AHHHH PROJECTS!

In an effort to keep relatively up to date with my blog, here is the next entry in my somewhat weekly escapade to document my life. Granted, lots has been happening that may very well define my work for the next few months of my existence here.

Recently, I was approached by Aissatu, one of the four leaders of the women’s group. (Ironically, 3 of the 4 women are named Aissatu. This was the one I am closest with, Aissatu Diop.) She requested that I help the group by finding financing and enclosing the garden with barbed wire. This is not the easiest of tasks, as the area to be fenced in is a 2-hectare plot of land (for those of us stuck in the western world, that’s about 5 acres, or 4.94 according to the handy-dandy converter on my phone. I guess little old-school Nokias are good for something. But I digress.) The project would require at least 100 thousand CFA of financing, which converts to roughly 200 dollars, not an easy sum to come by in the village. The project is very much possible, and similar projects are carried out all the time, but I had to air two main concerns, namely 1: they still need to come up with a 25% community contribution, which might be a challenge due to the fact that they can barely come up with their contributions towards seeds for this year and 2: I am sick of going out to work in the women’s garden and having most of these women peace out early to go cook lunch/lay down/take care of someone’s kid/whatever their excuse may be. Why should I work my butt off for a group of people who don’t quite seem to understand the importance of what they are doing? So despite all roadblocks, I started talking with my chief of village and my APCD in Dakar to see what we can do, and whether this will turn into a giant headache remains to be seen.

Another grant-funded project seemed to just appear at roughly the same time, this time to do with douches, or compound latrines. These would be similar to mine, if you’ve seen pictures of it that are buried somewhere in those album off to your right on the screen, but the village would complete one for every compound. This is also a significantly costly project and we are still working out the logistics of it, but if my original plan to hit up a lovely little organization called appropriate projects (google it- www.appropriateprojects.org) falls through, I may be hitting you all up for money in the near future. Unlike my reservations about the women’s garden, I actually am pretty determined to see this through, because you have no idea what its like to walk out to the field every day and pass by a group of children out on a compost pile behind their compounds with their pants down and pooping their little hearts out in public. The kicker is when they get all excited to see me and try to scream and wave and greet me in the middle of this rather awkward occurrence.

All while this is happening, I finally decided that I must paint a world map in my school before my close of service, and what better time to do it than when I am starting two other major projects? Makes perfect sense, right? After my exasperation with the school garden grant, the two new ones I plan to write and never wanting to write a project abstract again, I have decided to suck it up and just pay it. It’s not really all that expensive, and it’s a damn good way to get me out of my hut and away from screaming children for a few afternoons while I go grid out and outline a world map in pencil in my ecole primaire and listen to some good music. Sometime in the next month, I’ll invite a group of other volunteers over to my site, buy some paint and paintbrushes, cook up a good bowl of yassa ginard which for you non-wolof speakers is rice with chicken and onion sauce, and we’ll bring this thing to life. At least then finally most people in the village will be able to point to their own country on a map, especially after I reward them with candy for doing so.

In the meanwhile I’m still working in my garden every morning, watering my beautiful little guava and orange saplings, and damnit if I don’t get some good looking carrots and tomatoes by the end of this gardening season. It’s also pretty good therapy sitting in a garden each morning and writing in your journal. I suggest you try it sometime. And on that note, I leave you until next Sunday. Inchallah.

~E

About this whole blog thing

So it’s been a while, as you can see. I owe an apology to anyone who still reads this blog at all, but in my defense, I did go on vacation for a while. Since my last entry, I have come back to site, left site, gone to America over the holidays, come back to country, attended our all-volunteer conference in Thies, gone to the West African Invitational Softball Tournament in Dakar, and returned to site. So, it’s been a bit of a whirlwind, as you can imagine. I actually find myself enjoying the quiet downtime to get my life back in order that I have here at site. As it stands, I have 8 months or so left in my service, and I intend to make the best of it, whatever that may mean. But first, let’s back up a bit.

Back in December, I had a couple week period at site right before I went on vacation during which I was (I think understandably) rather annoyed and irritable at the world. I was, after all, about to return to my home, friends, family, boyfriend, etc. A couple of things occurred that are rather normal in Senegalese culture, but at the time irked me very much.

For instance, as I was working to get the school garden pepinieres in the ground before I left, I was struggling to get in touch with the teachers and outline the terms of the grant: I bought the tools, and they have to choose and buy the seeds. I like to be present when we actually seed the pepineres so I have an idea of what is going on, and for my school garden in Saloum Diane I set the date well ahead of time so that my counterparts would be ready. On the day we were supposed to seed, I got there and found that nobody really had any idea that the seedbeds were supposed to be made on that day and my main work partner had traveled to Sokone and was unreachable by cellphone. I was pretty flustered by the whole situation, not only because I just wanted to get it done and leave to go on vacation, but also because these sorts of things happen all the time in this culture.

A similar situation occurred right around that time in which a work partner of mine from Dakar showed up in the village to check out the project he has going on here. I can’t remember if I wrote about this a year ago, but there had been this big NGO collaboration that wanted to put in a massive tree nursery in my village, and it included partners in both Scotland and the US which I would liked very much to have talked to. After all, I will be back in that glorious country in less than a year, and it can’t hurt to have some high-up contacts there that have actually seen me at work in the village doing many of the same tasks and monitoring in the same way that they do. I called more than once to confirm the time and date that they were planning on coming, and my Senegalese work partner told me a certain day in the afternoon. That morning, I went to the garden to water my nurseries there, and just as I was returning to the village I saw the cars of all the American and Scottish partners driving away to another village. That was the only opportunity I had to meet with those people, and I got very upset with the Senegalese work partner who had told me the wrong information. I asked why he hadn’t called me to let me know he was coming earlier than expected, and he basically just told me that he forgot.

It’s really upsetting when you miss out on a such a large opportunity because of a small cultural flaw- timing in this country means nothing. Scheduling and appointments hold no real value whatsoever, and in both of these cases just a phone call to inform that a time or date had been changed would be sufficient. I left to go on vacation with a bad feeling about this culture- why should I bother to help them out and stress myself out over being on time for anything here if they never bother to show the same respect? It’s hard to get across the point that most developed country value schedules, but even if I do manage to explain that to a couple of people, a single American Peace Corps Volunteer really doesn’t have the power to invoke a major cultural behavioral change. Such is life, I guess.

Anyway, enough of that rant. AMERICA! Because that’s what you’re all wondering about, right? It’s a beautiful country, especially after having been in Senegal for 16 months. I went skiing and snowshoeing with the family, went on many walks and ate lots of delicious American cuisine, and apart from a few hiccups involving illness (I actually spent most of New Years in the ER) I’d say I had a very successful trip home. Being there was like walking through this weird dream-world where everything is like you remember it except the way you relate to almost every other person in your life. Also, everything looks amazingly clean, like someone just came down with a giant duster and made everything spic and span.
I spent the last week or so there buying supplies for the village and for myself; much of the weight I carried back to Senegal consisted of granola bars and dried fruit from Costco, which is a little like Peace Corps heaven in bulk. I also lugged about 80 dollars worth of cheap school supplies to be distributed between the 3 schools I work closely with, which was slightly ironic when I got back and found out that all the teachers in the country are on strike. It will all be used eventually though.

Immediately after touching down, my friend Clint and I had to find our way back to the training center in Thies and get our two very jet-lagged selves ready for the all-volunteer conference, and I immediately had to present to a group of Assistant Peace Corps Directors and the Country Director what is going on in my work zone, for which I am responsible. Somehow I made it through, and spent the next couple of days trying not to doze off in sessions and grabbing 10-minute naps on random benches wherever I could.
Finally, we all went to Dakar for WAIST, which I wrote about last year, and I don’t have much more to say other than it was a couple of days of reconnecting with friends, spending too much money on food, readjusting to this country and destroying my liver. But you know, that’s what growing up is for I guess.

At any rate, I’m back in village now, enjoying the cool breezes of January that you get for a couple of weeks before the hot season sets in. I’m actually pretty well bundled up at night because it gets colder than you’d expect for the desert. Pape keeps complaining about the cold and the wind, but I just respond how much I like it and making fun of him for complaining. At least let me have my fun for a few weeks, and the hot season will be here before we all know it.

I’ll do my best to update more regularly, because I know how fast these next 8 months will go by. It’s not exactly the light at the end of the tunnel yet, but the train is definitely on that track. Email me with any questions you’ve got, and I’ll respond as soon as I can.

Until next time

~E

November, and Tabaski, and those other things

Here I am, November 10th, sitting in the Kaolack house for installs. The new agriculture stage is finally here, and they are all living through that first terrifying day of newness and confusion. I don't envy that first day when you know nothing and nobody and are suddenly cut off from all your friends. But just as my stage made it through last year, they'll all make it through just fine this year.

It's nice to have all the sites full again, and my subregion is up to 15 people. 15! We started off with maybe 8, so it has almost doubled in the year I've been here. I'm pretty stoked for us too; we've got a really diverse and motivated group of people who I know will do great things. I'm proud I get the chance to help them as one of the coordinators of our work zone this year. And if nothing else, typing up meeting notes and visiting other people's sites gives me something to do in the non-agfo season.

In other news, it was Tabaski this past week, and I got to really celebrate with my family this year in a way that I was not quite able to do last year when my language skills and relationships were just starting to develop. I helped cook, watched the men kill and clean the sheep (a fascinating biology lesson) and went out dancing at night. I actually put a bunch of American dance songs on a flash drive and played them on a radio that one of my neighbors have and started teaching the girls what American dancing looks like. Felt a little silly showing little girls how to move their hips and get into it, but they loved the music and laughed a lot. Besides, Senegalese dancing is awkwardly sexual in its own way, and it's not uncommon to see women at baptisms jumping around and lifting their skirts up to show everyone what they've got under there (sometimes just underwear, but sometimes not) so I did not feel THAT bad teaching them how to move.

Tomorrow I'm on my way back to village to stick out the next couple of weeks until Thanksgiving, and I will hopefully be giving this health tourney I'm putting together a test run. See, my Poste de Sante doctor and I were putting together a mini health tourney for teaching first aid to villagers and how to take care of injuries until they can see a doctor. There was some miscommunication about funding and timing, which is essentially the downfall of every good Peace Corps project, and now I'm left with a bunch of visual aids that I paid for and drew myself and no real schedule or plan for how to use them. My next task is to convince the doctor that we can do this project informally and just do a test run to see how it works. I could also try to get my school gardens up and running, and forget the whole health tourney thing ever happened.

Basically, I just have to find ways to distract myself until mid-December, when I go on vacation to AMERICA. When you've been away for over 15 months, the last few weeks before you finally get to see your family is relatively unproductive. I have no high hopes for changing the world at the moment, only dreams of Dunkin Donuts and ski lodges. I'll update on how the whole village thing goes soon. Again, got to keep myself distracted, right?

~E

Another random reflection on life

Yesterday, I used cashed in the grant money I got for two school gardens that I am in charge of, and put down about $300 dollars at a local hardware store on chicken wire, watering cans, rakes, shovels, and gardening picks that will be used by students to create their very own little vegetable plots. Well try to, anyway. The process involved biking over to another larger village about 40 minutes away, negotiating prices, waiting for the car to come that goes each day between Saloum Diane and Kaolack, and getting all the materials and me and my bike onto that car to take back to Saloum Diane and unload at my friend Mbaye’s house there. Considering the general lack of organization and quality transport in this country, I’d consider it a pretty successful day.

It got me thinking how much harder that whole process would have been even a couple of months ago before I had the same relationships with everyone in the area that I did. Knowing the owner of the hardware store, the car driver, and the people over in Saloum Diane really expediated a process that could have been much harder had I not known all of these people. This, in turn, got me thinking about where I live now. I don’t think of myself as living in Africa so much as living in Keur Andallah and being a part of the Kaolack region in Senegal. I don’t spend every day now thinking “Wow, I’m in Africa” just as we don’t think every day in the states “Wow, I live in North America. Isn’t that special?”

I guess this just happens naturally over time, and speaking of time, it has now been a year since swear-in, and a year ago tomorrow was the day that I first set foot in Keur Andallah. So congratulations to anyone in my stage reading this, and let this be my own personal “yay for me” moment. With a little bit of perspective, it’s been a really rewarding experience thus far, and it just made me realize how little time I have left here. If I’ve already been here half my total time, that means I have that same amount of time to accomplish everything I wanted to accomplish in Senegal before I’m out. I took a little while the other morning to write down a short list of goals that I’d like to at least attempt before I leave here so I can start planning now. Time, just as it does anywhere, slips by when you’re not looking, and before you know it your time’s up. I wrote down mostly projects I’d like to try: painting a mural, grafting some mango and ziziphus trees, establishing a couple more live fences, etc. Then I still have to consider the places I want to visit before I leave…

Sort of a weird analogy I came up with while making my list is that your service in Peace Corps is like a whole human life cycle condensed into 2 years. You get here ,and you are an infant who does not know anything about anything- the language barrier is obvious, but how do you feel when you look at the hole in the floor where you’re expected to do your business and realize that your really are back at square one. Then a few months go by and you’re an infant- blabbing in baby language and learning how to eat or greet properly, and after that you are swearing in- more like your high school graduation- and off on your own learning how to be an independent human being. Over time you pick up the language, make friends, find a purpose (even if it is just to water a couple of seeds you planted). Then a year in, you have your mid-life crisis. Believe me, every volunteer I’ve talked to has had a mid-service crisis, which usually comes just before your actually halfway point. You struggle to find meaning in what you’ve done so far and how to make the best use of your remaining time here. Time goes on, and you start to realize that your time really is limited here, and you should see all those places that you never got to see and spend time with people you became friends with. By the time you leave, you have to accept what you’ve accomplished, knowing your time’s run out, and you’re going to say goodbye to all your friends and your host family knowing you probably won’t see any of them again. By Peace Corps life-cycle standards, that makes me about 50 years old right now. Got through my mid-life crisis, and now it’s time to buckle down and start seeing places, spending time with friends and getting projects done that I want to accomplish before I leave.

Time to get to it. I’m starting with a new herb garden. Wish me luck.

~E

Just a cute anecdote for the day:

As I was walking out to the field this morning, I said good morning to one of my elderly male neighbors and greeted him as usual. He said that there was a lot of grass now and if you walk in it there’s laeye. I looked at him slightly confused since I had not heard that word before, and after he confirmed that I did not know what it meant, he went on to explain that it is water in the grass in the mornings. I exclaimed,

“Oh, dew! Yeah I know what that is.”

He replied that yes- it’s water, and it must come from up above in the trees at night or maybe it comes from the ground, but either way, it goes away each day when the sun comes out and gets hot, then comes back again at night.

Helpless without the vocabulary to explain the concept of condensation and temperature difference in Wolof, I just smiled and agreed with him and went on my way. Sometimes Senegal amuses me.

~E

English in Dakar

So I've been to Dakar a couple of times, but never for such a long time. I made the trip to participate in the Access English Camps sponsored by the US Embassy, and it was a really fun and rewarding experience. We worked with middle school-aged students and put together a typical American summer day camp for a week, conducting activities in English and teaching them about our culture. We had them sing camp songs, participate in field day activities like the 3-legged race and tug of war, played basketball and ultimate frisbee, taught them capture the flag, and let them organize little skits in English to perform to the group. We also had a few classroom based activities involving a geography game show ("who can point to New York on this map?") and American music history ("Anyone ever hear of B.B. King?") At least now they know that American music does not consist solely of Beyonce and Rhianna. Oh, and you can't forget Justin Beiber. When we had the kids translating lyrics to their favorite songs, a couple of them could recite all of Beiber's "Baby." Keep in mind, English is the 3rd or 4th language many of these kids are learning.

It was a bit difficult to put together a week's worth of educational and fun activities in the spur of the moment, but between six of us, I think we did a pretty good job. In fact, the local TV station came and interviewed us on the day the US Ambassador made an appearance. I was apparently on national TV speaking in Wolof for an interview, though I haven't had the opportunity to watch myself. It's probably better that way.

After the camp was over, I stuck around in Dakar for my mid-service medical exam and to say goodbye to one of my good friends who finished her service and left. Now I will go back to Kaolack tomorrow with a clean bill of health (woot woot!) and as an official second-year volunteer to welcome the new trainees of the agriculture stage that is scheduled to swear in a the beginning of November. Then it's back to the usual grind, but this time with schools! Finally, school will be starting sessions again, which means that I get to return to my favorite project of school gardens and my Senegalese friends will all return to the villages. Time is really flying now. I'll be home on vacation for the holidays before I know it!

~E

Mangrove Madness

Sometimes I find that I’m so busy it’s hard to stay on top of everything going on here, and some days it just stops and I’m back to being bored again. You can never really fall into a routine. The past week I was up in Thies teaching the new stage for a day, then traveled through Kaolack and onto Toubacouta for a mangrove reforestation, and now I’m back to site for a week before continuing onto Dakar for an English camp and my midservice exam. These days, I live in this perpetual state of disbelief; it’s been over a year already in country, I still have a year left to go, I get to go home for vacation in a few months, I’m teaching the new stage and becoming a second-year volunteer, running meetings and actively planning projects and trainings. You never quite get over these things.

Peace Corps has made me, however, one of the world’s greatest travelers, because I can be stuck in a car for long periods of time and not notice it, even when squished in the back of a sept-place with large Senegalese woman on either side of me and breathing in fumes. Podcasts of “This American Life” and “Radiolab” do help matters, but when it’s over and I still have to bike 30 km over a dirt road back to site, I don’t blink an eye. Traveling in America will be heaven for me when this is all over.

At any rate, training was enjoyable, and I got to try my hand at teaching an hour-long session and using my experiences as teaching tools. I probably was a bit nervous at first, because at one point a trainee raised his hand and jokingly asked “Do you always talk this fast? You’re not from California, I assume.” I slowed down after that. Overall, it went well, and I then got to take advantage of a free afternoon in Thies to go buy stuff at the toubab stores downtown.

The mangrove reforestation went swimmingly as well. To save money in my travels, I camped out at one of the campemonts where the Tobuacouta volunteer lives. Some other volunteers were staying in a campemont with a pool, and the people working there let us all come over and use it, so everyone hung out in the pool at night and caught up. The reforestation itself involved a trip to the delta, an hour long boat-ride out to the reforestation area and a couple of hours of sticking mangrove seeds in the mud out in the sun. It’s more fun that it sounds, but also very sunscreen-intensive. There were large groups of kids that were enthusiastically running around and sticking the seeds in the ground as fast as they could, which limited the work that we had to do, and the whole event culminated in a water fight and some sharing of some boisson. It was a pretty successful day.

Now I’m just in transition. Outplanting is done, the rainy season is starting to wind down, I’m waiting for the teachers to get back to start the school gardens up again, and I’m planning some other tourney-type of projects with the doctor and some other volunteers that I’ll write about in the coming months. For the time being, my days consist of reading, playing guitar, blogging, and getting caught in the rain in Pape’s field. Fun times.

~E