Start of real service

Finally made it up to my permanent area, and installing in my site on Thursday! I took a sept place (seven seater station wagon) up to Ourossogui yesterday with the other volunteer installing near me and all of our possessions. We're picking up all of our necessary living items over the next few days (mattresses, buckets, cups, etc) and just mentally preparing for the transition to village life. Training has been such a different experience to what service will be, and only now am I starting my real life here in Senegal.

The last few weeks of training have been full of fun adventures so I'll give you a quick recap:

Dakar Day: Part of training is taking us to the PC office in Dakar and having a catered lunch from the embassy. We were treated to fried chicken, hummus, and by special request several platters of guacamole. We also went to N'Ice Cream, quite possibly my new favorite place in Dakar (note: they had a flavor "Obama").

Popenguine: a lovely beach location south of Thies. In PC trainee tradition we rented out 2 beach houses and headed for some fun and sun. I can definitely say I will be returning.

 


The coastline at Popenguine and one of our houses for the night.



Swearing-in at the Ambassador's house: To become an official PCV you have to take an oath to defend the constitution and we dress up in fancy Senegalese attire and go to the Ambassador's gorgeous house to do so. A quick ceremony, a few speeches by fellow trainees in the local languages (everyone who spoke did amazing! youtube links soon) and some kind words from our staff were followed by an amazing array of hor d'oeuvres, including quiches and mini-pizzas followed by brownies and fruit tarts. After 9 weeks of primarily fish and rice and cous-cous, we were vultures.

After swear in we had a few free days at the center to pack and hang out, indulge in the amenities and available foods in Thies, and now we've all dispersed to our respective regions.

I may participate in the "5 week challenge"where I don't leave site for 5 weeks after install, so my internet connectivity may be quite limited over the next month or so.. wish me luck!

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

Cultural Confusion

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.

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

Departure: 15 days

Welcome Friends, Family and Random web-perusers:

As many of you may know, I am soon leaving for a 27 month adventure with the Peace Corps in Senegal. I'm starting this blog to avoid spamming an e-mail list with updates, letting you check in as you please, and leaving me free to post as often as I like (i.e. as often as I'll actually have internet access). Feel free use this as communication as well as information, leave comments and love, ask questions, just say hi.. Every from-home interaction will be much appreciated!

Current itinerary: I'm flying out to DC March 3, orientation starts March 5, and flying to Senegal on the 6th. I'll have 2 months of pre-service training, and then I'll be assigned to my site for the following 2 years. I'll be an "Environmental Education Agent", but as for the specifics of what I'll actually be doing, there are many possibilities so I'll have to fill you in once I get there. All I know so far is I'll probably be living in a hut, eating lots of millet, and riding a bike.

I am so excited to start this new adventure, and even more so to share it with you all. Hope you enjoy the updates, thanks in advance for keeping up with what I'm doing!

-A