Map of Senegal

After our World Map Mural went so well the director of the Primary School asked me to do another mural, an outdoor one, to beautify the school. Actually, he didn't really ask so much as declared, in a loud, jovial way, that I must come back and do another mural, as soon as possible. I agreed, got my paints together, gridded a little map of Senegal I had lying around, and got to work. 

I got this far in one afternoon, but the holes in the wall were a stumbling block. Fortunately, there were some Bassari guys doing a construction project at the school, putting a cement floor in a new classroom, and it was pretty easy to convince them to come put some extra cement in the wall. 

After the cement dried I used bits of leftover paint to smooth things over (and because it's fun to smush colors around) and then came back the next day to paint a background for the school title. I also touched up the places where some little kids had scribbled with charcoal and left dusty little hand-prints in the still-tacky paint. Ugh. Kids.

Most of the kids were pretty cute and extremely respectful, actually. They'd sit near me, asking questions, bickering with each other, or reading the names of each department aloud. There was one kid who greeted me and then sat in the shade, making little things out bits of trash and singing made-up songs using the text from the wrappers and tins he was playing with. (He was my favorite.) The morning after that I came back again to add text, a fancy ribbon, and general finishing touches. 

The director requested that I write "Discipline - Work - Success" across the bottom, and I obliged, even though it isn't the slogan I would have chosen for an elementary school. I might have gone with something like "Friendship! Learning! Dreams and Rainbows!" or something similarly American, but he's the director and he seems to care about improving the school. I also misspelled "Discipline" but realized it only a couple hours after I'd finished up, while jogging by to admire my own handiwork, so I'm pretty sure corrected it before anyone noticed. Success!

Spell-Checked.

I obtained guests.

A couple weeks ago my neighbor Katie had a birthday and since she'd been traveling a lot recently decided to have a party out in village instead of slogging in to the Regional House. It rained quite a bit during her ride over to my place, so she wound up do a fair big of slogging anyway, but she made it safe and sound. 

Ramadan was in full swing so we had a discreet little mac & cheese lunch in my hut, and then PCVs Jackie and Jubal came in to celebrate with fancy hors d'œuvres (Laughing Cow "cheese" and salami gifted to us from a friend), hot chocolate, and cake. 

Katie blew out the candles on her Nutella-frosted loaf-cake (imported specially from Kédougou), opened her presents (cards, seed packets, candy, and her supply refills from the med office) and we watched a few episodes of Summer Heights High on my netbook. 

My host family likes it when I have visitors, especially Jubal because he's funny, plays music, and bring seeds, and kept popping in to say hello, exclaim that I'd obtained some guests ("Adama! A hebbi hohbé!") and ask good-naturedly which of us were fasting for Ramadan. (Jubal actually is fasting, but he's still drinking water during the day.) I like having visitors, too; all in all it was a lovely little evening.

Les Parfums de Sénégal

Not long after I came to Senegal I was in a car with a few other PCVs, and we got to talking about what scents a Senegal-themed scented candle set would include. (I think it was April's idea.) In any case, I still think about that when I catch whiffs of  Senegal-specific odors. As best I can recall, here are some of the odors we identified as being the iconic smells of PCV life in Senegal: 

• Café Touba: at pretty much every bean sandwich lady's stand in the whole country you can buy hot, sugary little cups of Café Touba to go with your breakfast. (Many PCVs love it; I am not so much a fan.) It smells over-boiled and slightly peppery, like cloves and leaves and instant coffee.
• Fish Market: in most markets there's a section devoted to selling all kinds of fish - big, small, fresh, dried, semi-spoiled - and it always reeks of fish guts turning rancid under the most powerful heat lamp in the world. 
• Trash Fire: one of the least-lovely smells to wake up to. 
• Tea Time: the singed-sugar smell that comes from cooking up the scalding, hyper-sweet ataaya tea that many Senegalese like to drink int eh afternoons (and mornings... and evenings...) 
• Dust: it's subtle, just a light, hot, dry smell, but it's also everywhere, especially on transport. It cakes up on clothes and in sinuses and gets way down into the seams and cracks of everything, from books to keyboards to skin and hair. 
• Mango: fresh, sweet, sun-warmed and lovely, mangoes right from the tree are one of the few silver linings to hot season. 

Other suggestions were Overpowering Body Odor (particularly while crammed in a crowded bus or a station wagon with nine other people), Sewage Puddles (a rainy season fixture in all cities), and Adji (the bullion packets that are the base flavoring for nearly all Senegalese dishes we eat on a regular basis).

Maybe the candle set would look like this. 

Sadly, for me (and the other people in the room with me right now) Trash Fire would have to be the smell that I most strongly associate with living here. While away on vacation I stepped out of the car after being picked up from the airport and the first things I thought was "Oh wow, it smells so nice here." I've heard that repeated - unprompted and almost verbatim - from several other volunteers.

There are many other smells that spring to mind when I think of my life here in Senegal, many of them quite pleasant - babies all freshly washed and lathered in warm, nutty-smelling shea butter; sweet, floral "chourie" incense paste; the fresh-baked bread smell of tapalpa village baguettes. But really, Trash Fire tends to overwhelm them all. 

Radio Party

Until just a few years ago the Kédougou was just a somewhat forgotten Department within the larger Region of Tambacounda. Now Kédougou has full regional status and over the last year we've been seeing all sorts of changes. For instance, as of last month the National Highway is now completely paved (but it wasn't last year) all the way to the city of Kédougou, our regional capitol, and they've started putting in sidewalks and streetlights along part of the main road through town. There are even (still non-functional) stoplights being installed at the main intersection by the market. It's all very impressive. 

Within Kédougou, the Salémata Health District (where I live) is still pretty much the least developed and most isolated. The road out to the Salémata Health Center is rough, unpaved, and often impassable in the rainy season, electricity is scarce, cell phone service is often patchy and weak, and until very recently just about the only radio stations that we could pick up were coming from Guinean stations, missionaries, or the BBC World Service. And then U.S.A.I.D. showed up built this lovely little community radio station and set up a broadcasting tower, which is really fantastic for a variety of reasons.

I didn't even know that the radio station was done (the U.S.A.I.D. agent in our area isn't exactly known for being thrilled about Peace Corps Volunteers) but my host family invited to the inauguration and it turned out to be quite the party; people really wanted to put on a show because the new American Ambassador, Lewis Lukens, actually came out for the inauguration ceremony. Because Americans are stereotypically extremely punctual, people here thought it was funny that he and his entourage showed up a little late (frequently people used to Dakar don't take into account how much slower one has to drive on a washed-out laterite road when calculating driving times) and couldn't stay long, but people were still really glad he'd come. It made them feel like Salémata was important, and that the American government cared about their community specifically. 

Middle school students dressed up like traditional Pulaar villagers, drawing on pretend face-tattoos (which you still see on older women sometimes), chewing on teeth-sticks, wearing blue leppi fabric outfits, and carrying traditional decorative woven discs. I gave my camera to Mamadou, my little host brother, and he took some great photos, including these ones of me sitting in the crowd (I'm still shocked sometimes by how much I really just don't blend in at all) and of my host mother Mariama (below left, you can see a snippet of her bright orange headwrap) dragging me up in front while she slipped the griot singers some change and had them sing my name in a song, which is a really nice thing to do for someone.

The Bassaris were the main attraction, though, and they lined up to pose for photos before starting to dance and march around to the music and singing of the griots.

A lot of Mamdou's photos were of his friends posing with the Bassaris or posing with the kids dressed up in traditional Pulaar garb. This his Mamadou and one of our neighbors, posing with my host sister Mariama Gaulo (one the left) and her friend, both dressed up in leppi and make-up.

Having a community radio has already started to make a big difference in how things work in Salémata and all the surrounding villages. Everyone listens to the radio, which makes it a great way to make community announcements, remind people to come to baby weighings, get the word out about vaccination campaigns or upcoming trainings. People also really love to hear their names on the radio, so people will swing by and give the D.J. a few coins to have him greet their friends and family live on the air. I haven't done that yet, but I'll definitely be sending a greeting to my family in the near future. 

New Roof!

My host family, the Souarés, are wonderful. At the beginning of each month I give my host father and mothers a modest cash contribution, to cover the cost of feeding me, sheltering me, just generally taking care of me. At the beginning it was awkwardly difficult to get him to take it, there was a lot of "No, you are part of the family now, we can't accept that!" but I would insist. By now we've fallen into a more comfortable oh-you-don't-have-to-but-thank-you-oh-no-thank-you sort of arrangement, and I've never had any problems with my contribution being squandered, (there are PCVs who have had problems) I'm confident that it goes toward food and basic supplies. 

When I gave my monthly contribution right before I left for vacation it got awkward again, with my host father insisting that I shouldn't be giving money for food that I wasn't going to be around to eat, but I said that it Peace Corps gave it to me to give to them (which is pretty much how it works) and so he considered that and then said "Ok, well, we'll repair your hut's roof while you're gone, so it will be very ready for rainy season." I said that sounded just fine, and when I got back to village I had this lovely, still-golden, water-tight, relatively spider-free thatch roof, and I was totally, totally happy about it. 

Fixed up for move-in day  - May 2011

Older, weathered thatch - Feb 2012

FANCY NEW THATCH! - Apr 2012

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.

Back to Salémata

I'm off to village and am planning to spend New Year's Eve in Ethiolo with my friend and her Bassari host family. The Bassari around here are mostly Catholicized animists, so they care a little more about the Gregorian calendar's new year than most people in our area. 

Also, thanks to GoogleMaps I can show you around Popenguine, Salémata and our little corner of Kédougou. 

Happy New Year! 

Fête Noël

I spent Christmas in Popenguine, a little beach town just south of Dakar, it was wonderful, and here are a few of the highlights. 

Peanuts

Honestly, before coming to Senegal I had only a vague idea of what peanuts looked like before they were roasted and salted or ground up for sandwiches. This is what peanut plants look like. They're all over the place here, and they tend to be about knee-high, but can get bigger. 

(Thanks, Wikipedia.)

This is a little bunch of raw, just-dug peanuts that one of my host brothers handed me a few weeks ago, like a little bouquet. 

The peanuts are roasted by a few of the small boys, who make a bed of coals from smoldering corn husks and cobs that they've scavenged and then push the raw peanuts into the embers, charring the shells, singeing their fingers, making me nervous. 

To me raw peanuts taste unripe, almost sour, like something you'd feed a hamster, but these peanuts were fresh, a wonderful new kind of taste I had trouble describing -- like, what airplane peanuts are to these peanuts what sushi is to canned tuna. (I like canned tuna, but it's a whole different deal.) 

They tasted warm and fresh and clean, they had a green bright flavor and a rich meaty crunch that made me think of standing in the sunshine, eating a BLT. I was hungry, and they were delicious.