Falling Down huts

There are a lot of huts in various states of disrepair around. In other parts of the country you'll see mostly apartment buildings, or square brick-and-mortar huts, or round mud huts covered in a protective layer of cement. Most of the huts around me are mud, though, just mud, or maybe mud spackled with a village cement made of sand and cow dung. My little hut is just whitewashed mud, with a thin cement floor added on later in order to comply with basic Peace Corps housing requirements. It works, I enjoy it, I feel very at home in my little mud house. But the mud huts aren't permanent, and when they're no longer tenable they crumble in all sorts of interesting ways. 

This hut on the left isn't really falling apart all that much, but it has a lovely squash vine on it and I like it very much. Some of the huts, especially the bigger ones with ample surface area, have stunningly large squash vines. They remind me of frilly old-timey bathing caps or something. The one on the right has slid down quite a bit over the last few weeks, the roof just sinking lower and lower after each rainstorm.

This is my favorite falling-down hut. It was at its best last month, when the tufts of grass around the wall were still short and neon-bright and the inside space was filled with corn stalks. Now the grass on top is grown long and looks slightly dry as it starts to go to seed. The broken-down huts are ruins, but ruins from a very recent past. They're made of dirt, so watching them slowly tumble back down to the ground while the grass and trees rise up around them seems symmetrical. Back from whence they came and all that. A solid hut can last for many years, a decade or mere. It's interesting, living in a structure that isn't intended or expected to last for ages. 

All the over-lush grass spilling out of the ruins of the hut on the left reminds me of a river, crashing through floodgates, and the one on the right makes me think of a game of pick-up-sticks. They're interesting, the falling-down huts, they're quiet and weathered and caught in the midst of a drastic transition; they're a little like clouds or inkblots. They look like sandcastles, or haunted shacks, or Andy Goldsworthy installation pieces. They're neat. 

Mud Wasps

I don't know what these things are called, but I call them mud wasps for obvious reasons, event though I'm pretty sure they're not actually a kind of wasp. They don't bite or sting, but they are always building these many-chambered larvae-caddies on the whitewashed walls of my mud hut. I don't mind them, but this one decided to set up shop right at the head of my bed, and I didn't like the idea of all that buzzing (they're kind of loud) and egg-laying going on just inches from my face while I slept. So, I got out an old spoon and used the end to pry the little structure away from the wall, and to my surprise it popped right off, fully intact.

"Mud Wasp"

Neat. Kind of gross, but neat. 

I felt a little bad about ruining their little home, but they have plenty of other nests set up under my eaves, and I did sleep much better that night.

This Old Hut

It's hut renovation and construction season here in Salémata, and people are building huts all over the place. These new huts are near the Health Center and the roof thatch is already all stacked up and ready to go.

Mariama, one of my host mothers, is having a new hut built. It's square instead of round, which I think is fancy.

Hut in Progress

It's also time to start mending or replacing roof thatch, before it gets ungodly hot or too close to the rainy season. People go out and gather tall grass, bundle it up, let it dry out in the sun, and then tear off the old roof and re-thatch the whole thing. My host family says that my roof (which I'm pretty sure is mostly made of spiders at this point) is due for some repairs, possibly a replacement, which will be interesting. (This photo is of one of our neighbor's huts, I'm not actually sure who usually sleeps in it.)

Partially Un-Thatched

There's a nice hut getting torn down and rebuilt pretty close to my compound. They're about halfway done right now and I really like how it's basically a cross section. Every time I walk by I think "Anatomy of a Hut."

Some people choose to get a little more creative with their renovations:

The Pink Hut of Salemata

(I think the guys who do the painting for the castle got to use some of the leftover paint.)

Things That Make Me Nervous

Now that the rainy season is long over and even the cold season is beginning to peter out and heat up, people are doing a lot of grass-clearing. These are photos from the lot next to the Regional House, and even though the fire was under control it made a snapping, crackling sound that kept me on edge until it went out. 

Some of it seems to be prescribed burning, and some of it is just to clear fields, and either way it creates lots of smoke. Sometimes it’s really hazy around town. 

The Castle Gets Weirder

The castle of Salémata is owned by a very creepy old French man who I suspect can't go back to Europe because of his InterPol rap sheet. Here are some updates of the slow, bizarre progression of the construction of what I hear is supposed to be a "tourism restaurant and safari bar." (Keep in mind that donkeys are the most terrifying big game animal in village.) 

Spring 2011

Summer 2011

Fall 2011

The North

To celebrate Thanksgiving I decided to make the trip up North, to Ndioum, where some volunteers were hosting a big Thanksgiving dinner.

It was quite a trek.

Along the way we noticed many things that were different up there - Meera and I made a list, actually.

Dinner was really impressive and overwhelmingly delicious and here is the Picasa album to prove it.

Hope you all had a very happy Thanksgiving, too! 

Rainy Morning in Village

The day before I left Salémata to come to Thiès for IST (In-Service Training) I was hanging out at the Catholic Mission - I'd been helping a few of a the girls who live at the Mission foyer to prepare for their year-end exams - and one of the nuns mentioned that they were driving in to Kédougou early the next morning and offered me a ride.
The next morning I got up at 5:30 (when she said early she meant early) and walked over to the intersection (there's only one) and took a few photos while I waited for their little white pick-up truck to come get me.

Misty Hillside

Welcome to Salémata

  

Snails in the Rain

Lariam Dreams...

I haven't had any Mefloquine-influenced dreams yet, but that was what I wanted to call this blog. I reconsidered after seeing that the domain name was taken, and also figuring that it's better to not tempt fate.

In any case, my life in Senegal (both days of it) have been surprisingly pleasant. There are 48 other trainees in my group, we landed in Dakar yesterday at dawn, wedged ourselves into a couple mini-buses and drove off to start Pre-Service Training. As the sun came up we looked out the windows at the sprawl of Dakar and the multitude of crumbling, half-built apartments on the outskirts of town, and then I half-slept through the rest of the drive. The Peace Corps Training Center in Thiès ("tchess") has everything a trainee could want, except for hot showers, but I'd take semi-reliable wifi over hot showers any day. We dropped our bags, had some food and some rest time, and jumped right into orientation and placement interviews. We also had individual medical sessions, where we were vaccinated for typhoid and meningitis, put on anti-malaria pills (I am now taking Mefloquine, the generic for Lariam), and given first aid kits and a stockpile of handy antibiotics and whatnot. My roommate and I decided to stay up until 21h00 (9:00pm) and we passed the time by writing in our journals and complaining about how exhausted we were and then promptly conked out at 21h03.

Today we had a guided tour of the area immediately surrounding the training compound, listened to another introductory presentation, had our French language assessments, and ate spiced rice, chicken and chopped peppers for lunch, which was delicious. Then we did our prep reading for our culture and etiquette session tomorrow, realized that we'd behaved fairly disgustingly at lunch (drinking with our left hands, sitting like heathens, making inappropriate small talk) and were extra glad that we have this week of heavily supervised compound-based preparation before meeting our first host families next week.

I'm going to try to get a "day-in-the-life" style photo album or video up this weekend, and after next Tuesday I won't have daily internet access for awhile, but I'll update when I can. Jërëjëf, ba beneen!