The True American Rainbow

There is a television show called New Girl, and on that show they play a game called True American. The Peace Corps Volunteers of Kédougou have talked about playing the game in real life several times, imagining how we could add in our own rules, quotes, and trivia.

Having already bade farewell to Digital Ben and the songwriter, phenologist, and re-birthed living legend Patrick Hair, the PCVs of Kédougou gathered on the occasion of the imminent departure of Marielle, Martin, Ian, and myself and actually played True American. We cooked garlic bread and Bucket Soup, made mojios and pesto pizza, combed the market and the Free Box for the appropriate attire, dressed up like a rainbow (because why not), and they showed themselves to be as True Americans as there ever were.

After the abject heartbreak of leaving Salémata, True American Rainbow brought some much-needed levity to my week of good-byes. We managed to cover the whole spectrum - Reds, Oranges, Gold, Yellow, Greens, Teal, Blues, Sparkles, Pinks, Purples, Plaid, and Gray.

 

Complementary Colors! 

The Crayola Fun Pack

At the Start of the Rainbow

Basically, playing the game involved dressing up, hopping from base to base (the ground is molten lava), calling out silly trivia questions and quotes, and switching clothing items in order to finish the game wearing as many colors of the rainbow as possible. It was fun and funny, and, as always, it was great to spend some quality time with the 'Gou Crew.

These are the people who've been there when all the tires went flat, when the ATM didn't work, and when my Sriracha ran out. They got the baignoire tubs out when it was too hot to live, fixed my bike when the gears got mangled, commiserated when work was going disastrously, and lent me a hair brush when I didn't have one (which was always). They've bush-messaged me Malarone, interpreted my dreams, put up with my affinity for confusing picture-messages, and made up songs about the terrible roads that leave us over-jostled and caked with orange dust. They've cooked Spanish omelettes, baked birthday cakes and pizzas and Ghirardelli double-fudge brownies and brewed countless French presses of hot coffee. When I lost my phone for the umpteenth time they called it, and laughed good-naturedly when it inevitably turned up my pocket. They've shared their M&Ms and their diarrhea stories and their huts and their palm wine and their fancy cheese. They took pictures of my rashes and forgave my irritability and taken team costumes to a whole new level. When I got sick they left Ricola in my basket, when I was away they greeted my host family, and when my American family came to visit they showed them a epic good time.

At the End of the Rainbow

I'll see some of the 'Gou Crew in the not-so distant future (inchallah) and in the meantime I'm grateful to have been a part of such a fun, brilliant, ridiculous, generous, beautiful, motivated group of True Americans. I'll miss them collectively as well as one by one, and I'll think of them every time I eat Pumpkin Spice, take a garlic shot, see a gold star, catch a glimpse of Cinderella, make bagel, hear a real nice chant, read a sexy book, sing my way down a river, throw it in the fan, eat too many beignets, count the birds in my backyard, or see a rainbow breaking through the clouds. 

Good Hair and New Friends

A couple weeks ago I got my hair braided for the first time. After my mom got her hair braided in during her visit Mariama Kesso decided that she would also braid my hair before I left. So the day finally came, I bought some meches extensions and she went to work. 

It didn't hurt as much as I'd imagined it would, and it only took about an hour. (Kesso is a pro.) Jackie had had her hair done in her village, Diarra Pont, the day before, and she came to take photos and sit under the mango tree while Kesso braided and braided and braided. 

Jackie asked for her hair to look like the crazy braided mohawk that she's seen on a little girl the week before, and her hair turned out amazingly well. She didn't even need any extensions!

Once we were all coiffed and fancy we put on our complet outfits and headed out to introduce everyone to the Peace Corps Volunteer who'll be arriving in May to install in Salémata. 

Her name is Katie W. and by all accounts she's pretty fantastic. She's still in training but came down for Volunteer Visit (VV), where Trainees have a chance to have village life demystified, meet their soon-to-be host families and counterparts, and just get a little bit of an idea of what lies ahead. During the days leading up to site announcements I fretted and wondered about who would be coming to Salémata. (Would they like living in a rural site? Would they decide it wasn't for them and Early Terminate? Would they be motivated and fun? Would they be as completely exhausted and out of it as I was during my VV?) As soon as I met her my anxieties were all assuaged. She's cool and fun and super smart. She studied Reproductive Health and already has her Master's, her Pulaar is really coming along, she can get by in French very nicely, and, best of all, she handled the ridiculous barrage of information and introductions and hellos and good-byes impressively well. She even brought out a fancy complet and dressed up with us! 

Here are Katie W. and I, and Katie W. with our friend and shopkeeper Wouri, and the two of us with Jean-Jacques, Salémata's head nurse and our Professional Counterpart. On the last day of her VV (and my last day in Salémata) we took the obligatory silly photos in front of the castle with Jubal and Katie O. and Jackie, greeted the Imam and the radio DJs and the neighbors and her new Community Counterpart and pretty much anyone who crossed out path. We drank frozen bissap juice and snacked on packs of cookies and just generally had a lovely day. Our host family prepared an amazing, amazing dinner (fonio and meat and vegetables in a delicious sauce) and then stayed up under the mango tree, just watching Guinean music videos and chatting.

As sad as I am to be moving on, it's a great comfort to know that Salémata is in good hands. Katie W. has a good host family, a beautiful site, and the best PCV neighbors anyone could ask for. As the saying goes, life in Senegal may not be all Skittles, I think she's a great fit and very much hope that she will have a wonderful and rewarding two yeas of service in Salémata. 

Coloring

No matter where they come from, pretty much all kids like to draw and color, and while coloring they like to say “Look! Hey! Hey, look! Hey, look, look here! Look! Hey! Look!” until you look over and say “Oh, that’s great! Good job! You’re so good at coloring!” Also, there always seems to be a kid who gets all bent out of shape if another kid loses a marker cap or puts the crayons back differently, and there’s always a littler one who sneaks in to gnaw on the crayons and chew off the marker tips.

I really like that coloring has become part of my routine at site. Kids, mostly host siblings and neighbors, show up in groups of three to six and ask for the mat and books and crayons and markers, and then they're usually pretty content to just sit there and color for an hour or so. Then, someone's mom will call them home, or it'll be time to fetch water or help with dinner prep or play soccer, and they roll up the mat and return all the supplies.

All this coloring has largely been made possible by Troll, my friend and fellow Camp Unalayee alum, has been sending wonderful packages filled with band-aids, ointment, embroidery thread, paper, and markers. My friends and American family have sent paper and markers and all sorts of fun stuff, too, and I've given some of the art supplies to my host siblings and their friends, kept some in my hut for the little kids to use a few times a week, and stashed some in my trunk so I’ll be able to give them as a going-away present next month. 

Journaling

I like to journal. Or, rather, I like to glue paper-type things into the small stack of booklets that have collectively become my journal. Mostly transport stubs and wrappers and bits of packaging. Sometimes things that people give me - drawings of the world, for example, or photos, or post-it notes. 

My first journal in Senegal was a gift from a good friend. It was a nice size, had lined off-white pages and a very world-traveler-looking leather cover thing, which I like. I labeled it "Senegal"and when I'd filled it up completely with receipts, swatches of snack food packaging and my semi-legible scrawl I cut a little paper-bound Moleskine notebook that my mom gave me down to fit in the cover thing, printed "Senegal con't" on the cover and kept going. I'm working on the last few pages of "Senegal con't con't" now and have another one lined up and ready to go. 

Most of what I write is boring, little more then what I did that day and what I plan to do in the near future. Sometimes there are vicious little diatribes about whatever has recently struck me as awful and there's a fair amount of cataloging of things that remind me of other things, which most things do. Short sentences are favored. Explanations and follow-able segues are not. I don't like to re-read it, unless I'm trying to go back to find the date for a specific event, because it has a tendency to read like the diary of a neurotic middle-schooler.

I wrote a lot more at the beginning of my service than I do now. I think that was mostly because everything was new and remarkable -- all the new places, all the new people, all that Mephaquin. Now, with only a couple of months left, most of the things that were once so novel have become routine. Instead of being shocked by the new I find myself jarred by the impending loss of the familiar - soon I will buy my last transport pass, be handed my last little drawing, make my last cup of tea in my hut, take my last Malarone, apply my last bit of antifungal cream. Funny, how you can be nostalgic for the present.

Out of Office

My American family came to visit so I took the rest of my vacation days and haven't been online much  at all lately. I'll be back in Senegal (all too) soon and will be post pictures and updates as regularly as the internet connection allows. 

In the mean time here is a photo of the ocean in Praia. It's very much a postcard-come-to-life-type-place, lots of warm waves and tropical fruit. Hope your year is also off to a beautiful start! 

Praia, Cape Verde

Fancy Ladies

There have been several very fancy things in my life this past week. The first one was Tambaween, which is like Halloween but is hosted by the gracious PCVs in the region of Tamba. Being so busy with work stuff lately I wasn't sure that I was going to go to Tambaween this year, but a group of Kédougou volunteers arranged for transport and decided to dress up like princesses, so I got a tailor to help me throw together a last-minute Snow White outfit and packed an overnight bag. 

Our Private Car and Chauffeur. And a street cow.

The drive from Kédougou up to Tamba is usually about four hours, barring flat tires, break-downs, and inclement weather. It can be a grueling ride on public transport if you happen to get squeezed into a sheep-laden mini-bus or have to perch awkwardly on a seat made mostly of metal bars and sharp edges, but we were in luck. PCV Ashleigh made some phone calls and hired us a driver and a mini-van, for the same price as a seat in a seven-seat station wagon at the public garage, and so we all got to travel in style and relative comfort.  

The Region that makes team
costumes together stays together.

The Ladies of Kedougou

As you can see, our costumes were pretty great individually and even better collectively. We had a great time the whole time -- getting ready, going to the party, hanging out, and going back down to Kédougou the next day. 

And, when we got back to the Regional House there was internet. Wireless internet. It's been weeks and weeks and weeks since a particularly fierce lightning storm took out our house router, so we're all pretty thrilled to have wifi again. Fancy!

My Garden Grows

Over the summer I finally put up some crintin woven fencing and turned the little space between my hut and my host mom Mariama's cooking hut into a little garden. My host family helped me get the crintin and I cleared out the trash and bricks, dug out some plots, and picked out some seeds to plant. 

With the help of Mankaba (above) and his older brother Mamadou (below with the moringa) I planted moringa, squash, cherry tomatoes, wax beans, radishes, okra and cucumbers. I tried to plant hot peppers and bitter eggplant but they didn't sprout. Luckily, Mariama, Mamadou and Mankaba's mother, has a nice garden of her own and transplanted a few seedlings over. My little garden's right next to her sleeping hut and her cooking hut it makes for a convenient kitchen garden - if all goes well the tomatoes will go in maafe tiga (the peanut sauce we eat with rice for lunch), the spinach-ish moringa leaves will go in maafe hakko (the leaf sauce we have with corn couscous for dinner) and the other things will be mixed into cucumber salads, added to sauces, or eaten afternoon snacks.

When I cleared out the garden space I realized that the moringa that Lindsay, the PCV I replaced, had planted a couple years ago had survived the long dry seasons and months and months of neglect. In Senegal people call moringa nebba die, from the English "never die" because it's such a tenacious plant. It was nice, feeling like there was some continuity between my little garden and the one she and Mamadou had planted during her service.

My first harvest of radishes and wax beans was somewhat accidental. I'd gone in only planning to thin  the radishes, which were growing in dense and tightly spaced, but most of them were already big enough to call it 'picking' rather than 'thinning.' I also snapped off a handful of beautiful purple beans (which turned green when steamed) and had a delicious mid-morning snack. Like many other Volunteers who haven't gardened in ages and who are lucky enough to live in southern Senegal (where the dirt seems to be made of Miracle-Grow) watching plants spring up in garden beds and produce recognizable, edible things seems slightly magical.

One day Mamadou planted a little banana tree. It's great, but I'm a little worried about its long-term survival outlook, since rainy season is drawing to a close and bananas need a lot of water. For the time being, though, it's a fun addition. Mariama's bitter eggplant and not peppers are coming along well, and the tomatoes are growing like they're trying to take over the world. I keep having to prop them up and trim them back so they don't cover the plants nearest them.

The squash has started fruit and also to climb up my hut; the tomatoes and okra are sprouting little tomatoes and okras, and the cucumber is blossoming nicely. I'm about to be out of village for almost a month because of work - project-related meetings and trainings followed by a Health summit in Thiès -  and I'm a little sad that I won't be able to keep an eye on my garden. While I'm away I'll check in with Mamadou and Mariama, though, and hopefully they'll be able to start harvesting some useful fruits and veggies pretty soon.