Costa Rica comes to Senegal

Nisha finished Peace Corps in Costa Rica and then came to visit her sister/my friend Emily in Dakar for a few weeks. While she was in country she caught a ride down to Kédougou and I had the pleasure of showing her around Salémata. The ride out was dusty and slow, but we made it, and after a crash course in Pulaar greetings I put her to work painting names on bowls for my host moms. 

We spent a lot of time comparing Peace Corps service in Costa Rica and Senegal, and there were a striking number of similarities. For instance, the roads are terrible, public transport is difficult, host families can be wonderful, acronyms abound, and you eat the same thing every day.

Candid under the mango tree

We spent some quality time with my host family, took the obligatory snapshot in front of the absurd castle that a creepy French man built, had much with my friend Maimouna, and threw rocks at trees in a middling attempt to knock down a few mangoes. 

Having just done her own Close-of-Service, she was really understanding of the miscellaneous loose ends I had to wrap up and gamely hung around during my last work-related meeting. I'd asked my host father to call the meeting so that I could thank everyone who'd participated in the latrine project, solicit feedback and suggestions, and distribute the bars of soap and plastic screening that I'd purchased with the last bit of the project money. (The plastic screening was to replace the metal screening on the ventilation pipes, which already seemed to be rusting on some of the latrines; the soap was a last plug for hand-washing and a token of thanks for all their hard work.) It also gave me a chance to start my good-byes, explain how I would be replaced by another volunteer, and talk about what an honor it's been to spend these last two years with the people of Salémata.

The next morning we day-hiked out to Ethiolo, a nearby Bassari village, and walked around, greeting people, stopping in at the Health Post, and hanging out with RPCV Tatiana's former host family. They invited us to stay for lunch, and then we stayed for tea, and then we stayed to sample some of the local palm wine. Nisha scored big points by offering a giant cup of palm wine to two older ladies on the compound, and then we headed back to Salémata to check out the market.

It was a Tuesday, and Tuesday is Salémata's market day. Everyone comes out for the market, and we ran into all of my host moms, including Mariama, who was selling vegetables and palm oil. 

I feel like Nisha got a really good sampler of all of the things that I do while in village. It was really fun to have her around, she was up for eating out of a communal bowl and carrying water on her head, and really nice to have PCV there for all the acronym talk about COS forms and DOS reports and SPA grants and getting NCI and being an RPCV. There was downtime, day-hikes, work stuff, market day, lunches with friends, and little kids piling in to my hut to ask for photos and band-aids.  

Sajou Ba gets a band-aid for a small scrape on his head. 

Afterwards, I realized that taking her on a tour of all my favorite parts of my life in Salémata was also a really wonderful way for me to revisit the things and people that defined and enriched my Peace Corps service. It was lovely to take some time to really just enjoy being in Salémata before beginning the bittersweet process of saying my final good-byes and I'm so glad that her visit gave me an occasion to do so.

Siblings Abroad: Life On the Dunes

After we got back to Senegal we headed out to Lompoul, a little village near the coast just a few hours outside Dakar. On the way there I just kept being impressed by how fancy the Louga area is. There are more gas stations and shops in each of the little road towns than there are in all of Kedougou, and the side roads are paved, all the way out to some of the smaller villages. Paved!

Anyway. The Gite Lompoul campement was pretty much empty when we got in, so we just puttered around, checking out out out tent and the dunes, until lunch was ready. The sand was really soft, which made it nice to walk on but hard to get any speed up when sliding down on the snowboard they leave out for people to play on. 

After lunch we went for a camel ride. Camels are much bigger than I was expecting, and their legs and feet were much stranger-looking than I'd imagined.

Walking along the dunes was nice, the camels plodded along, making weird, grimacing faces every once in awhile, and the crust of the sand cracked and crumbed prettily under their feet. The lovely pre-sunset sunlight, the hushed sound of sand blowing softly over sand, the rustle of leaves on the occasional tree - it was much more placid than I'd anticipated, but I liked it nonetheless.

That evening we had dinner with the thirty-or-so middle-aged French tourists staying int he other tents - there was drumming and hilariously bad dancing and some better dancing and a lot of "oh, your French is so good for an American!" and a pretty decent dinner. (The cooks there have nothing on my hosts moms, but it was good and there were some vegetables so no complaints.) The next morning we walked from Lompoul-Village to Lompoul-sur-Mer, to the slight consternation of the guides, who were concerned that we would not be able to make the grueling 8 km (about 5 miles) trek out to the seashore unaccompanied and with our daypacks strapped to our backs.

As it turns out, it was a flat and pleasant stroll, and took a little over an hour. We dawdled here and there, admiring first the dunes, then the eucalyptus groves, then the thorn-tree flats, and finally the little patch of Dr.Seuss-ish evergreens that cropped up just before we hit the beach. As soona s we arrived in the town of Lompoul-sur-Mer we saw a couple of the campement guides who'd driven in to buy fish and supplies; they seemed happy and amused to see that we'd made it, intact and in record time.

The beach smelled like chum and was strewn with fish heads and guts, so we didn't linger much. We found a car back to the road town, and then another one from there to Dakar, where we set about getting things together and packing up to head out on our respective long hauls back to the places that we live. 

Out of Office

My American family came to visit so I took the rest of my vacation days and haven't been online much  at all lately. I'll be back in Senegal (all too) soon and will be post pictures and updates as regularly as the internet connection allows. 

In the mean time here is a photo of the ocean in Praia. It's very much a postcard-come-to-life-type-place, lots of warm waves and tropical fruit. Hope your year is also off to a beautiful start! 

Praia, Cape Verde

Korité

I spent Korité, the feast day celebrating the end of Ramadan, in Salémata with my host family. I woke up, puttered around, got my complet outfit out, and waited for my host brothers to pound the big drum, signaling tat it's time for everyone who's going to the mosque to get a move on.

The drum, warming in the sun

 After mosque I walked around the compound, greeting people, being greeted, and taking photos of everyone's new clothes. My host cousin, Bineta wanted photos of both her new outfits, and we all took turns posing with my host sister's baby, little Fatou.

 Fatou's mother, Mariama Kesso, was busy all morning with food prep and cooking. We had steamed fonio (grown, processed and sold by host moms' women's group), meat, and an amazing vegetable-heavy onion sauce made with the onions, cabbage, carrots, and bitter eggplant that I brought in from town as my contribution to the family celebration.

Dinner prep under the mango tree

 After lunch, dinner prep started and the greeting continued. My host mothers Saliou Njan and Mariama wanted photos of their new outfits, and my neighbors Tatiana and Jess came by to visit and greet everyone, hold the babies and admire all the new outfits.

 

Adama and Fatou

 I also took a few pictures with Diabou, the stubborn, clever girl who was extremely slow to warm to me after I moved in, but who is now a great little friend. She refuses to accept having her hair braided (I can't blame her, it looks like it hurts, especially at first) so they're still shaving her head.

 After all that it was time to go greet people all around the village. I went greeting in a little group with Mariama Kesso, Fatou, and Diouma, the little girl in the blue and gold. Since the bridge to the far side of town was thoroughly washed out we picked out way along the creek bed, looking for a suitably shallow and solid place to cross.

Crossing the gulan (taro root?) field

 After a wonderful dinner of warm bread, spicy beans, flavorful yellow potatoes, and onion-y meat sauce I went to turn in at a reasonable hour and greatly relieved that the Ramadan schedule of dinner at 10:30 or 11 o'clock at night. Before I got to sleep, though, my host sister Kindi and her friend popped in to pose (sprawled out on my bed) for one last round of photos.

All in all it was a lovely holiday and it left me looking forward to the Tabaski celebration we'll have in October.