The Joys of Transport: Rainy Season

As I may have mentioned before, traveling is by far my least favorite part of living in Senegal. Most of the time Peace Corps Volunteers (like most other people here) get around on what the French would call transport public, which here means transportation that is open to the public (as opposed to private cars and buses) and not "public transport" in the usual sense. The vehicles tend to be dirty, slow, unreliable and rickety, and (with a few exceptional stretches) the roads are often crater-filled, crumbling, or very washboard-esque.

Last month, on our way from my village to Kédougou, the car that my Peace Corps neighbors and I were riding in broke down. It wasn't a total surprise when the clutch fell out of the car floor (the engine sounded like a dying foghorn filled with wrenches) but, as we were nowhere near anywhere, it was pretty inconvenient. Luckily, a guy we know from my village drive by in his truck and wound up taking us (and, somewhat grudgingly, the rest of the passengers) the rest of the way in to town.

Salémata to Kédougou, July 2012 

Several days later, on the way back, we jinxed ourselves by marveling aloud at the lovely weather, the total absence of flooding, the cleanliness of the vehicle, and the competence of the driver. We were thinking that we would get back earlier than expected, have the afternoon to hang out, pull water, sweep out our huts. And then we came upon a big truck, hopelessly mired in a deep and slippery mud puddle, completely blocking the road. Some people opted to wait in the car, some tried to help push and dig and pile rocks under the truck's wheels, and my two PCV neighbors and I decided to walk. We didn't have much baggage and we didn't think that we were too far from Diara Pont, one of their villages. It turned out to be farther than we thought, but again, thanks to a kind man in a sturdy truck, we got a ride in most of the way.

 Kédougou to Salémata,
 July 2012 

And then there's the turnoff in Salémata to continue to the village out toward Oubadji and Kékéressi. There's a small cement bridge there where the road crosses a seasonal stream, or there was until last month. To be fair, the cement part is still there, it's just the road part that's gone missing. 

Kékéressi turnoff on the Salémata Road, July 2012

July 2012 

August 2012

Bigger trucks and less-rugged cars won't be able to go out past Salémata until it's repaired. In the meantime, the mayor and some of the men from around the village stacked rocks and sacks of clay dirt over a shallow area just upstream, so motorbikes and 4-by-4s the ambulance and people on foot can cross without too much difficulty. It's not ideal, but it will have to do for now. 

Of course, despite the terrible roads, the erratic departure times, and the falling-apart cars, I do travel. I go because it's necessary for work, because it's fun and interesting to see new places, and because it's wonderful to visit friends in other cities and villages. I make the most of obligatory trips; while in Dakar, taking care of office-type things, I stayed with my friends Rachel & Emily and their adorable baby boy, and now that I'm in Tamba for a USAID meeting I get to catch up with Emma and Marie, a couple of my favorite PCVs from my training group. After the meeting's over I'll continue to make my way south, on down to Kédougou, eyes on the road and fingers crossed, hoping for the best.  

The Office Moat

This past week I spent a few days at the Thiès Training Center, helping with a few sessions during the latest training groups' In-Service Training (IST).

 

From there I headed over to Dakar, where I'm getting a few things done at the office (meetings, printing, reimbursements for rash-cream, etc) while I'm up here. While it's been lovely to have electricity pretty much all the time, warm showers at the transit house, and plentiful fruit vendors (Plums! Pears! Tangerines! Amazing!) I've also been reminded of why I'd much rather sit out rainy season in a little village than spend it Senegal's capital. 

The Moat: receding, but still very much present.

Dakar doesn't exactly have well-functioning sewers or an effective urban drainage system, so when there are heavy rains gutters overflow, raw sewage burbles up through access holes, and many streets are thoroughly awash with filthy, murky runoff water. Yesterday, after a heavy morning downpour, the water was so deep in parts of the Almadies neighborhood that taxis and other normal-type cars couldn't make it through the reach the main office and the main street by the transit house, where I was, briefly became a frothy river with a surprisingly swift current. Today the water has drained off, for the most part, leaving only the muddled pond that fills the road in front of the office for most of every rainy season here. We were able to get from place to place pretty well, carefully making our way around and over the filthy runoff puddles and streams in an impromptu little game of high-stakes hopscotch. 

South by Southeast by Southwest

From St Louis I headed down to the Peer Support Network (PSN) meeting in Thiès, at the Training Center. Peace Corps/Senegal’s PSN is still relatively new, so we went over by-laws, brushed up on listening skills with  mock phone calls, and discussed issues that have come up over the last few months. We also spent sessions discussing how to best handle PCVs who are dealing with domestic violence problems in their communities and host families and how to talking with Volunteers considering early termination (ET). It was a good meeting (even though my stomach was completely off the whole time) and I liked learning more about Peace Corps resources and hearing ideas from other PCVs on how to talk about and cope with stressors and difficult situations that crop up throughout a Volunteer’s service.

Senegal's PSN 2012

After the PSN meeting it was back to Dakar to catch transport back to Kédougou. I stopped by the office, where Hadiel helped me set up Twitter via SMS (it’s more complicated in Senegal than in America), and I visited Rachel, Emily and their adorable new son Xavier.

I ate my fill of buttery pastries from the decadent Grain d’Or bakery, packed up my backpack, and headed back down to Kédougou, where I am now. I’m just sitting around, typing and waiting for the rain to let up so that I can go run errands, get packed up, and turn the internet back on so that I can post this. When it starts raining we run around the house unplugging everything important because when lightning strikes on or near our Regional House compound everything plugged in just gets completely fried. We lost several routers that way last rainy season (I hear that’s down from six the year before) when no one was around to unplug things in time.

24°C = 72.2°F and 40°C = 104°F

In any case, soon I’ll bike over to the market to pick up a seriche gift for my family (a couple kilos of carrots and dry beans), buy my transport ticket to get back to Salémata tomorrow, gaze wistfully at the closed post office (I have a package waiting but the Poste has very limited hours and I won’t be able to get it before I go back to village) and stop by the office supply boutique to buy a notebook.

I’ll be back in Kédougou in a couple weeks, but now that I’ve figured out the whole SMS-tweeting thing you can look forward to those, for as long as my phone credit lasts, anyway. 

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. 

Post-Elections

So, after a lovely vacation, some time at the office in Dakar, and a visit to Thies to meet the new group of Health Volunteers (who seem really great) during their Pre-Service Training, I'm finally back in Kedougou. It's been a busy month so I have a bit of catch-up to do, and it seems like the best place to start is with the elections, which are totally over now.

There was some unrest in parts of the bigger cities during the first campaign period, so everyone was a little nervous about how things would play out, but much to our relief the first round of elections in February went very, very smoothly. The now-former president, Abdoulaye Wade, had rigged things so that he could run for a third six-year term (which is completely unconstitutional) and many people were understandably upset by this. The first round of elections narrowed the field down to two candidates, Wade and Macky Sall, for the second runoff election in March. The BBC covered the Senegal elections, the election run-off, and the April 2nd swearing-in of President Macky Sall. It's been an interesting time for Senegal, and I'm really glad that the elections went smoothly. Guinea's troubled transition to civilian rule in 2010 and last month's coup in Mali really make me appreciate how valuable - and difficult - it can be to hang on to stability and peaceful political transitions.

Supporters of President Macky Sall

Miscellaneous Things

Kola nuts, or goro in Pulaar, are something you give to someone here when you want to show that you respect them or to mark a special occasion, like a baptism. In my village pretty much all the elderly people are big fans of kola (and the caffeine that they contain) and many have the battered orange teeth to prove it. Once you break the nut open the white nutmeat rapidly oxidizes (I think that's what it's doing, anyway) and turns brownish orange. They're way too bitter for my taste (and I like to drink strong black coffee) and I don't like the weird alum-like thing that they do to your mouth. Also, being American, I have a the usual aversion to things that mess up my teeth.

Kola Nuts

Bissap is the best thing that you can possible hope for  when you're sitting in a hot car on a long trip. When you're on a long trip and your car goes through a village or police checkpoint people frequently run up to the door to shove thing through the window to try to get you to buy something. (This happens to everyone, not just people who are obviously foreigners.) A lot of the time it's cold, greasy fried dough, or warm bananas, or sachets of peanuts, but sometimes it frozen juice packets, and that's wonderful.

Frozen Bissap Juice

It's heating up in my village, which means that mango season isn't far off. In the meantime the papayas are starting to get ripe. My host brother cut down the first ripe one on the tree behind my hut, and we sliced it up and ate it. It was pretty good, but it turns out that I'm not nearly as big a fan of papayas as I am of mangoes. Mangoes are perfect, and papayas (to me at least) are kind of just like bland cantaloupes. It's fresh fruit, though, so I wouldn't turn it down.

My First Papaya

My Papaya Tree

Papaya Close-Up

Back to the Big City

And by big city I mean Kédougou. With all the pre-election protests that were going on in the bigger towns and cities I've been staying in my village, Salémata, where it's been lovely and calm. Right before Election day I did a lot of hanging out under the mango tree, playing with the baby, making things out of paper, and listening to the BBC. (I would like to take a moment to thank the BBC World Service for existing.) As it turns out, voting during the first round of the 2012 presidential elections in Senegal went remarkably smoothly, even in Dakar, and I'm now allowed to come in to the Kédougou Regional House to check e-mail and stock up on oatmeal and all that good stuff.

My sitemate and I decided to bike in to Kédougou today. We've done it before, we left early in the morning and were expecting it to get hot (which it did) but to make it to the house before lunchtime. We were not expecting the little cloud of bloodsucking tse tse flies that showed up on the outskirts of village and stayed with us for about 45 kilometers (28 miles, about halfway to Kédougou). At that point, exhausted from trying to bike and swat flies at the same time, we stopped in the shade of a baobab tree. It was getting hot, and since we'd just been passed up by the transport van that we'd opted not to take, I was regretting having been so enthusiastic about the whole biking thing. Just then, while we were sitting in the dirt next to our bikes, looking sweaty and dusty and fly-bitten and probably more than a little pitiful, a beautiful pickup truck came along and stopped in front of us. The passenger opened his window (Air conditioning! Fancy.) and asked if we were volunteers. We said yes, and he said he worked with the Ninefesha Hospital, he knew the volunteer Kadjabi (our friend Meera) and that she did good work so since we were with Corps de la Paix we were welcome to throw our bikes in the back and hop in the backseat and come to along Kédougou. We were thrilled. And grateful.

Anyway, I made it to the house and now I'll be around the next few days, working on a few things and (inchallah) uploading some photos and catching up on the blog.

Blogging for PeaceCare

All the PeaceCare team members and the PCVs took turns writing entries for the PeaceCare Blog  and this is the thing I wrote for my day.

Saturday Feb 4^th 2012

PCV LaRocha LaRiviere (ou bien Adama Souaré)

Today we woke up, greeted the family hosting us, and unsuccessfully looked for bananas on my way over to breakfast at the Saraya hospital’s housing area. We had an oatmeal can filled with village-style peanut butter, a plastic sack of hard boiled eggs, and a big pile of fresh loaves of tapalapa, handmade village bread. The water was on, so I sipped my instant coffee and filled our water barrels and watched a big class of kids doing their stretching on the basketball courts. The water went out after a little while, and the doctors headed over to the hospital for rounds. A couple of the Peace Corps Volunteers worked on translating and editing the team’s PowerPoint presentations, and there were a series of meetings were we mostly talked about meeting we’ve had and arranging for more meetings in the future.

Of course, it wouldn’t have been a day in Senegal without a massive schedule disruption. Unfortunately, last night there were two serious accidents involving multiple fatalities on the Kédougou road last night, and all senior members of the Kédougou medical staff were working on that past six in the morning. Obviously, getting on an early morning car to come to Saraya for a day of training and discussion was not going to happen after that. We did our best to salvage the day’s productivity, so we strolled over to the new Saraya hospital to ogle all the shiny fancy new things that JICA (Japan’s international development agency) has built and brought to Saraya. There were so many pristine rooms and pieces of equipment - a maternity ward with state-of-the-art birthing tables and little infant beds with sunlamps for jaundiced babies; a pristine specimen collection room, with the little wall-portal for passing cups back and forth; an operating room with brand new basins, lamps, and tables, capable of accommodating Cesarean sections and other surgeries; fancy facility maps with little red arrows declaring that VOUS ETES ICI. Sadly, the hospital won’t be able to begin seeing patients until the Senegalese Government finishes their contribution to the project, specifically building living quarters for staff, a morgue building, a driveway, and a low wall around the whole complex. It looks like construction’s starting on the wall, or a trench has been partially dug, but it may be awhile before the lovely new hospital is open for business.

After the tour wrapped up the group braved the mid-day sun and walked back down the (amazing, smooth, lovely, evenly paved) road to the current Saraya hospital. While we sat around waiting for lunch to be served Amish taught us all the “Zoo” game, which basically involves a lot of clapping and snorting and making funny animal gestures. Lunch was yassa sauce, made with diced onions, little bits of carrot, and small chunks of meat (beef? or maybe mutton?), over steamed rice. It was pretty good, but my favorite part, was the amazing selection of delicious juices. There was sweet, dark red bissap (like hibiscus) juice, thick, creamy baobab juice, light, spicy ginger juice, pale green kiwi nectar-ish ditakh juice, bissap with fresh mint, bissap mixed with baobab, and Foster Clark’s Orange, which is basically really strong Tang.

(PHOTOS: Ivy and the juice)

After all the juice and yassa I fell asleep for a bit, sitting up in the afternoon heat, and then spent the rest of the afternoon translating stuff from English to French. My netbook’s battery was running low, so I went inside the hospital’s living quarters to plug in, and people were watching a TV show about people with extreme gigantism and that disorder that makes children age horrifically rapidly. It was surreal but entertaining background noise, and I wrapped up my form translation just in time to watch Dr. Isaak Manga give a PowerPoint presentation on malaria in Senegal. After the malaria talk Dr. Nate gave a presentation on EKGs and the electrical goings-on of the heart. A lot of the jargon-heavy parts were alphabet soup to me, but it was neat to have a heartbeat explained in detail. After the EKG talk we headed over to dinner, which was lovely. They made the best thing, which is meat and fries and salad with dressing and tomatoes, and also more juice. After dinner we set up the projector and had a little outdoor screening of Babies, which went over really well. We’d set up plastic chairs for all the hospital staff, but when it was over and the lights came up we realized that during the movie a decent sized crowd had gathered to look on. Everybody loves babies!

NEVERMIND...

...about heading back to village today. This morning, a little after 8:00 am, I biked over to the Kédougou garage (a big dirt parking lot hemmed by tin-roofed boutique warehouses and lunch shacks) and bought a ticket for the next car to Salémata. I settled in with my books for what would turn out to be a futile eight-ish hour wait.

During those hours I ate the Spiced Pumpkin Pie Clif Bar that Santa left in my stocking (which was delicious), rode my bike back to the regional house for snacks and to use the latrine, and made a big impression on a gaggle of older Pular men who grew increasingly impressed as they watched me read three books, one after another.  Those books were Daughter of Fortune, which I really liked, Take the Cannoli [Stories from the New World], which was great even though I'd already heard almost all the stories on This American Life, and Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea, which turned out to be pretty much the perfect thing to read after sitting on a narrow bench in a crowded dusty lot all day long.

Around lunchtime I got up and very sweetly told the guy who's in charge of selling tickets that if the car didn't fill up by 4:00 pm I'd need to leave, because after that it would be possible that I'd be arriving in Salémata after dark and my boss at Corps de la Paix forbids me from travelling at night. (That's a real rule, though Safety & Security does make occasional exceptions) As it turns out, I'm really glad I had that little chat, and that I was very polite.  

Eventually 4:00 pm rolled around, and much to the ornery driver's irritation (other passengers were grumbling about refunds and so far had been refused) I quietly got my money back from the ticket guy and rode off to buy a ticket from the Niokolo Transport office, which has a truck that reliably goes out to Salémata on Monday and Friday mornings at 8:00 am. So, sometimes being a toubab means I have to put up with extra hassles, but sometimes being foreign (and invoking Peace Corps rules) seems to make it easier to duck out of unpleasant situations.  Sticking out like a bespectacled DayGlo thumb is a mixed bag.  

Anyway. The water's on for the moment so I think I'll take an outdoor shower, download some podcasts, heat up some soup, make the most of an extra night at the Regional House. And then tomorrow morning I'll actually head back to village. Inchallah.