After the Sunset

It’s been almost two months since I left Senegal as a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer, and a final wrap-up post of some kind seems long overdue.

For some people, serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer is a childhood dream, infused with the same sort of magic and optimism usually associated with moon-landings and spiritual quests. That was not the case for me; I became a PCV because professionally and personally it seemed like my best option at the time, and because my application went through so quickly I didn't have much time to start job-searching. Nevertheless, it turned out to be a valuable and challenging experience. With the exception of my relatively unhappy Mephaquin stint, throughout my service I felt like I was putting most all of my previous endeavors and experiences to use – backpacking at Camp Unalayee was excellent preparation for rural life; studying French and Art and International Studies and Global Health all turned out to be quite helpful; working with small children was good practice for dealing with irrational drivers and cranky bureaucrats; working at a bookstore was great preparation for being broke. In addition to feeling well-prepared, I was very, very lucky in a number of important ways – with my site, with my health, with my host family, with my PCV neighbors, with a wonderful World Wise Schools correspondence match, and with having supportive friends and family back home. Many thanks all around! 

Now, after what was quite possibly the best vacation ever, I am in Conakry, Guinea, preparing to start a Peace Corps Response position. If you’re interested, my new Guinea-focused blog is called The Kankan Express ("kahn-kahn") and will be doing my best to keep it up-to-date.

Whether you’ve just skimmed a few photos or have been following my adventures with intense scrutiny, thank you for reading, and I hope you found it worthwhile. Merci beaucoup et à la prochaine! 

West African Sunset 

Peace Corps Response: The Adventure Continues

In just five days I’ll be leaving West Africa, but I won’t be gone for long.

I've been offered and accepted a Peace Corps Response position with Save the Children, serving as a Health Program Specialist in Kankan, Guinea. It’s a nine-month assignment, starting in June, and I’ll be supporting the current Maternal and Child Health Integrated Program (MCHIP) that’s being funded by USAID and led by the non-governmental organization (NGO) Jphiego.

Home Sweet Soon-to-Be Home

MCHIP activities focus on strengthening family planning services, increasing local capacity for reproductive health services, and increasing the quality of care provided at the community level. As a Health Program Specialist, my main responsibilities will be to provide regular monthly updates on program activities in Guinea in English and French, to work with local staff to improve work plans and budgets, and to help coordinate the development of a Public Health and Nutrition Program. It will be a big change and a lot of responsibility, but I’m eager to work with Save the Children, to spend a bit more time in West Africa, and to eat avocados for breakfast every day. (Among other things, Guinea is renowned for having beautiful terrain, nightmarish roads and absolutely fabulous fruits and vegetables.) 

As excited as I am, there is a big opportunity cost – I was really looking forward to spending a summer in the Trinity Alps, to finally being around for weddings and birthdays, and to spending the holidays in California. Happily, I will have a long enough break to spend some quality time with friends and family, and the office where I'll work in Kankan is outfitted with electricity and a back-up generator  so it will be a lot easier to stay connected. Plus it will probably be all thrilling and novel just to be in an office, to have a desk and a chair and an internet connection. Who knows, maybe I'll even have running water at home. Fancytown! 

Photo Ops

My host aunt Hassanatou and her sons finally came back from summer vacation in Guinea (where she's from), my other host siblings came back from the various relatives they were visiting in other villages, and it's nice -- the compound felt very empty for awhile there. 

My mom in America sent some photos and a photo book and everyone really enjoyed looking through them. Sajou Ba (below) was totally over-the-top excited to have his very own photo of himself and his friend Mankaba from last Tabaski. He ran around the whole compound to show everyone and then ran around again, just to make sure than everyone saw that he had a photo. Of himself. And Mankaba. It was pretty adorable. 

Sajou Ba and his photo

Most of the older kids and grown-ups were more interested in looking through the photos of my family, especially my grandparents. After the initial rush of photo viewing Ablaye and Mamadou (above) went back through and looked very intently at all the pictures. Mamadou (int he blue striped shirt) took some of the photos (he's very responsible and I let him borrow my camera sometimes) and Ablaye just likes looking at pictures of himself. His parents are in Tamba (about 7 hours away) but he's lived with us for as long as I've been here. He's very shy most of the time but he really likes being included in anything that's happening.

Ibrahima is my host brother who lives in Dakar most of the time. He's one of the few students from village who make it all the way to University so he only comes back for holidays, like Tabaski and Tamkharit (the Muslim New Year). He's one of my older host siblings but he was just as happy as the little kids, when he saw that photos he was in from last Tabaski were included in the photo book.

And, of course, everyone in my host family here told me my American family and to say that they hope that everyone is healthy. I told them that my American family greets them back. Greetings all around!

Ibrahima and the photo book

Special Occasions

There haven't been many big holidays lately, but in January there was the Grand Magal, when many members of the Mouride brotherhood make a pilgrimage to the conservative religious city of Touba to commemorate the exile of Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba, who was persecuted for his piety. Magal isn't really a big thing down in the south of Senegal, where there aren't many Mourides and people tend to be less conservative, but I still heard people talking about it from time to time. (For example, I wear pants pretty much every day in Kédougou, but up in Touba women are not allowed to wear pants in public.)

The last holiday that we celebrated in Salémata was Gamou, the Birth of the Prophet Muhammad. It's Mawlid in Arabic, I think Gamou is from Wolof, but that's what everyone seemed to be calling it in French and Pulaar, too. 

I've heard that some people make a pilgrimage to Tivaouane for Gamou, but in Salémata they rented a big tent and we just had a big get-together around the mosque. People came out of the woodwork (and over from Guinea) to hang out in the mango grove and cook rice with meat in giant, cauldron-like marmite pots. This was just before the first round of elections, while there were still a lot of very angry protests happening in Dakar and some of the other big cities, and my host father explained that everyone would be praying for peace, which I thought was good. 

Some members of my extended host family came down from Dakar, for Gamou and to get away from the election strife, and Mariama Kesso got a chance to show off how chubby and adorable her daughter Fatou has gotten. Everyone wanted a photo with Fatou, and she got tired of being posed with after a bit, but it was still cute.

The Red Cross Youth Group did a lot of cooking and carrying huge bowls of rice and meat around to different groups of people; Daouda "Petit" Ba came late and got a bowl all to himself; Sadat Souaré (my host father, in white with the red scarf) walked around, greeting everyone and explaining things to me.

The Youth of Salemata

 The younger kids spent most of the day playing around, the same way they usually do when they don't have school. My little host brother Mankaba (on the right) and his friends had some sort of imaginary kitchen going on. I think.

Me and the Host Fam

The Lorax in Pullo-Fuuta

If you've ever wondered what it sounds like when people in my village talk, here's a reading of Dr. Seuss' classic The Lorax in Pullo Fuuta, translated and read by Ian Hartman (aka Mama Saliou Diallo). Before he COSed and went back to Amerik  last month as an RPCV Ian was one of my closest neighbors, and this version of The Lorax was one of the many pieces he did for for the Peace Corps radio show in Kédougou.

Bismillah!  

This Week in Kédougou

I've been in village for the last week or so, and things went well, as usual. My host family, the Souarés, are doing pretty well -- there is quite a bit of conjunctivitis (a.k.a pinkeye) going around, which is gross but under control, and other than that everyone's fine.

Some host family cousins were visiting from Guinea last week, so there were even more people at the house than usual, and the corp harvest is almost ready, most afternoons there were a lot of people just hanging out under the mango tree, making tea and cooking ears of fresh corn on little Hibachi-ish grills.

I helped do paper work at the monthly vaccination and baby-weighing day at the Salémata Health Center, worked on my Pulaar a bit, and worked on formatting my baseline data and planning my Action Plan.

Today I'm going to swing by the post office, try to catch up on e-mail at the cyber cafe, download and start filling out my Volunteer Reporting Form (VRF) and just generally take care of work-type stuff, and then a few of us are going to make lentil soup for dinner at the Regional House. Exciting times here in Kédougou...

Pleasant Things

Sandwiches. People here really seem to love sandwiches, and so do I.

Photo courtesy of Google Image Search

Bean sandwiches are standard fare at breakfast and snack time, but sandwiches made of peas, hard-boiled eggs, mayonnaise (as either a condiment or a stand-alone ingredient), scrambled eggs with onions, macaroni with chili sauce, and/or potatoes are also easy to find. Also, Kédougou is close to Guinea, and Guinea has lot so avocados, so you can get avocado sandwiches here. They are delicious, and they cost about 250 CFA, or 50 American cents.

Photo courtesy of SPORE Magazine