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

Adios Amigos

When it comes to living in Senegal there are hard parts (e.g. the heat, the awful transport cars, the skinny skinny babies, the pockets of abject poverty, the unwanted marriage propositions, the complete lack of dental care...), there are nice parts (e.g. the wonderful host families, the chubby babies who try to steal my glasses, the total strangers who take us in and feed us just because we're there, the tailor who refuses to accept payment for fixing the holes in my pants, the beautiful waterfalls, overwhelmingly delicious holiday dinners, everyone's Halloween costumes, N'ice Cream...). And then there are sad parts (e.g. the good-byes).

The new stage of Health PCTs (Peace Corps Trainees) are almost done with PST (Pre-Service Training), which means that the last stage of Health Volunteers has gone up to Dakar and COS-ed (Close-of-Service) and we miss them already. Especially these ones:

Frosting with Meera

Meera taught me everything I know about tailors in Kedougou, making pancakes at the Regional House and dancing like an old Bedik lady. We are an amazing food-making team and breakfast will not be the same without her. I took most of the clothes she left behind and pretty much plan on dressing up like her for the rest of my service. I'm currently wearing her pants. 

Laterite Spray-Tanning with Leah

One time Leah let me come to her doctor's appointment to get an x-ray looked at, just because I had nothing better to do that day and afterwards the doctor bought us both ice cream, which was awesome. Another time I completely covered her kitchen basket with pictures of babies, because she totally has Baby Fever. One of the most unexpectedly best times I've had in Senegal was on a bike trip when Kate's tire sheared open and we all spent the afternoon slogging through ridiculous mud fields and pushing our bikes across rivers. It could have been completely miserable, but because Leah was there it was hilarious and fun.

Hamburgaling with Eric

Ohhhh Eric! Whether we were taking imaginary vacations, making Joseph into a real person, watching tonic magically freeze, or trying to discretely mix Fant-angria in the back seat of a sept-place, we always had the best times and the funniest nonsense jokes. When I got really sick and completely fainted while coming out of the latrine Eric went into EMT mode, put me in a recovery position, cleaned up my scrapes, set up a straw system so that I didn't have to sit up to drink ORS, and pointed out that at least I fainted coming out of the latrine or things could have been a lot worse dignity-wise.  Fun Fact: Eric coined the term "John Boehner Laterite Road Tan."

On a side note, I can't help noticing that the John Boehner Laterite Road Tan makes my teeth look so pearly white. And also that I maybe should wear a different tank top sometimes. 

Hut Sweet Hut

Buckets are such a big part of my life here. I've really come to appreciate a good, sturdy bucket, especially one with a nice lid. Here's my bath bucket (with fancy sieve/soap caddy), my food storage bucket, and my gaz tank. 

My nice burner broke the other day and this little one (the only kind available in village) that doesn't have the nice pot-guard that my other had. I use my gaz to heat up water for coffee and instant oatmeal most mornings, and during cold season I'll heat up a little pot of water to add to my bathing bucket to take the edge off the chill of cold water. Some volunteers just leave their bucket out in the sun all afternoon, but because of the shady mango tree (which is great and I love) next to my hut I've had very limited success with that during the cold season. Right now it's quite hot, and I'll just leave my water buckets (which are exactly the same as my food storage and dish storage buckets) in the coolest corner of my hut and hope they don't get too warm.

This is my wooden table. It pretty much looks like this on any given morning, with my silver water filter, various mugs and water bottles, sunblock and toothpaste, and random this and that. It's a really nice table, I like it a lot. The metal water filter is nice, too, it keeps water much cooler than the dark plastic filters that some of the volunteers have.

The table has handy shelf for stacking all sorts of things, and there's a bamboo (or whatever it is, everyone in village calls it bamboo) rod for hanging clothes to dry or keeping stuff away from the rats and bugs on the ground level.

I store clothes and things in my trunks, and then I store important things in my little suitcase because it zips up, which keeps dust and critters out. The oatmeal cans also help with the bug situation, it's easy to sweep under the trunks when they're propped up, and that keeps ants from building trails along the fine cracks in the cement, and keeps the spider population in check, too.

Vacation Leave

I'm currently on vacation and will be back in Senegal in April. In the meantime I'm enjoying all the fresh veggies, fancy cheese, and wonderful coffee that America has to offer. 

Back to the Big City

And by big city I mean Kédougou. With all the pre-election protests that were going on in the bigger towns and cities I've been staying in my village, Salémata, where it's been lovely and calm. Right before Election day I did a lot of hanging out under the mango tree, playing with the baby, making things out of paper, and listening to the BBC. (I would like to take a moment to thank the BBC World Service for existing.) As it turns out, voting during the first round of the 2012 presidential elections in Senegal went remarkably smoothly, even in Dakar, and I'm now allowed to come in to the Kédougou Regional House to check e-mail and stock up on oatmeal and all that good stuff.

My sitemate and I decided to bike in to Kédougou today. We've done it before, we left early in the morning and were expecting it to get hot (which it did) but to make it to the house before lunchtime. We were not expecting the little cloud of bloodsucking tse tse flies that showed up on the outskirts of village and stayed with us for about 45 kilometers (28 miles, about halfway to Kédougou). At that point, exhausted from trying to bike and swat flies at the same time, we stopped in the shade of a baobab tree. It was getting hot, and since we'd just been passed up by the transport van that we'd opted not to take, I was regretting having been so enthusiastic about the whole biking thing. Just then, while we were sitting in the dirt next to our bikes, looking sweaty and dusty and fly-bitten and probably more than a little pitiful, a beautiful pickup truck came along and stopped in front of us. The passenger opened his window (Air conditioning! Fancy.) and asked if we were volunteers. We said yes, and he said he worked with the Ninefesha Hospital, he knew the volunteer Kadjabi (our friend Meera) and that she did good work so since we were with Corps de la Paix we were welcome to throw our bikes in the back and hop in the backseat and come to along Kédougou. We were thrilled. And grateful.

Anyway, I made it to the house and now I'll be around the next few days, working on a few things and (inchallah) uploading some photos and catching up on the blog.

Salémata/Ethiolo Bike Ride

Ethiolo, where my wonderful neighbor Tatiana lives, is about 5 or 7 kilometers away from Salémata. 

I don’t know how far it is exactly, but it doesn’t take very long to bike, even including the two hills that are too steep to bike up.

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. 

NEVERMIND...

...about heading back to village today. This morning, a little after 8:00 am, I biked over to the Kédougou garage (a big dirt parking lot hemmed by tin-roofed boutique warehouses and lunch shacks) and bought a ticket for the next car to Salémata. I settled in with my books for what would turn out to be a futile eight-ish hour wait.

During those hours I ate the Spiced Pumpkin Pie Clif Bar that Santa left in my stocking (which was delicious), rode my bike back to the regional house for snacks and to use the latrine, and made a big impression on a gaggle of older Pular men who grew increasingly impressed as they watched me read three books, one after another.  Those books were Daughter of Fortune, which I really liked, Take the Cannoli [Stories from the New World], which was great even though I'd already heard almost all the stories on This American Life, and Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea, which turned out to be pretty much the perfect thing to read after sitting on a narrow bench in a crowded dusty lot all day long.

Around lunchtime I got up and very sweetly told the guy who's in charge of selling tickets that if the car didn't fill up by 4:00 pm I'd need to leave, because after that it would be possible that I'd be arriving in Salémata after dark and my boss at Corps de la Paix forbids me from travelling at night. (That's a real rule, though Safety & Security does make occasional exceptions) As it turns out, I'm really glad I had that little chat, and that I was very polite.  

Eventually 4:00 pm rolled around, and much to the ornery driver's irritation (other passengers were grumbling about refunds and so far had been refused) I quietly got my money back from the ticket guy and rode off to buy a ticket from the Niokolo Transport office, which has a truck that reliably goes out to Salémata on Monday and Friday mornings at 8:00 am. So, sometimes being a toubab means I have to put up with extra hassles, but sometimes being foreign (and invoking Peace Corps rules) seems to make it easier to duck out of unpleasant situations.  Sticking out like a bespectacled DayGlo thumb is a mixed bag.  

Anyway. The water's on for the moment so I think I'll take an outdoor shower, download some podcasts, heat up some soup, make the most of an extra night at the Regional House. And then tomorrow morning I'll actually head back to village. Inchallah.

Sunrise

Last Saturday I got up at dawn to bike from Salémata  into Kédougou, and this was the sunrise that morning. It was cold. I wore my fleece for the first hour, and my ears ached from the chill, but it was still a pretty lovely ride. 

Waterfall Tourney

A "tourney" is our anglicization of the French tournée, which, as you can prob'ly guess, means "tour." So, say, if some volunteers around going around to a group of villages giving Neem Cream demonstrations we'd call it a Neem Tourney.

The region of Kédougou is known for being lush and verdant, especially compared with the northern regions of Senegal, and also for having very pretty hills, rivers, and waterfalls. So, since it's been raining and the rivers are flowing, my friend Meera's been talking about going on a Waterfall Tourney. It was a fantastic idea, and so far I've seen four of the best waterfalls in the area.

Here they are, in order of lovely to loveliest:

Dindéfélo: The easiest hike in, but it was kinda cold, and there was a pretty big snake.

Mike, Patrick, Meghan, Jess A., Eric, and LaRocha

  

We we saw a snake and almost took off
but then realized it was already dead. 

Ségou: A big hike, but the hike is almost as nice as the waterfalls. And the campement is really nice.

The campement at Segou has a lovely view.

Me, Jess A., Eric, Meghan, & Tatiana

Pélal : And easy ride, a pretty short hike, lovely falls, and not one but two snakes. And they were alive. Yay for a good zoom. Fun times!

One of TWO snakes we saw here.

Patrick

Me and Tatiana

Ingoley: There was a lot of biking and some impressive river crossings, but it was definitely worth it! And no snakes.

Patrick & Kate

Ingoley!