First of all, that is 150% NOT how you spell lylonggylongal on lenggy lenggy but since I can barely pronounce either word that’s the best I got. Lylonggylongal is the Pulaar word for spider and lenggy lenggy means scorpion. Now, a month ago I was not familiar with either of this words…so when I walked into my room and found a new scorpion roommate the only thing I could think to do was run from my hut to my Senegalese dad with my hands up in the air while bending forward and arching my back saying “it’s in my room!” Amazingly, he understood my wonderful acting and proceeded to my backyard where he beat the scorpion to death with a stick. About an hour later I head off to bed swinging my flashlight. After locking the door to my room I turn around to see a spider the size of my hand come flying at me. Naturally I start running in circles which is a completely fruitless evasion tactic since I keep the light shining in front of me and the spider is attracted to the light. After this amusing game of tag I chance trying to get my stubborn door open and run screaming to my Senegalese family again. Most of my family now gets up and starts running around the yard stomping in an effort to kill the elusive spider…which they do within about a minute. For the next week I would not cross my room unless I was high stepping it the whole way…
Regarding general Senegaleseness…this country is CRAZY loud…all the time…they are so loud they even yell babies to sleep in a strange sort of lullaby. I think babies here stop crying simply so they can make the obnoxious noise stop…but then again maybe they like it, hard to tell…since the babies do go to sleep. If baby Mariama cries, there is sure to be someone chanting loudly with her ear essentially inside their mouth…it seems pretty strange but she really does go to sleep rather quickly…
So many things here make me think that in America we might be a little crazy paranoid. I always though supporting infants’ necks was of pretty high importance…but here, almost the day the babies are born they are strapped to their Mom’s backs with a large piece of fabric. See the picture at the top, although the little babies have their arms tucked in too J The fabric ends right below the baby’s head and you often see them with their little heads hanging backwards, which makes you want to run around behind the Mom holding the baby’s head up…but I guess it isn’t doing any obvious damage?
Remember Jellies? Those awesome shoes? Well here they are used as soccer cleats….yup J And a palm frond is used as the flag for the soccer referee…I learned this because my village had a big end of school blow out. All the area teachers and students come and there is music all day and night and my village’s soccer team plays the school teachers’ soccer team…I don’t even remember who won but watching Senegalese soccer is insane…take crazy amounts of athleticism and absolutely no formal training and there you go. It has all the running of American soccer with the crazy footwork the rest of the world uses when they play soccer. After the soccer game there was a “dance” which had all the charm and awkwardness of your average middle school dance, very fun and amusing, plus it was outside! I saw the Milky Way brighter than I ever have…very cool J
Unfortunately mango season is now over…but while it was still getting its groove on I had some awesome bonding moments with my Senegalese grandmother – Kande. She likes to sneak me mangos…as if the rest of the family would oppose if they saw. She will sneakily motion me over and then pass me a mango she has hidden in her shirt…while ensuring I hide the mango in my shirt and take it straight to my hut. She’s the crazy grandma but she is pretty awesome!
Now its planting season, so the women are working in the farro (season river – aka where you plant rice) and the men in the ngesa (corn, millet, and peanut fields). Since I am asked daily when I will be going to work in the farro I decided to go check in out. I went and “hobied” for 2 hours which basically means I hacked away at the muddy ground with a little hand hoe. This resulted in a few blisters which after rowing were not all that impressive but my Senegalese mom was adamant that they must hurt like crazy so she stole my hoe and told me I was too tired to keep working. My protestations did very little to un-convince her of this so I was forced to steal the hoe back. When we headed back to village for the night we stopped by a well because one of my Mom’s felt the need to wash my pants (hobiing gets you very muddy) while they were still on me…
My dad’s bike tire was recently punctured…so he sewed it shut. To be fair he did patch it afterward.
While traveling into Kolda (my region’s “city”) on an alhum (bus-like van thing) I was asked for my passport…apparently Kolda is now a separate country…I rather angrily replied in Pulaar that I didn’t have it with me and that I lived in the Kolda region…the man answered me…and then asked if I spoke Pulaar…which was ironic since I spoke Pulaar and he responded in Pulaar indicating that he understood. I told him I was speaking Pulaar in Pulaar and then gave him my Peace Crops ID…all the while continuing to be rather angry. Someone on the alhum lived in my village and absolutely loved that I was being sassy. He went back and kept telling everyone in Thiewal Lao this amusing new story.
I recently went to a Senegalese meeting…if I thought this country has impressively inefficient before the meeting I don’t even know how to describe my feelings afterward. The meeting was supposed to start at 9…actually started around 10:30 or 11 and lasted until around 5 although it could have been easily summed up in 1 hour. At one point we broke into groups to answer questions. The leader suggested we count off into groups of 6…this proved impossible as none of the 30 adults could grasp the concept of counting to 6 and then starting again and then dividing based on the number you spoke aloud (abstract thinking is NOT used in this country). Thus it took about 20 minutes to divide 30 adults into 6 groups. Of course once we were in groups in was my turn to feel like a fool since I can’t speak French to save my life.
Fourth of July has never been a holiday I got particularly excited for but here is a huge event for volunteers, second only to our annual West African Intramural Softball Tournament (dubbed WAIST or wasted…). Most volunteers travel to the Kedagou region (southeast of Senegal) and stay and the Kedagou regional house (which is really like a small outdoor series of huts which is perfect for an outdoor barbeque). They roasted 3 big pigs and made potato salad and baked beans so we could pretend we were in America. There was a beer pong tournament…which I actually made it to the final round of with my friend Hannah!!! And a dance party of course. There is also a 4k; one of my friends ran in jellies because he forgot his sneakers…apparently it wasn’t actually too painful. We also saw warthogs and ate warthog sandwiches…which are delicious! And warthogs really do look exactly like Pumba from the Lion King, a fact I tried not to think about while eating them. Some people also grab intertubes and float down the Gambia River (I’m saving this for next year since it will likely lead to Schistosomiasis) or go see the Kedagou waterfalls.
So I have had a sun rash pretty much the whole time I have lived in village but recently I got a slightly more interesting disease. My self diagnosis is impetigo…but I can’t really be sure, regardless I did get the doctor’s permission to take antibiotics for the huge puss oozing megazits all over my face and arms…which thankfully are mostly gone now! Senegalese people do a fantastic job of easing self consciousness…everywhere I went I was informed “you have some things on your face…” thanks.
I finally finished digging and planting my garden…we will have to see if anything actually grows…while digging I was sweating so profusely I started fearing electric shock from my iPod. I also got blisters for real…I even had to tape them! It brought back such fond crew memories and also elicited my newly dubbed adult band-aid hypothesis. As soon as the tape came out one of my Mom’s had a “cut” she needed tape for. This cut was at least a week old and mostly healed…and on the top of her foot…clearly she did not need tape. But this is pretty normal behavior…I think since people here never went through the “I want a band-aid or medicine even though I don’t need it" phase when they were kids they go through it their whole life.
I had a new lunch a week or two ago…I believe I have mentioned that I eat rice or couscous with a peanut sauce or a mashed leaf sauce everyday for lunch. Since these combinations were clearly not strange enough I have now learned that occasionally the leaf sauce and peanut sauce are combined…very interesting.
I saw an Eagles Owens jersey a while ago…I can’t imagine how that ended up in Africa, who would have wanted to get rid of such a fine shirt?
Senegalese earrings are a very interesting point. Little girls’ ears are pretty much pierced as the girls are on their way out of the womb…which means by the age of 30 the ears are so stretched out that the “hole” goes right through the bottom of the ear lobe. You would think this would be a good time to stop wearing earrings, but don’t worry, the women here just tie 2 earrings to a string and wrap the string around their head so the earrings hang in the general vicinity of each earlobe.
Back to eating! I eat soured milk (kosam) here almost every morning…yes this means unpasteurized milk that was left to sit in the heat all day and night but the other night I had fresh cow’s milk! This was incredibly exciting both because it was fresh out of Bessie AND because I haven’t had real milk since arriving in Senegal…yum!
Yesterday, en route to our in service training back in Thies a group of us stayed with a friend in her compound. She took us to see the coolest Baobab tree! You can walk through the trunk and it is really wide so all ten of use could sit comfortably in a circle around it…unfortunately no one had a camera L
Ok…that’s all for now! Sorry it’s so long and delayed in getting to you…our regional house internet bill was lost and not paid so we were internetless for a while… I’m missing everyone in the states lots! Hope you are all having a fantastic summer!! Also - I'm hopefully uploading new pics on facebook now if you want to see!
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