W.A.I.S.T. 2013: Get off of our lawn!

The January 2013 West Africa Invitational Softball Tournament in Dakar was a great success for the Kédougou team. Not so much for winning games, but we lead the league for style and team spirit. 

Each year each region comes with a theme (Superheros, South of the Border, Beach Core, etc) and the costumes are generally intended to be flattering, not unlike Halloween on any given college campus. With that in mind, this year Kédougou's theme was Geriatrics. We pulled our pants up as high as they would go, baby-powdered our hair, filled our pockets with hard candy, and went searching for sweater vests. 

 We didn't have very many throwing or catching skills, and we weren't super clear on all the rules and positions, but had a lot of good cheers and we did our best. Jubal played Outfield Guitar, Katie O. and I covered Third Base from time to time, and Kyle pitched, with some help from Karen. We made the most of the element of surprise when Country Director Chris Hedrick got a solid hit and we all ran to first base, and we got a semi-standing ovation (and Captain America came over from the sidelines) for our mid-game rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner.

We ate hot dogs, drank cold Cokes, watched the other games, just generally had a good time, and all too soon the tournament was over. 

Most of the Geriatric 'Gou Crew 

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.

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. 

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?

MegaUpdate: January 2012 Edition

It’s been a busy few weeks (month?) over here. I kind of can’t believe it’s February. I knew (in general and in Peace Corps) about the whole time-speeds-up thing, but it still feels surreal.

In any case, January kicked off with a scramble to get our Work Zone stuff all squared away (basically everyone in and around Salémata told me what they’ve been up to lately and I wrote up a report), getting things together for a potential latrine project, and working on visual aids for nutrition causeries (health talks) at the Salémata Health Center.

Then, along with a few other PCVs, I headed up to Thiès for the Gender and Development (GAD) conference and Work Zone Coordinator meetings, followed by our All-Volunteer Conference (All-Vol). The idea behind All-Vol is that all of the PCVs from Senegal get together with delegations of PCVs from other West African countries (Mali, Guinea, the Gambia) to talk about projects and plans and chat it up about Peace Corps stuff. I had a good time, it was great to see other people from my training stage and to hear about what it’s like living in other parts of West Africa.

After All-Vol it was time to head up to Dakar to get ready for the West Africa Invitational Softball Tournament (W.A.I.S.T.). There are two categories of teams at W.A.I.S.T., those that play in the Competitive League (for people who play softball regularly, know the rules, and own gloves and bats and things) and those who are in the Recreational League (for people who are more concerned with having good costumes). 

My friend Rachel is on the International School’s Faculty Team, so she had to play against us, and we had a little Logger reunion – there are currently at least five University of Puget Sound graduates in Senegal, and all of them were on W.A.I.S.T. teams this year. 

Loggers: Rachel, me, Mac, Mika, Emily. 

After all the softball madness I spent a couple days hanging out poolside at my friends Rachel & Emily’s wonderful bungalow, playing with their cats and talking about babies – baby blankets, baby names, baby nannies, baby showers, baby onesies… It was adorable and Leah would have loved it. Then I had Peer Support Counselor Training at the Peace Corps main office in Dakar, which went well. A lot of other PC programs have peer counseling systems and I think it’s a really good thing to have for PCV support. After that wrapped up there were enough of us heading back from Dakar to fill up a sept-place back to Kédougou.

Peer Support Counselors 2012
(I'm top left, with the tall kids.)

Once I was back in Kédougou I went back to village for a few days, and it was really nice to sleep in my own bed, hang out with my host family (baby Fatou is getting so big!) and help out at the monthly baby-weighing stuff and vaccination day at the Salémata Health Center.

And then I got strep throat. 

Ramadan Food

I know that "Ramadan food" might sound like an oxymoron, but there is a lot of eating involved in celebrating Ramadan. First, there are a lot of people who aren't supposed to fast during the day, such as children, the sick, the elderly, women who are pregnant, breastfeeding, or menstruating, non-Muslims, people who are traveling long distances or doing serious manual labor, and so on.

People, like my host family, who observe Ramadan will get up before dawn to have breakfast, and then fast until seven in the evening, when they'll break the fast by eating dates and having tea and snacks while they prepare dinner. During the day they're supposed to be doing a total fast, meaning that they'll give up not just eating and drinking, but looking at, thinking about, and doing and saying sinful things. As my host mother during Pre-Service Training noted, Ramadan is much harder than the Catholic tradition of Lent. (I wasn't really sure how to go about explaining that I don't do Lent either, so I just agreed with her.)

Ramadan started while I was in Dakar, but it's a pretty big city and aside from a few things (cab drivers charging more and being less agreeable, witnessing a late afternoon fistfight in a roundabout, lots of Ramadan-related advertisements for dates and coffee and things) it was easy to forget that Ramadan was happening.

There were more people out praying then usual, especially on Friday, which is traditionally the day that everyone wears nicer clothes, and the men and the older women go to the mosque for afternoon prayers. On the first Friday of Ramadan we were walking over to the French Cultural Center at prayer time, and the streets were echoing with the megaphones broadcasting the call to prayer and impressively crowded with people praying or heading to the mosque to pray. I'm not sure why so many people were praying in the streets - maybe there isn't enough space in the mosques? Maybe people run out of time and it's more convenient?

Photo Credit: travelpod.com

In any case, today I'm going to go over to the Kédougou market to buy snacks, a bunch of dates as a seriche gift for my host family, and some gresil. I'm not sure what gresil is but everyone tells me that if you sprinkle it around the outside of your hut it repels snakes. (Side note: Last month I saw a couple snakes in my hut. They didn't hang around and they weren't black mambas or anything, but I'm going to get the gresil anyway.)

Tomorrow (after I go to the post office and hopefully finally finally the guy who has the keys to the cabinet where they keep all the packages will be there and I will be able to pick up my birthday mail) I'll be heading back to Salémata. 

Arrivederci!

Birthdayapalooza

On August 1st, 2011 I turned 28, Marielle turned 25, Switzerland turned 720, and a good time was had by all. On July 31st, after the SeneGAD meeting, a bunch of us came in to Dakar and got all cleaned up.

I had a little beer to celebrate...

We all went out for fancy pizza and it was delicious. Ben and I shared one that was half "H&M" (merguez sausage and garlic) and half "Hammam" (caramelized onion and goat cheese, no idea how they chose these names), Nic and Ivy split something similar, Sarah ordered a calzone, and Nathaniel opted to slaughter his own pizza.

Afterwards everyone went out for beers, and Marielle came thisclose to pulling off the opening-a-beer-with-another-beer trick. 

Sharing a birthday (and a delicious birthday cake) with Marielle was great because she is awesome, as you can clearly see. 

On August 1st, our actual birthday, we all went out to Ngor Island. It's a tiny island along the northern part of Dakar, and for about a dollar you can take a 3-minute ride out to it in a pirogue, which is exactly what we all did. 

Even though it was overcast, it was warm and the waves we beautiful. Emma enjoyed the view of the coastline, and Kayla, Ivy and I had a nice time strolling around the cliffs. 

It was a good day for fancy fancy coffees. Ben treated Emma and I to cappuccinos and tiramisu, and then a little while later we treated ourselves to beachside Nescafes.

It rained for a little while, but it was hot, so we swam anyway, doing our best to avoid all the plastic bags and bits if junk floating around in the surf. We looked at a bunch of sea urchins and little fish, and after successfully clambering around on all sorts of slippery rocks, I stubbed my toe walking out of the water and wound up making a little bandage out of a piece of my skirt-towel-fabric. Then it was naptime, and then we hopped in a boat back to the mainland.

After showers at the regional house it was time for N'ice Cream, more espresso, and then out for Thai food at the Jardin Thaïlandais, and it was fantastic. Really just amazing. (When we sat down I was saying they should tell the waiters it's my birthday and maybe they would give us a free dessert, and then was so wrapped up in how lovely the food was that I actually completely forgot about it and so was genuinely surprised when there was a candle and singing with my caramelized bananas.)

AND THEN the next day Marielle and I went into town with Kayla and her visiting friends, to check out a giant fabric market, eat more ice cream (I was not such an ice cream person in the US, but lately my love for cold things knows no bounds), and go on the trampolines. 

Kayla and her friend Sabrina decided to reenact the Scar/Mufasa (Mufasa!!) fight scene from The Lion King. 

Obviously, it was a pretty epic few days, and I'm extremely lucky to have such wonderful, fun, photogenic people in my life. And not just in Senegal - when we stopped for internet and I read all the birthday messages I may or may not have teared up a little bit right there in the CyberCafe. Many, many thanks to everyone for being so great ~