Just living life, in Senegal

Just got back to Thies after 10 more days in Ngeexoox (which is spelled Nguekhokhe in French if you’ve been wondering why it’s not on Google maps...) and first off, thanks for all the love! Got my first package from my parents supplying me with Economists to catch up on and other treats, as well as some letters and cards from some lovely people :) Keep them coming! (I will return the love with some cool Senegalese stamps attached!) But if you’re looking to send me something, now is probably the time to redirect it to my permanent address: 

B.P. 181 

Ourossogui

Senegal 

West Africa

Keep in mind it will take much longer to get to the North, possibly up to a month. I’ll be able to grab mail from Ouro Sogui once I install at site in just 3 weeks. 

As I’ve really done nothing more than immerse myself in Pulaar at training site (and I’m finally understanding what people say to me!), I guess I’ll explain some daily life/logistic type things in this post. 

Each morning I wake up and head to the washing area to shower.. From a bucket. There is usually only one source of running water per compound, if that, so to bathe I have to fill up my bucket at the spigot and take it over to the washing room. The most annoying part is washing my hair, which always takes forever. One of the girls in my stage has already shaved her head, and I’m really jealous every time I have to wash my hair. Other than that it’s really not so bad, and yay, I’m saving water!

The general communication that I have mastered is the greeting, which looks a little like this:

No mbad-daa? [How’s it going?]

Jam tam. [Peace only.]

Ada selli? [Are you healthy?]

Mawdum. [Good.]

No mbadu-daa e tempere? [How are you doing with the tiredness?]

Ko mawdum. [It’s good.]

No galle ma wadi? [How is your house/family?]

Ebe e jam. [They are in peace.]

Greeting is incredibly important in Senegalese society. The funny thing is, you ask it more of a formality, rather than for actual information on the persons well-being. It’s a bit of a spit-fire interaction of the key greeting buzzwords. As long as you’re saying one of the greetings, you’re good. Often people respond to my “No mbad-daa?” with “Ada selli?”

Another big part of Senegalese society is attaya, which is tea. They make their tea in a very specific manner. The tea itself is just black tea imported from China (they try to claim this as their own, but I can read the box). They brew it on a little charcoal stove and add a lot of sugar and some fresh mint to finish off the concoction. The next part is the most characteristic, the pouring of the tea. This practice is generally to cool the tea off to make it a drinkable temperature, but also involves a bit of skill. Essentially, you pour the tea into glasses just about the size of a double shot glass and pour it back and forth between two or three glasses. While pouring (some show off and pour it from high distances) you create a foamy top (so the glass is half tea, half foam) and the more foam you can make, the better/cooler you are. Generally the men make attaya, but I’ve tried a few times and the pouring is a lot harder than it seems. My family doesn’t drink it that often, but many families drink it after lunch and sometimes dinner. It is also the go-to activity if you have guests. 

Other things that are new in my daily life: 

I filter my water with a charcoal filter (provided by PC) and add 3 drops of bleach per liter after filtering. Sometimes I forget the bleach, but the charcoal filter purifies of everything but amoebas... so keeping my fingers crossed (and training my stomach). I’ve had my first bought of mild stomach issues this past home-stay, not fun at all, but I can pretty much pin-point the cause to random garage food I ate, so now I’m just being a bit more careful about where I buy my food from (though really, having some stomach issues is unavoidable here). 

I sleep under a mosquito net every night, which I am religious about not only to avoid malaria, but because it is the perfect security screen from anything that may possibly get at me at night. I’ve heard of mosquito nets as (at least preliminary) safeguards from scorpions, snakes and mice, all of which are things I’d like to avoid getting waken up by. 

Other than that, I’ve been doing quite a bit of reading and sitting. Not to generalize, but the Senegalese love sitting! And they love asking you what you’re doing when you’re obviously doing it... “Are you sitting?” is a common question. As annoying as these type of questions are, they are a nice reinforcement of my limited Pulaar. 

I did go to Saly recently, a toursity beach resort area mostly visited by European tourists. It honestly reminded me of the waterfront cafes in Nafplio, Greece. In other words, if you’re looking for a beach getaway, come visit me here! It’s gorgeous. 

Pictures coming soon, internet permitting. 

Volunteer Visit

I am back from my first journey to my new home! The trek up to the Matam region is a bit long, but it was great to finally see where I’ll be living. The north of Senegal is notoriously hot, but luckily it’s dry heat- something my California blood can handle. It was around 90 F the past few days, and can get up to 130 in the hot season. It took us around 9 hours to drive all the way from Thies to Ouro Sogui, but that was in the Peace Corps car, and by public transport will take more along the lines of 12-15 hours... yes, it’s a bit far. Luckily we have a great PC apartment in Ouro Sogui, which is where we spent the first night of our volunteer visit. The current volunteers in the area made us an excellent mexican food feast and Ghirardelli brownies.
I headed to my village, Sedo Abas, the next day with the volunteer I am replacing. It’s an interesting situation because she is moving to Ouro Sogui after a year to take on a different positions, so she’ll be near by if/when I’ll need help at the village. Sedo Abas is around 30 km from Ouro Sogui and we got there by bus, which took about an hour. My room is really nice, they just finished it for the previous volunteer-- it’s a freestanding room with latrine/washing area inside. My compound has 5 buildings, 2 for my family, 2 for other families and my room. My father is the village chief, has 4 wives but only 2 live with us and an un-countable amount of children, but about 10 of them live with us. I managed to keep my training Senegalese name, Hawa, permanently and my new family’s last name is Sall. Yes, I am now loosely related to the new Senegalese president (though really, as my host-dad has explained many times, everyone is related. And it’s true. Many people marry their cousin). We have around 30 cows, and comparable flocks of chickens and sheep. However, these are all just for show/status symbols. One of the cows hangs out on the front porch all the time.. and he has horns that are about 2 feet long (each). It’s such a bizarre sight.
I met my counterparts on my visit- the president of the women’s groups and the school director. They’re all pretty excited to start some gardens, so I’m pretty set to have a project after the hot season.
After a full day at village, the next day I headed to the regional house in Ndioum with the other new and current volunteers. We hung out there that night and headed back to Thies the next morning.
Now we’re heading back to our training homestay, so I’ll be in Ngeexoox for the next 10 days.

We've been here for one month already?!

Back from 2 weeks in Ngeexoox, crazily my time actually flew by. Also, cannot believe I’ve been here for a month. It hardly feels like it because we’ve been all over the place and our days are packed with training/language class.

Realistically, we didn’t do too much over the past 2 weeks. We have language class in the morning at 9:30 after a breakfast of instant coffee and baguette or bignets (if my mom was selling them the night before). At 11:30 we go buy snacks at the bitik nearby to hold us over until lunch. A bitik (boutique, but re-spelled into Wolof) is a kiosk-type store that has food-items (anything from powdered milk to food flavoring to yogurt-- either pre-packaged or in small tied off plastic bags) and random household needs items (washing powder, etc). Language class ends by 1 so we can all get back to our houses for lunch around 2 (mine is anywhere between 2 and 3:30). Lunch is always a variation of rice and fish in a community bowl. The seasonings all have MSG so it tastes good, but I’m really missing my daily dose of veggies and protein (1-2 fish for about 10 people... I get a few bites of fish each lunch). I’ve been supplementing my diet with fruits from the market and some peanut butter (they sell it in plastic bags at the market for sauces, I just squeeze it out on bananas or cookies.. kind of inconvenient packaging, but it’s natural PB- my favorite). In the afternoons we head over to our garden and water. We’ve transplanted tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and onions, in addition to seeding a bunch of veggies and trees. After the initial work of making the garden beds and compost, we don’t have a lot of work to do in it anymore other than water, so we often head over to someones house to practice Pulaar or just play cards or Bananagrams.
I get home before nightfall and hang out with the family, who is always watching TV. While conversation is sparse during this time (and there’s only one common room, so I either sit with the family and watch tv or be anti-social in my own room) I’ve turned watching ‘random soap operas from all over the world dubbed into French’ into productive French-study time. The TV programming here is pretty awful, but the daily morning Disney is pretty great (despite the fact they’ve already played Ratatouille 3 times).
We have dinner around 9 or so (as late as 10:30 one night..) and it’s generally milk and cous-cous... which I’ve nicknamed milky sand. Definitely not my favorite thing, but it’s kind of like bran cereal and at least I’m getting milk (I’m not thinking about how it’s reconstituted with non-treated water). Though 3 times we’ve had this great salad platter with caramelized onions, potatoes and hard-boiled eggs that you eat with baguette. Definitely one of my favorite dishes so far. Getting to sleep at my house is a nightmare, it is always loud outside my room. If it’s not chanting from a nearby brotherhood, it’s Top 40 blaring... neither monotonous prayers nor Rihanna at full volume are easy to fall asleep to, and I have to put my iPod at 80% volume to try to cover the noise. Luckily I’ve been exhausted for many nights so I’ve only been laying awake a few times. We’ve all been affected by crazy vivid dreams due to our malaria med- Mefloquine, but other than that, and possible limited short term memory, I don’t seem to have any of the other crazy side effects (unless I’m forgetting them all..).
Back at the training center we’ve had more full days of training. We had our first language exam to gauge our progress, I’m currently at a “novice-high” in Pulaar. We have to get “intermediate-mid” to finish training, and still have 2 more exams/one more month to get to this level. I’m feeling more and more comfortable in Pulaar and mastering the random consonant changes (F turns to P, or W to MB from singular verb to plural conjugation.... yeah). I still can’t believe I’ll be using it as my primary form of communication, but I know it will all just take time. It’s an interesting language because there are a lot of verbs. There’s a different verb for eating breakfast, lunch and dinner... in addition to “to eat”. However, there is no distinction between “to study” “to read” or “to learn”. Also, some terms are just great, the traditional term for fruit is “bibbe ledde” or “children of the tree”, though many people simply use “fruwta” colloquially.

One of the days in Ngeexoox we headed to Mbur, the next town over, to go to the beach. It was absolutely amazing and gorgeous, I can see why Senegal is a getaway for the French, like Mexico is to Americans. I’m very pleased that I’m on a coastal country so I can get away to a beach if/when I need it.

Other than that, I find out where my permanent site is on Tuesday! I cannot wait to find out my home for the next 2 years.

Also, mail is nice.. ahem :) My address is:
PCT Alicia Gorecki
Corps de la Paix
B.P. 299
Thies, Senegal
West Africa