The Home Stretch

During my Pre-Service Training (PST) time crawled by so slowly, each day seeming longer and more sweltering than the one before. Twenty-seven months seemed to stretch off into infinity, a boggling amount of time. Now, a year and a half later, my Close-of-Service (COS) conference is coming up on the horizon and it feels like the earth has sped up; the weeks are just flying by. It isn't really a surprise (pretty much everyone I talked to about Peace Corps mentioned this phenomenon) but it's still somehow slightly shocking, like when a good friend's baby is suddenly starting kindergarten.

It make sense that this happens; at first everything, even the most innocuous small-talk, was a struggle and daily life was both exhausting and filled with huge blocks of unoccupied hours. I'm busy now, with work projects and to-do lists and mundane chores and Peace Corps responsibilities and social calls and vacation ideas, and even though I have so many more things I want to do while I'm here it's starting to feel like COS-ing is just around the corner. It's not bad, it's mostly pleasant to be busy, it's just a little strange to be most of the way through a thing that once seemed like it was going to last such a long time. Now that I really feel at home here it's time to start thinking about going home there. Funny how that works. 

Demystification & Installation

During Pre-Service Training (PST) the Peace Corps Trainees (PCTs) get to go on a Volunteer Visit (VV) to see the villages where they'll be living and serving for two years. Every region (and even every site) is very different, and it's really good to get a basic idea of what it's like there. Is there a water spigot or will you be hauling water from a well across town? Are there mango trees or just thorn bushes? Does the village have a baker and boutiques or nothing at all in the way of places to buy snacks? The PCT gets to sort of shadow a current Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) for a few days, and hopefully that helps demystify the whole life-in-village thing a little bit.

I took PCT Katie O. out to her village, and it went really, really well. She'll be the first volunteer ever to serve in her village, and people seemed genuinely excited and really, really, really nice. They fed us wonderful food, (fonio! chicken and sauce!) showed us around town, and were just generally really hospitable. There's a baker, some boutiques, a bean sandwich lady, lovely community gardens, a couple good hand-pump forages for water, and her hut and latrine were mostly finished.

Katie (the PCT) and myself

Getting ready to bike the rest of the way in 

Yesterday, accompanied by Mamadou Diaw (basically the boss for Health PCVs in Senegal), we went back to install Katie in her village. The traditional village chief gave a welcome speech; the head nurse from the Health Post gave a welcome speech; Mamadou gave a speech about Peace Corps, likening a PCV to a knife, which cannot cut by itself, urging the community to be patient with language, and thanking them for their overwhelming hospitality. Her hut and latrine were all ready to go, her family had built her a little fenced in garden, and the entire community had prepared a huge arrival party in her honor. Dioula ("joo-la"), her sister and village namesake, had had matching complet outfits made, they gave her earrings and a necklace, the school children had prepared a song-and-dance in her honor, and the griot musicians and the older women all sang and danced -- it was an amazing party, above and beyond what most villages put together, and it was completely heartwarming. 

Katie (the PCV!) and her tokora

I tried to stay in the background, taking photos and greeting as many people as possible, playing the photographer and mostly taking pictures with her camera. After the first round of singing and dancing there was a parade through the village, which was funny because there was next to no one to to see the parade, since everyone was in the parade, but it was fun. 

Parade through the village of Dakateli

After all that the party continued, but they pulled us aside to feed us lunch. We were presented with the biggest bowl of rice I've ever seen, and a small vat of rich, wonderful sauce with two entire chickens chopped up in it. It was all very reassuring -- when a community invests this much time, effort, energy in making the PCV feel welcome, included, and well cared for it bodes well for everyone. Not that it isn't exhausting and overwhelming or that village life won't be incredibly challenging in many ways, but it's a very good start.

Dancing and singing for the new arrival

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

Newbies!

In Peace Corps/Senegal trainees (or stagières, if you want to get all French about it) arrive and are trained according to their sectors, and there are three Pre-Service Training (PST) groups each year. The Preventative Health Education (HE) and the Environmental Education (EE) people train together, the Small Enterprise Development (SED) and Eco-Tourism (Eco T) people train together, and all the Agriculture (Ag) people  - Sustainable (Sus Ag), Urban (Urban Ag), and Agro-Forestry (Ag Fo) - train together.

I arrived, along with the rest of my HE/EE stage, as a Peace Corps Trainee (PCT) in March 2011, and was officially upgraded to Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) status at our Swear-In ceremony in May.  Since then, one stage of new SED/Eco T volunteers has sworn in, but none of them were assigned to come down to Kédougou, so within our own region the rest my stage and I were still the newest people. That is, until the arrival of the new Ag PCTs. Over the weekend seven new Ag trainees came down to Kédougou for Volunteer Visits, or demyst, from “demystification,” when the trainees get to visit the sites where they’ll be living as volunteers, see current PCVs working, using public transport, going to the market, and so on. The PCTs are down here for a few days and then they go back up to Thiès to finish PST, and then after they swear in they’ll come back as PCVs to install at their sites.

We’re getting two new volunteers near Salémata, where I live. I’m sad to see the old PVCs go, but I’m also really stoked about the new kids (one of whom is actually older than me) because they seem pretty awesome.

For demysts in Kédougou it’s tradition that the current PCVs cook a big dinner for the visiting PCTs, and even though we were almost out of gaz (propane, I think) for the stove it all came together pretty well. We made Mexican-ish food: salsa fresca, cabbage salad (Kédougou been out of lettuce for a couple months now), a cauldron of beans, some fajita-style meat and onions, and we even splurged on some hyper-expensive cheese (pseudo-emmental, the only kind available) to grate up and sprinkle on top. My favorite part was the giant batch of tortillas that Lili, our good friend from the Jane Goodall Institute/Spain made. Delicious.

The PCTs arriving for demyst made everyone in my stage realize that we’re not the new kids anymore. We found ourselves wondering if just a few months ago we looked so clean (we did) and so eager (we did) and so mildly disoriented (we did) - it’s a funny feeling, meeting what basically amounts to a version of yourself from the very recent past. In any case, I’m really happy with the new Salémata volunteers! If all goes well they should be installing in early November, right before Tabaski. 

Flashback: Site Assignments

I just came across these photos from our site assignments, during Pre-Service Training. They gave us blindfolds and had us line up...

... and then, while blindfolded, lead us out onto a giant map of Senegal, stood us each on our respective villages, and then told us all to take off our blindfolds at the same time, so we could see who our neighbors would be.

It was a fun, very summer-camp-ish way of going about the whole site announcement thing.

Volunteer Status

Yesterday we went to the Ambassador's Residence (which is a very fancy place) Dakar and officially swore in as Peace Corps Volunteers!

Now I am going to hop in a car and go down to Kédougou. I'll have a few days to get everything I need to move in, so I will post some more photos soon.

PHOTOS: The Kédougou Regional House and Salémata (with some edits and captions!)

Photos: Beach Weekend!

Here are the photos from the beach weekend, loosely organized, mostly captioned, and all very scenic.

BEACH WEEKEND! 

Photos: Last Days in Darou

A photo album of my last couple days in Darou -- with captions, even!

Last Days in Darou

Beach Weekend!

The Counterpart Workshop went really well, and now we are all going to Popenguine to stay at a beachhouse for the weekend. On Monday we'll go out to the training villages for our last week of homestay with our host families, and then training will be almost over. If all goes well there will big a big televised to-do and we'll officially swear in on Friday, May 13th. (Inchallah.)

Bon weekend! En ontuma!

Pula Fuuta! Pullo Fuuta?

Today we got our language group assignments (which will pretty much determine the region where we'll be placed, and I will be learning a type of Pulaar called Pullo Fuuta (or Pula Fuuta, depending on which handbook you're reading). This means I'll most likely be placed in an Southeast-ish part of Sénégal (I am re-learning how to use all the accent shortcuts, have you noticed?) where there will be lots of wonderful fruit and veggies to eat with my rice and sauce. So far Pullo Fuuta seems pretty cool for a language, nouns aren't gendered and there are only seven characters that completely don't exist in the English alphabet...  Tomorrow, in groups of three, we'll be going out to our homestay families in villages around Thiès for a week of intensive language training. We'll have language and culture classes with our Language and Culture Facilitators (LCFs) during the day and will be eating meals and socializing with our host families in the evening. My LCF is a great Senegalese woman named Houssey, and she'll be coming along with us and staying in the village during the homestay. We each have our own host families (and our own rooms and all that) but since they're trying to ease us into Senegalese culture we'll all be quite literally next door to one another. We'll spend most of our Pre-Service Training in the villages, but will come back to the Thiès Center every week or so for technical trainings and whatnot.

Today we went to the market, where I bought a brightly-colored thin cotton dress, and to the Catholic compound, which is where people congregate to hang out and drink beer. We've all been told several times that it's not acceptable to walk around town taking photos of people and places, so I won't be posting many photos of Thiès outside of the Training Center, but I'll see if I can find some pictures around and post those instead.

In any case, I'm off to pack for the homestay! I'll be back at the Training Center on Sunday evening, but I won't have any internet access until then. Have a lovely week!

Training Center Video Tour!

This is a short, two-part walk-through video tour of the Peace Corps Training Center in Thiès. It turns out that one two-minute clip takes about 137 minutes to upload (no joke) so I'm not sure when I'll get the whole thing posted.

Training Center Video (Part 1)

UPDATE:

Training Center Video (Part 2)

Photos of the Thiès Training Center

Asalaam malekum! 
Hello, and welcome to the Peace Corps Training Center in Thiès (which I am now pronouncing "tchess").

Training Center Photos!

(Soon I'll figure out how to post them directly)

Lariam Dreams...

I haven't had any Mefloquine-influenced dreams yet, but that was what I wanted to call this blog. I reconsidered after seeing that the domain name was taken, and also figuring that it's better to not tempt fate.

In any case, my life in Senegal (both days of it) have been surprisingly pleasant. There are 48 other trainees in my group, we landed in Dakar yesterday at dawn, wedged ourselves into a couple mini-buses and drove off to start Pre-Service Training. As the sun came up we looked out the windows at the sprawl of Dakar and the multitude of crumbling, half-built apartments on the outskirts of town, and then I half-slept through the rest of the drive. The Peace Corps Training Center in Thiès ("tchess") has everything a trainee could want, except for hot showers, but I'd take semi-reliable wifi over hot showers any day. We dropped our bags, had some food and some rest time, and jumped right into orientation and placement interviews. We also had individual medical sessions, where we were vaccinated for typhoid and meningitis, put on anti-malaria pills (I am now taking Mefloquine, the generic for Lariam), and given first aid kits and a stockpile of handy antibiotics and whatnot. My roommate and I decided to stay up until 21h00 (9:00pm) and we passed the time by writing in our journals and complaining about how exhausted we were and then promptly conked out at 21h03.

Today we had a guided tour of the area immediately surrounding the training compound, listened to another introductory presentation, had our French language assessments, and ate spiced rice, chicken and chopped peppers for lunch, which was delicious. Then we did our prep reading for our culture and etiquette session tomorrow, realized that we'd behaved fairly disgustingly at lunch (drinking with our left hands, sitting like heathens, making inappropriate small talk) and were extra glad that we have this week of heavily supervised compound-based preparation before meeting our first host families next week.

I'm going to try to get a "day-in-the-life" style photo album or video up this weekend, and after next Tuesday I won't have daily internet access for awhile, but I'll update when I can. Jërëjëf, ba beneen!