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.) 

How The Peace Corps Works

So, a little while back I (along with a whole slew of other PCVs and RPCVs) e-mailed the Stuff You Should Know podcast and asked for an episode about the Peace Corps, and they listened!

You can find the Stuff You Should Know podcast on iTunes or stream the podcast here.

Also, if you just can't get enough of listening to things about the Peace Corps, NPR's Morning Edition did a Fifty Years Of Peace Corps episode awhile back and All Things Considered had a story about how texting and Skype and things are changing the Peace Corps experience.

Corn Harvest

The corn my family planted around our compound and out in the fields is ready for harvest, and my family has started bringing in huge piles of ears of corn to be shucked, pulled off the cob, dried, and stored. Eventually the kernels will be pounded, sifted, and steamed into cornmeal couscous, or lacciri, and we'll eat it for dinner with maafe haako leaf sauce.

Shucking the first round of corn

Some of the the neighbor kids came to help

In the shade of the mango tree

My favorite part was when Mamadou, my 13-year-old host brother, would carefully remove the corn without disturbing the husk, leaving a hollow corn decoy, which he would then put back on top of the pile. When I  picked one up it crumpled in my hand, I looked around in confusion and he just doubled over in a fit of laughter.

The neighbors and people from the village stopped by to say hi, drink some molten-hot ultra-sweet tea, eat a little roasted corn, and be amused that I knew how to shuck corn all by myself.

My other favorite part was Sajou Ba, Crown Prince of the Corn Harvest.

Sajou Ba, Mankaba, and Diouma: Corn Royalty

Trees and Plants and Whatnot

There's a pomme cannelle tree growing just behind my hut. I had no idea what it was when I moved in, it just looked like a sun-bleached twig stuck in the ground. When it started sprouting glossy dark green leaves in rainy season I was pleased, and then confused when it started growing weird dragon-egg looking pine cone things. My host family said that is was a fruit, and that it's delicious. I learned that it's called sweetsop or sugar-apple in English, and am looking forward to trying it when it gets ripe enough to eat.

Pomme cannelle/sweetsop

I also have a papaya tree just behind my hut, and am looking forward to all these big green unripe papayas turning sweet and yellow and edible.

Baobabs are also fruiting again. Before the green fuzzy fruit pods appear there are huge white hibiscus-ish flowers dangling down on those long stems, and it's beautiful like Christmastime. One of my host moms collects the fruit once it's dried out, breaks the pods open, and grinds and sifts the fruit part into a sweet powder that can be mixed with water to make a delicious, nectar-y drink.

And here's a cornfield near my compound, the harvest season is underway, but I accidentally left my hard  drive with corn harvesting and shucking photos in Kédougou, so those won't be up for another week or so.

Frogs & Maps

The rainy season is drawing to a close, and the frogs and snails that appeared in drove when the rains started are beginning to disappear as well. The giant land snails are almost pretty, with their big, swirled, periwinkle-esque shells, but I didn't like them sliming around inside my hut. I wasn't a huge fan of frogs in my hut, either, but the smaller ones are kinda cute, and they eat centipedes (I think) and other creepier crawly things so I don't mind. I don't like the idea of the larger ones hopping up under my mosquito net at night, so I shoo them out. 

Froggie behind my clothes trunk.

I really like this map, it shows how Salémata is at the center of a bunch of smaller satellite villages. It makes Salémata feel like a bigger village than it is; people come from all around for the weekly market, and cars in to Kédougou (and anywhere else) all depart from Salémata's garage, which is really just a shady spot in the market where the guy who has the ticket book and keeps track of things hangs out. Kédougou is off to the right somewhere, and the Guinean border is just below the general Salémata area.

Map from the Health Center

Gold & BBC News

The BBC recently posted a slideshow about gold mining in Senegal, relatively close to where I live. There's also a BBC video on gold mining in the region of Kedougou as well as a BBC report on prostitution in mining areas. This isn't my village, but if you're interested it does give you a good idea of what my region looks like - I feel awkward walking around taking videos of people going about their daily business; it makes me feel like a tourist, and I don't want my neighbors to start snapping cellphone pics of the toubab washing clothes in a bucket or carrying water or whatever else I'm doing.

At this very moment what I'm doing is being in Dakar, thinking about taking a pool-side nap at the Club Atlantique. A few of up came up on the overnight Niokolo bus last night, and it was uneventful (aside from the ridiculous amounts of dust) but still quite tiring, so I'm going to try to catch up on a little sleep before heading over to the Thies Training Center for the Health & Environmental Education Summit that starts tomorrow.  

Back to Salémata

Tomorrow morning I'll be headed back to village to help wrap up cervical cancer screening training stuff and to finish final drafts of my Action Plan and Baseline Report.

I'll be back in a few weeks, inchallah!

Stuff I Should Know

I'm a fan (on Facebook and in real life) of Free Rice. It's a website that has a lot of free online educational games, and the more you play, the more they donate to the World Food Program, so it isn't procrastination, it's supporting a good cause. And learning!

This Map of Africa Puzzle Game is a little clunky, but it's also free and perfect for those of us who haven't  completed coursework in cartography.

I feel like I should give a shout out to the Stuff You Should Know podcast for inspiring this post's title. 

THIS IS WHY WE CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS

There used to be a big mirror in the Regional House shower, but someone knocked it off the wall and broke it.

Last month our plastic house French press cracked, and we bought a fancy new glass one in Dakar. It lasted a week and a half before it broke.

We were having a lovely time making delicious banana-and-yogurt smoothies with our slightly-cracked-but-totally-functional blender but then I dropped the plastic pitcher and a piece of the black base part chipped off. We thought it was still going to work, but it didn’t, and we made a huge sticky mess all over the floor. (We use the blender on the floor, under the desk with the phone, because that’s where the outlet is.)

Luckily there are volunteers expecting visitors from the USA pretty soon, and they’re nice people who’re willing to pack replacement blender parts and purportedly indestructible French presses into their checked luggage.

Someone took a photo of that smoothie mess somewhere, I’ll try to get a hold of it. 

Newbies!

In Peace Corps/Senegal trainees (or stagières, if you want to get all French about it) arrive and are trained according to their sectors, and there are three Pre-Service Training (PST) groups each year. The Preventative Health Education (HE) and the Environmental Education (EE) people train together, the Small Enterprise Development (SED) and Eco-Tourism (Eco T) people train together, and all the Agriculture (Ag) people  - Sustainable (Sus Ag), Urban (Urban Ag), and Agro-Forestry (Ag Fo) - train together.

I arrived, along with the rest of my HE/EE stage, as a Peace Corps Trainee (PCT) in March 2011, and was officially upgraded to Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) status at our Swear-In ceremony in May.  Since then, one stage of new SED/Eco T volunteers has sworn in, but none of them were assigned to come down to Kédougou, so within our own region the rest my stage and I were still the newest people. That is, until the arrival of the new Ag PCTs. Over the weekend seven new Ag trainees came down to Kédougou for Volunteer Visits, or demyst, from “demystification,” when the trainees get to visit the sites where they’ll be living as volunteers, see current PCVs working, using public transport, going to the market, and so on. The PCTs are down here for a few days and then they go back up to Thiès to finish PST, and then after they swear in they’ll come back as PCVs to install at their sites.

We’re getting two new volunteers near Salémata, where I live. I’m sad to see the old PVCs go, but I’m also really stoked about the new kids (one of whom is actually older than me) because they seem pretty awesome.

For demysts in Kédougou it’s tradition that the current PCVs cook a big dinner for the visiting PCTs, and even though we were almost out of gaz (propane, I think) for the stove it all came together pretty well. We made Mexican-ish food: salsa fresca, cabbage salad (Kédougou been out of lettuce for a couple months now), a cauldron of beans, some fajita-style meat and onions, and we even splurged on some hyper-expensive cheese (pseudo-emmental, the only kind available) to grate up and sprinkle on top. My favorite part was the giant batch of tortillas that Lili, our good friend from the Jane Goodall Institute/Spain made. Delicious.

The PCTs arriving for demyst made everyone in my stage realize that we’re not the new kids anymore. We found ourselves wondering if just a few months ago we looked so clean (we did) and so eager (we did) and so mildly disoriented (we did) - it’s a funny feeling, meeting what basically amounts to a version of yourself from the very recent past. In any case, I’m really happy with the new Salémata volunteers! If all goes well they should be installing in early November, right before Tabaski. 

Food Dreams

Honestly, I'm really lucky in the food department. My host family cooks really well, and they give me fresh mangoes in during mango season, roasted corn now that the harvest is coming in, and lately they've been adding beans to the leaf sauce we have for dinner. When I come in to town I can pick up oatmeal, raisins, and  snacks, and buy refrigerated yogurt and juice, and in the market there are bananas and cabbages and things like that. I also spend my fair share of time waxing nostalgic about things that are unavailable here, things like these:

1. Breakfast. Specifically whole wheat toast. And juice. And fruit. I'd say coffee but thanks to my American family I get to have Peet's coffee pretty regularly. 

Popsicles. Cold things in general, but really popsicles. 

Sprinkles. I love sprinkles, particularly rainbow sprinkles. So much that I'm willing to count them as a "food" that I miss. 

Cookie bowls. I've never actually had one but I bet it would be good with something frozen and rainbow sprinkles. (But no almond flavoring. I do not miss that. Ever.)

Vegetables. Ohhhhh vegetables. Peanut sauce is great but I wish it came with fresh vegetables.

Cervical Cancer Screening Training continues…

…and it’s going well. More on that later. Right now I’m signing in to Skype so that I can chat with my Gramma.

Work Stuff: Training on Cervical Cancer Screening

I saw this recent New York Times article about a cervical cancer screening program in Thailand, and it just so happens that this week I'm sitting in on a week-long training program that teaches local nurses, midwives, and health workers to screen women for cervical cancer. The ten trainees came in to Kédougou from surrounding towns and villages, including Salémata, my village, and are spending the week learning about cervical cancer issues.

The Kédougou training program, run by Kédougou Regional Hospital staff, and supported by Peace Corps Volunteers and Peace Care, is pretty comprehensive. There are sessions on cancer in general, anatomy, risk factors for cervical cancer, how to recognize pre-cancerous growths, available treatments, and how all of this applies to people living and working in Senegal.

The schedule for this week's training

For many reasons, including lack of education and resources, cervical cancer has a disproportional impact on people living in certain parts of world. (The United States isn't in the dark red zone, but we're not in the white, either.)

From the WHO's cervical cancer guidebook

If you're interested, do take a look at "Comprehensive cervical cancer control: A guide to essential practice," provided by the WHO.

Also, my own little PSA: As you prob'ly already know, human papillomavirus (HPV) causes all sort of problems, including cervical cancer. In addition to regular check-ups, there is a very safe, effective vaccine for HPV available for males AND females who live in parts of the world that have more developed health systems.

Terrible Fuzz

This morning there was a weird little bit of funny stuff wedged under my 'A' key and in the process of getting the fuzz out I think I broke the tiny piece of plastic something that kept that key from jiggling around like a loose tooth. It still works, luckily, it's just irritating, but I guess I'll either just have to deal with it or start being like that guy who wrote and entire novel without using the letter 'E.'

Either way, if you happen to get any messges or e-mils from me now you know why.