing.

In terms of work, yesterday was actually somewhat successful! I sat down with my counterpart and two very motivated local farmers to decide what the overall needs of the community were and what types of projects they were interested in carrying out so that I can do the research for them while I am in Thies. I explained some of our training and offered some ideas, but it seems that people are particularly interested in “diversifying” types of fruit trees being planted, protecting fields, starting a bee-fodder project, fish farming in our little pond, and soil stabilization to prevent continued erosion. We’ll see how many of those projects get started or turn out to be successful, but now I feel like I’ve made connections and have a goal in life. It’s a pretty good feeling.

So I’ll check in again when I’ve made it safely to Thies. Remind me not to overuse my computer at site- I found myself looking through old pictures a lot in my hut halfway through writing this entry; I’m hoping that does not become an addiction. Homesickness is a painful thing sometimes, but I’ll leave it at that.

Love and miss you all!

~E

Tabaski and Thanksgiving. Yummy x 2

Wow, I have failed miserably at this whole blogging deal over Thanksgiving, as normally I would be much better about getting a good entry or two up as soon as I got to Kaolack. But here you go.

I successfully made it through 5 weeks of sitting at site, not doing anything particularly productive with my life, not quite knowing the language or people who live there, and essentially wondering what I got myself into. I made it through Tabaski and endless hours of sitting, peeling and cutting onions to cook the Tabaski meal, and watching them kill sheep. Little background information- Tabaski is the Islamic holiday that celebrates the story of Abraham and his willingness to kill his own son to prove his faithfulness to God. Most of you know the story or some variation thereof: at the last minute, God informs him that he should sacrifice a ram instead. In order to celebrate this, Muslims decided that they should do the same, so everyone kills sheep throughout the country and has large, meat-eating celebrations. However, the process of killing and cooking the sheep is not exactly the clean, well-run operation that you would imagine in the states. People dig a hole in the ground to drain the blood, everyone brings their sheep or goat over to the communal killing location, and they ceremonially saw off the sheeps’ heads with machetes. There are a few pictures of the killing in the Tabaski album if you’re curious to see the gore. I’ve got a video too if anybody is really sick in the head.

The problem with this whole Tabaski process is that it is almost entirely based around the cooking process, and in Senegal, cooking is exclusively the women’s job. This gets really annoying when you consider that my sister Umi went home to her family in Foungioune for Tabaski, my mom Arame got very sick, and I have a small enough family that much of the cooking responsibility fell to me. After spending hours peeling onions and cutting up chunks of meat, we had to wait until 3 in the afternoon to be able to serve the men food. Another hour later, finally, women were able to sit down and actually eat the food they had been cooking all morning. But before they could do so, they decided that the whole community must eat exactly the same meal, so they put all the cooked food from all of the bowls from all of the families into one large bowl, mixed it, then redistributed it back into the bowls brought by all the women. It was a rather odd process. Everyone then dressed up, and many of the younger people went out dancing each night. I did my best to make an appearance, but I have decided that Senegalese dancing is probably better watched than done, especially if I am going to be here for two years.

By the end of the five weeks, I was definitely ready to get out of site. After days of sitting in another culture, isolated from friends and family and not having much to do, I was beginning to lose my patience. A visit to Cassie’s site did the trick. I traveled down to her site just north of Karang to see her lovely agroforestry projects and get inspiration for my own in the future. We wondered around all morning, chatted, saw some lovely live fencing, and decided that it made no sense for us to sit around and do nothing all night when we had a free afternoon to travel into Kaolack, so we came into the house for the night and had a chance to hang out with friends a bit before the madness of Thanksgiving occurred.

Thanksgiving itself was lovely. I was responsible for making pies, because as those of you who know me probably know, I am much more of a baker than a cook. I really miss baking in the states- our ovens have pilot lights, temperature gauges, and are big enough to put more than two tiny pies in them on its single rack at once. However, it was still a good time hanging out in the kitchen, listening to music and baking with friends. After two full days of cooking and baking and 5 mil (about 10 bucks) a person, we put together a true Thanksgiving feast of turkey, green bean casserole, deviled eggs, macaroni and cheese, sweet potato casserole, a few other vegetable dishes, corn bread (we actually had to pound the corn meal from scratch), sangria with orange slices actually floating in it, and pumpkin, squash and apple pies. I am pretty sure I have never been more full in my entire life. Definitely a success. And what do you imagine happens when you have 41 just out of college kids in a house after a good meal hanging out in a house together? You’re probably wrong. We sat around, complained about how full we all were, watched a movie, and went to bed. Thanksgiving, no matter where in the world you are, is not a giant party. That tryptophan gets you every time.

I bought an AC/DC converter for my family so I will be able to charge my computer at site! That means I will have internet access as soon as that gets hooked up and I can secure a wireless key, so I look forward to skyping and emailing all of you on a more regular basis very soon. Also, I found a volunteer who is leaving soon and is actually planning on GIVNG me his guitar, so I will be saner at site in the future, inshallah. At any rate, it seems that the worst of the at-site insanity is over, but I have a long way to go, so we’ll see how this journey plays out. In the meantime, I will be traveling into Thies for our all-volunteer conference on Thursday, so I will soon again have internet and bring you the next episode of these ramblings.

Until next time,

~E

Almost Thanksgiving

Day trip to Sokone! I’m pretty sure that I need to stop showing up at other volunteer’s doors asking to use their computers to type blog entries. If I get into that habit, it may not fly so well when this whole adventure is over and I’m back in the land of the free. Can you imagine- “Hey neighbor, how’s it going? Just gonna sit and watch your TV for a while because I don’t have one yet. I’ll only be a little while, thanks!”Maybe not.

Public transport situation is getting slightly better. One of the advantages to living in a remote village is that there is only one or two cars you can use, so you get to know the drivers pretty well. In fact, I now have the phone numbers of the two bus drivers that go to Saloum Diane or Keur Andalla saved in my phone, which makes it much easier when I go into a crowded garage and the one car that is going to my destination recognizes me and makes sure I am on it. When I got off this morning, the driver left me with strict instructions on where I should sit and wait for him, what time he will be back this afternoon and how much it will cost to get back. This is all well and good, other than the fact that to get here, I woke up at 4:15 am to catch the bus at about 5, then sat as it drove over rough bush roads honking its horn to wake everyone up and alert people of its presence for the 2-hour trip into the city. You give a little, you take a little I guess. Everything in Senegal is a tradeoff.

At any rate, the 5 week challenge is coming into its homestretch! We are more than 3 weeks in now, and within the next week Tabaski will occur, which is sort of equivalent to Easter in the States. It comes about 2 months after Korite, as you may have noticed, and involves many of the same traditions- women braiding their hair and buying new clothes, getting dressed up and cooking fancy meals involving meat and onions. It should be a good time. I am, however, avoiding markets at all costs from here on out until after the holiday is over, because I do not want to deal with frenzied Senegalese trying to buy their goats last minute to kill for the holiday. So maybe it’s not exactly like Easter but you get the idea.

I’ve noticed lately that very little goes to waste around here, though an outsider would never know it by all the trash in the streets. Things get reused all the time for various purposes that Americans would never think to do. This is mostly because we have access to buying products that usually fill that purpose, and the old saying of reduce, reuse recycle is rarely taken to heart when a vendor has a product that fills the exact purpose you were looking for. I have started following along with this trend, and have become increasingly more creative with my use of products I may have previously disposed of. For instance, when the cable to my hut broke and I was solar lamp-less for a few days, I had to find a way to hold a candle.Given that the boutique next to me doesn’t even sell bread never mind candlesticks, I used a small cardboard box that had contained the lighter for my gas stove and filled it with dirt to hold the candle in place. When I painted my room, an old coke bottle with the top cut off proved to be the perfect container to mix paint and paint thinner. When I was breaking up the soil in my garden-to-be, a ripped up plastic sheet that was stuck under the ground seemed to be the perfect cover for my compost pile (banana tree leaves work well too), and the chaco box that my parents sent a care package in work great as a clothespins holder. Senegalese use a cleaned-out tomato can as a cup for water so often that when cooking, the can itself has actually become a unit of measurement. I feel like this is a good trend that I should bring back with me- if anybody is in, we should start a club. The 4 Rs- Reduce, reuse, recycle, for real. Please don’t make fun of my humor, I’m a geek and I’m proud of it.

My village had a big day yesterday! As I was chilling and reading my book in the afternoon, my family told me that there were a few Toubabs walking around. I found that hard to believe, so I got up to investigate, and sure enough a group of three white people and two other Senegalese were wondering around taking pictures of trees. Much as remote peanut-farming villages in Senegal seem like the most desirable place in the world for a nice relaxing vacation and this seemed entirely normal to me, I decided to go introduce myself anyway. It turns out that and NGO collaboration consisting of Plan Vivo, BioClimate and some professors from the University of Dakar were investigating a group of villages in the area and scouting out potential host sites to start some research on agroforestry techniques there. Hah! Now I know that as a PCV I am expected to find out what other organizations are active in the area and try to form connections and collaborate on projects, but I did not expect one to show up knocking on my door. They were unaware that a PCV was present in village, since most of them are based out of Denmark and Scotland, so we talked a bit and tried to figure out what each organization was up to in the village. They proceeded to sit my chief of village and half of the village down and explain the benefits of agroforestry and try to gauge their interest in participating in projects with the NGO. As far as I have gathered, there is no definite that they will return, and they are simply trying to do surveys of potential sites before selecting specific villages to work with. An exciting day for the village for sure, but no guarentees that anything will happen. I still feel as though my work has officially started; I got to act as a delegate for the village, share information, speak in Wolof (they had to bring a translator) and gain some contacts that may be useful in the future.

Chillin in Toubakouta

Yay I have a computer! I apologize in advance- this might be long. I don’t have computer access that much these days, so I take advantage when I can.

Biked into Toubakouta to hang out with Garrison and Amy and see civilization for a few hours. Sometimes I forget what it looks like. Granted, our definition of civilization is a bit different here- if I can get a bean sandwich in a little shack and speak English with another volunteer for a few hours, I’m a pretty happy camper. The ride in is really beautiful- it is about 4 kilometers to Saloum Diane on a sand road, which is a pain, then a little over 20 or so into Toubakouta on a laterite clay road. It’s about a 2 hour ride, so you can imagine I will be in pretty damn good biking shape after 2 years of this. Pan-Mass challenge, anybody? I showed up at another volunteer’s door randomly since the internet café next door was going to charge me a mil an hour to use the internet, which is ridiculous in comparison to the 300 I paid in Sokone. Now I am sitting and typing on his computer while he does laundry, and I will upload this in a little while at a campemont with internet access. Eventually, I will have internet at site, so that should solve that problem.

Last Thursday, I went to a groupemont training down in Karang on the border of the Gambia. To get there, I stayed overnight with a study-abroad student in Saloum Diane and caught a sept-place at 6 am down to the city, and a Peace Corps car brought us over to the garden. Translation, for those of you who are not yet fluent in PC-Senegalese: a groupemont is a small organization of women who share a garden space and help to maintain it, then split the profit of what they make as a result of selling their produce. This is one of the major goals of the agriculture section of PC Senegal- working with women’s groups to enhance gender equality by providing women with the means to create their own income aside from what their husbands allow them and teaching them agriculture and agroforestry techniques to increase yield and sustainability. I watched as women dug zai holes and terraces into the land, and helped a bit despite the heat. Zai holes are small round holes about 20 cm deep that you dig into a slope and plant field crops in such as millet or corn, and you form a berm around the downhill side to catch water when it rains. Most of you are familiar with terraces- flat areas of land built into the side of a hill where you can plant crops. Senegal is not exactly known for its rolling hills and slopesides, but it is a useful technique even in a very minor slope where any water that can be caught should be use effectively. Both the zai holes and the terraces are then amended by digging the crop area and adding composting materials such as green leaves, brown leaves, manure, and charcoal as a carbon source. Sometime in the near future, planting will begin for dry-season gardening. Believe it or not, this concept actually exists- some plants can tolerate a drier climate, and if watered to a certain extent, can be a productive use of time and effort during the dry cool season in December and January into the warmer dry season later in spring. I’ve got some pictures of all of this, but you have to wait until I get back to Kaolack to see. Gotta keep everyone in suspense somehow.

Enough of technical stuff. Want to know how we buy things in Senegal? We go to Loumas! Loumas are open markets that occur weekly in certain villages, and comprise much of the major economic exchange in remote villages where regular markets don’t exist. Aside from a few boutiques scattered throughout larger villages (my village only has 1 because nobody likes us) most people do their shopping and selling on a weekly basis in the market. The major louma near me is in a village called Touba Mouride, and it occurs every Sunday. I have two options for getting there- pay 250 CFA to take an overcrowded car there at 6 am over a horrible road with tons of products to sell strapped to the top and wait at louma until 5 to leave, or bike. The bike ride is about an hour long, but entirely worth the trip, as you can well imagine. The other day, I biked there and met up with my sister Umi and Amy, my neighboring volunteer. Probably spent too much money (because the equivalent of 20 bucks American is a huge deal here) but I came home with some lovely spoils: a giant clay pot to keep water cool at site, materials to build a door for my backyard, extra paint thinner to finish painting my room, margarine, some bananas, and some bread. Yesterday afternoon, Umi and I attempted to finish painting my room- still a little bit short on the paint thinner, so I bought some more today in Toubakouta, but it’s an activity and a welcome break from going to the field. As you can imagine, transporting everything home was an adventure in itself, so the clay pot was strapped to the top of the car that Umi took home, the wood for the door was lashed to the horse charet that my brother took into louma, and I biked home with a backpack full of bread and bananas and not quite enough water. (I learned my lesson, I have more than enough water for today.) Most of my time in market, I found myself missing the malls back home- the food courts there are a far cry from the small tin shack that I got a bowl of rice with a piece of fish in for lunch, and lord knows some Ben and Jerry’s ice cream afterwards from Providence Place would have been lovely, but you learn to live without it.

I know my sister (my real one) has been dying to hear about my “daily routine,” so I will do my best with what semblance of a routine exists in my life. When staying in village, I usually wake up at 7 am- right after the sun comes up, and heat up water to make coffee. I turn on my ipod and sit on my plastic mat in my room and set up everything to make breakfast- usually some bread with some jelly or honey- and chill out while drinking coffee and taking my sweet time to get ready for the day while it is still cool outside. I brush my teeth with a water bottle and put out my solar charger for the day. I will eventually be able to charge everything in the house where there is solar electricity, but I’d prefer not to take advantage all the time. Afterwards, I emerge from my hut around 8 am or so to go greet my family while they are cooking breakfast and sleeping- Umi is still sleeping if she’s not teaching that day, and my mom and taking care of baby Diama. She is my 1-year old younger sister, and I love her probably more than anyone in the village. I then go back to my hut and leave the door open so people can greet me while I do a little bit of work preparing to the plant my garden- I have a small compost pile going and I’ve broken up the soil and constructed some bad-ass handles with eucalyptus branches with a machetti. (Sorry if I’m repeating anything, I don’t have internet right now to check back on my old entries.) When my mom is ready, I go out to the field to help pull up peanuts until noon, then we come back and I take a short bucket bath and rest for a while before lunch. We don’t eat lunch until 3 normally, so I have a small snack and hang out until then. The afternoon really has no rhyme or reason to it. Eventually, I will use it for real work time, but right now I spend a lot of time hanging out with the women, picking peanuts off the plants we brought back to village, having tea, and doing other random tasks (such as painting my room) and needed. We eat dinner around 8 or so- lately we’ve had millet and beans just about every night. It’s not that bad, at least it’s palatable. In some villages, I’m pretty sure it’s difficult to eat whatever was made. On the other hand, some people cook for themselves or are more urban and live with patron families that cook better dinners. I’m in the Peace Corps- I take what I can get.

Speaking of taking what I can get, many of you are wondering what strategies I use to stay sane while living in a remote village with no good electricity, pulling water out of a well, no internet access, difficult transportation and no English. I have a few things that keep me relatively happy. My morning routine is a big part of that- it’s amazing what an hour of having a cup of coffee and listening to familiar American music does for your morale each day. My sister is another big part of that. She gets that it’s difficult to come live away from your home and give up comforts that you are used to, especially when you are educated and can look at the world around you with a more critical eye. I have had many conversations that have ended with “Xamunu dara u aduna…” They don’t know anything about the world. Just hearing that she gets it, even if she doesn’t speak English or has never been out of Senegal, is a huge help. I can tell her whatever, and she doesn’t judge. She knows what skype is and has relatives in the States, France and Italy, so she understands a bit more about where I’m coming from. It’s also nice that I can put on a Goo Goo Dolls song and she will have actually heard it before, which is more than I can say about Senegalese music before I came here. Talking to people in the states (echem thanks Tim) and writing letters home makes a huge difference too. I really do love sharing my experiences with people, hence this blog, and hearing what is going on back home. Just knowing that someone had a difficult day at work or that the Patriots won or lost makes me feel a bit more connected to my life back home. Things like today, biking into Toubakouta for the day, make a big difference as well- like I started this entry with, a bean sandwich and a good English conversation makes a world of difference. Feel free to call me any time you like, you might be lucky and I’ll have reception and we can talk about your life. I don’t judge. And before I ramble for another few pages, I’ll leave it here for today. Probably will update again when I get to Sokone for my mail and language seminar in a week or two. More about that then.

Mucho Senegalese Amour,

~E

First week complete!

I am here at a cyber in Sokone where I came in to meet some volunteers, check my mail and buy some stuff. Its a pain typing on this though since it is a French keyboard and I almost have to relearn to type everything. But lots to say, so Ill do my best until I can get on an American computer again, preferably mine.
My site is lovely! Pics to come when I get back into Kaolack, which will be Thanksgiving. Where do I even begin? I have a small family, which is a huge change from my homestay site where I was surrounded by tons of people all the time. Now, if I need to get away and rest for a while, that is perfectly feasible. I have a backyard where I am working on starting a garden, and my own bathroom (a hole in the ground wth some concrete and a millet fence surrounding it). I actually have my own patio, with a little plastic and millet stalk roof covering it, so people can come over and sit on the concrete banister and chat. And best of all, I have lighting!! It turns out that my counterpart is also my dad at site, and he is pretty patron, so he installed three solar powered lightbulbs in my hut; one inside, one in my backyard and one on the front patio. It is rather convenient.
As of right now I dont have a bed, but I commisioned a local artisian in a neighboring village to build one, and we are going to get it back on a horse drawn charette in the next few days. Yes, I will make sure to take pictures of that. For the time being I am sleeping on a cot I bought in Kaolack before install and my camping mat on that. For what its worth, it gets the job done.
My sister and mom make my life a much happier experience as well. My sister, Umi, is the same age as me, and she is amazingly not yet married. She has a boyfriend in Keur Saloume Diane, the aforementioned neighboring village, and she always pretends to deny it, so I tease her. She then proceeds to tease me back about my boyfriend, who I refer to as my husband here in Senegal so as to avoid a long cross cultural discussion every time I mention him. Umi is the only person I have met in Senegal so far who can go toe-to-toe with me when I tease her for something. We actually managed to start dueling with our spoons at the dinner bowl the other night, which progressed into a pretend kung-fu match, and eventually ended up as an all-out wrestling tournament. Sometimes I wonder about my own antics...
My mom, Arame, here is adorble. She called me yesterday while I was at another volunteers house in Sokone to say goodnight and check up on me. I am pretty sure I never really appreciated people always checking up on me back in the States to see if I am ok, but now in this foreign culture and place it means the world to me to know that I have support and am not completely on my own all the time trying to figure out what I am doing. Oh and ps, I`m pretty sure she is the same age as me, but Senegalese have a habit of never telling you their real age. It is not an embarresment thing like it is in the states, but more of a superstition. And for clarification, Umi and Arame are not actually related; Umi is my sister because she has a room in the house with which I am associated, but she is just living in Keur Andalla for a while because she is a teacher there.
Usman, my counterpart/dad, normally stays in a room that he has in Saloum Diane because he works there. He comes home a few times a week to see the village and spend a bit of time with Arame and Diama, their 1-year old baby. Diama is adorable and I play with her all the time. She`ll get into her terrible twos while I`m living here, so maybe it`ll start to get annoying, but 2-year olds can be cute too sometimes.
There are two major downsides to my site: first, it is the most remote site in all of the Fatick region. To get to Sokone, I biked around 48 kilometers yesterday, mostly on a packed laterite road, which is basically a red gravel and clay mixture. In the future, I can take a car from Saloum Diane at 6 am, but that involves waking up and walking 4 km to Saloum Diane before it is light out through the fields, probably not the safest means. Otherwise, I can bike on the bushroads which I have not yet learned about 25 km here, which is better distance but worse quality roads and may just be annoying. I guess I`ll learn my options quickly enough.
The other downside is water- I do not have a robine (tap) at site, so I am pulling water from a well for everything- laundry, drinking, showing, watering my garden, etc. It`s amazing how much you are concious of your water usage when you have to carry every drop you use on your head for about 150 meters. Really makes you appreciate showers. I am starting to get the hang of it; it will definitely involve some next muscle strengthening before I perfect the art that is carrying binoirs of 10 gallons or so of water on your head.
I haven`t started any major work projects yet, and I don`t plan too for a while. We won`t hqve the training for it until after IST in December. Right now, our jobs as new volunteers is to integrate into our communities, learn everybody`s names, settle, start to form ideas about where we would want to start projects in the future, talk to other volunteers about their work, and start to pinpoint potential work partners outside of just our counterparts. To start, however, I`ve already started a guava pepiniere as part of a reserch project for one of our PST trainers, and I plan on starting more of a garden in my backyard. I am also learning to cook Senegalese dishes, and generally I go out to the fields with the other women in the mornings to pick peanut plants and help carry a few back to the compound. It`s pretty hard work, but I do enjoy getting outside and having something to do rather than just sit and drink Senegalese tea all day. My sister and I are also going to paint my room tomorrow or the day after, should be fun!
Ok well my time at the cafe is running out quickly so I`ll wrap this up. Now you can all start sending me packages! Easy mac, instant oatmeal packets, granola bars, and American candy/chocolate is all apprecited.
love you all from across the ocean,
~E

New mailing address

At the regional house in Kaolack. I will probably be posting entries from here and cybercafes in Toubacouda from now on. It's a pretty neat place to just chill and relax with other volunteers, and it is stocked with a library of books that volunteers brought over the years, a guitar, and NesCafe. Yes, we drink instant coffee because the alternatives are either difficult and time-consuming, expensive or non-existent. But I digress.

As the title of this blog indicates, and the main reason for me posting a blog entry two days in a row, is that I got my mailing address today! See side bar -------------------->>>

So now all of you lovely people and can send me stuff. It is a shared box with 3 other volunteers, which is good because a) I spend less money to have the box and b) if my site mate happens to be in Sokone, she can pick it up for me and bring it to me, enabling me to receive mail slightly more often. I don't know what the situation will be like for making it there, but at the very least I will receive the gifts that you bestow upon me every other week or so.

This morning we went out and bought a ridiculous amount of things for install. We need to buy all sorts of new tools for gardening, kitchen supplies, storage containers, buckets and baskets for showering, etc. I will also have to aquire a bed at some point along the lines, but I may end up buying a cot to hang out on and sleep on until I can find a better solution. Most volunteers said they found an artisan or someone in a road town near them and hired a charet- a horse-drawn carriage- to get it back to site. I’ll take pictures believe me.

Side note-while writing this blog entry my homestay family called me to say hi. They call me every day to tell me that they miss me and make sure I’m ok. I miss them. Senegalese phone conversations are very bizarre; I’m pretty sure the cellphone has not been a common item until recently, so local phone etiquette is much different than it is in the states. People will answer their phones no matter what- Aissatu used to answer her phone in the middle of the class all the time because it would be rude not to. My two older brothers from homestay- Mousa and Alisou, call me all the time just to tease me and reference our old inside jokes. I used to call them my “nari jafe-jafe,” my two problems. They teased me so much that I joked about how I loved everyone but them because they were “sy-sy” or teasers. I definitely want to go visit them all whenever I get a chance to get up to Thies.

Ok I’ll wrap this up for now seeing as I’m probably blabbing on now, but I will soon have stories about install and my site. Ba benen yoon (until next time)

~E

Hey mom look! I'm a real PCV!

Swear in!

A lot has happened in the last few days. It’s all pretty overwhelming actually. Let’s recap:

Wednesday- last day of classes. We finished logistics and review of our final language exams. And guess what? I scored advanced low for Wolof! (There’s a breakdown of novice, intermediate, advanced and superior for languages, and we’re required to achieve intermediate-mid to swear in. Thus, I win.) Also got perfect scores on my tree ID and tech exam, so if you’re are ever wondering if the tree you’re looking at is a Delonix regia or a Leucaena leucocephala, hit me up. We had a soccer match of staff vs. trainees Wednesday night too, which was rather amusing. Senegal vs. America minus 2 or 3 American trainers. The soccer game is a tradition at the end of stage, and America has lost the last 10 years in a row or so. Last year they did not even score. This year, we lost 2-3, so all things considered, I’m pretty proud of us. I got to play about half the game, and there’s a couple of pictures in the swearing-in album.

Thursday- Family reception! Fatou, my homestay mom and namesake, came to the center and brought her baby, Ndaiy, with her. It was really nice getting to hang out with her one last time and enjoy a good meal. We had a small ceremony for the families and gave them a chance to speak to everyone, and everyone wished us luck and congratulated us on making it through PST despite the obvious difficulties.

Friday- Swear-in! We all shipped it to the ambassador’s house in Dakar where we immediately commenced picture-taking and head-scarf wrapping (see pictures) and watched the ceremony. It was a bit like graduation all over again- they had speeches, had us take the oath of service, and 4 of the other trainees gave speeches in local languages that they had prepared ahead of time. Then they called us each up to receive our official PCV ID cards and documentation that we are, in fact, part of the organization. The important thing occurred after the ceremony- food. As any PCV knows, good food must be cherished and hoarded, and they had lots of it, so we ate all sorts of fun delicious American finger foods. Afterwards, we got on the bus, went to the office to do the necessary paperwork, and proceeded on to the so-called “American Club” where rich white people go to send their children to school or go swimming. It is actually called Club Atlantique, but they have American food and menus in English. We jumped in the pool, had a beer and chatted with other volunteers who came to share in the occasion. It was, all around, quite entertaining.

Today- moving. I packed up all of my stuff, went out to lunch with some friends, and now we are waiting for the busses to take us on the bumpy pot-hole filled road that leads to the magical land that is Kaolack. More madness will occur- moving all of the stuff I own into the house (there’s more than I stared with because we now have so many things that Peace Corps gave us or we bought here), and we also have to store the major purchases tomorrow- beds, trunks, cots, etc. We’ll see how that goes.

I cannot believe that I am already going to install. In some ways, it really does seem like we just got here, and in some ways, I have been over training and ready to move on for a while now. I guess that’s what happens with everything- it was the same with graduation too. I miss college to no end, but I can’t imagine wanting to go back and start classes again at this point. Life moves on. On another, related note, I am surprisingly ready to go back to the village now. Yes, it will be stressful trying to integrate into a new family, and it will probably suck a lot going back to village food and lifestyles, but it is also quite tiring having ceremonies and going out with people a lot. It’s fun at first, but after a couple of days in the center, the idea of going back to someplace quiet, having some time to myself to organize, collect and read a book actually sounds quite tempting. Also, I know it will not be as bad as going back to homestay the first time. While I am by no means fluent in Wolof, I know I can start to converse, talk about myself and express my needs right off the bat. It’s useful. I am also looking forward to having a routine again- not having to think too much about my daily activities to make sure I am not pissing anybody off. By the time I was done with homestay, it was normal for me to go running or change in the shower. It takes a lot of stress off of having to explain yourself for every stupid little thing you do. Also, I got amazingly close with my family in the two months I was there, and then we had to leave. Now, I get to bond with my family and actually stay for a while. I still get calls daily from my family saying hi and good morning or just teasing about random jokes we have. It’s sort of hard to talk on the phone in Wolof because a lot of the conversation is lost when your communication ability depends greatly on gestures and facial expressions, but we get the point across that we miss each other and they want me to come visit when I can. I suppose I’m going to go need to buy more phone credit soon.

So before this gets too long, you can check out pictures of swear-in now on the picassa album! There’s a whole album for soccer, family day and swear-in that I posted. Also, I should have my new address when I get to Kaolack later so I’ll be able to post that, and care-package sending can commence immediately thereafter. An idea that Tim and I started- take videos of stuff and put them on an old flash drive or burn them to a cd and send that. That way, I don’t have to depend on the internet to download stuff about your lives, and you can give me tours of things like new apartments (you all know who you are) or projects/bands you are working on. I’ll be putting together a flash drive on my own and shipping it back to the states once I get a chance to settle into site and get some videos of it, so you can see glimpses of my life here and hear a bit of Wolof. Look for that probably in a month or two. Thanks for everyone’s support and emails, you mean the world to me.

~E

Goodbye Keur Madaro

Wrote this yesterday then my computer decided it didn’t want to connect to the internet, so here we go. Thank god for Word.

Sort of sad story. We were supposed to have our final language tests in the village this morning and then have the afternoon to pack and spend the last few hours chatting with our families. This morning, as I was reviewing for the exam and chatting with my siblings, Spencer showed up at my house telling me that Aissatu was sick and a car was already on its way to pick us up. I rushed to put all of my things together and said a relatively quick goodbye to my family as I tried to explain that no, I was not going to be back that afternoon, and I will see them when I can go visit in December during IST. (IST, for those of you who are lacking in Peace Corps lingo, means in-service training, and occurs a few months after our initial PST when we all go back to Thies for a couple weeks to do some more advanced tech training.)So thus I am back in Thies, took my language exam with the program language coordinator while my teacher recovers at home. I would have left around now anyway, but still, I will miss them. Posted a few pictures of the last few minutes at homestay on the homestay album. I am about to consider my online album organization a lost cause and start from scratch after swear-in.

At any rate, the last week of homestay was pretty nice. We took an afternoon to come into the market in Thies so I could print some pictures for the family and get an album to put them in as a last nice gift to them. Also, the three of us trainees all bought chickens for the families to make a special last dinner with them last night. It is a huge treat for them to have chicken or any sort of meat, so despite the fact that I am now out about half of my walkaround money, it was a worthwhile last thought. Chickens here run around 2500 CFA each, which is the equivalent of 5 dollars American. I bought three for the family, which in America is an extremely cheap last gift, but considering the fact that I make 28000 CFA (about 60 bucks) every other week, it was a pretty significant gift.

Now, the madness begins. Tomorrow we have a few wrap-up type of sessions and logistics for swear-in and install, and then Thursday afternoon we have our family reception! Fatou, my training mother/counterpart/sister will come to meet me here and we can dress up and have good food and dance, then it’s D-Day! Swear in occurs Friday in Dakar, pictures and stories to come. We have a day here in Thies preparing, and then we’re off to Kaolack house for 2 days to go buy stuff we need to install into our new homes. Me, Amy, and Garrison will be going to a hotel in Sokone for a night on the way to Toubacouda to make transport for install easier the next day, and finally, on the 20^th, I move into my “dekk bu bess,” or my new home. Logistics for you lovely people back home: don’t send stuff to the Thies address anymore, since it won’t get here on time. Stand by for further instructions, since I’ll be getting a box in Sokone in a few days that will likely be a shared box with a couple of other volunteers. I will explain when I know more. When I get to Kaolack, I will posted a wish list, since it seems many of you lovely people are interested in sending me presents from the States. I cannot express my true and undying gratitude if you decide to do so, as it is amazing what trivial items you appreciate when you do not see them for a long time.

As always, stay tuned. Love from Africa,

E

Almost there

Finally changed the background of my blog! So now instead of some random road picture that google provides as a template, you can see an actual African scene- taken by yours truly behind my homestay house. Enjoy it.

So I swear in as a full PCV next Friday. There are parts of training that went by incredibly slowly, and heaven knows I'm ready to get to site and start to gain my independence back, but at the same time I almost can't believe that I've been in country almost 2 months now. I can only imagine how fast time will go by once I'm at site, into the swing of things, comfortable with my family and language and have regular projects going. That may be a stretch to think of now, but one can always dream...

For the time being it's back to homestay today for the last time. I am actually excited this time- I love my family and I know it will go by super fast; I am now comfortable in the village and we will plan a really nice going away dinner or something with the other PCTs in the village. I think we might buy some chickens and kill them for a final night or something- that's pretty special for people there because chickens are expensive. I'll also be pretty busy wrapping up our garden; we have to figure out who will continue it and maybe train a few people on watering or making a fence around it. First experience with really training people in country. That's not to say that I actually really know what I'm doing yet, but it's a start. Keur Madaro has survived without us for a long time and will continue to survive without us after we leave, so I'm not that worried. Not to mention we'll be back- IST is at the beginning of December, which is not that long away. It seems like a long time, but in the life of many plants and trees, it's just a drop in the bucket.

At any rate, the beach was fun. We took two Alhums (the big white van-like busses) down to Poupenguie (not sure how to spell that) where Kelsey's site will be. It was gorgeous, and it was a welcome break from the normal day-to-day that is class, translating every thought I have into Wolof, and digging in the dirt. The occasional beach vacation can do a world of good. I posted pics too- they should be under the PST album if you're curious. Since I'm bad at putting captions up, you'll see the cliffs and some other rock formations. Some artist carved random statue figures into one of the formations and you can see a picture of this face that greets you when you go to climb on the rocks. It's pretty cool actually. You can climb up to the top of the little island and look out at the ocean too, so Garrison and I went exploring there. Lauren and Rachel hung back, but me, being the natural rock climber/lover of heights, I climbed up the rock wall and checked it out. The other cool thing- the water here has plankton with bioluminescent proteins. We learned about them in school, and I remember all sorts of research and biological advantages to them, but nothing compares to how cool they are when you go swimming in the middle of the night and all the water sparkles white around you as you move your arms. Definitely up there with the coolest things ever. I'm a geek and I'm aware of that fact, so I will probably research what type of protein they produce and what biological function it performs.

We also had Dakar day yesterday. All of us piled into some PC cars in the morning and shipped out to downtown Dakar, which is a very bizarre experience after living in the village on and off for a while. In the nicer areas of Dakar, it feels like you are in a French version of NYC. Street vendors are everywhere, expensive brand name stores line the streets, and it is easy to go to a fancy restaurant and spend all your money on one meal. There are also a lot of white people in parts of it- you never know what nationality, but along the road of embassies you suddenly feel like you are no longer in Africa. This further emphasizes the separation of upper and lower classes in this country. Most of the wealth is located from Thies and west into Dakar, but as you move in any other direction from here, the landscape and overall socio-economic status changes dramatically. I guess that's where we come in.

Ok I've been rambling now so I'll leave it here. I'll be back in Thies next Tuesday night, and then stay tuned for swear-in! I'll have plenty more to share soon.

Love from Senegal,

~E

Anyone remember high school biology?

I’m sure that none of you were losing sleep after my last blog post mentioning my recent illness in country, but just in case you were intently waiting for an update, I just got the test result that I have amoebas. It’s funny how all I can think of is going back to high school and looking at the prepared iodine-soaked slides under a microscope of those little critters, and now they are alive and well, floating around in my intestinal track. A month ago, this may have freaked me out a bit. Now, it is a relatively normal occurrence that is quickly taken care of with Peace Corps’ readily available supply of medication. I swear I will dread the health care system upon my return to the states; I am spoiled here, medically speaking.

In other news, I get to go to the beach tomorrow! Every year, the new stage takes a day to put together a trip to a house on the coast as a chance to get away from the daily grind and relax a bit. I will be a much needed bought of repose, if you will. Pictures are forthcoming as well.

Finally, the fun part of this entry- counterpart workshop. I met one of my two counterparts, and his name is Ousman Sy (pronounced Usman See). He is a relatively short and mildly chubby quiet man, all unusual characteristics as Senegalese go. He also has only one wife and one kid, which is also pretty surprising given that Senegalese families tend to be around 10-20 people. He speaks French in addition to Wolof, which is quite lovely, as I was told that being in a village I would have very little chance to learn or practice French. This also means that he knows the difficulty of learning a new language and being able to pronounce it. His Wolof is pretty clear as well, so our conversations are less labored. We chatted a bit, and we agreed to be patient with each other while I learn the language and adjust to the culture.

Both of us are motivated to work and make some changes in the village, but from what I hear, the village is doing pretty damn well on its own. It has a few women’s gardening groups that meet regularly, good sources of water, large fields, many trees, and is set in a pretty beautiful location. I learned this from several sources including PCVs who have been in the area, my site information sheet and my counterpart himself. It looks to be a pretty good outlook for the next two years. Secondary projects may become a priority. However, it’s hard to really talk about my work when I have not even seen my village yet. We’ll come back to that, no worries.

For now, it’s onto more Wolof-ing and counterpart-ing. Let the good times roll.

~E

more of my randomness

Hello hello!

Just got back from homestay, part 3. It’s pretty nice now actually, since I have my routine and relationships with my family fairly well established. I won’t lie, I’ve been a bit homesick at times; it’s funny how back in the states you know you take things for granted and you appreciate a lot of what you have (electricity, running water, good food, etc.) but living here you start to realize the things that you really honestly never thought about before. Here is a short list of things that I have now become intensely aware of that never really had that much importance back in the states:

· Weather- we do watch the weather in the states. We have an entire channel on TV devoted to it. We talk about it until day’s end, but that’s because we really have nothing better to talk about sometimes. Here, it actually has a real meaning behind it and yet there is less awareness of specific figures. For instance, I’ve realized that I have not actually wondered what temperature it is for a while, but I have an intense awareness of the temperature based on how hot or cold I am. I do not know the weather forecast or the relative humidity, but I do know that if it rains for several days before I travel down to southern Kaolack, I will not be able to get through the majority of the roads because it is not safe. Another thing we take for granted- working windshield wipers/no potholes in the roads. And don’t tell me about the pothole incident on I-93 in Boston just before I left- that is nothing in comparison.

· Nutrients in food-another thing that we think we are really aware of but in reality we have no idea. Only once you have been eating a diet of absolutely no fiber or decent protein for a month do you start to appreciate your food in the states. It’s one thing to be aware of it, it’s another to feel the physical effects of not having any real fruits or veggies on a regular basis, and every gram of vitamin you can get makes a huge difference. Suddenly you find yourself becoming intensely aware of your body functions as a result of nutrient intake (can you tell I went to school for science?) and much as we think about calorie intake and nutrients in the states, we get plenty. Once your diet starts affecting your reproductive and digestive systems and your hair growth, then we can start having a conversation.

· My own accent- suddenly, I consistently hear what I am saying. Not really related to things we take for granted, but I’ve noticed that I listen to how I talk both when I am speaking Wolof and English. I constantly compare myself to people; even other Americans since this is the first time I’ve really had a group of friends from all over the country. My language group alone consists of some girl from Boston (yours truly), a kid from Washington state and another guy from Memphis. You can imagine that we occasionally have our different viewpoints and mannerisms of speech.

· Skin quality- for those of you who know me, you probably know that I’ve dealt with some general acne problems for pretty much my whole life. However, my own awareness of it is different when 1-I am in a completely different climate and 2-my entire family just thinks that I have mosquito bites all over my face. It’s actually funny sometimes because I just go with it, it’s easier than explaining in a language I don’t completely understand or speak that in our American gene pool, we have this common harmless but annoying problem that affects some people more than others. In addition, keeping track of your skin is important here, since there are a lot of actual problems that must be dealt with. Parasites and rashes are common, and I know a lot of people who have already gotten ring worm or creeping eruption (google it) because we simply don’t have the natural defenses to these things. Minor infections also can become a major problem quickly if they are not checked, as we saw with my toe, because our standards of cleanliness here are many times lower than what we are used to in the states. Don’t worry, we’ve been briefed on all these things by med, so please don’t freak out.

· Things that keep me sane- this may seem obvious, but most of us have never spent a significant time without the ability to talk to their friends or even other people that speak the same language as you. Everyone hears that people learn a lot about themselves in Peace Corps, and this is why- you spend so much time dealing with stuff by yourself without help or support from other Americans or friends that you really have to know what makes you happy and keeps you calm as a survival technique. This is often reading a book or listening to music or something, but everyone’s got their own ways of dealing with stuff, and we have so few of our normal electronic distractions here that it forces you to learn about new interests and gives you a lot of time to reflect. Not to get too deep or anything, but it’s a thought.

· Other random small things you take for granted that don’t require a long explanation- running shoes, tables and chairs, toothbrushes, shingled roofs, real mattresses… the list goes on.

So more real updates on my life, now that I have sufficiently bored you- I am legitimately sick for the first time in country. I did pretty well making it this far all things considered, and I’ve had a few moments, but what can you do; it was bound to happen eventually. Yesterday afternoon after class we went to the field to pick some beans with my LCFs sister, and it had been a very hot day. I was feeling sort of tired, and I attributed it to the heat and not getting enough exercise, so I decided it would be fun to go for a walk. When we got there, I started feeling very tired and dizzy, and I sat in the shade to try to rest while the others picked beans. By the time we were leaving, I was feeling nauseous and pretty weak. We walked home slowly, and when I got back I just sat quietly while my family watched, concerned. I figured I had heat exhaustion, and it occurred to me that I hadn’t really sweat since yesterday morning, so I was pretty dehydrated. Last night I started vomiting and having diarrhea, which is not an enjoyable experience, but is less enjoyable with a conservative Muslim family and a squat toilet. I had a fever all night into this morning, and I slept most of the morning and have been trying to rehydrate. So that’s that.

The rest of the week was relatively fun. We have a lot more time to just hang out in the community, and we’re starting to have the language skills to chat with people too. Even our formal classes are mostly discussion based. Don’t get the idea that we are all fluent Wolof speakers now- we’re not. A higher level would especially be appreciated in instances when I am trying to explain to my family that I have to take my oral rehydration salts because I am dehydrated and have a high temperature and I don’t really feel like eating, but what can you do. It’s rewarding too when you can start learning things that you would never have understood a month ago. I’ll give you a quick list of the highlights of the week-

· Soccer games! We went to two soccer matches and supported our friends from Keur Madaro down in our neighboring village Keur Maggee. I will post pictures of that soon after this post so you can see. It’s a different experience- they play on a sand field and don’t have very many subs, so the poor players are half beaten and sanded to death by halftime. The environment of the game is pretty cool though- women stand with other women and men with other men, and the women all bring bowls or some device to make noise on and sing or chant the whole game. I’ve got a video too- we’ll see if that works.

· Modeling with kids- this sounds ridiculous but it’s funny and a welcome break from sitting on a mat. After Korite, there were some high heel shoes hanging out in the foyer, and just for fun me and my little sister started wearing them and pretending we were models walking up and down the runway. I can’t tell you how adorable and hilarious it is to see little Senegalese girls pretending they are supermodels with their oversized high heel shoes.

· Running! Probably the best part of my week. My little brother likes running too, so he’s started taking me on some routes to our neighboring villages through the fields surrounding Keur Madaro. The routes are only 3-4 kilometers long total, but I will take what I can get, and I need to start off slow after not running for a while or being used to the heat. Also, I run in my Chacos. Didn’t have my running shoes in the village, and once I did start running, I realized that the Chacos are probably a better choice anyway in the sand and weeds. They’re cooler, lighter and still have support, so as long as I’m not running for any significant distance, they’re the way to go. I think every PCV should have a pair.

Ok this blog entry is getting long enough and I’m starting to ramble on, so I’ll keep you updated on my illness and the coming week. We have our counterpart workshop starting tomorrow afternoon, when we will all meet our permanent counterparts for the first time, and the center will turn into one giant mass of 200 people who all speak different languages running around confused and many of which never have seen a real toilet or shower before in their lives. I’m sure I will have some fun stories to share soon.

Signing off and hoping to hear from all of you,

~E

Volunteer visit and a brief introduction to Kaolack

Hello world!

This is pretty cool, I just checked the stats on my blog and it seems there are a lot of people interested in my life out there! One of the big linkers to this page is PeaceCorpsJournals, which I connected my blog to on purpose to help out all you aspiring PCVs out there wondering what it was like. I know I religiously stalked that site a few months ago, so hope I'm not wasting all your time ;)

At any rate, I am currently at the Kaolack regional house for the night where I will be able to come to throughout my service to hang out with other Americans, cook food on a real stove, take a real shower, watch tv, go on the internet (most of my future blog posts will be typed here) and play some guitar! Yes, there is a house guitar here. It's a shitty guitar with no picks or capo, but it is fantastic nonetheless. For those of you who are unaware, I have been spending much of my procrastination time over the last year learning to play, and I even took lessons this past summer for a few weeks courtesy of my lovely boyfriend back in the states. So yes, music has re-entered my life, if only briefly. In the meantime, I have taken to singing to my host family, mostly the little children. When I first arrived at homestay and could say absolutely nothing in Wolof, I saw that people sometimes sang to themselves, so I started to sing in English to myself too. They thought it was hilarious and fascinating, and it was a great bonding experience to share music, which has always managed to bridge cultures and language barriers. And my voice got better. Or maybe I just haven't heard good voices for so long that it seems like it did. Damnit, I'm going crazy and I've only been here a month and a half. But I digress.

Volunteer visit was fun, if not as useful as I had hoped it to be. Since I am opening a new site, I do not have former volunteer (onCN in PCSenegalese) to go visit, so I had to visit another AgFo Wolof volunteer in a different subregion. I found out that when I install, I will be the only Wolof Agfo volunteer in Fatick, which is fine. The more I learn, the more I realize that you really can do whatever project motivates you, even if that means doing something partially outside your sector. That means I can work with volunteers in all sectors on everyone's projects. In fact, I just learned that a whole group of volunteers in the Kaolack region are working together from different sectors this coming weekend on a mangrove restoration project. Too bad I could not have sworn in a month sooner; I would love to see how that works. Overall, the visit was fun though. I did get to walk around the village, see what a standard PCV hut looks like and get some information on install and how the first few weeks after swear-in will run, and hear some fun stories. Most of the volunteers that were in the stage a year ahead of us can't believe that a year has gone by so fast, which is promising. I can't wait to be done with training, have a place of my own and be able to establish some semblance of a routine. Moving back and forth every few days gets tiring quickly, and it's annoying to feel like you have no real home. The stage ahead of us seems so well adjusted and comfortable here in comparison. (god help me if one of them reads this blog) The other fun occurrence we got to experience was public transportation- we had to take an Alhum back and forth to my volunteer's site when we went to go visit some other volunteers in Nioro, her local town. Alhum are old vans with some seats installed in them that serve as the public bus system in Senegal, but there are no such things as tickers or money counters like there are in America, so often the people on it argue and try to jip you for being white around here. That was the first time I felt real racial discrimination based on my race here. I had already gotten used to the constant shouts of "toubab!" but having someone put their foot down and tell you that you have to pay more because they think you have more money is a really upsetting experience. We also took a sept-place this morning, which is for longer-distance transport and works between towns and cities rather than stopping off to pick people up along the way. They get there names from the French word for 7 and "place" or places. Sept-place=7 places. They are Peugeot station wagons that must be filled in order to go anywhere. You first go to a "garage" in a town where you find a sept-place to take you where you want to go. You then put your stuff in the car (bags in the trunk cost more so pack light, argue that a small backpack is like your baby that you must hold in your lap, then just get in before they can respond), and finally wait until there are enough people who want to go to the same location as you. It generally doesn't take too long for larger cities such as Kaolack because there is a lot of traffic between those locations, so we only waited 10 minutes or so. Then you pay your fare and go. Upon arrival, you arrive at a ridiculous mess of people, taxis, sept-place, alhums and vendors known as the Kaolack garage, and you get out and book it as fast as you can out of there until you find a taxi that will take you to the house. Finally, you arrive at little America where the relaxation can occur.

Speaking of relaxing, I am about to embark on just that. I will update more soon, no worries!

~E

Merry Korite

Brief update, since I am consistently being told that there are more of you out there than I originally believed. Back in Theis for the night! Korite was lovely, it was nice to have a chance to just hang out with my family a bit rather than having to schedule around going to class. They made a special dish for lunch and dinner consisting of meat, onion and garlic sauce, potatoes and peas which was served with bread, a welcome change from the normal day to day dish of rice and fish or beans. Everyone dressed up too, and it was cool to see everyone’s korite outfits. It sort of reminds me of Christmas in the states; kids have those cute little dresses that their parents pick out for them. The hair is the best part. People spend days ahead of time braiding their hair and adding in fake hair and beads or other sparkly things. They didn’t have time to do mine- sorry to anybody who was looking forward to more Emily-with-braids pictures, but I have some great pics of the kids. And for those of you parents out there who were wondering how mothers in Senegal got their kids to sit still for long enough to have their hair done, they don’t. It is either done in small amounts of time with many breaks over a few days, or the kid is held down kicking and screaming while her mother makes her look beautiful by Senegalese standards. Generally the former occurs, which leads to several days of many Senegalese girls walking around with half-done hairdos for several days leading up to Korite. It’s actually quite funny, and for a minute there I seriously thought I had been transported back to the 80s when some of my younger sisters looked like they had a hard core mullet. Wish I got a picture of that one.

Anyway, I had another cultural point I thought it would be interesting to share. We had a class session here in Theis the other day on marketing agro- and agroforestry products. The girl who was presenting explained how she had helped her counterpart to market the hand-made soap she makes in her house. Many women like her make home-made products to sell to the village, but have very little education and do not understand the concept of supply and demand or marketing, or even oftentimes basic mathematics. Originally, soap-woman was making her soap and selling it for the exact price of the materials. Many women also do not factor in transportation cost if they are lucky enough to travel into a regional market to sell their product, and may lose money on it. One may think that the logical answer would be to sell their product for more money, but that’s where an interesting cultural component comes in- women here often feel guilty for making money off of something. I do not know why since I do not yet have personal experience with this, but some people speculated that it may be because they believe that it is the man’s job to make money and not a women’s or because they know that others expect to pay a certain price and feel bad changing it. That fact really hit me for some reason when we talked about it because it has so many cultural and economic implications, and reveals a small hint as to why many developing countries are just that- developing. Think about it, research it, do what you will. I’ll keep you posted if I find out more.

Another quick cultural note- I have yet to learn the word for “Please” in Wolof. I asked once, and somebody told me, but I have never heard anybody use it. People also laugh whenever I tell them thank you. Nobody else uses that either. In class, we learned that people don’t normally say thank you, they just remember whatever you did for them and do something for you later in exchange. It just occurred to me today how that is so drastically different from how we were all brought up in the US. There are no Barnie songs for little kids here about how please and thank you are the magic words. Sorry if that brings up any scarring memories for anybody.

I meant for this blog post to be relatively short, which clearly I did not accomplish, but here’s the life update section. I go to volunteer visit tomorrow. We will be taking a bus at 7 am down to our regional house in Kaolack where I will meet up with my host volunteer, and we will travel together to her site. I get to spend a few days doing some of my first technical observations about my region and learning about the life of a regular PCV, so I am pretty excited. I have to take pictures of stuff anyway as part of an ecological assignment that is due on Friday (make a powerpoint and tell us in 10 minutes about the ecology you observed) so I will have plenty to share next week. Until next time…

~E

Back from Homestay, part 2

Hi All!

It's been a little while. I feel like I have a ton to say and not enough time to say it in, since I have spent a while already on the computer talking to my parents and writing emails.

Just got back from our 2-week stay at homestay. And I have pictures! that are uploaded! Doing my best to get captions on them so you know what you are looking at. The internet is always iffy here in Thies, but I am hanging out while everyone else is out in the market or at the bar so I can get some bandwidth to myself for a few. It's actually quite lovely just having a bit of quiet time on the computer after two weeks of tons of little kids crying all the time and not understanding what is going on most of the time. I'm definitely starting to pick the language up bit by bit though. It takes a while and the progress is sometimes painfully slow when all you want to do is tell them about your home in America or express your frustration about learning to live in a new culture, but your vocabulary is limited to saying "I need to go to my room to get some water" or other fun things.

Since I know you are all intensely interested in my first real impressions of life in Senegal, I wrote down a few key experiences in my journal to remember to write about later. Here goes- 10 random experiences for you all

1) Mangos. Ker Madaro is known for its mangos. Every day either in the afternoon or evening after class, Spencer Peter and I go into the market to buy a basket of mangoes, then we go back to the school where we can be away from people and speak English for a few minutes and eat them. It's pretty much the best part of my day, and also the only time I get any fiber in my diet. (Sorry to my aunt if you're reading this, but you would hate it here as a nutritionist. They don't exactly understand the concept of a balanced diet in Senegal)

2)Being asked by every person in the street how my fast is going, not seeming to understand that not every person in the world is Muslim. Usually I respond that I'm Christian, which is easier than trying to explain that I'm Jewish, since most of them have never heard of that before. I also don't have the vocabulary to tell them that I am Jewish or explain what that means. It's hard enough for some people in English.

3) Getting my hair braided. This falls under the category of the ‘ngendi,’ the Muslim baptism here. I think I mentioned in a previous entry that my mom just had her baby, and the baptism was held while I was at sight. For this, they wanted to braid my hair and make me look more Senegalese. Rather than doing the typical cornrow type braids we all think of, they made individual small braids around my head so that I looked a bit like a relatively cute alien. I suppose women really are from Venus. OK dumb joke.

4) The ngendi itself. It actually wasn’t as ridiculous as it could have been since it was during Ramadan, so they couldn’t eat during the day. Also, it started thunderstorming and the electricity went out for the evening, so most of it was held inside. I did, however, watch a goat get killed to eat, which was a new experience to say the least. I posted a pic of the dead skinned goat in the album, so be aware.

5) My first charet ride. Also under the category of the ngendi, but deserves its own number. I sat on the back of a horse-drawn cart while the horse galloped through down and I had very little to hold onto. It’s not as bad as it sounds, but still a bit nerve-wracking. They thought it was hilarious that I looked scared. I’m ok with that.

6) Being asked to marry people. I generally ward this off by explaining that I already have a husband and show people a picture of Tim. I get creative with it too. The night before the ngendi my dad had a bunch of people over for a dinner, and one of them started persistently asking me to be his wife. I just kept repeating to him that I already had a husband. My family is already very aware that I am “married,” so they thought the whole situation was quite funny. I started explaining to him, loudly and very slowly so everyone could hear, “IIIIIII HHHHAAAAAVVVVEEEEE AAAA HHHUUUUSSSBBAAANNNDD.” This, of course, occurred in Wolof so I didn’t necessarily understand his response, but my family thought it was hilarious and was quoting me for days afterwards. Humor is usually the best way to respond to any situation, and it does not always require language skills.

7)I have to mention bucket baths and squat toilets. They are not as bad as they seem. It makes you appreciate a real toilet that much more, but most of the day when I’m missing America, I’m not thinking about how much I want to just sit down and go to the bathroom. Seriously people. There are more important things in life than running water. Like chicken Caesar wraps.

8) The night I got locked in my room. Dislcaimer: this one involves bodily functions. My key has been getting stuck a lot lately cuz the door is a bit rusted out. It worked, but lately I’ve taken to using the bottle opener on my swiss army knife to open the door in the morning (it locks with a key from the inside.) As you can imagine, this is probably not the best way to approach the situation, but I already feel like a burden on the family sometimes so I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it. The other night, I had a bit more bissap than usual. Bissap, by the way, is the Senegalese equivalent of cranberry juice, made with sort of a hibiscus flower that grows here. It is delicious, and my family knows I like it so they give me leftover sometimes if everyone has already had it. Anyway, nature called, but I had already locked my door. It was about 11:30 or so and people had already gone to sleep, so I tried to pry the door open and the key started bending in the door. After a few tries, the key ended up breaking in half, leaving part of the key entirely lodged in the lock and leaving me stuck in the room having to go to the bathroom after everyone had gone to bed. Not wanting to wake everyone up, I looked around my room for other alternatives. Finally, I saw the plastic Chinese takeout container in the corner of my room that I had been using to soak my toe in when it was infected. I know my mom had been pressing me to bring those to country for a reason…

9) Kids running away screaming bloody murder because they’ve never seen a white person before. One of the funniest experiences I’ve had here, sadly, was walking into a house that I hadn’t been to before. One little boy looked up at me, then realized that I was a white person, and started screaming and crying like he was about to die. I have never seen a kid more scared in my life. Sadly, I found it hard not to laugh. Hope that doesn’t make me a bad person.

10) Saved the best for last. I finally got comfortable enough with my family to bring out the ipod. I’m glad I got the new one cuz it has a little speaker on it, so I can share my music with everyone. People here really do like American music, and I have plenty of it, which makes me popular after break-fast every evening when people are allowed to listen to music (it’s prohibited as a part of the fast for Ramadan during the day). The first night I had it out, all my little sisters were gathered around listening to it and dancing so whatever I put on, including Fall Out Boy and Panic at the Disco. I can also sing along with whatever since they don’t understand anyway and they think its fantastic that I know the words. Finally, I got to the Lion King, and sung and acted out Hakuna Matata for my whole family, which they thought was hilarious. So yes people, I had a dance party to Hakuna Matata in Africa, with Africans. I can die happy. And don’t you dare say that the Lion King does not take place in Senegal since it is Swahili. I don’t care.

K So not that gives you a bit of a picture of my life here, I can give you the big news of the day: SITE ANNOUNCEMENTS!

I will officially be living in a small village of 600 people called Keur Andalla Wilane, which is in the subregion of Fatick in Kaolack. I am not particularly surprised about my assignment but I am still stoked, since I am within a pretty short ride from the ocean, I am in biking distance of several other volunteers, I can easily get into a small town near me called Toubacouta, and can cheaply and easily get into Kaolack, the regional capitol, for around the equivalent of 2 dollars American. Keep in mind that “quickly and easily” is a very relative term here. I don’t have electricity or running water probably, but that is fine since the solio has been working pretty well for my ipod and phone the few times I have tried it. I am glad I can get internet access fairly regularly to start off in the local town and in Kaolack, and I might be getting internet access at site if I can figure out a way to charge my comp in village and pay for the expresso card. At any rate you will all know in time.

Ok I think I have bored you enough sufficiently with my ranting. I will have more to say after Korite when all of Senegal erupts into a crazy mass of ridiculousness. Stay tuned.

Love to the states (and anyone reading this abroad)

~E