Tales from Senegal

Guest blog from Mom

2008-01-19T06:04:00.000-08:00

It was wonderful to be with Christine after a year and a half. I was smacked in the face by her ability to thrive in the harsh and isolated desert of Senegal. I will never worry about her again. I also appreciate her fellow volunteers, many of whom we met. They support each other immensely. Finally, I am happy that we could express our gratitude in person to Christine's most generous host families in Sintiou Garba and Thies.

It is hard to make sense of Senegal if you haven't traveled to a poor country. Cooking fires and sheep line the streets. In the city, sidewalks are narrow and uneven; walking is a balancing act between people selling things and cars coming up over the broken curbs. Concrete and mortar get hard wear, but construction continues and Western-style hotels provide A/C and croissants for breakfast. I was on red alert due to constant hustlers, but managed on our final day in Dakar to navigate the few blocks to the post office and back alone. Colleen and Christine impressed us with their French skills and Christine's "Pulaar street cred." My French got worse.

Weather was warm. A steady breeze kicked up enough dust and sand to obscure the sun on occasion, and we got in a couple of refreshing swims. The call to prayer was broadcast day and night. Mosques are the biggest and newest buildings in even the smallest of hamlets. We became accustomed to hearing little kids shout "toubab!" ("white person") as we walked by, announcing us to all their friends and giving the bravest a chance to reach out a hand in greeting.

We traveled to nature centers, museums and beachy resorts. Mike got in almost enough birding in several hot spots. We ferried to the island of Goree', where thousands of West Africans were once packed onto ships and sent into slavery. Sobering. Today, artists and their families live there.

At St. Louis, still holding historic French influences, we spent a festive Christmas Eve with several Peace Corps families, went to a drum-and-music-filled French Mass, and peered across the river to Mauritania.

Peugots, Renaults and Mercedes carried us from place to place. Both our longest trips featured fierce haggling and car breakdowns, but another car or spare part always turned up eventually. Cars are able to roll with barely enough bolts to hold them together. The Senegalese can calculate the exact number of threads in a frayed piece of rope it takes to keep a bleating sheep tied to the top of the bus. There appears to be no term in Pulaar for "overcrowded bus."

The purpose of our trip, of course, was to visit Christine's home in the Fouta, the northeast. Her family lives in a series of attached concrete rooms around an earth courtyard that contains the cooking fire, chicken coop, pens for sheep and horses, and a shady neem tree. Christine has a room next to the sheep pen, along with a small patio and open air bathroom. C's father, farmer and village chief, is a man with many responsibilities. He has three wives (one is the widow of his brother), many children, and countless other relatives to house, feed and clothe. We learned about the importance of greetings and picked up several useful Pulaar phrases for this ritual. We visited the dispensaire, schools, and a couple of impressive garden projects as well as the local market and the homes of several of C's family and friends.

We stayed mostly healthy with just a couple of tummyache delays, fortunately in places with good plumbing. Food varied from French crepes to Vietnamese stir-fry to rice and fish in the homes of the families we visited. Our hosts inevitably brought us Fanta orange soda. We are adopting this tradition. You can even have your own glass, but it is traditional to share the glassware.

Christine's city family in Thiess was a contrast with the country "cousins." She spent two months there learning Pulaar before going to her site. The girls watch music videos and go to university. I loved the mother instantly when she threw her arms around me in welcome. The father is a retired French teacher. I heard Christine's praises many times on the trip, but he said the thing that pleased me most: that Christine is the best of several PC volunteers that the family has hosted. How could I disagree? Despite their fancy living room, Western clothing, and makeup, we ate lunch on the floor picnic style out of one huge bowl, spoon optional. Even in town, you can have three sheep in the garage instead of two cars.

On Tabaski, a thanksgiving-type celebration involving the slaughter of sheep, we were staying at an eco-resort and shared a luncheon of mutton and lentils with the staff followed by drumming, singing and dancing-Mike and the girls did well on the dance floor.

This voyage was not your typical rush to see sights and wonders, novel activities, or R n R with a long, cool drink, although we enjoyed elements of all those things. Instead, it was a family visit, and now we have two new families, with the privilege of getting just a taste of the inside of real Senegalese life.

A typical day

2008-01-19T05:54:00.000-08:00

7am- 9am.

Get up. Take down mosquito net and move bed inside. (Those of you who know me will know it’s not my normal style to be an early riser, but I can only say it’s not easy to sleep in past sunrise when people start greeting you through your mosquito net when you’re still in bed).
Greet family. At this time of day, this means grunting unintelligibly in Pulaar.
Wait for my family to give me bread and then eat breakfast (bread and Nescafe. I know that might not sound that appealing, but I don’t really drink coffee, so my coffee is mostly milk, a little sugar, and barely enough coffee to deserve the name, and I like it).
Sweep room (I’m also not the kind of person who would normally sweep their room every day, but, well, there’s a lot of sand).
Get ready to greet the world.

9am-1pm.

Run around village trying to create work for myself (some days I am more successful than others, but keeping myself occupied from 9 to 1 is always my goal). This can include going to the pre-school, the two elementary schools, and the junior high trying to get health lessons and club meetings organized, going to the health post to get help on writing/translating a health lesson into Pulaar, and meeting with leaders from the women’s group garden to talk about various ways we can appeal to local authorities to help supply tools, information, etc. Some days I actually manage to teach health lessons at the schools, or substitute as an English teacher at the junior high.

1-2pm.

Go back to the house and practice the fine art of waiting for lunch. Stay out in the village too late and you might get sucked into eating lunch at somebody else’s house. There’s nothing wrong with this in theory, and sometimes I bestow my presence at other people’s bowls, but I like eating at my house because we have good cooks, and my family is relatively well off so the food is usually better. Also if you stay for lunch, people like you to stay for tea, and if you stay for tea, people like you to stay for dinner… and if you stay for dinner people invite you to spend the night. But there is especially no concept of leaving after lunch, largely because people think you’re crazy if you try to go anywhere in the afternoon because it’s so hot. So sometimes I decline lunch invitations just because I don’t want to be committed to spending the entire afternoon at someone’s house.

2-2:30pm.

No times are exact, but this is a basic average of when I usually eat lunch. My lunch partners have changed somewhat in the time I’ve been here, but currently I share my mid-day meal with two of my host sisters, one seven years old, the other four. I like this arrangement because our food preferences complement each other well (I like the vegetables, they like the bony fish), so everyone’s happy (although Mainouma and I are both greedy when it comes to folere, this leafy sauce with lime juice and hot pepper. This description does not even remotely capture it’s essence, but trust me, it’s delicious). On the downside, seven and four year olds squabbling over coveted bowl items tends to result in a lot of rice getting spilled in your room.
Sweep again. See aforementioned note about rice spilling at lunch time.

2:30-5pm.

This is my ‘me’ time. It’s generally absurdly hot, so pretty much everyone’s taking a siesta or just hanging out chatting, and I take this time to read, write, and just kind of hang out in my room without anyone bothering me. Basically, I consider this a sacrosanct time in which I do not have to speak Pulaar.

5-7pm.

These are prime greeting hours, so if I’m feeling ambitious, I will go hang out at a friend’s house. Or if I’m feeling really ambitious, I might go running during this time. But only if I can face running in 100 degree heat with children shouting and following me, which doesn’t happen that often.
After I’ve finished greeting or running, or in the event of not feeling ambitious, I proceed directly to take a shower. Well, I take a bucket bath. In the hot season, this is the high point of the day. In the cold season, this is the low point of the day.
This period of time is also a good time to schedule things like club meetings or other meetings. If you schedule a meeting before four o clock, good luck getting anyone to show up at all, and even then, people usually show up an average of an hour late.

7-9pm.

Somewhere during this time frame, I take a few of my favorite buckets, basins, or jugs out to the water tap and collect my water for the next day. The taps are only open during the evenings and sometimes the early morning due to a conviction that the machinery associated with the water tower will break if they are turned on during the day because it’s too hot. Getting water can take anywhere from fifteen minutes to over an hour because often all the women of the household are getting water at the same time and we have to take turns during the limited time the taps are open. I like it though, because it’s a nice time when a bunch of women can chat and be silly without any men around.
Another important evening event is watching Barbarita, a Venezuelan soap opera that plays every day during the week. I am ashamed to admit that I am addicted to the ridiculous plot lines as much as the kids, neighbors, and grandmothers who all appear at 7:30 to watch it. In my defense, the only other thing to watch on TV is Senegalese ‘theatres,’ low budget productions in which mainly consist of people sitting around on mats talking to each other in Wolof or Pulaar, and frankly, I get enough of that during the normal course of my day to want to watch it for entertainment at night.

9pm.

Dinner. Usually millet and milk (kind of like cold cream of wheat), or sometimes deep fried eggs or some other treat that involves a lot of oil. Occasionally I cook for myself, which almost always means pasta with tomato paste, onions, and eggplant. It’s better than it sounds.

9-10pm.

Hang out with the family some more, especially six year old Molido and her mother, who are usually not around during the day because her mom cooks for the teachers at the elementary school. There is a lot of silliness during this time, usually involving Molida sitting on my legs and pretending I’m a boat, or making faces at each other.

10pm.

Bedtime for me. I set up my bed and mosquito net and get made fun of for going to bed early by my family, but between the heat and the effort of speaking Pulaar all day, I usually can barely keep my eyes open at this point. I fall asleep quickly, and while I used to wake up because of donkeys wandering around the yard in the dead of night, a sheep standing two feet from my head, roosters crowing at any and all hours of the night, and last but certainly not least, the calls to prayer from the mosque next to my house at four in the morning, now I pretty much sleep like the dead until the sun comes to wake me up. Or, you know, if someone starts greeting me through my mosquito net again.

Sounds

2007-09-17T08:23:00.000-07:00

Donkeys braying. Braying sounds like a nice word, but I don't feel it properly conveys the complete pained hysteria the sound actually communicates.

The alarmingly loud (really, deafening) five times daily call to prayer from the mosque across from my house. And when I say five times, I mean seven: sunrise, noon, late afternoon, two evening prayers, and two pre-call-to-prayer calls to prayer at four and five in the morning respectively. Feeling fairly confident that the praying doesn't actually start til sunrise, I've asked a couple people why the mosque blares at four or five in the morning more days than most, and been informed that it's to warn people that sunrise is coming soon. So basically it's like an obscenely loud alarm clock with no snooze button.

Roosters crowing, chickens squawking, goats bleating, sheep baa-ing, packs of dogs barking in the middle of the night (I never hear them in the middle of the day, only at night), lizards skittering across tin roofs, horses and donkeys clip clopping through the courtyard in the dead of night. I really don't think there is any sound more sinister than a donkey clip clopping through the courtyard at three in the morning- especially when you sleep outside on the ground and you wake up thinking the creature is going to step on you. This is only slightly more creepy than waking up in eerie silence to see a sheep staring at you at two in the morning from three feet away from your head.

Music playing. This can be anything from 50 Cent, Youssou Ndour, Celine Dion, to Viviane or Baaba Maal, (in other words rap music to traditional kora cds) at any volume from merely loud (playing it on the radio until the father of the house yells at the boys to turn it down) to blasting (someone renting huge speakers and playing dance music loud enough for the whole village to hear)- there's no level which a normal person would really consider quiet or sedate.

Hot oil sizzling in a pan with onions and garlic.

Children playing; children crying because someone bigger than them is beating them; children insulting each other (I can't translate the things they call each other on a public website for fear of being banned from the site for extreme profanity); children singing the Senegalese national anthem ( and other French songs they've learned in school with various levels of recognizability when it comes to pronunciation); children laughing. Also, if you're white, children shouting 'toubab!'

Wind and accompanying sound of sand blowing over a vast expanse of desert. Multiply that by a factor of a hundred during a sandstorm.

The swish swish of a handheld broom on a cement floor.

The squish squish of washing laundry by hand.

Water from the tap filling a bucket; water poured from the bucket to a large clay pot for cool storage.

Frantic car horn beeping. In Senegal, this does not mean 'Hey, you're driving like a maniac, watch where you're going,' it means, 'Get out of the way right this instant you lowly pedestrians, I'm bigger and faster than you and I have no intention of slowing down for you or that old grandmother carrying a baby on her back and fifty pounds of firewood on her head.'

Snatches of conversation. With me, certain themes tend to repeat themselves- 'Take me to America!,' 'Do you have a husband?,' 'Give me four cents!,' or the ever popular 'Toubab! Toubab!' Otherwise, it can be anything- 'It's very hot today,' 'Aminata had her baby, the baptism is next week,' 'Where's that music coming from? Oh, there's a presentation at the school today.' Above all, greeting, greeting, greeting.

Television playing. If it's a Venezuelan soap opera playing, the children sing along to the theme song. If it's the news, the father tells the children to stop making noise so he can hear. If it's a soccer game or a wrestling match, the entire crowd of thirty people who have gathered to watch it simultaneously jump up and down, shout and scream their heads off when a goal is scored or a winner declared. If it's the American tv show 24 dubbed into French, there are frequent efforts to translate the dialogue into Pulaar. I really don't think I can express how funny it is hearing terrorist plots to destroy nuclear weapons using computer-controlled satellite technology being discussed in Pulaar. Also many comments communicating the Pulaar equivalent to 'Jack Bauer is a badass.' If it's a commercial for condensed milk, the children sing and dance along to the theme song (commericals for powdered milk tend to be quite catchy, and usually feature families dancing while singing about the produce in question).

Cat on a hot tin roof. This isn't a reference to the play; I mean this in the most literal sense. Somehow I don't think Tenessee Williams had as intimate relationship as I do with the incredibly alarming sound of a cat landing on an uninsulated tin roof. The first time this happened, I thought my hut was about to cave in on my head. Does the play talk about the incredibly magnified sound of an animal landing on a tin roof unexpectedly? I could also talk about lizards on a hot tin roof, or pigeons on a hot tin roof.

Jingle bells. Yes, you read that one right. Horses hitched to carts often have bells attached to their bridles to warn people to get out of the way when they hear the cart coming. This has resulted in me turning my head in the middle of the desert and suddenly expecting to see a horse-drawn sleigh pulling up in snow instead of a two-wheeled cart barreling through the sand more times than I can count. Never mind that I've never actually seen a horse-drawn sleigh in real life, so I'm not sure why I continue to have that reaction no matter how many times I hear it.

A group of Koranic students reciting the Koran in the afternoons, huddled around wooden tablets with Arabic script.

Radio playing. News in French, DJ greeting in Pulaar. Among other things.

Women pounding millet and singing along to the rhythm of their pounding.

Mosquitos and flies buzzing, crickets hopping, frogs croaking.

Silence. I think I did hear that once, maybe, in the middle of the night, between the late night chatter, moonlight donkey wanderings, and the competition between the roosters and the mosque for who can make the loudest noise the earliest. But I could be wrong.

Open house

2007-05-12T11:05:00.000-07:00

On Saturday the junior high in my town held an ‘ouverture du foyer,’ which as near as I can figure translates to what we would call an open house. They had tentatively scheduled it for the end of April a month or two ago, but in the end it was somewhat hastily thrown together, left to the last minute because they weren’t sure until the last whether the school would be able to afford to pay for the event. Major expenditures included rental of two tents for shade, a large mat for a stage, beignets and bissap juice or snacks for guests, lunch for about forty invitees, and some of the students, and above all the rental of a major stereo system to beckon the entire village at large to come to see what all the noise was about.

Having been invited by the director of the school and told events would be starting at nine, I foolishly showed up at nine thirty. I had originally planned to show up even later than that, but around nine fifteen, I suddenly started worrying that this was going to be the one time Senegalese people were going to actually show up on time and if I went too late I would miss something important. Turns out I should have followed my instincts and dawdled a bit more, because even after showing up a half hour late I ended up sitting around for two hours having my ears blasted out by Senegalese pop music used playing on giant speakers to herald the townspeople.

Things finally got started a little before eleven thirty. The event commenced with a welcome song by a group of students, followed by a series of short speeches by various guests and officials. There were so many speeches, in fact, that I began to grow worried that all the guests were expected to give one, including me. I hastily began composing a speech in French in my head, hoping I wouldn’t forget to thank the director of the school for inviting me or commit another gaffe like omitting to greet any of the various officials in attendance, but fortunately it didn’t come to that and they proceeded to the student presentations without testing my extemporaneous speech-making skills.

The first presentation was by the English Club, and as I had helped them rehearse for the event, I felt a vested interest in their success. There were two poems and two songs planned and I have to say a group of about fifteen boys spontaneously rushing the stage to dance along with one of their classmates singing that Senegalese favorite, ‘My African Queen,’ narrowly beat out as the highlight a grinning seventeen year old decked out in navy dress pants blazer over a pink and white plaid shirt with a blue and yellow striped tie, topped off with a pair of brown and tan dress shoes, reciting a poem about the weight of the world resting on his shoulders.
The Literature Club followed this act with a theater sketch on the more sober topic of forced marriage. The story centered around a girl whose father wanted her to marry a rich friend of his. She tells him she doesn’t want to marry an old man. She is at the top of her class and doesn’t want to quit school. He threatens to kick her out of the house if she doesn’t do as he says. The girl tells the teachers at her school of her plight and they assure her they will intervene on her behalf, ultimately convincing her father that allowing her to continue her studies will be a good investment for the future- when she finishes school she will be able to get a good job and help support the whole family.

This hopeful ending was undercut by a sad parallel in reality. Two teachers were discussing the theater sketch over lunch and deploring the existence of forced marriages in general when a composed young woman politely interrupted and asked if she might comment. Her situation eerily mirrored the drama played out by the students. She, too, was a top student- in fact, she was one of two students sent to the Sinthiou Garba exposition as representatives of their school in another town. She told us her father wanted her to marry a friend of his in Dakar, and when she refused, he kicked her out of the house; she is now living with her grandmother so she can continue going to school. Her voice was steady throughout this narration, but partway through, tears started spilling down her cheeks, belying her apparent calm.

This was not the first time I have encountered a story like this, but fortunately the other instance I am thinking of had a happier ending. My neighbor, Louga, went crying to her teacher because her family had suddenly sent her to live with her husband, to whom she had been promised since she was a little girl. She told her teacher she did not want to be married yet, she wanted to continue her studies. Her teacher talked to her family, and Louga ultimately came home and went back to school. Even in this case, all hope is not lost- the teachers told her to talk to her school director and ask the teachers at her school to intervene on her behalf. They told her there was a law prohibiting forced marriages enacted specifically to prevent this kind of situation from occurring, so her father is technically legally bound to support her if she chooses to continue her schooling.

Later in the afternoon, as I watched an inter-class academic competition, another skit, and a presentation by the ‘Sinthiou Garba Dance Troupe,’ my mind kept straying to the girl with the poised air and sad story. I find the occurrence of forced marriages and girls being pulled out of school to start having kids at fifteen alarming and upsetting, but the teachers told me it is a dying practice that would soon disappear. I can only hope they are right.

Four toubabs walked into a radio station...

2007-05-01T07:15:00.000-07:00

My friend Kris has been talking about doing a radio show practically since we arrived in Senegal. He had done some work with a radio station in Mali, organizing health-themed soap operas in between commentaries on soccer matches, and was interested in doing something similar. At first I dismissed this as a preposterous scheme (who in their right minds would let random Americans commandeer a Senegalese radio station for two hours every month?), but after a while, word trickled down the Peace Corps pipeline that some of our fellow volunteers started a radio program in the region of Kedougou, down in the southern part of the country. At this point I conceded the idea wasn't quite as absurd as I originally thought, but I remained skeptical. Then my friend Jenni checked around and found out one of her host brothers worked at a local radio station and all of a sudden the whole plan started to sound a lot more feasible.

Kris and Jenni had a preliminary meeting at the radio station and came back discouraged. They hadn't been able to meet with the director of the station, and the man they did meet with wasn't very enthusiastic. I tagged along to the next meeting, though, and we were able to meet with the director at that time. We proposed our idea- an hour long radio program with health lessons, interviews, and short skits, all interspersed with American music to keep it lively. He nodded, and took some notes, but said very little. We blathered on nervously for awhile, and then as we sort of drifted into silence he looked up and said, 'Well, when do you want to start?'

We were a bit taken aback, and completely unprepared for the question. After a hurried consultation, we tentatively proposed a date. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘What time?’ We settled on eleven am (any earlier and it would be difficult for us to get there on time from our respective villages), and asked him if we should come by before the program to run through the details and maybe learn how to work some of the equipment. He seemed unconcerned by the fact that he would be ceding his station to complete novices without a teaspoon of technical savvy or radio know-how between them, and brushed aside our anxious questions as unnecessary. The only thing he wanted to know before we went on the air was what the name of our program was going to be. We all looked at each other in dismay- we hadn’t even thought of that. We drew a collective blank, and told him we’d have to get back to him. (Ultimately, we decided on the uncreative ‘Health Hour.’ I have no defense for this; I can only say it’s marginally better than the other frontrunner, which was ‘Toubab Hour,’ and that it sounds slightly more interesting in Pulaar.).

Ten minutes later we walked out of the station, partly elated, partly dumbfounded. We’d gone in thinking we’d be lucky to lay the groundwork for a preliminary proposal, and then we were essentially handed our own show practically gift-wrapped. We decided to do the first show with just the four of us (here I include our other friend Jane as well as myself and the original two schemers), so we could introduce ourselves and the program, and test out our Pulaar radio skills. Our first show was on that ever-popular health topic, diarrhea, and included a short lesson about oral rehydration solution, and two short skits.

Perhaps not all of you know this about me, but I am afflicted with a particularly bad case of stage fright, which apparently applies even when there is technically no stage involved, as in radio, and is somewhat exacerbated by the thought of performing in Pulaar. I tell you all this by means of saying I was extremely nervous in the time leading up to the broadcast, a feeling which was not improved when all of a sudden eleven o clock snuck up on us and the director checked his watch and announced it was time to go. We all looked at each other slightly panicked. What happened to a few minutes preparation with the equipment? Fortunately, as we were ushered into a small room that serves as the basis of all broadcasts out of Radio Dunyaa, we realized not much technical expertise would be required of us. The four of us were expected to arrange ourselves around two microphones, and everything else would be handled by our technician, Mr. Diop. You’d think that just talking into two microphones wouldn’t be too much to ask from four sophisticated Americans who grew up with the advent of blackberries, palm pilots, and mp3 players, but some of us still managed to have technical difficulties by way of continuously forgetting to speak close enough to the microphone (me).

Before we even got started my nerves were ratcheted up another notch when the clock struck eleven and the director himself sat down in front of the controls and started announcing our show in a positively booming voice. ‘Ringing tones’ doesn’t even begin to cover it- I mean, this guy would put a carnival barker to shame. It wasn’t just his decibel level- he was talking up our show like it was the main event in a three ring circus. I don’t know what I expected (maybe to sneak on the air quietly and hope no one would notice?), but this did nothing to ease my anxiety. Fortunately, Jane relieved me of the responsibility of speaking first at the last minute or we might never have gotten started, but once we got going there was nothing for it but to stop thinking and let the Pulaar roll. The rest of the show went fairly smoothly, and if I flubbed my lines in the skits, at least everyone was kind enough not to mention it.

We did our second show on prenatal consultations, and I took primary responsibility for arranging our first guest stars. I started talking up the idea at my health post right after the first show, trying to get a feel for who might want to be involved, and enthusiastic about having a native speaker or two to relieve the burden of public Pulaar speaking on the air. With that in mind, this time around my nervousness revolved around being a good hostess to my guests. Having been on the receiving end of it quite a bit, I know that hospitality is important to Senegalese people, but I wasn’t quite sure what was expected of me in this particular situation, except I was reasonably certain it would involve orange soda.

Orange soda is the Senegalese equivalent of champagne- crucial at weddings and in honor of esteemed guests. I’m not too sure how this tradition evolved, though it does seem more appropriate for the predominantly Islamic Senegalese- non-alcoholic and much cheaper. And I have to say that on a 115 degree day, given the choice between champagne and a cold orange soda, I would go for orange soda every time. So with my bottle of orange soda in tow, I set out the morning of the broadcast to collect my guests. I was especially eager to make a good impression because it turned out to be much harder to convince people to be on our show than I thought it would be.

The nurse who heads the health post seemed willing enough, but he’s from a different part of the country and only speaks French and Wolof, so we would need another person to translate into Pulaar for him. At first I thought our pharmacist would do it- he’s outgoing and personable, and I thought he would get a kick out of being a guest on a radio show. But the night before night before the show I stopped by to confirm that everything was set, and the pharmacist blythely informed me that he had a meeting scheduled in Matam the next day, which of course he hadn’t mentioned any of the six times previously I’d asked him. I was a bit flummoxed, but the nurse told me he wanted Marie Sow, our head mid-wife, to do it anyway. Naturally, he hadn’t mentioned this plan to Marie.

I had mentioned it to her when I’d first started pitching the idea, but she’d seemed rather lukewarm about the whole thing, so I hadn’t pushed it. Now I had to go to her and essentially beg her to come at the last minute. She wasn’t wild about the idea (apparently Pulaars aren’t immune to the malady of stage fright, either). Eventually she agreed, but only, as she said with a sigh, because I am her daughter-in-law.

Before any of you start making hasty assumptions about what exactly I’ve been up to since coming to Senegal, I should probably explain that this comment was the result of a long-standing joke between the two of us, stemming from her trying to convince me to marry her twenty-five year old son and take him to America and me attempting to deflect the proposition by saying I’d rather marry her other son, a gap-toothed charmer by the name of Ablaye, but that I’d probably better wait a few years as he's only fifteen. She found this hilarious, and started greeting me by saying ‘My daughter-in-law!’ every time she saw me from that point on. I respond by saying, ‘My mother-in-law!’ every time I see her (both are the same word in Pulaar). Anyway, seeing as it ended up security a crucial part of our show, I’ve never been more grateful that I’d promised myself to a fifteen year old. Thank goodness for family connections.

The second show consisted of an interview with our two guest stars designed to inform people of the importance of prenatal consultations and two skits with the same aim. Having local language speakers relieve the burden of producing our own imperfect Pulaar really made the time fly, and everyone seemed happy with how the show went, especially after I treated our guest stars to a nice lunch as a thank you.

The funniest about all of this was the reaction we’ve been getting to the show. After the first show, we were a bit giddy and relieved that we’d gotten through the first performance generally unscathed, but we were completely unprepared for random people to stop us on the street and tell us they liked our program. I guess it wasn’t too much of a stretch for people seeing four white people together coming from the general direction of the radio show, but the following week I was with Marie on the way back, and a woman in the car with us turned around and asked if we were the ones she’d heard on the radio a couple of hours before. I don’t know how Marie felt about it, but I for one found it somewhat disconcerting to be a recognizable radio personality all of a sudden. Then when I got back to my village one of my neighbors told me a friend of his in Diandiolly (a small town 3 kilometers from my town) told him she heard me on the radio station. I was surprised how many people tuned in- of course it probably helps that there are only three stations to choose from, but still.

What I found even more surprising was how enthusiastic people were about the show. I mean, there is the novelty of four white people presenting in Pulaar, but you can only make prenatal consultations so exciting. Part of me still can’t believe this whole radio scheme has actually come together. But overall, people said they really enjoyed the show, and more importantly, understood our Pulaar. I for one was extremely grateful for this assurance (I don’t care if people are lying to my face, as long as they are saying nice things).

I’ve had a lot of unexpected experiences in Peace Corps, but I have to say, becoming a radio celebrity pretty much takes the cake.

Democracy on the ground... and in the sand.

2007-04-02T04:52:00.000-07:00

So, the president of Senegal came to my village recently. Well, technically he stopped in the middle of the road through my village on the way to a bigger town. Still, he did stop, and stuck his head out of the top of his car and spoke to the crowd that turned up for ten minutes or so. I saw him from about twenty feet away, along with a child on each hip and the hundreds of other people lined up alongside the road after waiting for him for two hours in the heat of the afternoon, with no shade, no less. I was seriously doubting my sanity for undertaking such a foolish enterprise, and for forgetting a hat, but on come on, how often does the president of Senegal come to your village? I couldn't miss it.

This appearance came in the midst of a series of two months of political campaigning leading up to the presidential elections, which in Senegal occur every seven years, although beginning with this election, the term limit will be reduced to five years. Abdoulaye Wade, the current president, has been in office since 2000. Before that, Abdou Diouf was president for nineteen years, and he was preceded by Leopold Senghor, who became Senegal's first president when Senegal gained independence from French colonial rule in 1960. For all that history indicates Senegalese voters don't place a high value on variety, this election boasted at least fifteen candidates, including Wade's former prime minister Idrissa Seck and Louis Jacques Senghor, the first President Senghor's grandson. Admittedly, most Senegalese people were only familiar with a handful of the many candidates who put their names forward, but this didn't seem to deter the hopefuls, who arranged rallies and spoke of their leadership ambitions on Senegal's public television station.

A democratic system wherein the primary means for candidates to communicate with the electorate is via state-run television is rather dubious, but the time allotted for election coverage was divided scrupulously evenly among the candidates, although each candidate had to pay an obscene amount of money for the privilege of a few minutes on the air. On the other hand, practicality demands American politicians be rich as well, so criticism on that point is perhaps hypocritical until we can solve the problem of equal political access in our own country, and our free press can't make any great claims to equal election coverage as long as coverage is biased in favor of sensationalism rather than an inclination to provide all candidates with an equal say.

The most interesting thing about all this political campaigning has been the conversations I've had with prospective voters. One day I was traveling to a northern town some distance away and the trip was taking even longer than normal due to the road being torn up for a construction project and I was surprised to hear an elderly man sigh in French, 'Ah, Afrique-- on sait construire, mais on ne sait pas maintenir. (Oh, Africa-- we know how to build, but we don't know how to maintain.)' This comment set off a political discussion in which the entire car participated. I expressed my pleasure that this construction was taking place at all- despite the fact that it was making my journey that day longer, if it got finished, it would undoubtedly make future travels smoother. However, the others did not share my optimistic outlook. 'Political promises!' another man said dismissively. 'The government has been saying they will fix this road for seven years- they are only fixing it now because the elections are coming.' The connection had not occured to me, but this was not the only time I heard allusions to spectacular political promises.

On the television I was hearing promises so outlandish even I, a stranger to the political realities of Senegalese governance, recognized them as unpracticable. Promises to build fancy schools and hospitals, to bring peace and prosperity to the troubled Casamance region. Though these promises were greeted by cheers by people attending the political rallies at which they were made (incidentally a major form of entertainment for the otherwise sleepy social lives of Senegalese people in rural areas), others remained unsurprised and unconvinced by these claims. When I mentioned the elections to two friends of mine, young mothers at their hut, trying to guage whether they intended to vote or not, I was greeted by a tirade about corruption and false promises that took me somewhat aback coming from two seemingly unworldly, uneducated women. They, at least, did not seem to be under any illusions about the nature of these promises, and their complaints were not the only ones I heard.

Knowing the current president was the favorite to win by a long shot, I was also interested to learn how many varying opinions existed even within one family over who would be the best person to lead their country in the years to come. I admit I'm guilty of assuming that in such a patriarchal society the women would likely follow their husband's lead when it came to political affairs, but that was proven to be a fiction formed by my own prejudice rather than basis in fact. Perhaps in other families I might have been closer to the mark, but in my family, at least one of the wives expressed her intention to vote for the president's leading opponent, who was primarily responsible for developing the town of Thies, where the family had lived twenty years, into one of the largest cities in Senegal. The assertion of this candidate's superiority was contradicted by my aunt, saying the only reason Thies had gotten so nice was because this guy had stolen money from the government meant for all into one town. The third wife, who never lived in Thies with the rest of the family, preferred the president, saying simply, 'He fixed Senegal. He brought the roads, and schools. Life is easier now.' This seemed to be the prevailing opinion among most of the people I talked to, and I suppose it makes sense for people who have so little not to care for comlex political rhetoric, and instead reserve judgment for evidence of a measurable impact on their lives.

Another aspect that intrigued me about the whole election process was the problem of voting when such a large portion of the population is illiterate. This especially concerned me in regards to women- in a country where women have little power, it seemed of the utmost importance that they should vote for whoever they thought served their best interests. I was also worried about whether women would be inclined to vote at all, especially the older ones who'd had little access to education. However, on the day of the election, I was pleasantly surprised to see women lined up outside classrooms at the elementary school waiting in the sun for their turn to vote, many of whom I knew could not read or write. The solution was revealed to me when the women of my household returned from voting and children squabbled over who would get the left over palm-sized sheets of paper printed with the names and pictures of the candidates the voter did not choose- these sheets, also printed with each candidate's signature color as another cue for those voters who couldn't read, served as easily distinguishable ballots for every one involved.

I heard references of political corruption from several different people, but from what I can tell, Senegal suffers much less from that particular affliction than most other African nations- not that that's saying much. But whatever the complaints, I was impressed by the turnout in my little town, and it's hard to feel too discouraged about the state of democracy when a student travels over twelve hours in a hot, cramped car to go to his hometown to exercise his right to vote, or a group of people pile onto a cart hitched to a skinny horse to drive miles through the desert to cast their ballots.

Strange things that now seem normal

2007-01-16T08:59:00.001-08:00

Running water only being available for a few selected hours in the evenings. Also, having to carry said water on my head fifty yards from the outdoor tap to store in my room for the next day.
Sweeping my bedroom multiple times a day. Yes, there's that much sand.
Four year olds playing with sheep poop and knives and no one telling them to stop.
Traveling by horse and cart.
My WASPy self being a one in ten thousand minority.
Getting a flat tire pretty much every single time I go out on my bike due to thorns.
The back of my neck being sweaty for six months and counting.
Gorgeous men telling me that I'm beautiful and that they love me. Also not so gorgeous men. Both within five minutes of meeting me.
Me finding men more and more attractive the longer they go without asking me to marry them. Basically, a twisted kind of truth to the adage about playing hard to get.
Being woken up at four in the morning every day for the call to prayer, and again at six. Still no idea why they do this twice. Four am is by no means sunrise.
The village chief asking me if I have diarrhea.
My sisters cooking for me and helping me wash my clothes (and by helping, I mean doing 95 percent of the work.
Washing clothes by hand.
Eating rice and fish for lunch every single day of the week.
Being followed down the street by as many as thirty children any given time I step out of my house.
Finding the theme music to the soap opera 'Passions' oddly comforting because it reminds me of America. ( i.e., it's in English).
The fact that young men's primary social activity revolves around drinking tea in the afternoon. Also, that people drink tea out of shot glasses. It's pretty strong stuff.
Women of various ages whom I may or may not know patting my ass and commenting on my jayfonde (see previous post re: ghetto booty).
Knowing that when I hear people speak some unintelligible dialect that doesn't resemble any language I've ever heard, they are probably trying to speak English.
My feet always, always being dirty.
Being woken up in the middle of the night and told I have to move my bed and mosquito net inside because a sandstorm is coming.
Women sweeping the yard every single day. Note the yard is entirely composed of sand.
My bedroom being frequented by sheep, chickens, frogs, and locusts, though generally not all at the same time.
Waking up in the middle of the night hearing ominous footsteps only to find that is an escaped donkey wandering around the yard. Also waking up in the middle of the night to see a sheep two feet from my head. I should probably mention that I sleep outside three quarters of the year.
People being more scandalized by knees than breasts. To the extent that if I see a girl in a knee length skirt, I catch myself thinking, 'I can't believe her mother lets her out of the house like that.'
Me thinking a plant whose primary gesture to foliage is two inch long thorns is a nice shade tree.
People using rocks for hammers and a rusty nails for can openers.
The omnipresence of sand.
Sleeping six inches away from ten of my ten of my closest family members. Specifically, my bed being placed between my sister and one of my moms, both of whom often sleep without a shirt, so it is not unusual for me to wake up with an eyeful of breast first thing in the morning.
Living in a place where the language has four different words for thorn.
Polygamy in general, and specifically me beginning a sentence with, 'Well, one of my three moms said...,' not referring to my real mom. Also people asking me if I want to be their co-spouse.
Tye dyed fabric being fashionable among distinguished citizens.
Sitting on mats more often than chairs.
Sweeping frog poop out of my bathroom.
Being able to identify frog poop in the first place.
The epitome of hospitality being being given a plastic chair to sit in and served orange soda.
Falling asleep surrounded by as many as 60 people who have come to watch TV in the front yard.
Being asked if I'm afraid of odd things. For example, am I afraid to have my hair braided? Except the way people ask if you're afraid of something is to ask if you have courage to do something. Yes, I have courage to have my hair braided. I just don't think white girl dreds would be a good look for me.
Being heckled by passers-by every time I wash my clothes. Just because I don't make that special squishing noise doesn't mean the clothes are any less clean, people.
Normally placid babies screaming in terror at the sight of me. Also, the parents of said babies telling them if they don't stop crying, the toubab is going to beat them.
Knowing that if I ask a question, I'll have to figure out when I hear the response whether the person is a) laying to me to get something from me, b) lying to me to mess with me, c) lying to me in a joking way that just goes over my head, d) lying to test me, e) lying to me for some inscrutable reason of their own, f) lying to me to be polite (no, I'm not hungry. Never mind that I've been working in the fields all day, you just go ahead and eat that whole bowl of food by yourself), g) lying to me because they are embarrassed to tell the truth, or h) telling the truth.
Me telling my friend Jenni when we were lost in the desert with no water, 'Don't worry, we'll just go greet the people in the first house we see; if we wait five minutes they'll order some little kid to go get us water.' Sure enough, that's exactly what happened. They even asked us to stay for lunch.
Knowing I can walk into the home of complete strangers and hang out there the entire day if I'm so inclined.
Everyone I see from the moment I step out the door demanding to know where I'm going.
People I could swear I've never seen before calling me by name when we pass in the street like we're old friends.
Being so accustomed to being called Aissata Lo that if a Senegalese person calls me by my real name it honestly freaks me out a little bit.
People loudly protesting any time I try to leave to go anywhere. 'Don't go, stay for lunch.' This at 9 in the morning. If I stayed for lunch, it would be 'Stay for tea.' If I stayed for tea, it would be, 'Stay for dinner.' If I stayed for dinner it would be, 'You can't go now, it's dark. Spend the night.'
The high proportion of sheperds in the composition of the work force.
Being asked within the first two minutes of meeting someone if I know how to till fields.
The most universal joke in Senegal revolving around someone saying, 'You know this guy? He eats beans!' and then laughing hysterically. I've figured out by this point that saying someone eats beans means they're poor, but I still don't understand why that's so funny.
Machetes being a common household item. Also scythes.
People chopping wood in flip flops with a dull axe. And when I say people I mean six year olds and grandmothers.
Everyday use of a mortar and pestle.
People reacting as though I'm withering on the vine when they learn I'm not married at the old age of twenty four. When I told one lady I was too young to get married she looked at me, puzzled, and said, 'You have breasts, don't you?'
The complete non-existence of garbage cans and consequent littering of trash, well, pretty much everywhere.
Children not knowing their birthdays or knowing how old they are.
People offering to give me their babies. Also, sometimes their husbands.

*Normal things that now seem strange- carpet, grass, bathroom sinks, and socks.

Peace Corps Community

2006-12-22T04:58:00.000-08:00

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

2006-11-20T06:29:00.000-08:00

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?

2006-11-07T04:26:00.000-08:00

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

2006-09-13T11:33:00.000-07:00

*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

2006-08-07T08:24:00.000-07:00

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

2006-07-10T04:16:00.000-07:00

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?

2006-06-27T06:25:00.000-07:00

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

2006-06-27T06:18:00.000-07:00

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

2006-05-24T08:15:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-04-23T10:52:00.000-07:00

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:

2006-04-10T12:25:00.000-07:00

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?

2006-04-03T11:58:00.000-07:00

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

2006-03-26T03:38:00.000-08:00

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

2006-03-14T19:00:00.000-08:00

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

2006-03-05T11:13:00.000-08:00

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!