More Random Stream of Conscious Musings

Hello Friends!

I am already getting lazy about blogging O NO! Internet here is temperamental! I spent 6 hours trying to download photos…the download failed thrice…and then internet decided it was tired and stopped working. So sad L BUT THEN!!!!!!! The photos uploaded! I have another set still to upload but anyway they are in an Album called SeneKel on my facebook!!!

Anyway…I believe that since my last blog much has happened. First we had the “Counterpart Workshop” where 2 or 3 Senegalese people come for each volunteer…we have 42 volunteers. There were over 100 people here which is crazy because the Peace Corps compound is not that big. Tea has to be made (making tea here is an excruciating process) and prayer mats have to be laid out and everyone has to be greeted…it’s crazy. The Senegalese who come are our counterparts, the people who will help us in village when we need to get things done! I am the only person with one counterpart but I will have 2 eventually. My counterpart is Amadou Gano. Gano has 2 wives and 7 children! But he seems pretty cool.

When the counterparts come they ALL speak different languages…additionally some of the volunteers speak third languages. As far as I can tell (and I’m probably missing a few) we had people who spoke all of the following languages fluently…Pulafuta, Fulakunda, Pulaar de Nord, Mandinka, Wolof, Sereer, French, Chinese, Japanese, Italian, Cantonese, Zaarma, Mandarin and of course English! To help our counterparts understand how hard it is for adults to learn new languages we taught them a new language…so the volunteers who spoke languages like Mandarin and Japanese led a mini language class for them…it was hilarious…the Fulakunda counterparts had to learn German J

I also forgot to mention something about my volunteer visit in my last blog…they actually call volunteer visit demystification, or they used to…because it demystifies the business of being a real volunteer…apparently that name was too intimidating so now it’s just boring old volunteer visit.

Back to real time, while staying with my temporary homestay family I got to see Senegalese wrestling in real life! One of the Senegalese host dads used to be a pro wrestler here and he organized a wrestling tournament for the kids on the wrestling team at the school. There were speakers and a massive hoard of crazy excited people! Basically Senegalese wrestling, if I haven’t already described it, involves two huge men waving their hands cat like and slow motion at each other while slowly moving in a circle for what feels like 10 minutes….THEN they attack and the match is over in about 2 seconds…usually I am at a total loss for who won. It’s quite the experience but everyone here loves it. During the Senegalese Independence day match people ran screaming into the streets when the match ended, men and women!

If you find yourself bored please YouTube Disney’s Malaria video…”Winged Scourge” because it will unbore you! It’s super old and hilarious but does have some useful info…we watched it as part of a training…although I promise we will not be following all of the advice.

I was pretty excited to learn the other day that I have not one, but TWO songs on my iPod that are in the Mandinka language…in fact the Mandinka language instructor has the same songs on his iPod!!!!

An interesting note about the Senegalese perspectives of America..Other than the fact that one of the few American TV shows they see is Desperate Housewives…One family asked their volunteer (she’s a redhead) if people with different hair colors lived in different regions of the U.S. I think she really had to restrain herself to keep from inventing Gingerland, U.S. A.

To celebrate the end of our training the volunteers in each stage (training class) rent a beach house for one night…usually a night full of stories. It’s an awesome house, gorgeous view with some fun rocks to try to hike up and it is literally on top of the ocean, the waves come right up to the base of the house. I’d have to say the most memorable moment was when about 20 of went skinny dipping in the Atlantic…someone still in the house figured this was a good time for fireworks which inspired us all to sing a loud version of the Star Spangled Banner…I’m sure we were quite the spectacle. Fortunately we all made it through the weekend in one piece…although I’d say about half the stage bleed profusely after sustaining scratches from all the rocks in the water. Pleased to report I was not one of those people! We also made some interesting French friends at the beach…although they had 2 dogs that were very awesome!

Anyway…back to real life…in preparation to leave homestay I was looking around for little gifts to give my homestay family…while shopping I was just smart enough to leave my cell phone in a boutik (shop)…well, as we walked away the store owner was calling after us…volunteer Wilma and I decided to ignore him because we figured like normal, he was just being the Senegalese sales person that won’t give up…we continued to ignore the cries as they got louder and louder…switched onto a new street, only to realize we were being chased by a motorcycle…I continued to ignore the person yelling at me from the motorcycle until he cut me off and held up my cell phone…I was so impressed that this shop owner could be so incredibly nice! An amazing example of how nice people can be here. Did I mention I hadn’t even bought anything at his shop? I returned the next day and overpaid quite nicely for a few pairs of earrings.

On that note, for my last day at homestay my mom taught me how to make this peanut butter/fruit porridge stuff called lacc…very delicious AND my Dad surprised me with a new Senegalese outfit, which was super nice!

And finally…today we had a party at the Peace Corps training Center for our families! They came and we had a super patron (that is boss in French and basically means “baller” slash the same thing as boss in the US when used in the gangsterish sense) lunch so we could impress/thank them. Super patron means CHICKEN!!!! By the way…never been so excited to see a dead chicken in my LIFE J Actually about 30ish dead chickens…I’m a wonderfully uncommitted vegetarian. Afterward we got a surprise! I don’t really know the name but as far as I can tell we had a “Gourd Band” come play for us! First, all the instruments/acrobatic equipment is made out of nothing but gourds! Drums, shaky things and a guitarish (by the way spell check just told me I should replace that with guitarfish) like object. Then they wear these crazy rings so they can make scratchy sounds on the gourds when they are drumming. They also wear the most ridiculous pants I have even seen in my life. I’m fairly certain the butt is padded and there must be a good 15 meters of material used to make said pants. By the way to word for pants in fulakunda is Touba…which I find amusing. Anyway, they were cool when they were just playing music BUT THEN they started acrobatics. Amazing, combine gymnastics vaulting and the pommel horse with straight up flipping and break dancing and drumming…all with a gourd. After that after the families left the volunteers followed up with a Michael Jackson dance party along with some others. The head of the Peace Corp Training center (Demba) came in and broke out crazy dancing to the tune of……Back That Ass Up. Clearly it was an awesome day.

That’s all for now folks!