Another Map Mural

Ever since I painted a couple map murals at the primary school near my host family's compound the director of the local Cas de Tout-Petits (pre-school) has made a point of coming over whenever he spots me in the market and telling me how nice one of those murals would look at his school. For months I've been telling him that one of these days I'd come paint a map there, and last week I finally made good on that promise.

Scary and confusingly-out-of-context fairytale figures aside, Cas de Tout-Petits (which translates literally to "the case of the all-smalls") is a pretty decent place. There's a big yard with some trees, a classroom with some little desks, and various charities and NGOs have donated chalk and little black boards and a few books and things like that.

I think the wolf on the upper left is from some sort of folktale but I really have no idea what is with the earless, smiling elephant-man. I decided to put the map where the elephant-man used to be. I really do wonder if any of the kids will miss him or if they found him to be as off-putting as I did.

I painted most of the map myself, which was pleasant. My little host brother Mamadou stopped by to take some photos and ask various questions about maps and America and whatnot, and while we chatted I painted a blue background for the map. And then started to fill in the regions with different sherbet-y shades of yellow, green, pink, and orange. And then realized that on my map Senegal looked like an island nation, which is not exactly accurate.

The inadvertent island of Senegal. 

Then Jubal, one of my PCV neighbors, biked over to hang out and help me finish up the painting. It's more fun to paint with someone, and Jubal knows his way around a paintbrush, too. It didn't take long to wrap things up, and by the end of the day Senegal was no longer an island, I was having sherbet cravings, and the director was super pleased with us.

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. 

No Reseau

I've been having cell phone network connection problems (or no reseau, as they say here) off and on for a few weeks. It's been better the last few days, and now that I'm back in the city of Kédougou my cell phone's working just fine. 

The internet, however, is another story. I'm using a little USB key to connect. I buy credit and log on; today I opted to spend 1000 CFA (about $2 USD) on three hours of internet access, which I can use all at once or in bits over the next three days.  It's really not a bad deal, it's not too slow and I get to use my own computer, which is great. 

Yesterday I biked in from Salémata yesterday -- the rains starting meant that everything was starting to turn green and lovely, but also that the road was muddy, so it was slow and messy going for a few big stretches. It was a good ride, though, my neighbor Jackie took my backpack in on a car and gave me a mocha-flavored Clif Shot packet, which was fantastic. After I got in, washed up, and got over the disappointment of no wifi at the Regional House Tatiana and I made home fries and a big pan of sautéed eggplant for dinner, which was amazing and delicious after all the rice I've been eating in village lately. 

Tomorrow we have a big Malaria Fair and then a big 4th of July celebration, so we're very busy with all the preparations today. I have a bunch of photos I'm really excited about uploading and posting, but that won't happen until things settle down and the real internet comes back, hopefully early next week. 

Malarone!

One of the very first things that happened when I arrived in Senegal was that I started taking anti-malarial medication. People who grow up in areas where malaria is endemic can acquire some degree of resistance to malaria infections, but PCVs definitely don't have any sort of immunity. While there are a places in northern Senegal where malaria is practically non-existent (mosquitoes can't live without water and it's the desert up there) it exists on an epic scale down here in Kedougou, particularly during the rapidly approaching rainy season. 

The go-to malaria prevention drugs in West Africa are doxycycline (doxy, as we call it)and mefloquine (AKA Mephaquin, Lariam). Doxy is an antibiotic, sometimes prescribed to people in America for acne. You have to take it every day and it has mostly mild side effects, like upsetting your stomach and making you more sensitive to the sun, but most PCVs here tolerate it well and for a few it's even helped keep their complexions clear. However, due to an allergic reaction I once had to a medication in the same -cycline family of drugs the Med Office (quite rightly) decided that it was off-limits for me and I was put on mefloquine. 

Mefloquine (one of the generic versions of the much-maligned Lariam) is made of a chemical that disrupts the development of malaria parasites. It doesn't tend to upset your stomach, you only have to take it once a week, and, like doxy, it's pretty cheap. However, in some people it can cause things like extremely vivid dreams, insomnia, anxiety and/or depression. More rarely it can cause hallucinations, odd behavior, and self-destructive thoughts. My first few months on Mefloquine I had bizarre, incredibly vivid dreams (all of Peace Corps in a strange pageant at an Under-the-Sea-themed middle school formal; being menaced by lazy, helmeted urban dinosaurs, etc etc) but that was pretty much it and I didn't mind. 

Then, as the weeks went by, I started getting weirder. Slowly, like the proverbial frog, I went on with my life as a tight, angsty knot began lacing itself around my sternum. Back in America I wasn't exactly an carefree ray of twenty-four-hour sunshine, but I also didn't get all squirrely about making eye contact with my neighbors. It took awhile for me to decide that the anxiety I was feeling wasn't justified (from scary transport to aggravating cat-callers,  there are so many anxiety-making things here) but eventually I listened to other PCVs and gave Med call. It didn't take long for them to decide that I shouldn't be taking mefloquine anymore and (because my -cycline allergy ruled out taking doxy) they set about getting authorization from the Washington, D.C. Medical Office to switch me to Malarone. 

The most valuable thing in my hut. 

They needed official permission from D.C. because Malarone costs a lot of money. The Cadillac of Chloroquine-resistant malaria prohylaxsis medications, it's known for having almost no side-effects, and also for being crazy expensive. Because it's a generic drug Mefloquine is pretty cheap (I think brand-name Lariam can be more expensive) and an entire month's worth of doxy only costs about $10 USD, but Malarone costs about $5 USD per pill, or about $185 USD per month. That's considerable, particularly at a time when budgets are getting slashed left and right. In any case, they sent me a bottle of Malarone, I stopped taking Mefloquine, and after a couple weeks the big ball of anxiety in my chest started to loosen. It took a couple more months for me to really feel like I was getting back to normal, but it happened eventually and life is much better now. There are still plenty of stressful things (student loans, rainy season transport, project funding, garage weirdos, government paperwork...) but they no longer feel like they're consuming me, and I have a new appreciation for what people who struggle with serious anxiety issues have to deal with. 

Also, I was sitting in my hut the other day and realized that the bottle of Malarone I was holding probably cost about five hundred dollars, making it the most expensive thing currently in my possession, worth more than my netbook and my iPod put together.

"Adama"

My American name is LaRocha ("la-rock-a"), but my Senegalese name is Adama. I have a number of tokorabe (people with my same name) around Salémata. I've gotten used to it, more or less, but for several months it was profoundly weird. 

It took me awhile to really identify as "Adama," and once I actually started to feel like it was my name I couldn't really get my head around how a bunch of other people also had my name. That has never happened to me before. Ever. In my entire life. It's funny, I spent a significant part of my childhood wishing that I had a name that other people had (specifically so that I could have a personalized toothbrush and name stickers) and then when I finally did it was oddly disconcerting. 

Adama and Friends

I've gotten used to it, though, and have come to appreciate some of the perks of having a normal, phonetic, immediately understood name. Greetings and mundane daily interactions are smoother and less complicated, and when people read my name off a list they don't hesitate and look around, blinking and uncomfortable, for a few seconds before attempting to say it aloud. They laugh, sometimes, amused that such an obvious foreigner would go by such a Senegalese name, but it's always friendly and often leads to questions about my family same (Souaré, "soo-are-ay") and where I live and if my family is in peace. 


Also, sometimes people are extra nice to their tokora, which is arbitrary but pleasant, and I'm not one to argue if the peanut butter lady or the bean sandwich lady wants to give me an extra spoonful just because I'm her tokora.

Baby Party

At the end of every month there is a Growth Monitoring (AKA Baby-Weighing) and Vaccination Day at the Salémata Health Center, and it is pretty much my favorite thing in village. It wasn't that way at first, though. The first few times I helped out the whole thing was so hectic (between 30 and 60 women usually show up with their children) and confusing that it really wasn't very enjoyable. I didn't understand the register system or how to fill out the Health Booklets, the babies' names all sounded like gibberish, the mix of Pulaar and French was disorienting, and there didn't seem to be an established order for who got to go first.  Over time I learned how the registers work, got to know people's names, and became comfortable enough to make start making little changes to help things run more smoothly, like carring over tables so that we weren't filling out the registers and booklets on our knees.

Overall, though, it was really heartening to see how much people in Salémata care about vaccinating their babies and making sure that their kids aren't underweight. The chaotic as they can be, Baby-Weighing Days are very well established and the Health Center staff are committed making sure they happen every month. When moderately malnourished (Yellow Zone) children do turn up (which they inevitably do) a midwife or relais consults with them, and helps provided largely by WorldVision, UNICEF, Catholic Relief Services (CRS) and the local Health Committee. If a child is severely malnourished (Red Zone) then they're admitted into the Health Center for therapeutic feeding. 

Here are the relais community health workers in charge of baby-weighing, as well as my host sister Mariama having her daughter weighed. (She was totally in the Green Zone.) 

Basically my role is to enter everything into the Health Center's registers, fill out new Health Booklets,  try to make sure things are moving along, and to smile and greet everyone. The staff has (somewhat) jokingly referred to me as the secretary on more than one occasion, which is fine by me. The Health Center already has local health workers who give shots and put toddlers on the scale and so I'm most useful when I make myself busy making things more organized and less hectic.

Here a visiting German gap-year student who stayed at the Catholic Mission for a couple months came to help out, and my friend (and same-name tokora) Adama took a photo of me holding a stack of Health Booklets.

Vaccinations Winding Down for the Day

Celebration!

Typing "Celebration!" makes me think of that creepy town in Florida, but this post is all about birthdays and festivals that happened way back at the end of February. 

The first few photos are of the start of the Bassari people's Chameleon Festival, a week-long dance party that kicks of in the afternoon, goes late into the night. I hear it involves some pretty racy outfits toward the end of the festival, but I had to head out to Kedougou, so I didn't get to hang around and watch, even though my host father encouraged me to, saying "You're young, you can stay up late! I went to the Bassari parties when I was young, but now I'm older and have many responsibilities." 

Anyway, I gave my camera to my host brother Amadou, and he took a bunch of photos, including these:

Then we all got together at a local campement for Jackie's birthday. I made her a card, Jubal drew her a picture, and Tatiana got her some palm wine from the Bassaris. (I am not a huge fan of palm wine, it's sweet, slightly foamy, in a fermented-tasting yeasty way, and it doesn't help that it's usually room temperature. And room temperature can be pretty warm.)

A few days later (after a ridiculous, fly-ridden trip in to Kedougou) we came in to the regional house for meetings and then had a big Mexican-ish dinner to celebrate Jackie and C.J.'s birthdays. Meera and Meagan cooked up tortilla and beans, people lit candles (since we all conveniently came in right as a 3-day power outage struck), and Jess A., Jackie, and Meagan posed in front of the lovely table they'd laid out.

The food was delicious and, thanks to the blackout, the ambiance was all candle-lit and sophisticated. Or, as sophisticated as sweaty people in headlamps eating out of plastic bowls can possibly get.

After dinner it was time to decorate the amazing cake that Meera had baked. I made the frosting, but the actual icing of the cake was a team effort.

This has nothing to do with anything in Senegal, we just thought it was really funny.

In any case, the cake turned out to be really pretty (for rural sub-Saharan Africa during a blackout) and tasted fantastic (for anywhere) and a good time was had by all. 

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. 

Yellow Fever (Vaccinations)

Over the last few months there have been some cases of yellow fever around the region of Kédougou, so the Ministry of Health got a vaccination campaign together. Along with enough vaccine for pretty much everyone in the region, they sent out banners and hats and t-shirts and posters that proclaimed "One Injection = 10 Years of Protection." I had to get a yellow fever vaccination at my staging in Washington D.C. in order to be allowed into Senegal, so I was all set. Every person who got vaccinated got a little card, very similar to the one I have now, as proof of vaccination in case they need to cross a border that requires proof of vaccination. My role during most of the campaign was to provide comic relief (A toubab who speaks Pulaar! Hilarious!) and also to fill out hundreds and hundreds of these little cards.

Neighborhood Vaccination Station

Vaccination station in a
village without a health structure.

Sedenbou: A ramshackle mining village with no wells. 

Maybe my favorite part was on the last day that I went out en brousse and we went to a tiny little Pulaar village called Medina Jam Weli. It's just a few compounds, the road out to it really isn't a road at all -- It's just a tiny little village wayyyyyy out in the bush. We pulled up, and the health workers (many of whom have been sent out from the cities and do not speak Pulaar or live in huts) were wondering who on earth lives out here, and I realized that I recognized the moto leaning up against the mango tree. One of my host brothers was randomly visiting the village, dropping some stuff off for my host father. Everyone in the car thought it was really funny when I exclaimed "Omigod! That's my brother!" and went off to greet everyone in the village. It turns out that Kade, my youngest host mother (my host father's third wife) is from Medina Jam Weli, so I got to meet her parents and siblings (I took a lot of pictures, which she was super pleased about when I got back and showed her) and they sat me down and made me eat some steamed rice with peanut sauce, which was great because I was really hungry.

Adama (me) and Ibrahima (my host brother)

People were really receptive to being vaccinated, and to getting their kids vaccinated. Many community members helped out with spreading the word about the vaccinations and with running the logistics of the campaign. There were still many problems (communications, transport, gas, and so on) but it was a really encouraging to see a big group of people working so hard to help their communities avoid a really nasty illness.

Vaccinations under a mango tree

Baby Mama

Awhile back I was telling someone how cute Saliou, their little boy, is and they exclaimed "You should marry him You think he's pretty! Marry him!" Because my Pullo Fuuta was still just barely functional I was slightly confused, and I guess it showed in my face, prompting my host sister to gently place a hand on my knee while telling me in an overly reassuring tone that they were, in fact, joking, and did not expect me to marry a baby.

Saliou and Sajou Ba, being serious.

Then, the other day, I was chatting with a neighbor, admiring her newborn baby girl, and she said "Oh, you think she's very pretty? Well, then she should marry your father! Because he's the chef du village! And then... she would be your mother! Come greet your baby-mother!" This was pretty funny for everyone except the baby, Kadjitou, who slept through the whole thing. I see them around my village, at the Health Center and in the weekly market, and the mom always calls out "Adama! Come greet your neene! Your neene is here!"

And so I do. 

THIS IS WHY WE CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS

There used to be a big mirror in the Regional House shower, but someone knocked it off the wall and broke it.

Last month our plastic house French press cracked, and we bought a fancy new glass one in Dakar. It lasted a week and a half before it broke.

We were having a lovely time making delicious banana-and-yogurt smoothies with our slightly-cracked-but-totally-functional blender but then I dropped the plastic pitcher and a piece of the black base part chipped off. We thought it was still going to work, but it didn’t, and we made a huge sticky mess all over the floor. (We use the blender on the floor, under the desk with the phone, because that’s where the outlet is.)

Luckily there are volunteers expecting visitors from the USA pretty soon, and they’re nice people who’re willing to pack replacement blender parts and purportedly indestructible French presses into their checked luggage.

Someone took a photo of that smoothie mess somewhere, I’ll try to get a hold of it. 

N'ice Cream

I have been in Dakar for a few days for a dentist appointment, and because of the power outages and the total lack of internet access at the Dakar regional house it's been surprisingly inconvenient to get online. However, it is really convenient to get ice cream, and there's a place downtown called N'ice Cream that's as close as Dakar comes to having an American-style ice cream shop. 

As delicious as many of the flavors are, there are a few significant differences between Baskin Robbins and N'ice Cream. First, despite the name, the employees at N'ice Cream aren't actually that nice. For instance, you only get two samples, and those are given somewhat begrudgingly. Also, many of the flavors are not labeled, and it can be a challenge to get someone to tell you what's what, which, combined with the sample limits, adds a certain element of surprise to the whole flavor selection process. It's still really fun though, and so yesterday, after we finished up at the dentist, my friend Chelsea and since we're in Dakar and had just gotten out dental problems taken care of we decided to have a frozen sugarfest to celebrate.

Chelsea at N'ice Cream

Chelsea ordered Tiramisu with Strawberry and she got Vanilla with Blueberry. It was still very good, but confusing.

Blu N'ice, Triple Chocolate, Rainbow Sprinkles

As far as we could tell, Blu N'ice seems to be frosting flavored. When paired with Triple Chocolate and Rainbow Sprinkles it's pretty much like eating a cupcake. A frozen, pureéd, and reconstituted cupcake. It was amazing. 

Blu N'ice, Triple Chocolate, and Sprinkles