The True American Rainbow

There is a television show called New Girl, and on that show they play a game called True American. The Peace Corps Volunteers of Kédougou have talked about playing the game in real life several times, imagining how we could add in our own rules, quotes, and trivia.

Having already bade farewell to Digital Ben and the songwriter, phenologist, and re-birthed living legend Patrick Hair, the PCVs of Kédougou gathered on the occasion of the imminent departure of Marielle, Martin, Ian, and myself and actually played True American. We cooked garlic bread and Bucket Soup, made mojios and pesto pizza, combed the market and the Free Box for the appropriate attire, dressed up like a rainbow (because why not), and they showed themselves to be as True Americans as there ever were.

After the abject heartbreak of leaving Salémata, True American Rainbow brought some much-needed levity to my week of good-byes. We managed to cover the whole spectrum - Reds, Oranges, Gold, Yellow, Greens, Teal, Blues, Sparkles, Pinks, Purples, Plaid, and Gray.

 

Complementary Colors! 

The Crayola Fun Pack

At the Start of the Rainbow

Basically, playing the game involved dressing up, hopping from base to base (the ground is molten lava), calling out silly trivia questions and quotes, and switching clothing items in order to finish the game wearing as many colors of the rainbow as possible. It was fun and funny, and, as always, it was great to spend some quality time with the 'Gou Crew.

These are the people who've been there when all the tires went flat, when the ATM didn't work, and when my Sriracha ran out. They got the baignoire tubs out when it was too hot to live, fixed my bike when the gears got mangled, commiserated when work was going disastrously, and lent me a hair brush when I didn't have one (which was always). They've bush-messaged me Malarone, interpreted my dreams, put up with my affinity for confusing picture-messages, and made up songs about the terrible roads that leave us over-jostled and caked with orange dust. They've cooked Spanish omelettes, baked birthday cakes and pizzas and Ghirardelli double-fudge brownies and brewed countless French presses of hot coffee. When I lost my phone for the umpteenth time they called it, and laughed good-naturedly when it inevitably turned up my pocket. They've shared their M&Ms and their diarrhea stories and their huts and their palm wine and their fancy cheese. They took pictures of my rashes and forgave my irritability and taken team costumes to a whole new level. When I got sick they left Ricola in my basket, when I was away they greeted my host family, and when my American family came to visit they showed them a epic good time.

At the End of the Rainbow

I'll see some of the 'Gou Crew in the not-so distant future (inchallah) and in the meantime I'm grateful to have been a part of such a fun, brilliant, ridiculous, generous, beautiful, motivated group of True Americans. I'll miss them collectively as well as one by one, and I'll think of them every time I eat Pumpkin Spice, take a garlic shot, see a gold star, catch a glimpse of Cinderella, make bagel, hear a real nice chant, read a sexy book, sing my way down a river, throw it in the fan, eat too many beignets, count the birds in my backyard, or see a rainbow breaking through the clouds. 

Lessons Learned

In no particular order, here are a few of the things I have learned so far:

1. I've been told that the giant, scorpion-looking spider things (which are attracted to light and come skittering in around my feet when I turn on my headlamp at night) are harmless, but the caterpillar-ish centipede things (which I have not seen yet) have a nasty, poisonous bite.

2. My neighbor Sully was right about the Salémata Health Center having fantastic food. Last week (when I came to observe a 10:00am sanitation presentation that didn't wind up starting until 2:30pm) they invited me to have lunch with them and they served delicious rice and fish and vegetables.

3. You really can't buy vegetables in Salémata. Aside from a few sad little tomatoes and onions that sometimes show up at the weekly lumo market, you have to go 80 km (50 miles) to buy them at the market in Kédougou. Or plant a garden yourself.

4. Pulaar grammar and vocabulary is all sorts of fun. Jangugol means "to read," "to study," and "to learn." So no one really has any idea when I'm being a serious student and when I'm relaxing with a good book. Which and be both good and bad. Also, Pullo Fuuta has 24 classes of articles, meaning that there are 24 ways to say "the." It gets even better when you throw "these" and "that" and "this" into the mix...

5. I have come to think of 'cold' as a flavor. As Cady knows, it it currently my favorite flavor. Along with 'Snickers.' (I was not a huge fan of Snickers before, but I have recently realized that they are fantastic. And also almost entirely unavailable outside Dakar.)

4. My host brother was right about how much easier it is to fetch water by strapping the covered bucket on the back of my bike than it is to carry it on my head.

5. It was maybe not the best idea to read As I Lay Dying straight through in one ungodly hot afternoon. It put me in a strange mood and set me up for a series of extra-strange social interactions.

6. According to some people, my life here sounds just like Little House on the Prairie, except with a hut, and in the hills, and in Africa, and with texting. (I never actually read Little House on the Prairie, so I will have to take their word for it.)

7. Infinite Jest is long.¹

8. I am really lucky to live in a village (almost more of a town, really) that has a bean sandwich lady. And extra-extra lucky that the beans are pretty tasty.

9. I can be needlessly difficult and contrarian at times. Particularly when I am hot and/or hungry. (This isn't so much something I have learned so much as been made more vividly aware of over the last few weeks...)

10. If everything goes well it takes three hours (squished in between a girl with two live chickens and a man holding a very small baby) in a van-type vehicle for me to get from Salémata to Kédougou. Yesterday everything went well, alhamdoulilaye.

________

1. In Senegalese culture it's really incredibly offensive to eat things in front of others without sharing (but serious nose-picking is ok) and people will not decline to eat half your Clif bar, bean sandwich, etc, if given the opportunity. If people have something they want to eat then they do it in their rooms or in some other non-public space, and so I frequently do the same, holing up in my hut to eat a secret apple or packet of Biskrem,^a especially since lunch is often not until 2:00pm. Also, I don't yet feel comfortable openly using my laptop or iPod in village, so I only listen to music and podcasts at night and at naptime, and pretty much hide in my room whenever I have laptop-based work to do. Given all this daily pseudo-secrecy, combined with the fact that I have an assumed Senegalese name (Adama Hawa Souaré) and often pretend to be married or engaged, Infinite Jest is maybe not the worst book to be reading at this particular time in my life.^b 

________               
                   
a. Biskrem is an extremely tasty chocolate-creme filled cookie, produced by Ülker (a Turkish brand owned by the Yıldız Holding group) and wildly popular in Senegal, West Africa. 
b. Apologies for all this footnote business to everyone except for the three of you who I am mostly sure will find it amusing.

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.

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!

Highlights

A few of the more memorable things from the last couple weeks of training:

• Fielding questions about American culture as my mildly conservative Muslim host family watched a French-Canadian show called "Reportings" do an exposé on American co-eds on Spring Break in Cancun. Luckily they find it hilarious when drunk people fall over, and they also understand that every culture has its share of ridiculous people.
• Indian Soap Operas. They're 20 minutes of non-stop intense-gaze-filled melodrama backed by a soundtrack that's mostly thunderclaps and they're incredibly popular in small-town Senegal. 
• In Pulla Fuuta, my local language, the verbs for 'to vomit,' 'to plant,' and 'to spit' are tuutugol, tutugol, and tuttugol. I'm pretty sure that I've been showing up to dinner and then cheerfully announcing that I went to the school garden, where I spent the afternoon vomiting carrots, okra, and eggplant.
• Trash. In some areas there is so much trash. Clumps and piles and fields and acres of plastic bags, kitchen garbage, soda bottles, worn out shoes, anything and everything.
• Baobabs. There aren't any in my village, which is entirely built on sand, but there are zillions of them along the road to Thiès. The ones here aren't tall and column-looking, like the ones that come up when you google 'baobabs,' but wider and stumpier, extremely impressive in a gigantic, gnarled, squat sort of way.