Yesterday we returned from our first home stay. I am staying with a family in Ngeexoox (pronounced N-Geh-Hoh), who will be my cultural and language immersion for the next 2 months. My family consists of my father, 2 mothers (polygamy is very common in Senegal---sidenote: I am very interested to learn how these household dynamics work), my grandma (on father’s side) and 4 children. I haven’t clarified ages concretely, but sisters probably 10 and 5, and brothers around 9 and 1. My Senegalese name is Hawa, and my family is Sy. It is common for the Senegalese to give you a new name, and it is after someone in the family. Slightly unfortunately, mine is after my younger sister... who they call to do everything in the house. I’m still training myself to respond to Hawa, but it’s hard because I have to respond to a specific intonation as well (not the piercing get-over-here tone my sister gets). An additional hindrance to this whole new language/name situation is that “Alaa” is the Pular word for “no”, which you hear often in a household of children... And Ala is my Polish nickname/what my family calls me/what I’ve been responding to my entire life... so on top of the communication barrier, there’s that whole confusion. My father speaks a bit of French and English, so when I really need to say something I’m able to get my point across. One of my moms speaks French and English very well, but she doesn’t speak Pulaar so I’m “not supposed” to talk to her because I can’t practice language. My other mom is Pulaar, and she is the home-maker (the other one works) so luckily she is around the house the most. It’s an interesting dynamic because I’m probably closer in age to her than the children, but she’s a caring woman and we have definitely gotten along. My grandma is is always laughing at me, but she always uses Pulaar so she’s very helpful to learn from.
The greeting, a very important part of the Senegalese culture, is all we’ve really mastered in language classes thus far, and I’m still learning new questions/responses in this process every day. Every morning I am to greet all family members in the house, especially my grandma. I go to her room, shake her hand, and greet her. I don’t always understand what she says, but usually saying “mawdum” (good) or “alhumdulila” (praise god) does the trick.
On Sunday my next door neighbors had a baptism, so the night before and morning of, everything was abuzz with preparations. It was an interesting experience, everyone was dressed so nicely in their formal African complets, sitting around and eating delicious food. The dancing was good fun, they taught me how to do a few of their moves.
The food at the homestay has been quite different from the food we’ve had at the training center. Lunch is definitely the largest/most elaborate meal of the day, and is similar to what we have at the training center-- community bowl of rice, veggies and fish. The hardest part is eating dinner at around 9:30, and it’s usually a random combination of grains/wheat and milk and possible sugar.
Sanitation is definitely the biggest issue at my home stay. Soap is nowhere to be found in the compound. Everything is rinsed with water (non-sanitized). Washing occurs via bucket bath. Flies are EVERYWHERE. There is a lot of adjustment.
Our time at home stay time is primarily spent at language classes and practicing our gardening skills. There are 3 of us in my language group, and we spend a lot of time together learning and gardening.. but we’ve had a lot of fun so far.
I’m off for another 2 weeks to my home stay. Election runoffs are this weekend, hopefully things remain peaceful in-country.
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Sunday, March 11, 2012
First week of training
It's been less than a week since our staging group met in DC, but it seems like forever ago. So much has changed, not only geographically, but in terms of relationships with these people and my mindset towards the next two years.
Staging in DC on Monday was really just a means of organizing and "meeting" half of the group, nothing significant in terms of things we haven't heard before from Peace Corps. We flew out Tuesday at 5:40 pm and landed in Dakar, Senegal at 6:10 am the next day. Between 2 time changes within a few days, I didn't sleep at all and was pretty delirious upon arrival. We took a PC bus to our training center in Thies, about 2 hours away from Dakar. As we pull into the training center, a group of locals is dancing in the courtyard, welcoming us. The first day is a bit of a blur, I snuck a few naps in but was mostly dozing during our sessions. The next few days were more Safety and Security sessions, technical information, language and med interviews, Survival Wolof (the main language in Senegal), etc. The most exciting thing we did didn’t happen until Saturday, when they finally let us out of the training compound and into the city. We were all ready to get out and explore after 3 full days in the center, but I’m sure trying to let out a group of 60 government ‘agents’ without full Safety and Security briefing must be a bureaucratic nightmare. We were supervised by current volunteers, which was a good introduction to get a feel for the city. It was my first time in a developing country/city, and I didn’t have anything specific in mind, but it was definitely still a bit of a shock. Most obvious: so much trash! Everywhere. My first instinct was to just start picking it up, cleaning.. but it was everywhere. It was also a bit jarring to be stared at, yelled ‘toubab’ (foreigner), and have kids run up to you with outstretched hands (they assume all white people are rich). However, I am pretty excited to get used to this and become a part of it.
As far as training goes otherwise, we have sessions all day from 8:15 to 5:30, with lunch and breaks throughout the day. Lunch is a traditional bowl meal, where 4-6 of us sit around a large bowl of traditional Senegalese food. Mainly rice with veggies and some sort of meat or beans. I really enjoy it, and it’s a great experience to share a large bowl of food with many others. Dinner is generally more “American” with salad, fries and meat or bean type dishes. Also very good, though it’s hard to adjust to eating around 8pm.
We’re starting our “Community-Based Training” (CBT) on Wednesday, where we starting living with our training home-stay families. I just found out I’ll be learning Pulaar du Nord, so I’ll be living with a family that speaks that dialect of Pulaar and try to learn the language and culture through experience, in addition to the language classes we’ll have throughout the day. I’m pretty excited to be learning Pulaar du Nord, while it is a specific dialect, I’m told if you know one dialect you can understand all of the others of Pulaar. And Pulaar is used through many West African countries, providing me an excellent linguistic foundation if I do chose to do further work in Africa in the future. Also, it gives me a better idea of where I’ll be, geographically, for my 2-year site. I’ll definitely be in the northern region of the country, which while that still leaves a huge possibility of where I’ll be, is a bit more specific than those who are learning Wolof.
Overall, everything is going well and flying by. I can’t believe it’ll be almost a week soon, yet I can barely place myself back in the US as well. I’ll write again soon, once I’ve finished my first homestay experience in a week or so, where I’ll have some legit cultural experiences to report back about.
-A
Staging in DC on Monday was really just a means of organizing and "meeting" half of the group, nothing significant in terms of things we haven't heard before from Peace Corps. We flew out Tuesday at 5:40 pm and landed in Dakar, Senegal at 6:10 am the next day. Between 2 time changes within a few days, I didn't sleep at all and was pretty delirious upon arrival. We took a PC bus to our training center in Thies, about 2 hours away from Dakar. As we pull into the training center, a group of locals is dancing in the courtyard, welcoming us. The first day is a bit of a blur, I snuck a few naps in but was mostly dozing during our sessions. The next few days were more Safety and Security sessions, technical information, language and med interviews, Survival Wolof (the main language in Senegal), etc. The most exciting thing we did didn’t happen until Saturday, when they finally let us out of the training compound and into the city. We were all ready to get out and explore after 3 full days in the center, but I’m sure trying to let out a group of 60 government ‘agents’ without full Safety and Security briefing must be a bureaucratic nightmare. We were supervised by current volunteers, which was a good introduction to get a feel for the city. It was my first time in a developing country/city, and I didn’t have anything specific in mind, but it was definitely still a bit of a shock. Most obvious: so much trash! Everywhere. My first instinct was to just start picking it up, cleaning.. but it was everywhere. It was also a bit jarring to be stared at, yelled ‘toubab’ (foreigner), and have kids run up to you with outstretched hands (they assume all white people are rich). However, I am pretty excited to get used to this and become a part of it.
As far as training goes otherwise, we have sessions all day from 8:15 to 5:30, with lunch and breaks throughout the day. Lunch is a traditional bowl meal, where 4-6 of us sit around a large bowl of traditional Senegalese food. Mainly rice with veggies and some sort of meat or beans. I really enjoy it, and it’s a great experience to share a large bowl of food with many others. Dinner is generally more “American” with salad, fries and meat or bean type dishes. Also very good, though it’s hard to adjust to eating around 8pm.
We’re starting our “Community-Based Training” (CBT) on Wednesday, where we starting living with our training home-stay families. I just found out I’ll be learning Pulaar du Nord, so I’ll be living with a family that speaks that dialect of Pulaar and try to learn the language and culture through experience, in addition to the language classes we’ll have throughout the day. I’m pretty excited to be learning Pulaar du Nord, while it is a specific dialect, I’m told if you know one dialect you can understand all of the others of Pulaar. And Pulaar is used through many West African countries, providing me an excellent linguistic foundation if I do chose to do further work in Africa in the future. Also, it gives me a better idea of where I’ll be, geographically, for my 2-year site. I’ll definitely be in the northern region of the country, which while that still leaves a huge possibility of where I’ll be, is a bit more specific than those who are learning Wolof.
Overall, everything is going well and flying by. I can’t believe it’ll be almost a week soon, yet I can barely place myself back in the US as well. I’ll write again soon, once I’ve finished my first homestay experience in a week or so, where I’ll have some legit cultural experiences to report back about.
-A
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