Peace Corps Community

When I signed up for Peace Corps, I thought I would be alone in a hut for two years in the middle of nowhere. I imagined it to be similar to life on a desert island- a limited diet and no one to talk to, but unlike stranded boat wreck survivors, at least I had the opportunity to plan ahead and bring a lot of books. In case any of you are imagining me in a similar state, I thought I'd better tell you how different the reality turned out to be.

In addition to the Senegalese people whom I've started to get to know on a level beyond, 'Did you wake up? Yes, I woke up,' I've also gotten to spend a lot of time with my fellow volunteers, whom I've grown to rely on as a major source of emotional support. There are about thirty-five of us that all came to Senegal on the same plane, and spent about ten hours a day together for two months of training. Friendships spring up quickly in that kind of environment, especially considering the tendency to cling to anyone you can speak to on a level beyond, 'Where is your bucket? My what? Bucket. Huh? Bucket. BUCKET!' At the end of the first two months of training, I found myself upset that I'd started to care about these people only to be thrown out into the wilderness for two years, never to see them again.

But once I got to my site, my neighbors, who seemed so far away on paper, turned out to be much closer than I imagined. My closest neighbors and I manage to get together once a week or so for lunch at a hotel in a central town, eat spaghetti (it's not American spaghetti, but it gets the job done) or hamburgers (same goes), speak English, and also use the internet, while we're at it.

In addition, those of us in the northern region try to meet at the Peace Corps regional house once a month or so for a few days, a real haven that offers such amenities as a refrigerator, an oven, running water, an impressive library of books in English collected by volunteers over the years, a DVD player and American movies, and even an airconditioning unit in one room. This is a place where we can rest from the strain of constantly performing in a language and culture not native to us, and vent about some of the less pleasant aspects of life in Senegal, such as public transportation, and being constantly asked for anything from the t-shirt you're wearing to your hand in marriage from anyone you happen to pass in the street. Here too, we can share things that Senegalese people might not relate to- such as a fight with a significant other, or a three week craving for nachos that never gets satisfied, to name a couple of examples.

Another great thing about the regional house is the chance to vary our diets from the usual fish and rice every day, and even indulge in true comfort food- in other words, things that one might actually eat in America. We have to be a little creative with ingredients, but spaghetti, deviled eggs, pumpkin soup, chili, and banana bread are among the dishes we have managed to create based on what the market has to offer. If someone has gotten food sent from America recently, we can expand our options significantly- I'm remembering a batch of cinnamon rolls with walnuts with particular nostalgia.

The regional house has turned into a kind of home away from home- my closest friends are there, and I look forward to going every month to catch up. We just organized an impressively complete American-style Thanksgiving (which incidentally involved me carrying around a live turkey around by its feet for an afternoon on public transportation... but that's a story for another time), and now we're planning a Christmas celebration, which might possibly include going to the beach afterwards in another town and gorging ourselves on cheese (at least, that's my priority for the excursion).

I probably shouldn't mention the large, not-strictly-sanctioned parties the Peace Corps community manages to put on every so often, but they are undoubtedly part of the Peace Corps social scene, and remarkable for the sheer craziness of it all. Just imagine fifty recent college graduates, after several months of solitary confinement, have all gotten out of prison at the same time, and have all been put in the same room... with alcohol. If you can picture that, you'll probably be able to have some sense of what I'm talking about.

Peace Corps socialization isn't without its oddities (going days and sometimes weeks on end without talking to anyone and then spending twenty-four hours a day with ten people for four days is the number one thing that comes to mind), but overall, making friends with so many new people from all different states of the union has been an unexpected benefit of the experience. With whom else am I going to be able to share Pulaar in jokes, or turn to and say, 'Hey, remember that time that goat strapped to the roof of the car peed on the guy sitting next to you?' That reason alone is enough to make me think that I'll keep in touch with these wayward Americans long after our adventures in Senegal are over.

Health education in the time of cholera

There was a cholera epidemic Touba recently, a region of Senegal neighboring my own beloved Fuuta. News of the epidemic prompted the nurse at the health post in my town to suggest this would be a good time to do some work on informing people about cholera. As a result, I spent the past week going from house to house in my town doing cholera education, telling people to wash their hands with soap, cover their food, etc. My Pulaar has improved considerably in the last ten days or so- I can now tell people to put three drops of bleach in a liter of water to wash vegetables, and that if they don't have a latrine, they should dig a hole in the ground to poop and cover it with sand.

That's all very well and good, but what I really wanted to tell you about is my friend Binta. She's four. Also, adorable. My town is pretty big (at least for one person trying to go to every house in the city limits), and to make it seem more manageable, I started the house to house tour in the quartier (neighborhood) of Falbe. Most of my previous excursions to Falbe consisted of visits to my aunt, her twelve year old son, and four year old daughter, who are particular favorites of mine. Binta lives next door to them.

Falbe turned out to have way more houses than I originally thought, which resulted in me spending a good chunk of the week wandering around the twisty-turny paths of the herder neighborhood without knowing exactly where I was going. The second or third day of my tour, I ran into Binta, who was quietly lurking around the streets of Falbe, and who looked delighted to see me, in her own taciturn way. I said hello to her, and the next thing I know she's tagging along with me to every house I go. Me having a four year old shadow as I went around trying to fulfill my professional duties didn't seem to faze anyone, at least not more than a toubab showing up unexpectedly in their house speaking Pulaar and talking about diarrhea. And Binta coming along had an unexpected benefit- given that four year olds are apparently given free to roam the streets in this town, she knew the entire area I was working in like the back of her hand, and was able to direct me to the next house, and the next, with an ease that had eluded my increasingly disoriented self. This was extremely useful, seeing as I was having some trouble navigating the mish-mashed jumble of houses that pass for Sinthiou Garba's gesture to urban planning. Binta has never been to the paved road before (which is all of a ten minute walk from her house), but she knew every single household on her turf. Often when we entered a household together, the head of the household would greet her and then turn to me and say, 'You know her? She is my daughter.' Turns out having a four year old guide is a better deal than you might imagine.

Really, though, the highlight of the whole experience was when, after going to about twenty houses with me, and patiently sitting through my spiel at every single one, Binta and I were walking along and she turns to and says thoughtfully, 'Aissata? Cholera is bad.' Alleluhiah! I officially succeeded in communicating a health message. I felt pretty gratified, not to mention charmed, because, come on how many people have four year old assistants in their work on health education?

So I've had kind of an odd responsibility this week- acting as a bouncer for a vaccination campaign. In other words, serving as crowd control for the hordes of people that show up when doctors are handing out free medicine, in this case, two pills and a vaccine for children between six months and five years of age. The government is doing a seven day vaccination program against measles, as well as providing Vitamin A supplements and a pill called Vermox. I honestly don't know what the Vermox is for (some health worker I am), but I think it has something to do with stomach parasites, which I deduced from a picture of a person with wormy-looking things in their stomach on one of the attendant pieces of paperwork for the campaign as a whole.

I was extremely reluctant to accept the job of vaccination bouncer, and I even tried to get out of it by pointing out that the crowd was likely harder to control if I came in contact with it because half the children would probably run screaming in terror the minute I got near them, and the other half would follow me around and shout 'Toubab!' incessantly, which is what happened during the last vaccination campaign. That was the excuse I offered but in retrospect what I should have said was that my somewhat reticent personality wasn't up to the task of bossing around a bunch of pushy black ladies who look like they could crush me with a baby under one arm and another on their back, especially if I had to do it in Pulaar.

However, as the only other person available for the job wasn't feeling well, she was dispatched to record the number of children receiving the vaccine, and I was assigned to crowd control along with a gregarious man named Mamadou Sow, who has the unfortunate habit of spitting when he talks and, like almost all Senegalese people, no concept of personal space. Still, he is the perfect ally in this case, because while the aforementioned black ladies tend to disdainfully ignore my orders, and ten year old children think it's the funniest thing in the world for me to tell them to get out of the way, and then go back to what they were doing the minute my back is turned and wait for me to yell at them again. Sow bypasses the idea of reasoning with people or even cajoling- he just roars at everyone in his path and chases them with a big stick if they don't do what he says- a technique which is frankly much more effective than my own more pacificistic efforts.

The first day of the campaign was pretty much completely hellish. First of all, the nurse at the dispensaire- er, health post, who is the head honcho around here, told us to be at the health post at 7 am so we could get an early start. I was not very happy with this idea, as I've grown accustomed to generally never getting out of the door before nine, but I grudgingly acknowledged that it was a reasonable request, seeing as we were helping babies, and all, and foolishly showed up that morning promptly at 7 am. Essentially, this resulted in me sitting around half asleep for two hours waiting for the rest of the team to show up, which has turned out to be a pattern. I have now adapted by showing up an hour late and and only waiting around and hour for the others.

Anyway, once everybody showed up, we trooped over to the vaccination site, where there were approximately three hundred children waiting to be vaccinated with their mothers. It started out peaceably enough, but as soon as the sun started to rise high in the sky, things started to get out of hand. Up to that point, being a vaccination bouncer mainly consisted of me telling people their children were too old (older than 5) or too young (younger than 6 months) to be vaccinated. But once the shade started to diminish, the mothers started getting surly. People started pressing forward and it was like the tide moving inexorably forward- my efforts to stop it were ineffectual at best. Nonetheless, I valiantly fought to maintain some semblance of control in the midst of people entreating me to let them go in front of the others with such excuses as 'I'm tired,' or 'I need to go cook lunch,' as though the same were not true of every other woman there. Or my personal favorite, 'The sun. It is hot.' I haven't yet figured out the Pulaar translation of 'No s---, Sherlock.'

It is impressive how quickly I made the transition from pushover to hardass once annoyance replaced intimidation as my primary emotion. I'll spare you the details, but highlights include me weilding my notebook menacingly to frighten children and me yelling at a nursing mother for trying to sit down and nurse her baby. This last makes me cringe to recall, but in my defense, I didn't really process that she was trying to nurse her baby until after I yelled at her. I thought she was just another one of the dozens of obnoxious women trying to flout my authority.

After the first day, I had had enough of the chaos that reigned, and decided we needed a system. I thought wistfully of those mazes of metal barriers used to direct lines in amusement parks and other public venues accustomed to accomodating large crowds, but since I had nothing of the sort immediately available, I was going to have to devise an alternative. The experience of the previous day had removed all my faith that Senegalese people were remotely capable of forming a functioning line (the thought 'Senegalnabbe wawaa lines' kept running through my head. The Pulaar way to say someone is not good at something is to say they cannot do it. For example, 'the white girl cannot Pulaar.' My version translates as 'Senegalese people cannot lines,' which I think is a fair statement in English as well.), so I decided to try giving each woman a number and organizing them that way. I thought this was a pretty brilliant solution, but I didn't take into account that a lot of the women can't read, so about three hundred ladies were waving tickets in my face at once asking if they were next, even if they were number 232 and we were only on number 56. Nonetheless, it was an improvement over the previous lack of system, and it gave me some way to keep straight who had really arrived before the others and who hadn't. At this point, we've modified the system, writing down the names of the mothers and then giving the first ten people in line tickets. This is a much less nerve-wracking way of doing things, and more easily understood by the women, but has not yet been tested by the sheer numbers of the first several days, and is slightly complicated by the fact that in every group of 50 mothers, there are only six or seven different names, so when I call 'Mariam Ndiaye,' for example, 13 different women answer.

This whole chaotic experience has made me realize how biddable we Americans are when it comes to bureaucracy, and my longing for nice, orderly lines notwithstanding, I find myself admiring these Senegalese ladies despite myself for their refusal to allow themselves to be regulated myself. In any case, it's nice to be doing something useful for a change, even if it is imposing my obsessive compulsive American will on stubborn Senegalese women.

To date, the team of Sinthiou Garba has vaccinated 1729 children in 5 days, with 2 more days to go.

The North/South Divide

*I wrote this a couple of weeks ago but am only just now getting around to putting it up, for anyone who might be confused about where I am at the moment. I am back at site, and am trying to figure out what on earth I'm going to do with myself now that I'm actually expected to be working. On to my outdated entry...

I'm back in Thies for three weeks to do some more technical training, and I have to say I'm going through some culture shock being back in the big city, not to mention the structure of being at training for ten hours every day. It's remarkable how different my perception of Thies is after being in my village for three months; now I find myself impressed at the level of development here. So many more schools, health facilities, and much more commerce. I find myself amazed at the amenities available, from the existence of things like shoe stores to the presence of a robinet (water tap) in almost every compound and the difference in quality and variety of foods available.

The best thing about being back here is getting to see all the people I met during the initial training period that ended up being assigned to sites in different regions of the country. I am able to meet with my friends up in the north pretty regularly, but those that live down in the southern region of the country have been much harder to stay in contact with. It's been wonderful to catch up with everyone I haven't seen in awhile, but I can't help noticing how different our experiences have been, even within the same country.

Similar to the economic disparity between the urban and rural areas, there is another subdivision in the level of poverty between the north and the south. Herding and agriculture are the main sources of income for most people in the north, which both suffer from lack of water. Overgrazing is a huge problem, and is contributing to the desertification of the entire Sahel region. On the surface, the prospects look pretty bleak for the entire region, yet my town has a fairly significant level of development-three schools, a health post, well-nourished looking children, electricity, robinets, and several other functioning community organizations.

The south is much richer in natural resources, as they get much more rain and are able to grow things in their fields for a greater portion of the year, but my friends down south describe a level of poverty much greater than anything I've seen in the north. They tell me they consistently have meals that consist of rice only. Electricity is a rarity, education nearly non-existent, and many villages don't even have latrines.

I was puzzled as to how it came to be that the people of the north, with not a lot to sell but sand, came to have more money than the people of the south, who live in the most beautiful, resource-rich part of the country, but then someone pointed out to me that the people in the north get their money from outside the country. If they can get an education, they might have a chance to emigrate and find work in Europe or America, and then send remittances home to their families. Also, what little food they manage to grow, they keep for their families to eat or sell in local markets. In the south, on the other hand, people have work in the fields to keep them there, but they sell their crops to foreign buyers for little or no profit, leaving their own families with next to nothing.

I'm noticing a lot of disillusionment among my fellow volunteers after facing the realities of living in such impoverished conditions and finding the task of development an entirely daunting notion. But we're having some good discussions and hopefully we'll be able to put our heads together to come up with something. Besides, we're all walking around wearing t-shirts that say 'World peace or two years service, whichever comes first,' so we'd better put our money where our mouths are, or we'll have to stop wearing them. I for one don't have that many t-shirts with me, so I'd be pretty reluctant to give one up.

Things that crack me up about Senegal

• Carrying water on my head.
• Huts.
• Being asked if I've ever been to a town called Harmony. It took me about three weeks to figure out this is the name of the fictional town in which the American soap opera 'Passions' is set.
• The fact that of all the television shows produced in America, 'Passions' and '24' are the ones upon which people base the majority of their perceptions of America.
• Non-verbal communication. For example, pointing to things with your tongue instead of your finger, and doing a gesture which resembles a short, clipped version of the chicken dance when you want to refuse to do something. It's funny enough seeing a little kid do this when a bigger child tries to take something away from him; it's all I can do to keep a straight face when my 31 year old brother does it while scowling and urging me to reject a marriage proposal from a 'sai-sai,' a Wolof word which means 'trouble.' (I think the closest American translation would be 'player,' as in, 'He's such a player,' or 'Don't hate the player, hate the game.')
• My growing obsession with an Argentinean soap opera dubbed in French called 'Muneca Brava.'
• Men wearing gellies to play soccer instead of cleats.
• The word 'weccit,' which means 'change,' as in 'Do you have change for 500 CFA?'
• Several members of my family spontaneously serenading me in an off key version of 'Happy Birthday.' 'Happy birthday, you you...'
• Senegalese dances. Particularly the one which consists of placing your hands on the ground and shaking your butt in the air.
• The word 'jayfonde.' I believe the literal translation is 'ghetto booty.'
• Pulaar radio shows.
• This probably makes me a horrible person, but I couldn't help laughing at the sight of my six year old brother walking bowlegged and holding his clothes away from his body after he was circumcised last week.
• My teenage sisters' determination to learn 'Baby Got Back' after I told them there was an American song about jayfonde. Right now they've gotten as far as, 'I lick bick buss an ah canna lye.'
• The odd and depressing familiarity of Marlboro billboards and Shell stations.
• The corruption of the French word 'chargeur' (cell phone charger) into 'sar-sar.'
• The fact that if I receive less than five marriage proposals in a seven day period, I'm having a slow week.
• My twelve year old brother wearing pale lavender shorts and a matching t-shirt with a picture of a teddy bear which says in English, 'When God made me, he was just showing off.'
• Rattling buckets of bolts emblazoned with the word, 'Alhamdillilah' (Praise Allah), with pictures of marabouts fixed to the front window and a picture of Madonna from the 'Like a Virgin' years fixed to the back. These white vans are what passes for public transportation in Senegal.
• Minicars. Imagine an ancient VW van, except instead of carrying six hippies, it carries about thirty Senegalese people. I'm not exaggerating with that number. The big white vans must carry sixty or seventy.
• Putting a sheep in a bag and strapping it on top of a rusty old station wagon to transport it over 300 kilometers.
• Television ads for tea starring Senegalese rappers.
• My aunts spending hours embroidering images of soda bottles with the Coca Cola logo or Fanta orange onto cheap white cloth to use as sheets.
• Me drawing a bird on my five year old sister's hand and her looking at it and saying 'coos!,' the Pulaar equivalent of 'shoo!,' specific to a chicken.
• The fact that there are different words for 'shoo' for different animals.
• Millet.
• Senegalese living rooms.
• Senegalese photographs. Let me just say these unsmiling portraits put drag make up to shame.
• The necessity of hanging your cell phone in a tree to get service.
• The question, 'Did you wake up?'
• The question, 'Are you breathing?'
• The presence of TV, cell phones, and stereos contrasted with women carrying water on their heads and cooking over a fire.
• The fact that I now think it's totally normal for frogs and lizards to use my room as a shortcut on their way to wherever it is they're going.
• The level of alarm the sound of lizards skittering across my tin roof inspires in me. (Less now that I've figured out what it is.)
• The necessity of barricading my doorway with my bike to prevent sheep from invading my room.
• People ordering six year olds to go to the market to buy them cigarettes.
• Sandstorms.
• Showering out of a bucket.
• My excitement over bucket shopping.
• Brightly colored striped plastic teapots people use to take water to the bathroom. Mine's pink and blue and I think of it as my sink, as I use it to wash my hands.
• My five year old sister thrusting her butt out at me and saying 'Woof am!' in an insistent tone. Apparently this means, 'Put me on your lap.' I had to have my aunt explain that one to me.
• Three tiny Senegalese girls between the ages of three and six simulating a Sumo wrestling match in their underwear at eleven o clock at night.
• My two year old cousin Abdul, singing 'L'amour, l'amour, ce n'est pas possible!' The song he's singing actually says, 'L'amour, l'amour, ce n'est pas facil,' which means, 'Love, love, it is not easy.' What makes this funny is the glee with which Abdul, who speaks only Pulaar, corrupts the French into, 'Love, love, it is not possible!'
  

Cheb e jen or maaro and liddi

Lots of people have been asking me about the food here, so I figured I ought to devote an entry to Senegalese cuisine.

For breakfast every morning, my family gives me some coffee and bread. I should explain that Senegalese coffee consists of a hot cup of milk, two or three giant tablespoons of sugar, and maybe a teaspoonful of Nescafe instant coffee. Given that I don't really drink coffee at home, but adore both milk and sugar, this is pretty much perfect for me. The bread is kind of like freshly baked French bread, wonderfully soft and filling and sometimes still warm from the bread maker's, but a little denser than a typical loaf of French bread. Breakfast is generally a leisurely affair.

Lunch is the most important Senegalese meal, by which I mean in poorer villages, it might be the only meal- during the hungry season (dry season), at least. Fortunately, my town is on the road and has access to lots of amenities smaller villages don't have, such as vegetables to buy and sell in the market. My family is also fairly well off, relatively speaking, so I always eat well. I almost always eat cheb e jen (no idea how that's spelled), as it is known throughout Senegal or maaro e liddi, which is the Pulaar translation of the Wolof cheb e jen. Directly translated, it means rice and fish, which doesn't sound nearly as interesting as it actually is.

Maaro e liddi consists of, well, rice and fish (the rice generally seasoned with something that resembles tomato paste and cooked with oil), and may include a piece of squash, casava, something which is kind of like a potato that I don't know the word for in English, only a little smoother and sweeter, eggplant, bitter eggplant, half a cabbage, and a carrot. Hopefully I'm not forgetting anything.

I usually eat lunch with my brother (in my family in Thies, I ate with the women and kids, and my dad ate separately, as respected members of the household get priority in terms of the best food), or if he's not around, one of my sisters might come eat with me. The meal is served in a huge bowl (we use spoons, but most everyone eats with their hand- their right hand only; the left hand is the bathroom hand, so it's pretty much horribly rude to reach for anything with your left hand), with the fish in the middle, and the vegetables arranged around it over the rice. Other things to remember about Senegalese bowl manners are not to reach across the bowl for something you want, but to ask someone to pass it to you, and if there is something in front of you, to either move it so the other person can reach it or to cut some of it off and put it in front of your bowlmate(s). My brother, for example, is always depositing bites of fish and cabbage in front of me and ordering me to eat. That's another big thing- urging people to eat, especially guests. Even when I have eaten half the bowl, which would normally feed about six Senegalese people, he's always admonishing me, 'Eat! You didn't eat anything.' Along the same lines, if someone comes to your house while you're eating, you always, always invite them to join you. They probably won't take you up on it, but you have to ask. Also, if you're visiting someone's house, even if you only stopped by for two minutes, and you try to say good-bye, they'll always make a fuss, saying, 'Don't go! Wait for lunch.' This even if it's ten o clock in the morning (Lunch is usually served around two pm).

Dinner doesn't happen until about nine o clock at my house. Again, I eat with my brother, sometimes one of my sisters. A lot of the time we eat left over maaro e liddi, but sometimes we have mafe (again, no idea how to spell that. It's pronounced mah-fay), rice with a wonderfully rich dark brown peanut sauce; niri, rice with a milder subtler peanut sauce, sometimes served with oil and fish; or once in awhile we have omelettes, which are really exciting, but don't really resemble omelettes in the States. I like them because my sister makes the eggs with a savory tomato paste and a ton of onions. However, I can't gorge myself as much as I'd like to, because they're pretty greasy, and if I go crazy with the eggs I feel like I have a vat of oil sitting in my stomach. Another meal which I really like I don't know the name for, but has that same tomato-ey sauce, with tons of onions and potatoes cut up like french fries.

Another main staple is lechiri and haako, which is basically finely ground millet and a kind of leafy green sauce. I'm not the biggest fan of haako, as ground millet tastes like sand to me, but the sauce is not bad, and lots of volunteers tell me haako is their favorite meal. I don't eat it too often because my family knows I don't like it, but it's something that most everyone else eats quite frequently.

For special occasions, such as baptisms and weddings, people usually prepare plates and plates of what essentially is macaroni and meat cooked in oil. It doesn't sound that good when I describe it like that, but actually it's quite tasty- very salty, which I like. Meat of any kind is a delicacy here, as it's expensive by Senegalese standards. Chicken, too, is expensive, which is a shame because possibly my favorite Senegalese dish of all is yassa poulet, which is rice or noodles with chicken and a delicious onion sauce.

Things I've eaten as snacks include mangos, lechiri and kosam (millet with milk and sugar), goos (rice with milk and sugar, but a milder taste than lechiri and kosam- I love goos, but usually only eat it when I'm visiting someone).

Well, I don't feel like I've done the delicious nature of Senegalese cuisine justice with my description, but hopefully this gives you some idea of what people eat most of the time. Dolen e jam (May we digest in peace).

How many people have you greeted today?

I wanted to post an addendum to my previous post about learning Pulaar, because I feel I left out several important aspects of Pulaar that might lend some insight into the Pulaar culture.

The first thing you should know is that greeting is very important. Keep in mind that I still have not mastered the language by any means, so it's entirely possible I might be completely mistranslating things. Having said that, I thought you might like to get a sense of what conversation is like here, so I'll give the translation a shot. Again, greetings are about ninety five percent of interactions, so once you get those down, you're pretty well set to get around town. In the morning, a typical greeting between two neighbors might be:

Wait, hang on. The first neighbor is probably named Aissata. I've concluded that approximately every third person in my village is named Aissata. I include myself in that tally- I received a new name when I got to my site. I am now Aissata Lo, named after my father's first wife. But for our purposes, this is just some random Aissata. We'll call the second neighbor Fatimata. Thank God my father isn't married to anyone named Fatimata- I would have been really unhappy if everyone was calling me Fati, which is a common nickname. Okay, back to greeting and translations...

Aissata Lo: Jam walli?/ Is the morning passing in peace?
Fatimata Sow: Yawur. / I don't actually know what this means, but I think it's something like 'may we have long life,' or something. I'll let you know if I figure it out.
Aissata: Wallen e jam. / May we pass the morning in peace.
Fatimata: A fini?/ Did you wake up? (At first I thought this was a trick question and people thought I was really stupid because I stared at them blankly when they asked it. But really, I thought it was fairly obvious that I had woken up and thought maybe I had misunderstood the question. I was similarly confused by the question always posed to me when I enter the family compound- 'did you come home?' Again, obviously, I did come home. But now I know the response to this question is, 'yes, I did come home.'
Aissata: Ko mawdoum./ It is big. (For a long time I thought this just meant 'fine,' as in 'how are you? - I'm fine,' but I recently learned that no, it actually means, 'it is big.' It turns out that 'did you wake up?' actually is a trick question, because the answer is 'fine,' or as a Pulaar would say, 'it is big').
Fatimata: Jam fin toon? / Did they wake up in peace there? (The English equivalent of 'how is your family?').
Aissata: No mbad-daa? / How are you?
Fatimata: Jam tan. /Peace only.
Aissata: Ada selli?/ Are you in health?
Fatimata: Mawdoum. /It is big.
Aissata: No jom galle ma wadi?/ How is your husband? (On a side note, the word for husband I used here translates as 'master of the house' and the word for wife translates as 'master of the bedroom,' which I find hilarious. The informal term for husband is gorko, which also means boy and man, and the corresponding word for wife is debbo, which also means woman and girl).
Fatimata: Omoy jam. / He is in peace.
Aissata: No sukaabe ma mbadi? / How are your children?
Fatimata: Ebe e jam. / They are in peace.
Aissata: Alhamdillilah. / Thanks be to God.
Fatimata: No mbad-daa? / How are you?
Aissata: Jam tan. / Peace only.
Fatimata: No mbad-daa e tampere? / How are you doing with fatigue?
Aissata: Mawdoum. / It is big.
Fatimata: No mbad-daa e bowdi? / How are you doing with the mosquitos?
Aissata: Mawdoum. / It is big.
Fatimata: No mbad-daa e liggey? / How are you doing with work?
Aissata: Mawdoum. / It is big.
Fatimata: No mbad-daa e nguleeki? / How are you doing with the heat?
Aissata: Mawdoum. / It is big.(If you wanted to spice things up a bit, which I usually do by this point in the conversation, you could also respond by saying, 'ina wonda' ('it is there) or 'mbido wondi heen' (I am in it').
Fatimata: To pah-daa? / Where are you going?
Aissata: Mi yehii jeere. / I'm going to the market.
Fatimata: Haa boya. / See you later.
Aissata: Adiarama. /Be thanked.
Fatimata: Adiarama. Lo. / Be thanked. Lo. (Aissata's last name. When you part company with someone, it's a sign of respect to repeat each other's last names, even as you're walking away from each other.)
Aissata: Sow. (Fatimata's last name).
Fatimata: Lo. (Fatimata is probably well on her way now).
Aissata: Sow. (Nodding and smiling, but not really paying attention anymore.)
Fatimata: Lo. (By this point she might be halfway across the compound).
Aissata: Sow. (Aissata has probably turned back to her cooking by now, and is just raising her voice to the rice to be heard).
Fatimata: Lo. (She's not even looking at Aissata anymore, she's halfway to the market now. Bear in mind that this whole conversation is probably happening in the amount of time it takes Fatimata to cross through the compound on the way to the market, without either of them stopping what they are doing).

Letter to Casey

I thought some of you might be interested in reading a letter I wrote to my friend Casey about the trials of learning Pulaar. I wrote this when I was in the middle of training, but I find a lot of it is still relevant as I try to improve my language skills here at my site. So without further ado...

Dear Casey,

I'm going to take this opportunity to answer your question about Pulaar. I guess the hardest thing about learning it is that people talk really freaking fast and all the words sound the same... But I guess maybe you were looking for something a bit more specific. There really are quite a lot of words that sound very similar, especially when spoken fast. For example, yihde, yitde, yahde, yarde, arde (to see, to like/love/want, to go, to drink, to come, respectively) all sound quite similar when conjugated. Another thing is that there are completely different words (well, same roots but different endings) to express doing something and doing something with someone, etc. For example, haccitaade means to eat breakfast, haccitodaade means to eat breakfast with someone, and haccitoraade means to eat something (specific) for breakfast. There are also different words for passive verbs vs. active verbs, i.e., neesaade (to inject) vs. neeseede (to receive an injection). On the other hand, verb conjugations are generally the same for all of the different subjects, and you hardly ever have to worry about prepositions. In my class, we spend a lot of time learning how to insult Serers. Pulaars and Serers are cousins, so according to Senegalese tradition, they can say anything to each other without being offended. For example, Simone, the language coordinator here is a Serer, and she likes to greet my class by saying, 'Hello, my slaves.' A typical response to this is, 'Oh, look, a Serer. Serers are cats.' Saying Serers are monkeys is another favorite insult. For some reason, it's also a good insult to say, 'Oh, Serers eat a lot. They eat everything.' Which is ironic, considering that the Senegalese like nothing better than to shove food down your throat. Or so it seems. Anyway, my class knows how to tell someone they smell bad and several different ways of saying why someone smells bad - the other classes know how to say they came to Senegal to help people learn about health. Time will tell which of these will come in more handy. Hope all is well with you.

Love,
Christine

Transition: Part Deux

So my new family seems nice. Five minutes after I met them, I threw up in their front yard, and they were totally cool about it. At least, they didn't refuse to take me in for fear of contamination, or anything.

I started out my time up here in the Fouta (the North) on an interesting note. I arrived in the region of Matam at nine o clock in the morning (after leaving the town of Ndioum at six), spent three hours opening a bank account in Matam, ate lunch at the hotel in Ourossogui, went shopping for a few life essentials such as buckets (in which to shower and store water), drank a Fanta, and then threw up on my friend Kris' new sheets, bucket, and I regret to say, on him. Not the most auspicious beginning, I grant you. On the other hand, Kris and I have a new and special bond. I don't think you can throw up on someone and not be their friend forever thereafter.

I probably threw up about seven times that night, but in the morning I felt a lot better. However, I still wasn't feeling exactly top notch, so I elected to skip the morning schedule of greeting all the regional officials, and slept for about six hours instead. After that, I felt ready to brave the task of loading up all my stuff into the Peace Corps car and going to my site. That was when I threw up the eighth time, right after meeting all of the approximately thirty people that are a fairly ubiquitous presence in my household (they may or may not all live there, I haven't quite figured that out yet).

In case any of you were wondering, it is indeed quite hot up here in the Sahara, so it's customary to take a petite sieste after lunch, and I was pretty wiped out my first couple of days what from all that puking on friends and family property. So thus it was that my first full day at my post was punctuated by three noisy sheep invading my room and waking me up from a nap. My second day, a lizard fell on me while I was peeing. I haven't yet decided whether I am afraid of the lizards or if I'm starting to think they're cute. On the other hand, I am definitely starting to develop a hatred of sheep.

Everyone in the Peace Corps talks about how the first few months are terribly boring, as you're not really supposed to work, but rather focus on learning the language. I don't know what they're talking about. I've been busy ever since I got here. Thus far, I have gone to the health post to speak to the doctor there about how the Senegalese health system works and to watch vaccinations; gone to the equivalent of a town council meeting and gave a speech about myself in Pulaar; I went with my brother to work one day (under a shade structure in the town square) and learned all about how the water tower and taps work (every family that has a robinet pays each month per cubic meter of water consumed. The taps only work at night, and are slightly separate from the household, so the women spend most of the evening carrying buckets of water on their heads from the tap to the house to store for the next day. In small villages, carrying water is more of a morning chore, because it has to be pulled from wells, which generally no one wants to do once it gets too hot); and the other day I went running and stopped by the college (junior high), and greeted the principal, who told me he wanted me to help him with an English club there. All this in between working to learn Pulaar (What is that called? And that? What did you say?) and struggling to learn the names of everyone in my family (my dad has three wives and twenty children, so this is not an inconsiderable task, especially when you throw in the neighbors and cousins and aunts and friends that are at the house all the time).

Anyway, so far I love it, and I seem to have made a full recovery from my illness (I'm eating again!), so everything is, you know, jam tan (Peace only).

p.s. I'm moving to the Sahara.

Okay, so technically, it's the Sahel, but it's so much cooler to say you live in the Sahara than to say you live in the Sahel.

I found out my post assignment last week, and I'm moving to a town called Sinthiou Garba in the northeastern part of the country, close to the Mauritanian border. When I told my host father where I was going, his face lit up and he said, "Ah, Sinthiou Garba. That is a good town. There are cars there. It is on the paved road." Apparently, it is a town of about 8,000 people. At first, I was a little disappointed not to be placed in a tiny village where I could learn everyone's name, but I think ultimately I will appreciate the amenities available in a bigger town, such as a market. It also has a health post, two primary schools, and a junior high, so I will have people I can work with right away while I'm still getting a handle on Pulaar (only educated people speak French in that part of the country- well, in most rural areas in general). Still don't know too much about the living situation, but I'm hoping for a hut. Because, come on, how cool is it to say you live in a hut? On the other hand, if I live in a batiment (building), I'll probably have electricity, so there are upsides either way.

I spoke to some volunteers who are working in that area and they said the family I'm moving in with is very cool, and that I'm moving in with the family of the village chief. They also said that the people of the town are very excited to have a Peace Corps volunteer and are very motivated, so that was nice to hear because I will have lots of good people to work with. It sounds like the volunteers up there have a strong community, so hopefully I'll get to meet some more cool people I can spend time with so I don't forget English (Don't laugh, it's already a problem. My brain now constructs sentences in a strange nonsensical mix of Pulaar, French, and English, and once in awhile it shorts out and produces random words in Spanish, which is of no use at all.).

I'm really excited about my site and I will tell you all about it when I get there. Three weeks and counting. Gotta get in a lot more Pulaar lessons before that.

Animals seen so far:

Goats
Ducks (deformed looking)
Chickens (scraggly looking)
Dogs (lots, all the same kind)
Cats (lots)
Sheep (that look like goats, and have tails)
Horses (hitched to carts)
Cows (scary looking white ones)
Emu? (some kind of exotic looking bird, anyway, in a hotel in Kedougou (in the southeast region of the country))
Baboons (two, in Kedougou)
Antelope (in Kedougou)
Monkeys (a herd of them, in Kedougou. Coolest animal moment so far.)
Guinea fowl (technically, I didn't see this, only felt it as it slammed into the windshield of our bus on the way back to Thies from Kedougou. I thought we had hit a cow.)

No mbieyete daa?

Mbiyetemi ko Salymata. Njettetemi ko Sall.

What's your name? My name is Salymata. My family name is Sall. My Senegalese family has given me a new name, Salymata. I mention my family name, Sall, because family names and family are very important in Senegal. Senegalese people view themselves as all part of one big family, and acknowledging someone's family is an important way of showing respect.

In my new family, I have four sisters, and one brother... that I've met. I also apparently have two more brothers and a sister who are older and live in Dakar. My sisters are named Aissita (21), Diarra (20), Mariam (19), and Marietou (12). My brother's name is Boum-Oumar, and he is 13 or 14, I think. My father's name is Oumar Sall and my mother's name is Aminata Lih.

I'm closest to the sisters, and spend most of my time with them. Aissita is the quietest, and 'le plus sage,' I think. Diarra is the most mischievous, and also my closest ally in my quest to learn Pulaar. She cracks me up and is a slave driver on the vocab words. Mariam is the most confident and the Senegalese equivalent of a teenage social butterfly. Marietou is the sweetest and the best dancer.

Boum-Oumar is like a little monkey, always doing gymnastics around the house and has the funniest, widest grin. My father is a retired French teacher, a pious Muslim, and a very kind man. My mother has the happiest smile.

As for me, I speak the worst Pulaar. But the family seems to like me nonetheless, and hopefully I will master the language soon so I can distinguish myself within the family in my own way.

New country, new family

Don't know where to start. It's been crazy ever since I arrived. We did a bunch of admin stuff the first few days I was here, and then we broke up into pairs and piled onto a bus to drive to the southeastern part of the country to visit a Peace Corps volunteer and get a taste of volunteer life. We spent four or five days there, and I got to see some of the health projects my host was working on. I saw a health center, visited a junior high where she does a peer educator program, an NGO that does AIDS education, and a youth center that does free AIDS testing. Also went to a health talk or causerie, but didn't understand a word as it was in Pulaar.

Now I am back in Thies for the next seven weeks, staying with a host family while I go through Peace Corps training. They aren't kidding around when they say your family takes you in as one of their own. It's hard to describe the sense of welcome I feel in my host family; there is simply nothing comparable in the U.S. That isn't to say I am completely comfortable there yet, because it is a very different situation, but they are going out of their way to make me feel comfortable. They are all taking good care of me and are laughing at my pathetic attempts to learn Pulaar. That part of family life, at least, is familiar.

Peace Corps 101

Tonight is my last night in the States. I've been in Philadelphia since Sunday night, meeting my fellow travelers and going through orientation together. There are about thirty of us, all headed to Senegal, although to various assignments. The staging, as it is called, is mostly a preliminary transition, to finish last-minute paperwork and ease anxieties. Also, to get to know one another, although it's hard to tell at this point who will even be assigned to post near me. We will all be going through training together for the first eight weeks, though, so I imagine I'll get to know everyone pretty well.

We check out of the hotel tomorrow and take the bus to a clinic to get all our vaccinations; then we will take a bus to New York to catch an evening flight to Dakar (direct, thankfully). We will arrive in Senegal at about 6 am local time and go straight to Thies, where we will go through pre-service training. We spend three days at the training center, then spend 3-4 days visiting a Peace Corps Volunteer who is already at their post, so we can see what that's like, and then we head back to Thies to spend 7 weeks with a host family and to complete the preliminary training period, which will consist of cross-cultural training, health education, some very basic professional training, but above all, intensive language training. After the eight weeks of pre-service training, we will be assigned our post, and then we will learn more technical/professional skills for our assignment. More to follow from Senegal.

Greetings

After many requests to receive updates on my experiences in Senegal, I've decided to start a blog where people can read about my adventures at their leisure.

As many of you know, I leave March 12, 2006 for Philadelphia, where I will spend three days at my Peace Corps orientation before leaving for Senegal March 16. Once I arrive in Senegal, I will spend about three months in training in the town of Thies before I receive my post assignment.

Right now, I'm just packing up and getting ready to go. I don't know when I'll next have internet access, but I'll post again as soon as I can once I have something to report from Senegal.

Please stay in touch!