Highs and Lows

Highs and Lows

Anybody reading that from RWU, remember that game? Granted, probably anybody who has gone to college recently or been in any sort of club knows highs and lows- you say the high point of your day and the low point.

Today: I went to Saloum Diane to meet up with my counterparts there and prepare for moringa tourney and our women’s outplanting formation. Went to the school to check up on the intensive beds. My low for the day: Some kid actually broke open the side door of the schoolyard to let their livestock in so that it could eat the grass and destroy the intensive beds, which are all now pretty much grazed to the ground. We (and by we I mean the school director) yelled at some kid walking by with his donkey, who the school director had seen grazing yesterday, and the kid just mumbled some stuff, looked away and continued walking. Real respectful. If it was me, then much as it would anger me I would understand more than the school director himself. Anyway, we met up with the chief of village and some other people, and explained the project and the upcoming follow-up nutritional tourney that we are planning, and they are all on board with it, so that redeemed it little.

The high of my day, though, was when we went back to Mbaye’s house so I could go through all the parts of the project so that he could present it better in native Wolof, and during the conversation he said how he liked the project and actually started a moringa bed himself. We walked behind the house to the garden and voila! A tiny little rudimentary moringa intensive bed was germinating away, complete with trees off to the side to provide seeds for replacement in the future. That was one of those very rare times that I actually get to see our skills applied and carried on.

And on a more personal note- one more high and low. High: I started jumproping in my hut since it is hard to get out and run when it is raining all the time, and I needed exercise. Discovered that it is really effective way of avoiding gawking Senegalese while the Toubab girl runs around in shorts first thing in the morning.

Low: I don’t remember the time my calves hurt this badly.

~E

New SEDers

A couple of days ago, we welcomed a new group of Small Enterprise Development volunteers to Kaolack, and seeing as everyone was on vacation, COSed or not wanting to deal with it, I ended up in charge of coordinating their installation. Luckily it was a small group, and only 9 new volunteers were here, but this continued the bizarre year-in-country experience. I found myself standing in front of them all with my notes going over rules of the house, places to eat and shop in Kaolack, and apologizing in advance for our slow annoying internet.

Our subregion is welcoming 3 new volunteers to replace my friends Byron, Cassie and Cail. This is probably the weirdest experience of all, since those people really helped me get through my first year in country and were my go-to people when I had a question about anything, and now I'm supposed to be the one responsible for having all the answers. I really do remember thinking the year-in volunteers knew everything and were totally comfortable in this country, and now I realize that nobody ever has all the answers to anything. Yes, I've adapted and I can more comfortably navigate this developing country in a language I previously did not understand a word of, but by no stretch of the imagination do I have all the answers. We'll see if it's any different a year from now.

Well I'm out.

~E

Year in Country

Last week, I passed my first year in this country, which I aptly managed to forget to blog about and thus am now getting around to my public reflections on life. Rather than reflecting on how far I've come, etc, I'll share a quick little anecdote. Most days at site, I go out of the field in the morning with a bag containing my water bottle, planner (because I'm a geek) and my journal, so I can sit in peace and write about life without being bothered by people in the compound. The other day I was reading back in the journal to earlier in my service, sometime right after install, and got to a line that read almost like "man, I can't imagine how much I will have adjusted to all of this after a year has gone by." Ironically, this was almost exactly my year mark in country when I read this, and I could very clearly remember writing that statement in the first place. It was sort of a surreal talking-to-myself-from-a-year-ago experience. I guess you could also call it a time capsule.

Then, talking to my dad on skype yesterday, he commented about how weird it will be to read back on the journal after I've been back in the states for a while and whenever I'm having a hard time there, I can remember "at least I'm not in Senegal anymore." That's still seems like forever into the future, but I'm sure when it does happen, reading back on it will seem quite recent. Funny how time works.

The point of this whole thing is that despite the fact that I feel like I've been in this country for eternity sometimes and am bound to while away the rest of my life here, I'm really almost halfway done. And that's sort of a scary thought. I've been thinking "Ok, what have I accomplished so far? Now I've got about that amount of time to accomplish everything else I'll do in this country." And yes, I realize that I haven't quite yet reached a year at site, but as we speak the stage a year ahead of me is in the process of ending their service and going home. I'm starting to get that same feeling that I had in college of "what next?," you know, the feeling you get when you don't know where you'll be or what you'll be doing in a year or so. But I guess that's part of the excitement of it all.

Ok enough sentimental ramblings on time. Back in the here and now, I currently find myself piled high in planning programs and installs. The new SED volunteers are due to arrive in Kaolack for their installation on Sunday morning, and being the overachiever that I am, I had to volunteer to coordinate the process. This means that I will go back to site today, only to return again 3 days later to continue my online ramblings to you all.

In addition, we had a training for our upcoming moringa health tourney yesterday. If you remember correctly, we did a region-wide tourney training how to plant moringa intensive beds a month ago, and I installed one in the primary school in Saloum Diane with the help of some other volunteers and some very motivated Senegalese counterparts. Now, we are returning to all of those sites armed with dried moringa leaves to make moringa powder, ingredients for making a nutritional porridge, and visual aids to help us explain the benefits of vitamins and importance of eating healthy foods to combat illness and malnutrition. I am lucky enough to have some friends in Saloum Diane that are extremely motivated to make this program work- the primary school director and one of the high school students that is home for the summer have both proved to be indispensable counterparts who want to educate the community. The high school student, Mbaye, has also expressed interest in coordinating an outplanting day to help with the women's garden pepiniere in Keur Andallah, so we will hold a training in my village in few weeks to help the women understand the importance to live fencing to protect their field and the trees to improve the soil. Hopefully, we will manage to outplant a few hundred trees in one day with the help of the communitarial student association, the women's group, and a few key Senegalese counterparts that are willing to get the message across.

Hopefully, when everyone is done starving themselves for Ramadan and people are once again willing to work, September will be a very productive month. Sometimes you really just have to set small goals for yourself, like making it through the next two weeks. I'm ready for this boring lull in my service to be over.

~E

Ramadan. Second time around.

I’m currently sitting here in my hut on a rainy Tuesday, which also happens to be the first day of Ramadan, cooking myself a lovely little lunch of mashed potatoes and hiding from the world. For those of you who are unaware of the outside world and don’t know what Ramadan is, it is the Muslim month of fasting to teach humility, patience and submissiveness to God (thank you wikipedia). They are permitted to break fast every evening, and in Senegal we do so with coffee dates and bread. I was in homestay last year during Ramadan already, so it is not a foreign holiday to me now. However in training, the family was briefed on the fact that we had just gotten to country, had no resources and didn’t understand the culture or language, and they were expected to cook us lunch. Here in the village, no such briefing or expectation occurs, and as a full-fledged volunteer, you’re on your own.

Many volunteers choose to fast along with their families, and people in the village often expect that you do fast with the rest of the community. However, many of us also resort to hiding in our huts and treating ourselves to all the foods we generally don’t cook for ourselves on a regular basis in village. I talked to a couple of Senegalese friends and family members about this, and the understand. Yes, the villagers will joke about me having to fast with everyone, and yes, I have to be very discreet, but according to my Senegalese uncle Babacar, they understand that I’m not Muslim and there’s no real spiritual gratification in it for me. I can try to be integrated to a point, but in the end I’m still me, and when all my friends are getting out of village to go on vacation or COS, I really feel no remorse if I’m still here in village and I don’t want to starve myself.

So that will be my August. Hiding to cook myself lunch, breaking fast with the family each day, and being jealous of everyone going on vacation. However, the AC converter was fixed a little while back, giving me the ability to charge my computer once again, so maybe I can pass the time by blogging more often.

~E