American Gosi

Most evenings one of my host sisters or host moms will make gosi, a kind of rice porridge, to feed all the little kids (and me, sometimes) before dinner, since they often fall asleep early. I've had really bland, unappealing gosi at other people's houses, usually for breakfast, but the stuff that my host family makes is really good, almost like African rice pudding. 

The bland kind is thin and saline, made with just rice, water, and salt, and people usually eat it when they don't have enough money to add anything else. My host family is well-off enough to be able to make good, nutritious gosi, which is nice for me and great for the kids. My host sisters like to make gosi tiga, which is sweetened rice porridge with ground peanuts. The peanuts they use aren't roasted, so the flavor is mild, very unlike the roasted peanut buttery taste we're used to with American peanuts. The peanut meal thickens the porridge, giving it a rich, slightly nutty taste, as well as a big protein boost. My host family also likes to add kosam, a yogurt-ish sour milk, or a big scoop of powdered milk if they have some on hand to make it heartier and to add vitamins and protein; my host sister Mariama Kesso (whose daughter Fatou is the adorable chubby baby is so many of my photos) is fond of telling me that milk is a complete food, and that it's good for kids and mothers. 

So, my host sisters kept giving me these wonderful warm mugs of gost tiga in the evenings and I decided that I should try to make an Americanized version, something akin to rice pudding. I bought some rice, sugar, powdered milk, and brought raisins, vanilla sugar, and cinnamon in from the toubab store in Kédougou and told Kesso that I wanted help making American gosi . She thought that this was funny (watching me cook is endlessly entertaining) and everyone was curious - there are so many people on my compound (around 30 at last count) that I've never really tried to cook anything for everyone before. We boiled the water and added all the ingredients, let it simmer, and it thickened up nicely. Even though they made fun of the raisins a little (someone said they looked like "little goat poops") they liked it and ate it all. Raisins aren't available in my village and there doesn't seem to be a Pular word for them, so people kept calling them "little dates," which is pretty close. The Senegalese are known for having a big sweet-tooth and tend to really love dates, especially during Ramadan, since they're said to have been one of the Prophet's favorite foods. It went over really well, and made me want to cook more often. 

I also tried out adding a couple packets of Maple & Spice instant oatmeal to another batch of American gosi , but people were not into that. They were really polite about it, but apparently the maple flavor tasted weird and savory to them, like I'd added bullion or something. I was more than happy to keep that bowl for my breakfast, but it made me think about acquired tastes, and how strange it must be to try a new taste when you've only ever eaten from a very limited range of flavors.

Host sisters Kesso and Diabou

It was fun to cook with Kesso, and nice to share something American with my Senegalese family -- I told them that sometimes in America my mom and my grandma make rice pudding/American gosi, and they really liked that they were eating something that my family in America also eats. I think that I might get more ambitious and try making American-style spaghetti one of these days. It would be a mess to try to eat with a spoon, but since spaghetti noodle and onion sauce sandwiches are an accepted breakfast food I'm pretty sure that everyone would like it well enough. 

Baby Party

At the end of every month there is a Growth Monitoring (AKA Baby-Weighing) and Vaccination Day at the Salémata Health Center, and it is pretty much my favorite thing in village. It wasn't that way at first, though. The first few times I helped out the whole thing was so hectic (between 30 and 60 women usually show up with their children) and confusing that it really wasn't very enjoyable. I didn't understand the register system or how to fill out the Health Booklets, the babies' names all sounded like gibberish, the mix of Pulaar and French was disorienting, and there didn't seem to be an established order for who got to go first.  Over time I learned how the registers work, got to know people's names, and became comfortable enough to make start making little changes to help things run more smoothly, like carring over tables so that we weren't filling out the registers and booklets on our knees.

Overall, though, it was really heartening to see how much people in Salémata care about vaccinating their babies and making sure that their kids aren't underweight. The chaotic as they can be, Baby-Weighing Days are very well established and the Health Center staff are committed making sure they happen every month. When moderately malnourished (Yellow Zone) children do turn up (which they inevitably do) a midwife or relais consults with them, and helps provided largely by WorldVision, UNICEF, Catholic Relief Services (CRS) and the local Health Committee. If a child is severely malnourished (Red Zone) then they're admitted into the Health Center for therapeutic feeding. 

Here are the relais community health workers in charge of baby-weighing, as well as my host sister Mariama having her daughter weighed. (She was totally in the Green Zone.) 

Basically my role is to enter everything into the Health Center's registers, fill out new Health Booklets,  try to make sure things are moving along, and to smile and greet everyone. The staff has (somewhat) jokingly referred to me as the secretary on more than one occasion, which is fine by me. The Health Center already has local health workers who give shots and put toddlers on the scale and so I'm most useful when I make myself busy making things more organized and less hectic.

Here a visiting German gap-year student who stayed at the Catholic Mission for a couple months came to help out, and my friend (and same-name tokora) Adama took a photo of me holding a stack of Health Booklets.

Vaccinations Winding Down for the Day

Post-Elections

So, after a lovely vacation, some time at the office in Dakar, and a visit to Thies to meet the new group of Health Volunteers (who seem really great) during their Pre-Service Training, I'm finally back in Kedougou. It's been a busy month so I have a bit of catch-up to do, and it seems like the best place to start is with the elections, which are totally over now.

There was some unrest in parts of the bigger cities during the first campaign period, so everyone was a little nervous about how things would play out, but much to our relief the first round of elections in February went very, very smoothly. The now-former president, Abdoulaye Wade, had rigged things so that he could run for a third six-year term (which is completely unconstitutional) and many people were understandably upset by this. The first round of elections narrowed the field down to two candidates, Wade and Macky Sall, for the second runoff election in March. The BBC covered the Senegal elections, the election run-off, and the April 2nd swearing-in of President Macky Sall. It's been an interesting time for Senegal, and I'm really glad that the elections went smoothly. Guinea's troubled transition to civilian rule in 2010 and last month's coup in Mali really make me appreciate how valuable - and difficult - it can be to hang on to stability and peaceful political transitions.

Supporters of President Macky Sall

MegaUpdate: January 2012 Edition

It’s been a busy few weeks (month?) over here. I kind of can’t believe it’s February. I knew (in general and in Peace Corps) about the whole time-speeds-up thing, but it still feels surreal.

In any case, January kicked off with a scramble to get our Work Zone stuff all squared away (basically everyone in and around Salémata told me what they’ve been up to lately and I wrote up a report), getting things together for a potential latrine project, and working on visual aids for nutrition causeries (health talks) at the Salémata Health Center.

Then, along with a few other PCVs, I headed up to Thiès for the Gender and Development (GAD) conference and Work Zone Coordinator meetings, followed by our All-Volunteer Conference (All-Vol). The idea behind All-Vol is that all of the PCVs from Senegal get together with delegations of PCVs from other West African countries (Mali, Guinea, the Gambia) to talk about projects and plans and chat it up about Peace Corps stuff. I had a good time, it was great to see other people from my training stage and to hear about what it’s like living in other parts of West Africa.

After All-Vol it was time to head up to Dakar to get ready for the West Africa Invitational Softball Tournament (W.A.I.S.T.). There are two categories of teams at W.A.I.S.T., those that play in the Competitive League (for people who play softball regularly, know the rules, and own gloves and bats and things) and those who are in the Recreational League (for people who are more concerned with having good costumes). 

My friend Rachel is on the International School’s Faculty Team, so she had to play against us, and we had a little Logger reunion – there are currently at least five University of Puget Sound graduates in Senegal, and all of them were on W.A.I.S.T. teams this year. 

Loggers: Rachel, me, Mac, Mika, Emily. 

After all the softball madness I spent a couple days hanging out poolside at my friends Rachel & Emily’s wonderful bungalow, playing with their cats and talking about babies – baby blankets, baby names, baby nannies, baby showers, baby onesies… It was adorable and Leah would have loved it. Then I had Peer Support Counselor Training at the Peace Corps main office in Dakar, which went well. A lot of other PC programs have peer counseling systems and I think it’s a really good thing to have for PCV support. After that wrapped up there were enough of us heading back from Dakar to fill up a sept-place back to Kédougou.

Peer Support Counselors 2012
(I'm top left, with the tall kids.)

Once I was back in Kédougou I went back to village for a few days, and it was really nice to sleep in my own bed, hang out with my host family (baby Fatou is getting so big!) and help out at the monthly baby-weighing stuff and vaccination day at the Salémata Health Center.

And then I got strep throat. 

Good-Luck Noodles

Tatiana was kind enough to host us for a little New Year’s Eve celebration in Ethiolo, the Bassari village where she lives. Two of the new agricultural PCVs joined us for deep fried shrimp chips and vanilla-sugar beignets, super-oily-but-still-delicious spaghetti noodles, and movie night. 

We watched The Gods Must Be Crazy (which apparently none of us had remembered clearly) with Tat’s host family while one of her host brothers (who’d watched it before with Jimmy, the beloved local Canadian missionary/tooth puller) did the translating into Bassari.

After that we went back to Tat’s hut to cheers with some sparkling white wine (imported specially from the supermarket in Dakar) and watch The Hangover. The movie ended right at midnight (according to my netbook, anyway) which was neat and also maybe the latest that I have ever stayed up in village. (I’m pretty sure my village thinks I’m really boring.)

It was delicious, entertaining, a lovely evening and a good end to a good year. 

The Castle Gets Weirder

The castle of Salémata is owned by a very creepy old French man who I suspect can't go back to Europe because of his InterPol rap sheet. Here are some updates of the slow, bizarre progression of the construction of what I hear is supposed to be a "tourism restaurant and safari bar." (Keep in mind that donkeys are the most terrifying big game animal in village.) 

Spring 2011

Summer 2011

Fall 2011

Plant Life

What is this plant? I saw it in Tamba and I've asked around a little bit. I have no idea, but it looks like some sort of edible citrus-type-thing.

These are my favorite tall-grass-type-plants (obviously I'm not an Ag volunteer) because they remind me of something out of Dr. Seuss. The grow all around the now-dried-up cornfield behind my house.

This is a big baobab near my compound - I'm pretty sure that big branch blew off one really windy night not long ago. They call baobab bohe "bow-hey" in Pular and pain-des-singes "monkey's-bread" in French. Once the big, fuzzy, Christmas-ornament-like pods dry out people collect them, break them open, pound and sift the dry fruit pulp, and use the sweet, tangy powder to enrich porridges or make a thick, sweet nectar that people like to mix with bissap hibiscus juice on special occasions. 

More Notes on Camp

The radio show This American Life has an excellent episode called Notes on Camp, and it's totally work a listen.

Here are a few more photos from youth camp:

Tatiana running a Marketing activity for selling
 locally made bug repellent and the weekly village market.

Host Sisters: Mariama Gaulo and Adama

Eric & I, exhausted from teaching First Aid. 

Also, doorways here tend to be really low, and everyone hits their heads pretty frequently. One evening Patrick, one of my Peace Corps neighbors, hit his head one time too many (he had a couple scrapes on his scalp that were actually bleeding a little bit) and went and got his bike helmet. That night was also spaghetti night, and they ran out of utensils at dinner (usually we'd get spoons to eat with) so some of us wound up eating with our hands. It was a total mess, and also almost pants-wettingly funny. Almost.

Patrick, Meghan, & Tatiana

Meghan and me, eating spaghetti with our hands

Tatiana and Patrick on Spaghetti Night

You can tell who sat where by how much pasta
 was left on the floor afterwards. (Those are my toes.)

All in all, I'm lucky to be in a region with such awesome and entertaining people; even when things got hectic and confusing (which happens a lot when cultures and schedules and languages collide) we still managed to have a lot of fun.

Also, just for the record, my summer camp, Camp Unalayee, is still the best summer camp of all time.

Work Stuff: Baseline Survey and Potential Work Projects

Before I begin working on any projects in my village I have to do a Baseline Survey and lay out an Action Plan for my service. There are three main neighborhoods in Salémata and the Quartier Mosqué, my neighborhood, has approximately 61 family compounds. So far I've  taken my survey questionnaire around to almost all the compounds in my neighborhood and a few in the other two neighborhoods, and people have been really helpful and receptive. I did my survey in Pulaar, and I asked things like how many people live on the compound, where they get water, if there's a latrine, and about the communities health challenges and resources. I'm currently setting up an Excel spreadsheet and getting ready to enter in all that data -- sometimes life in Africa exactly as exciting as life in any office in America.

Once I get all my baseline data organized and sorted out I'll have a better idea of what projects I'll propose in my Action Plan, but here are a few things I could work on that people I interviewed suggested:

Latrines: It's nice to have a toilet, even if it's a pit toilet, and many people here do not. Diarrheal diseases, like amoebic dysentery, are a major cause of suffering and death here, and a lack of latrines contributes heavily to that problem.

Malaria: Malaria is still a huge problem here and I'll definitely be working on finding ways to reduce malaria in my village. Having a training on making neem lotion, and to teach others to make it, There are Long-Lasting Insecticide-treated Nets, indoor spraying,

Reproductive Health: From basic human anatomy to ways to prevent infections to reliable family planning options, there's a need for accurate information about reproductive health, especially for young people. There are many people who have a lot of good knowledge about health, but here's also a lot of misinformation out there - for instance, I've had several people tell me that pregnant women shouldn't eat foods rich in vitamins because it will make the baby too big and cause difficulties during childbirth, which is both untrue and potentially very harmful to mothers and children.

Nutrition: From underweight babies to iodine deficiency, there are a lot of food and nutrition issues in my area. Promoting moringa gardens, use of iodized salt, and having workshops on basic nutrition and how to make simple enriched porridges to help malnourished kids recuperate are a few examples of potential projects.

Here's some more info on the Preventative Health work that Peace Corps Volunteers do in Senegal:

• Malaria
• Preventing HIV with Youth Theater
• Community Latrine Projects
• Moringa

Postcards

These are actually photos of postcards. Everyone in Peace Corps/Senegal calls these large vans "Alhams," short for "Alhamdoulilahi," which I'm pretty sure means "Thanks to God" in Arabic. Many Senegalese people call them "Njig Njai" because a guy named Njai owns a large percentage of Senegal's large van fleet, and he had his name painted across the front of most of them. If I have other options (Sept-Place station wagons, certain buses, my bike) I usually avoid Alhams. They're slow, usually totally overcrowded, and break down a lot.

An Alham, Njig Njai, oto on, un mini-bus, etc 

There are traditional Bassari villages in my area, and Initiations happened in May. I went to part of one right before I installed in my site and took some pictures, but this one's really nice. It's an impressive event, even though I was only allowed to watch the dancing part, not the stylized fighting part.

Bassari men in Initiation masks

Packages!

My birthday was over a month ago, but with all the power outs, flooded roads, and finicky cell phone reseau it's been hard to get online lately, so I haven't had a chance to gush about all the great mail I got last month.

I got an amazing package from Switzerland!

The girls I used to nanny for made me some beautiful drawings and a really wonderful calendar -- it was a lovely gift, and it's going to be great to have all these photos up in my hut:

I got some pretty sweet cards and letters. 

My American family sent me this fantastic package...

... and this lovely new sunhat!

I was particularly excited about the hat, the fruit leathers, and the gel pen that was filled with glue. A glue pen! So good! It works really well, too.

This package from Troll wasn't technically birthday related,
but it was really, really awesome. 

Slightly Famous

This is pretty much everything I own.

So, about three weeks ago, as I was loading this pile of gear into the Land Cruiser to go out and get installed in Salémata, the village where I will live for the next two years, and the driver says "Hey, Adama! I saw you on TV!"

It turns out that RTS, a very popular Senegalese television network, had aired a bit on the Peace Corps and included a short French interview with me from our swearing-in ceremony the week before, and even though there aren't very many TVs in Salémata, it seemed like everyone had seen it. The Peace Corps driver, my host family, the neighbors, my counterparts, the entire Salémata Health Center staff...

It is a singular and mildly surreal thing to spend the same morning moving into a little hut and having a dozen little conversations about how yes, that was me on television last night.

Teeth.

So today I am in Dakar because I had a dentist appointment, and it went really well. Last week I bit down hard on a little rock that was mixed in with the rice and fish and veggie bits, and my tooth has been slightly sore ever since. It seemed like a good idea to have someone take a look at it before I install in Salémata, since from there it's a two-day trek to get back up to Dakar and the Peace Corps dentist.

Luckily, the dentist took a look, tapped around a bit and told me that my tooth had taken a big shock (with the enormous power of the jaws) and that the ligament had a little inflammation, but as long as I leave it to rest for awhile it should be fine. He put some cinnamon-tasting stuff on it, told me to have a bonne installation, and sent me on my way, much reassured. 

Ça va la tête?

I've been very into hat-wearing lately (since my part burns horribly if I don't) and it's been working out really well except for the how the brim sometimes interferes with my peripheral vision. Last week, on my way to the village health post with Hilary (my fellow Health stagière) I walked under a sign. Or, I would have, but I couldn't see that I was slightly taller than the bottom of the sign, and I smacked my head on it. Pretty hard. And once Hilary had verified that I hadn't given myself a concussion she laughed and laughed and laughed, and I though that was the end of it. 

Then, yesterday afternoon, in a different part of town, we were walking back from class and a guy I don't know called out hello and then asked "Ça va la tête?" which means "How's your head?" and also "What is wrong with you?!" I must have looked confused, because he continued in French, said "Don't you remember when you hit your head? You hit it really hard, did you forget?"

I had not forgotten (apparently no one else has either) and Hilary got to have another good laugh.