6 months in site- a reflection

Six months as a sworn in PCV, nearly six months since install in my village. I've read about 25 books (and taken about as many mefloquine (anti-malaria) tablets). I've grown markedly more confident and comfortable in the language, with the people, and my role here. Listening to the newly arriving volunteers makes me smile- all those worries I had in the beginning have faded away. Sometimes I even have to remind myself that I'm living in Sengal, that I've made it to Africa- the massive continent romanticized as a single location. I also keep staring at world maps, both pondering ways to see more here, give my time 'in Africa' more legitimacy, and also staring at new, unknown corners of the world, with newfound confidence to venture there. At times my life here feels stagnant, each day passing quickly but seemingly unproductive. Yet each day provides amusing moments-- from having to run to a stranger's latrine, to finally having the vocab to tell someone off when they insist you should be married for the 100th time, to taking horse or donkey charrettes to most nearby destinations-- things that now seem normal yet still ring of foreign-ness when compared to my previous life. The life where I'm not eating lunch at Teesbar and getting home before Futuro, the calls to prayer that structure my schedule. The life where laundry doesn't leave your knuckles raw. The life where my knees are tan. Do I miss that other life? Sometimes, definitely. I've been day-dreaming about a cold, fresh nectarine for weeks now. But then I realize I've got the best job ever- hanging out with people, learning a culture, and becoming part of a community that I can eventually contribute to. So despite the difficulties I'm going to sit back and enjoy it. There'll be plenty of nectarines whenever I get home.

Rice harvest- Take me to the river

As many of you more geographically oriented (or those who have google mapped my location) know, my village is relatively close to the river which borders Mauritania. Many families have land up on the river to grow rice, and right about know is harvesting time, meaning that about half of my village now lives on the river to gather their stores for the next year. A friend of mine took me out to the fields the other day, and I spent the day observing and helping out with the gathering (kind of, mostly just sitting in the shade with the babies).

The process boils down to this:

The men use their hook-looking tools to cut down the rice stalks. 

Rihanna's playing on one of their phones in the background

After the entire paddy has been cleared they bundle up the stalks and the women carry these on their head to the cleared location. 

This is a bundle I was rescued from (I made it 50 ft or so)

The skyline is always filled with walking bundles

There they lay out a large tarp, and grab handfuls of the rice stalks and bang them against the ground to free the rice grains. 

The grains are poured against the wind to sift out the debris.

The grains are pounded.

Rice is ready to be cooked! Add a little fresh fish, and you've got yourself a Senegalese staple.

Lots of fish available by the river!

It's a lot of work, but these few months of harvest provide most families with enough rice to last them the year. It was a great experience to go see my fellow villagers at work, and much more appreciative of the bowl of rice I eat for lunch daily. 

Tabaski- How much sheep can you eat?

I have recently experienced my first Tabaski, or Eid al-Adha as it's known throughout the Muslim world. It is essentially the Muslim equivalent of Christmas, and by far the largest holiday I will celebrate in Senegal with my host family. Most holidays and celebrations here boil down to 2 things: wearing fancy Senegalese clothes and eating lots of meat (sheep or goat). Because this is a larger celebration, we did these 2 things for 3 days. The premise of Tabaski is the sacrifice of a sheep, symbolic of the story of Abraham, who was willing to kill his first-born in God's name, but was provided by God a ram to sacrifice instead. Our family has had the marked sheep picked out for months; it's been tied up to various shade structures in my compound, getting fattened up for the big day. I was also in Dakar the days leading up to Tabaski, and the images of hundreds of sheep by random intersections was quite a sight, but everybody who can afford it is in the market for their own sheep that time of year!
On the big day I threw on my (thus far only) Senegalese complet and sat with the women of my house. I witnessed 3 sheep getting killed and skinned and prepped for cooking. We had meat for 3 meals that day... and for the next 3 days. Needless to say, I'm a little sheeped-out. Quite frankly, I think I could never eat sheep again and be perfectly happy.
It was great to see everyone in my village in their finest complets coming around, greeting and forgiving/asking for forgiveness. Most people spend a lot of time with their "fedde" or age group, essentially hanging out with their groups of friends, drinking tea or juice, and hanging out. The younger fedde's have some music and dancing, the older fedde's mostly sit around. In village my real age rarely corresponds to my companions, so I spent a lot of time hanging out with the older women.
Other than dressing up, greeting, hanging out and eating meat, there wasn't too much more to the holiday, and as I'm still a bit of an outsider to cultural things, I found myself with a bit of down time throughout the holiday. It was definitely an experience and interesting to see, though honestly I don't know if I'll be sticking around village for meat-a-thon 2013.

In other news, school is starting up again so I'm looking forward to working more at the primary and middle schools, where I think I'll base the bulk of my projects. When I first arrived, I was intimidated by the fact that I'll be spearheading projects on my own, but after being here for 8 months, assisting in other volunteers' projects, and really getting used to life here, I'm naturally finding avenues for work and am excited to start some good projects in my village!

Girls' Education in Senegal

So I've been in Senegal for 6 months already, and I'm sure many of you are wondering when I'm going to start some "real work." Projects tend to be rather long-winded in the development realm, primarily because we have to deal with the bureaucracy of the grant process, after you've finally come up with a feasible and sustainable project. However, one project that I'm lucky enough to already be a part of (because it is a collaborative effort of all volunteers in our region) is the Matam's 2nd Annual Girls' Leadership Camp. I recently finished up the Michelle Sylvester Scholarship at the middle school near my village, which involved working with the top 9 girls from 3 different grades at this school to pick 3 winners of a grand prize scholarship to go towards school supplies and tuition. Most PCV's participate in this scholarship program, and to continue working with these distinguished young girls from each of our schools, we've organized a leadership camp for them and to reinforce the benefits of education. It's an excellent program, especially in our region where you see girls married off as early as age 11 and many times cooking and cleaning their family's house before this age if they're not married. Education is not a priority in many girls' lives, and I hope that by positively influencing even a handful of girls to continue with their education we make strides in the right direction. School is an opportunity to gain critical thinking skills, socialize with people of their own age, and overall gain a type of independence. The leadership camp reinforces positive mind-sets among girls and encourages them to stay in school.

In general, the schools in my area are pretty well funded and taught. There just needs to be further encouragement to ensure every child has the motivation to stay in school, despite the social pressures to marry early.

We cannot complete this project without your help. We're fundraising to have this camp through a Peace Corps Partnership Grant and anything you can spare will make sure these girls have an opportunity for creativity, leadership, and a general outlet that they may not get in their daily lives.
Go here to donate:
https://donate.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=685-221

More updates how this camp goes early next year, but thanks for your support!

I'll leave you now with a video of some of these girls performing a traditional Pulaar dance at the end of the school year celebration:

IST and Ourossogui Eye Clinic

I've just finished a whirlwind month of work, all of which took place out of site, so it's been quite a change of pace from my slow month of Ramadan. I caught a Peace Corps ride down to Dakar about a month ago, an air conditioned land rover was a nice alternative to a cramped and stuffy public transport car. [Side bar on public transport here: it is miserable even in the most "luxurious" of forms. A 7 seater (sept-place in French) car (a station wagon with a third row) is the nicest/fastest way to get anywhere, but 12 hours in a cramped car is still less than pleasant. And there is no schedule. Cars leave when they are full so you can spend anywhere from no time to 5 hours waiting for a car to leave once you've gotten there and bought your ticket.. (Though to be fair it's mostly the 14 seater vans or big (50ish people) buses that you're waiting 2+ hours for.)]

After a few days relaxing and exploring Dakar I went to the Thies Training Center again, this time for our In-Service Training (IST) where I reconnected with my fellow stagiers and got inspired for potential projects I could do in my site. It was crazy to be back at the training center, but very cool to check in with everyone and see how different our various experiences already were. We had 10 days of sessions on gardening, maternal and child health, sanitation, and various other types of projects volunteers in sector have done.

After that I came straight back to Ourossogui to participate in an Eye Clinic another volunteer in the area organized. The trip back ended up taking 2 days, due to some misplaced trust in the buses. We caught an early morning bus outside of Thies which was supposed to take us all the way to Ourossogui (a 12 hour direct ride, though we knew it'd be longer with the inevitable stops). After a few too many stops and transfers, we decided to get out in Ndioum where the northern regional house is, as it was already 6:30 and a midnight arrival in Ourossogui (especially on the horrible roads for the last 200km) was less than desirable.

At the eye clinic we worked for 2 weeks at the hospital with a team of American doctors from an NGO and performed 140 cataract surgeries during this time. My role varied throughout the 2 weeks as we had 2 different groups of people for the 2 weeks. The first week I stayed primarily in the pre-op room, conducting vision exams in Pulaar, and prepping the patients by giving anything from eyedrops to information. The second week I worked with the post-ops, as well as giving out reading glasses (as the NGO brought boxes of those as well). It was overall an incredibly interesting experience. There were definitely parts that made me anxious (taking patients without knowing their medical history, sometimes not being sure if the patient really knew 100% of what the surgery entailed--I definitely had a few older women turn to me after I put in their dilating eye drops if they were done and could go home...) but overall, seeing some people come out with markedly improved vision was incredibly rewarding. I've also realized I am not cut out for the medical profession, just seeing the anesthesia injection into the eye area made me incredibly queasy. I can't even begin to imagine how scared some of the patients were (it was many's first time receiving this type of medical care) and I can only hope my limited Pulaar was able to ease some of their minds.

Busy OR

One of the cataracts

Group of happy post-ops

I will soon head back to village after a month away and I'm excited to get back to that part of my Peace Corps life.. I've missed my host family, friends, and even the village food!

Ramadan

It is currently the 3rd week of Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting (meaning no food or water for all daylight hours, essentially from 5:30 am to 7:30 pm). As my entire village is Muslim, you can imagine the dramatic change in pace of life that has occurred over the past few weeks... It has come to a bit of a standstill.

In the states I only knew a handfull of people who participate in Ramadan, and it never had such an impact on my life as it does now. It's definitely an interesting experience. While I'm sure fasting as a community makes it easier to complete, it also comes with some complications-- community image of devotion, or merely the ease of completing the difficult month with the support of your fellow fasters (especially if you're the female who cooks in the house... nobody wants to be cooking for the house while they are making up their fasting days beyond Ramadan). Fasting is quite difficult (especially with the 100 + degree F heat we've been having) and many people power through and fast during all of Ramadan with the community (rather than skip a day for legitimate reasons and make it up later throughout the year by themselves)... this includes many pregnant women and older folks. While I understand that this is a religious practice, and I honor and respect that, it's hard to see people who need to put their health first and not do so. One of my older host-moms already had to go get an IV drip at the health post, and many women in their 3rd trimester of pregnancy are still fasting. As a health/environmental ed volunteer, I'm still trying to figure out how to address these situations in a culturally acceptable manner. This year Ramadan also falls during the short but sweet rainy season, so people are still going out to the fields to work in the morning, but luckily this means we're getting some cooler days as well.

Volunteers choose different ways to adapt to this month long change of pace, some try fasting as well, some sneak food in their huts (I am of this variety) and some just choose this time to go on vacation. I did one day of solidarity fasting (and essentially slept all day), and am currently subsisting on peanut butter oatmeal, mangoes, and Mauritanian biscuits (I may dedicate a blog post to these at a later date, they are amazing- I can't explain why because they are just bland biscuits... but I'm addicted). 

Luckily I haven't started any time pressing projects yet, because the day gets progressively more sedentary, and many people aren't willing to do much more than the absolute necessities. As my job is still mostly getting to know the village and integrating, Ramadan has actually been a nice time to go greet and visit the various compounds in my village-- people are always home and nobody is trying to shove food at you the entire time you're there (sure, not eating at all isn't ideal, but sometimes overly-hospitable households just seem impossible to please... "you didn't eat anything!").

In other events, I went to Dakar for an impulsive trip to see Hillary Clinton address US Embassy/Foreign Service employees. It was a short but sweet presentation, but the real reward was all the delicious food and first world amenities I was able to indulge in while there. Burgers, ice cream and a shopping mall have never been such an amazing experience. 

Kedougou- the land of waterfalls

I just spent a few days in the south of the country, the Kedougou region of Senegal. Volunteers from all over Senegal convene there for the annual 4th of July party at the Kedougou house, and I took this time to explore the area as well. Ecologically, it's a whole different world down there. Whereas I'm in the desert, Kedougou is the tropics. I've definitely developed some envy for the volunteers serving in this region (they live in huts! there's vegetation!), but I also came back with 50+ mosquito bites (something I haven't had to deal with), so I'm realizing there's a pro and con for every living situation. So I soaked in the greenery, avocados and waterfalls while I was there, but I'm honestly pretty happy to return to the dry heat of my desert.

Top of the fall in Segou

Jungle-looking hike to Segou falls

Walking from Segou to Dindefelo

Dindefelo waterfall

Gorgeous views all around the fall in Dindefelo