Laundry

During the first year of my service I washed all my own laundry in plastic tubs (baignoires, as we call them here) with a washboard and soap packets. I washed socks, shirts, towels, everything, and I was passably competent (everything came out smelling fine at least) but never really became a stellar washing-lady or anything. There's nothing particularly awful about pulling water, carrying water, mashing the clothes around, and wringing them out, but there's nothing particularly great about it, either. 

The laundry area at the Regional House

I like hanging things out to dry, though. At the Regional House we have lines set up; in village people just drape clothes over fences or wherever and I have a couple little lines running over my latrine enclosure behind my hut so that I can discreetly dry my underthings. Drying laundry in the hot season is like magic - things seems to insta-dry. In the rainy season it's more of an exercise in futility, just an un-fun game where you hope the sun comes out long enough to get rid of the dampness before mildew starts to set in.

Laundry lines at the Regional House

Nowadays my laundry mostly gets done in village and it's my host sister Mariama Kesso who does the bulk of the washing. The first time I gave her my clothes to wash they came back so clean that they were an entirely different color (they had all been slightly orange, from the dust) and I gave up trying to wash things myself. I still launder my own underwear and things but she takes my pants, shirts, and sheets and washes them on Sundays, when she does her own washing. She does a better job than I ever did and is happy to earn a few extra mille every month, so it's a win-win situation. 

Name That Rash!!

As many people know, Peace Corps Volunteers love to describe in unsolicited detail all the positively revolting things that have gone into (and come out of) their stomachs, burrowed into their feet, or raised nasty welts across their torsos. I, alas, am no exception. 

So, a couple months ago I started getting this rash on my right knee. It wasn't particularly terrible-looking, but it was unbearably itchy, oddly hard, and started to flare up angrily in bright red swaths around both knees and across my lower back. I talked to Med, sent in some photos, applied hydrocortizone cream, and things improved. This was right when the nail of my big toe was threatening to become painfully ingrown, but after a few weeks of no closed-toed shoes (which I only wear for jogging) and soaking my foot every day my toe was fine and I went back to my normal routine, toes intact and rash-free. For a few days, anyway. 

To: Med Re: Recurrent Mild Knee-Rash

And then the rash came back with an irritating vengeance. I happened to be on my way up to the Thiès Training Center where two Peace Corps Medical Officers were kind enough to spend twenty minutes looking at my knees, running their fingers over the rashy parts, and deducing the cause of my discomfort. They immediately decided it was contact allergy, and guessed that it was caused by some sort of fabric that, combined with rainy season, my skin finds intolerable. We talked about my clothes, they asked about this and that and if I have any knee-length synthetic pants, maybe ones with seams around my knee and across my back. 

And then I realized - my running pants. My stretchy, frayed-at-the-synthetic-seams, capri-style running pants. The rash went away when I stopped jogging because of my toe. I am allergic to my pants. Problem solved. They gave me some strong anti-itch cream and, only a few days later, the rash has almost entirely disappeared. 

On a related note, while looking through my photos to find this picture I realized that I have an entire album's-worth of photos of rashes, stings, blisters, infections, and swollen lumps, taken by myself and  my fellow Kédougou PCVs and e-mailed to Med in the hopes that they can diagnose us from afar and spare us the long slog up to the Med Office in Dakar. Of course, I thought "Wouldn't it be funny if we all sent these photos in to the PC/Senegal Volunteer Newsletter? They could have a little matching-game-thing in the next issue, where people guess who was afflicted by what. Name That Rash!! Hilarious!" 

My suggestion went over pretty well with the Newsletter editorial staff; it might actually happen. 

More Birthday Cake

I am pleased to share my birthday with Marielle, another Health PCV from my training group, and this year we had a remarkably delicious birthday celebration. With help from Jackie we made veggie spring rolls with peanut dipping sauce in the afternoon, and very tasty squash and sweet-potato soup (the secret ingredient was oatmeal, no joke) with double-butter garlic bread for dinner. 

Later in the evening we brought out the cakes (one chocolate, one double-Ghirardelli-chocolate) to be decorated, set ablaze, and blown out.

 

It was a great birthday and a very nice little break from village life. Even if you aren't fasting, Ramadan in village can start to wear on you a bit. Food is scarce during the day, dinner usually isn't ready until well after 11 o'clock at night, people are tired, and if you're not going to the mosque there isn't much happening in the evenings.

Experiencing Ramadan in Senegal has been really interesting, but it was also really nice to get together, speak some English, hang out around the kitchen table, play music, eat wonderful food, and catch up with people. We also took a bunch of with Katie, the other most recent birthday girl, and I modeled of my fantastic new shirts from my birthday packages.

 

Summer Birthdays! 

2012 Bassari Initiations

Last weekend I (along with half my village, a dozen other PCVs, a few European tourists, a handful of Canadians) went to the Bassari village of Ethiolo ("Etch-il-o") to see the annual coming-of-age initiation ceremonies for young Bassari men in the area. 

PCV Tatiana, AKA Taki Bendia, our gracious hostess

We started by hanging out with Tatiana's host family, greeting people, eating fried dough beignets and watching things get started. I don't have a super comprehensive understanding of all the aspects of the ceremonies, but one of the first things that happens is that people from each initiant's family bring out live roosters, slaughter them, and then hang them all from a tree. (The men in the photo below left are taking the roosters down, to pluck and butcher them.) The people running everything fire off blank shots to signal that the initiants have started coming down from the trees, dancing in lines that wind slowly though the crowd before heading off to a hill for the battle portion of the initiations. 

The battles take place a little ways off form the village, out of the sight of women; we heard that this is because it's embarrassing when a man loses a fight (and every fight, even the highly ritualized initiation fights, has to have a loser) and they'd rather not have the women knowing who all the losers are. In any case, while the guys all went off to the battles we passed the time looking at the jewelry vendors' wares until Marie Christine (our wonderful housekeeper at the Regional House) invited the ladies over for snack time. The snack turned out to be chunks of fresh bread with a sautéed onion and green pepper dipping sauce, and it was pretty fantastic. 

When the battles were over and then masked Bassari men and the younger initiants, lead by a man wearing a heavy-looking wooden mask, came streaming back up the hill. Many of the younger kids fled in terror (they are pretty intimidating up close) and everyone clambered up onto rocks and logs to get a better look. 

 After the frenzy of the arrival of the masks we retired back to Tatiana's family's corner to drink water and sample the Bassari palm wine, honey wine, and millet beer. (The Bassari are mostly somewhat Catholicized traditional animists, so there's no religious prohibition of alcohol in Bassari areas.) The honey wine is pretty good, as is the millet beer, but I'm not really a fan of palm wine and none of it is particularly easy on the stomach (especially if you're getting over some sort of stomach bug, which I was) so I didn't drink much.

 We ate a big chunk of peanut butter candy (above left) made from cornmeal, peanut butter, and sugar, and Tatiana's family cooked us a wonderful lunch of chicken and cabbage sauce over rice. Over the course of the day I ran into pretty much everyone I know in Salémata, including my friend's little brother (above right)who really wanted a photo of himself with the masked men. He's a good kid and his family hadn't come to watch the initiations, so we invited him to have lunch with us and he showed us the random things that the tourists had given him -- specifically, a pair of nice ladies' dress slacks and a navy blue skort.

This last photo is of an initiant with his family, standing on a mat with the gifts that have been offered to him to commemorate his achievement. He's standing in a tub of rice and onions, and there's a sack of rice, some corn, millet, and other foods on the mat as well. He's looking over at his family members who are in the process of slaughtering a goat in his honor. I lost count of the number of roasting goat (and sheep, even a cow) heads I saw over the course of the day. Most people don't eat meat or fish on a daily basis, but they really pull out all the stops for holidays and special celebrations.

Highly Fashionable

I wear things here that I just wouldn't wear in America, (unless I was at summer camp, where I once wore a vividly teal full-body rain suit with yellow cuffs) especially when I'm in village. This is a country where an all-fuchsia outfit with sparkly gold trim is considered pretty but not at all out of the ordinary, and I've gotten used to it. A few months ago I was walking to the water pump with my purple bucket, and noticed that I was wearing pink flip-flops, bright red pants with yellow squiggles, a bright green t-shirt, purple glasses and a tan hat. At least my glasses matched my bucket, I guess. 

So when I came in to the Regional House, (where there are other Americans) looked down at myself, and all of a sudden realized I was pretty much dressed like a giant crayon, right down to the green flip-flops. I couldn't find my green hat, or I would have put that on, too. 

Crayola Green

Baby Fat Cheeks

Fatou, my host sister Mariama Kesso's baby, is adorable. People are always saying that she's "cheeks only" because her chubby little face is basically 80% cheeks. During the elections when things were really slow in village I spent a lot of time playing with Fatou while Kesso braided hair for women in the neighborhood. Last year Kesso went in to Kedougou for a week-long training on fancy braiding techniques and new styles and designs, so her hair-styling skills are very much in demand. 

Here's Fatou and I posing, Mariama Kesso, in a fancy, heavily embroidered pink outfit, trying to get Fatou to pose, me wearing the blue complet that Kesso gave me, Fatou smiling, and Fatou with her brother Mamadou, refusing to smile. 

Sometimes we're adorrrrable.

One of the main reasons I was so stoked to go to IST was because I was looking forward to seeing my PST roommates (Sarah L., Emma, and Cady) again. Sarah and I arrived a day early, and Sarah gathered some flowers for dorm beautification. 

I got my art-type-stuff stuff out, and we had a good time having craft time on a rainy afternoon. 

The bouquet idea was all Sarah L.

I was behind the paper-and-soda-can vases. 

We are adorable. And also look like bridesmaids in a vivid wedding.

We are such a good room-match that we all (totally separately) wore blue outfits to the Five Week Challenge dinner in Dakar last week. Adorable. A little weird, but still adorable. 

Happy Belated 4th of July!

We hosted the Peace Corps/Senegal American Independence Day party at the Kédougou Regional house. About a hundred people came and all in all it was a pretty great party. 

Meera and I improvised facepaints

I got to see Emma and Cady again!

David and I made vats of potato salad...

... and coleslaw

The Ice Cream guy set up shop in the yard

Everyone got all America-ed out!

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!