Endless Trash

Waste disposal is a huge problem here; trash cans are often non-existent and littering is completely normal. Sewage, garbage, recyclables, food scraps - too often they wind up strewn about on the ground, waiting to be swept up and burned or washed away by rain or just left there forever.

Trash on a beach in St Louis

A typical debris-filled drainage ditch in Dakar

In the U.S. people produce a truly astounding amount of garbage on any given day, but for the most part it's quickly whisked off, to landfills or barges or processing centers or treatment plants, and we don't have to look at it. In Senegal everyone has to look at it. Pretty much all the time.

When I first arrived here the sheer volume of trash was one of the most striking things about the city-scape. When I travel around the country I still get hung up on how much garbage I see by the roadside, on the outskirts of towns, and just generally strewn around on the ground.

One of Dakar's many refuse-strewn lots

Batteries, old clothes, corn cobs, broken shoes, cardboard boxes, empty bottles, old notebooks, used-up pens, animal bones, mango peels, burnt-out light bulbs, candy wrappers, an ocean of plastic bags; anything you could use or grow or buy and then throw away is piled in the great swaths of refuse fanning out around the cities, towns and villages.

A village garbage pile in a field

Litter in a village creek bed

Rubble in a village ravine

People nonchalantly toss wrappers out car windows and drop soda cans right in the gutter without a second glance. For someone coming from a part of the world where littering is not only illegal but considered morally reprehensible, this is profoundly unsettling. It's awkward to watch. When there isn't a wastebasket handy (which is almost always) and no one to come by and empty a wastebasket anyway it's hard to argue with. It's a complicated problem and is difficult to change, but there are many people, PCVs and Senegalese, trying to do just that, with Sanitation Committees and public awareness campaigns and designated trash collection and burning areas.

Trash on a village path

At the end of the day all of this really, really makes a person appreciate the often unrecognized value of well-enforced anti-dumping laws, all that chiding about putting things in the proper bin, and access to an efficient garbage collection service.

Mid-Service

I was just up in Dakar for my mid-service medical appointments. About a year into service PCVs are supposed to come up to Med to have a check up with a doctor, a cleaning and x-rays at the dentist, and a tuberculosis test. Depending on what the PCV needs they'll also do a Pap smear, HIV and STI tests, MIF (stool sample) kit analysis, and tests for various parasite problems, such as schistosomiasis, a sort of snail-worm infection. Schisto, as we like to call it, is a neglected tropical disease (NTDs; they're horrible but fascinating) and is very common in my region. 

My check-up was pretty brief and boring; other than strep throat, switching off Mephaquin, a few relatively minor bouts of diarrhea and vomiting, I haven't really had any significant medical problems so far. (Knock on wood.) My schisto results haven't come back yet, but I don't have any cavities or tooth-problems (yay!) and my TB-exposure test was as negative as they come. The dental cleaning is a little odd, mostly because the dentist (a cheerful older Moroccan man) doesn't do things like give you a free travel-sized tube of toothpaste or provide a lead apron during x-rays. In fact, he takes the x-rays while standing next to you, sometimes whole holding the little square of film in place against your teeth with his own hand. He also develops the x-ray films right there, rinsing the chemicals off right into his little lab sink. It's how I imagine American dentists did in the olden days when it was totally okay to use fluoroscopes for fun and have women hand-number clock faces with radium paint.

In any case, it was interesting and good to get all checked out. And totally bizarre that I'm already more than halfway through my service. How is it June 2012 already?

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. 

Village Etc

Yesterday I was (painfully) reminded that biking in flip-flops is a terrible idea. My foot slipped and I scraped my big toe, not very badly but I will be wearing shoes for awhile.

Now I'm headed back to Salémata, and will be back to town in a week or so, after my Action Plan community meeting is all done.

UPDATE: My toe is healing up very nicely. Again. 

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.) 

All About IST

If you're curious about the Kédougou Region, where I live, or the Pulaar language, which I'm still learning, do check out these links on the Peace Corps/Senegal website, they do a good job of giving you an idea of what I'm doing work-wise. 


As you prob'ly know, I am a Preventative Health Volunteer, and I'm currently at In-Service Training (IST) at the Center in Thiès. The Health Volunteers have training with the Environmental Education Volunteers, so there are about 40 of us total. It's the same group that did Pre-Service Training together, so it's been really fun to see my stage-mates again. 


Fun fact about the Thiès Training Center: our dorm building has two English toilets (meaning American-style, where you sit instead of a squat toilet) stopped flushing last week, so we've been flushing manually, filling up mini trash cans and pouring the water in the bowl.   

On the whole it's been nice to be at the center, though. There's electricity and wifi most of the time, salad with dinner every night, and showers instead of bucket baths. Fancy. 

Termite (In)Fest(Ation)



Hey, what are those funny little piles everywhere?

Are those leaves?

Oh. Yeah, those are bugs.

And they're everywhere.

For a couple days the Regional House was swarming with termites. They're harmless, and not really that gross, at least not until they start piling up in the shower, shedding their wings and piling up in the corners until you can't even see the floor. The only one who was happy to see the termites was Joseph, the cat, because he likes to eat them by the dozen, which is helpful but also a little disgusting to watch.

Ah Hab A Code.

It's a gray and rainy day here in Kédougou. It's so chilly that I put on a long-sleeved t-shirt, even. The wet season is starting and I have a little bit of a cold, so the other under-the-weather volunteers and I are hanging out in the library hut, sniffling and drinking lovely green tea and rooibos from my Tekoe stash.

(Actually, I am drinking out of an old mayonnaise jar.)

Lessons Learned

In no particular order, here are a few of the things I have learned so far:

1. I've been told that the giant, scorpion-looking spider things (which are attracted to light and come skittering in around my feet when I turn on my headlamp at night) are harmless, but the caterpillar-ish centipede things (which I have not seen yet) have a nasty, poisonous bite.

2. My neighbor Sully was right about the Salémata Health Center having fantastic food. Last week (when I came to observe a 10:00am sanitation presentation that didn't wind up starting until 2:30pm) they invited me to have lunch with them and they served delicious rice and fish and vegetables.

3. You really can't buy vegetables in Salémata. Aside from a few sad little tomatoes and onions that sometimes show up at the weekly lumo market, you have to go 80 km (50 miles) to buy them at the market in Kédougou. Or plant a garden yourself.

4. Pulaar grammar and vocabulary is all sorts of fun. Jangugol means "to read," "to study," and "to learn." So no one really has any idea when I'm being a serious student and when I'm relaxing with a good book. Which and be both good and bad. Also, Pullo Fuuta has 24 classes of articles, meaning that there are 24 ways to say "the." It gets even better when you throw "these" and "that" and "this" into the mix...

5. I have come to think of 'cold' as a flavor. As Cady knows, it it currently my favorite flavor. Along with 'Snickers.' (I was not a huge fan of Snickers before, but I have recently realized that they are fantastic. And also almost entirely unavailable outside Dakar.)

4. My host brother was right about how much easier it is to fetch water by strapping the covered bucket on the back of my bike than it is to carry it on my head.

5. It was maybe not the best idea to read As I Lay Dying straight through in one ungodly hot afternoon. It put me in a strange mood and set me up for a series of extra-strange social interactions.

6. According to some people, my life here sounds just like Little House on the Prairie, except with a hut, and in the hills, and in Africa, and with texting. (I never actually read Little House on the Prairie, so I will have to take their word for it.)

7. Infinite Jest is long.¹

8. I am really lucky to live in a village (almost more of a town, really) that has a bean sandwich lady. And extra-extra lucky that the beans are pretty tasty.

9. I can be needlessly difficult and contrarian at times. Particularly when I am hot and/or hungry. (This isn't so much something I have learned so much as been made more vividly aware of over the last few weeks...)

10. If everything goes well it takes three hours (squished in between a girl with two live chickens and a man holding a very small baby) in a van-type vehicle for me to get from Salémata to Kédougou. Yesterday everything went well, alhamdoulilaye.

________

1. In Senegalese culture it's really incredibly offensive to eat things in front of others without sharing (but serious nose-picking is ok) and people will not decline to eat half your Clif bar, bean sandwich, etc, if given the opportunity. If people have something they want to eat then they do it in their rooms or in some other non-public space, and so I frequently do the same, holing up in my hut to eat a secret apple or packet of Biskrem,^a especially since lunch is often not until 2:00pm. Also, I don't yet feel comfortable openly using my laptop or iPod in village, so I only listen to music and podcasts at night and at naptime, and pretty much hide in my room whenever I have laptop-based work to do. Given all this daily pseudo-secrecy, combined with the fact that I have an assumed Senegalese name (Adama Hawa Souaré) and often pretend to be married or engaged, Infinite Jest is maybe not the worst book to be reading at this particular time in my life.^b 

________               
                   
a. Biskrem is an extremely tasty chocolate-creme filled cookie, produced by Ülker (a Turkish brand owned by the Yıldız Holding group) and wildly popular in Senegal, West Africa. 
b. Apologies for all this footnote business to everyone except for the three of you who I am mostly sure will find it amusing.

Less Pleasant Things

Life as a PCV in Senegal is not all beach parties and fancy outfits. For example, I've had a mild-to-moderate stomachache all day, there's some sort of heat rash cropping up on my sides (lovely, huh?) and I'm pretty sure everything about me permanently smells like sunblock, sweat, or some combination of the two. I install in Salémata tomorrow (!!!) and am eager to settle in, set up a routine, and adjust to the new climate.

In less gross news, my left pinkie toenail is growing back nicely! I will try to be more careful with it this time around.