Privy Party!

Back in August my amazing grandmother (with lots of support from my equally amazing mother and family) decided to celebrate her birthday by hosting a lovely tea party to benefit the latrine-building project I’d proposed. She called it a Privy Party and it was a resounding success. She raised so much money that I was able to expand the project, increasing the number of latrines that we’ll be able to build.

I can only hope that the latrines
will turn out as well as the tea party did ~ 

My community here is very excited about this project, and I’m eager to start building, but there are still a few weeks left until the rainy season is definitively over and building can begin. I’ll be doing my best to make the most of this time to increase awareness of the importance of latrines and of how to go about getting involved with the project - each participating family will provide a contribution, learn about disease prevention and latrine use and maintenance, and assist with the construction of their latrine. It’s not a hard sell; people around here are generally really enthusiastic about latrine use. Some compounds already have latrines, but they’re often used by a large number of people, leading to the latrine prematurely filling up and breaking down.  Many other houses have no latrine at all, and so people resort to practicing outdoor defecation (a fancy way to say pooping off in the bushes or out in the fields) or settle for using a neighbor’s latrine when they can, which is fine but tends to exacerbate the overuse problem.

I really can’t do enough to thank all the people who contributed to this project – especially my family – but I will do my best to post updates as the project progresses and to (eventually!) send out thank-you cards. It’s been really moving to see how engaged and motivated people are to help other people improve their communities.

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.  

Garden!

Ever since I moved to Salémata I've been talking about how I should  plant a little garden or my own, but something always seemed to come up. Leaving village for training, being busy with other project ideas, the onset of hot season...

After my mom sent me some seeds from America I started thinking seriously about gardening again, and then Jubal brought some seeds in and we had a little seed exchange in my hut, with our neighbors Jackie and Jess.

Last month I finally got my act together and with the help of my host mom Mariama and my host brother Mamdou I put up some crintin woven bamboo fencing and got started. I cleared out the area between my hut and Mariama's cooking hut where my ancienne (the PCV I replaced) had planted moringa and dug out some simple garden beds. True to it's Pulaar name ("nebbadai" from the English "never die") the moringa she'd put it had survived just fine, despite many months of total neglect. One I cleared out the weeds around them they took off - the photo below left is the day I dug out the beds and below right is less than a week later. Moringa leaves are very nutritious and my family likes to use them to make leaf sauce; cooked moringa is a lot like spinach, which I enjoy.

In the other beds I planted beans, yellow squash, cherry tomatoes, radishes, hot peppers, and jaxatu, or bitter eggplant, which looks like a big pale-green heirloom tomato and tastes exactly like bitter eggplant. It's not my favorite, but it's really popular around here.

My host brother Mankaba (Mamadou's youngest brother) helped out by following me around, chattering away, literally describing everything I was doing out loud as I did it, (which is a great way to learn new words) and occasionally chasing off a marauding chicken. He is adorable. 

We'll see how it goes, things are already starting to sprout so I'm pretty hopeful that I'll have a few vegetables to show for it by the time rainy season ends. 

Mankaba, Personal Narrator 

New garden fence, on the right of my hut

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. 

New Roof!

My host family, the Souarés, are wonderful. At the beginning of each month I give my host father and mothers a modest cash contribution, to cover the cost of feeding me, sheltering me, just generally taking care of me. At the beginning it was awkwardly difficult to get him to take it, there was a lot of "No, you are part of the family now, we can't accept that!" but I would insist. By now we've fallen into a more comfortable oh-you-don't-have-to-but-thank-you-oh-no-thank-you sort of arrangement, and I've never had any problems with my contribution being squandered, (there are PCVs who have had problems) I'm confident that it goes toward food and basic supplies. 

When I gave my monthly contribution right before I left for vacation it got awkward again, with my host father insisting that I shouldn't be giving money for food that I wasn't going to be around to eat, but I said that it Peace Corps gave it to me to give to them (which is pretty much how it works) and so he considered that and then said "Ok, well, we'll repair your hut's roof while you're gone, so it will be very ready for rainy season." I said that sounded just fine, and when I got back to village I had this lovely, still-golden, water-tight, relatively spider-free thatch roof, and I was totally, totally happy about it. 

Fixed up for move-in day  - May 2011

Older, weathered thatch - Feb 2012

FANCY NEW THATCH! - Apr 2012