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.

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.

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

Transport

Transport is usually the worst and most unpleasant part of living in Senegal. Unless you're well-to-do and have your own car and driver the "public" transportation system is made up of a chaotic, ramshackle network of privately owned beat-up buses, rusty jumbo-vans, smaller-but-equally-rusty vans and mini-vans, pick-up trucks, horse/donkey-drawn charette carts, and safari cars. It's expensive and unpredictable (cars leave the garage as they fill up, so you wait three minutes or nine hours), the guys in charge of cutting tickets are usually loud, aggressive, and will often stretch the truth to pressure foreigners into buying tickets, and the baggage guys frequently try to extravagantly overcharge people (last time I went from Tamba the guy tried to charge 2 000 FCFA for a bag that should cost 500 FCFA) but they also tend to relent pretty quickly when you tell that that you've been here before and you know the price.

A typical transport receipt 

Each city has a "garage," which is just a big parking lot where cars and buses park and wait for passengers. The garages in Dakar and the other big cities are sprawling and hectic, filled with vendors and ladies selling ceeb u jen, but the mayhem is somewhat organized. There are garage managers, and the guys in charge of selling tickets who make sure that cars get passengers and leave in the proper order. In the smaller cities, like Kédougou the garages are smaller, slower-paced, and more manageable. In a mid-sized village like Salémata the "garage" is just a bench in front of a sandwich shack, with a guy who sits around, making tea and writing out little ticket stubs. (I happen to glue all my travel tickets, baggage stubs and other paper miscellany into my journal, so at this point I have a comprehensive catalog of the kinds of hand-written receipts that there are in Senegal.

We don't get many nice transport cars out in Salémata on account of our road being rough, dusty, unpaved, somewhat washed out in a few places, and 80 kilometers (about 50 miles) long. It gets worse once the rainy season starts; the road gets muddy, occasionally floods completely by the bigger bridges, and we don't get very many cars at all.

A sept-place and a green van in the Salémata Garage

The nicest vehicle in the Salemata Garage that morning

I got lucky with this car because it had decent-looking tires, the engine sounded ok, the uplostery was still pretty much intact, and it had been painted pretty recently. The interior (below on the left) looked pretty nice. The photo below in the right is of the Salémata garage and main street, where the weekly lumo market happens on Tuesdays. There weren't many people around this morning (which is partly why I felt comfortable taking photos), just people stopping on to buy bread and boutique owners sweeping garbage into little piles and lighting little trash fires. 

I only had to wait for about an hour and a half, which really isn't too bad. The car also didn't stop that many times to pick people up along the way, so it never filled up to the point of being ridiculously over-capacity. They also let me hop out right in front of the Peace Corps house (conveniently right on the road in from Salémata) and that made things easier, too.

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. 

Year of the Pull-Tab Soda Can

Sometimes it's the little differences that catch your eye. Is this some sort of retro-futuristic marketing ploy? Is this a thing in America now?

Revenge of the John Boehner Laterite Road Tan

So, last week when we got on the Niokolo bus from Kédougou to Dakar, a very nice man sitting in the row behind us handed over these disposable surgical masks and told us to put them on. We weren't totally sure we would need them (the bus had windows and everything) but dutifully put them on anyway. (Left to right: me, Leah, Marielle, and New Ian.)

Four hours later when we stopped in Tamba we were very glad we'd done so.

Eight hours after that we were in Dakar, enjoying croissants and fancy coffees and attracting all sorts of sidelong looks from the well-kempt people on their way to work. (Once the Peace Corps office was open for business we went and took showers and felt much more presentable.) 

Biking en brousse

Since the start of the rainy season I've expanded my list of things that I consider "bike-able" to include rock fields, sand pits, and small rivers. The only thing around here that it turns out you really can't bike through is mud. Your wheels sink in, and the mud cakes up so thick on the brakes that the wheels stop turning. Even pushing a bike through the deep clay mud in some places requires stopping every few minutes to scrape off the rims and tires. 

A few days ago I biked from Dindéfélo to Kédougou, all by myself. I'd done it before, but in a group and from the other direction, so I was a little nervous about remembering where the turnoffs were, and about mud and water level, but it went just fine. It is en brousse, but even out in the sticks there are little villages and huts along the way, and at the one fork where I wasn't sure which was to go I just asked an old man who was sitting under a tree, enjoying his morning tea, and he told me which way would take me toward Kédougou.

My favorite part is this stick bridge, supported by tall big branches and wires attached to another tree off to the left. I felt very Indiana Jones-ish starting my day off with a 30 kilometer (19-ish mile) ride through the African countryside. Except that I had a water bottle and a helmet instead of a whip and a fedora. 

Stick Bridge!

Return of The John Boehner Laterite Road Tan

Salémata is about 80 kilometers down a red dirt road from Kédougou; in a Peace Corps Land Rover it takes about two hours, but in a mini-bus or a truck it can take a lot longer than that. Ever since rainy season started up in earnest it's been even more of a trek than usual, and on bad days it's completely flooded in several places. My neighbor Sully and I waited until it had been sunny long enough for things to dry out a bit, and decided to head in to town.   As you can see, even with the recent rains tamping things down it's a pretty dusty ride... 

The best part (other than the icy icy cold Coke that I bought as soon as we arrived) was that when we got back to the Kédougou Regional House the water was on (it's not on a lot of the time) so that I got to take a shower not out of a bucket, which was lovely. 

Incommunicado!

So, everything's been pretty good lately, except for the recent lack of internet access and our road being flooded on and off for most of the last week or so.

I'm back in town for a few days and am using a little USB InternetEverywhere key to connect to the cell phone network and get online. 

I'm going to slog through my Gmail for awhile and then will get to uploading some photos and posting some updates. 

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!

The Village Castle

I spent this past week in the Kédougou reion, visiting the village of Salémata (where I'll be living during my two years of service) shadowing current volunteers to get an idea of what life will be like as a PCV, and checking out the village castle. Mmmhmm. The castle.

 

For some reason it looks mini in this photo, but it is a couple stories high, and as far as anyone seems to know it was built about 10 years ago by a crazy French guy who thought that a cinder-block Medieval-Times-looking chateau was exactly what this little rural village needed...

Anyway. Back to Volunteer Visits.  So, we all climbed into a Peace Corps Land Cruiser and drove down to the Kédougou Regional House, which took about 10 hours. The Regional House is a kinda communal house in the city of Kédougou, and it has a kitchen and wifi and plenty of beds. It's where I'll stay every few weeks when I come into town to pick up mail and buy stuff at the market, and it's a pretty nice place with a very beach-town-commune feel to it. 

After spending the night in Kédougou the other volunteers who live around Salémata hired a van to take us out to village, which took a couple hours. It's about 80 kilometers (50 miles) out to Salémata, and the dirt road is pretty good but it still tends to be slow going. I have a bike (and a helmet!) and there's a cheap, reliable bus that goes into town several times a week, so transportation shouldn't be too much of an issue for me. I'll also have a very nice little hut with my own little fenced-in backyard and latrine/bathing area, as well as electricity for several hours during the evening on most days, which is fancy if you ask me. I'll be living with the village chief, his three wives, and their zillion children, and according to the volunteer who lived with them before they're pretty great. I met the wives and a half a zillion kids, but the chief was out of town during my visit, so I didn't get to meet him and I also didn't get a name. My name in my training village has been Adama Diallo, so people in Salémata have taken to calling me Adama Tawo, which means Adama-For-Now, and I feel like there's a decent chance that that will stick.

So! I also did actually visit Volunteers! And they were great! My closest neighbor and visit host was an Agriculture Volunteer named Sully. He extended for a third year, his language skills are really fantastic, and it was really nice to go around town with someone who knows everything really well. We met the people I'll be working with, worked on some HIV/AIDS awareness billboards he's been painting, spent a morning leading a tree-seeding activity at the local school, and just generally hung out being very Peace-Corps-ish and talking about how hot it was all day. (It was so hot!) 

My other neighbors, Tatiana (Eco-Tourism) and Ian (Agro-Forestry) were also really fun, really funny, and are working on really great projects, like facilitating well construction and helping get schools involved with scholarship programs for girls. 

More on Salémata soon, right now I'm going to go work on getting some photos uploaded ~ 

UPDATE: Volunteer Visit Photos