How To Get Rice Yo

I recently went to a wedding ceremony…apparently all the dads go the night before the wedding, sit in a circle, give money and pray. But I went with one of my moms anyway. It was interesting, and when I say interesting I mean my mom Jenaba and I fell asleep. I spent most of the time wondering if they expected me to give money (turns out they didn’t since I am decidedly not a dad). But the food was good and I got to do some fake praying thanks to my dad elbowing me and hinting that I should at least do the hand motions.

Sadly, very soon after the wedding my village experienced an extremely sad event when a 10 year old girl died of malaria. The family said she was only sick for 2 days but by the time she got to the hospital she had a serious case of malaria and they were unable to help her. Her body was brought back to our village on a horse drawn cart with mourners wailing behind her. The men and women of the village went to sit in the compound. The men sat with the dad and the women with the mother and grandmother. I went and gave the mother a hug and said a prayer when I met the father. It was extremely sad but the environment was strange. I have never been to funeral in America so I can’t compare but while the villagers were sitting in the mourning family’s compound they were talking and occasionally laughing. The mother was either silent or very loud and when she was crying out it was heartbreaking. All in all it was a very surreal and moving experience.

Back to happy times in Thiewal Lao. A dude with a crazy cello-like instrument made from a gourd showed up in my village claiming to be my dad’s brother. He then hung out in our compound for a few days so that every five minutes he could say “Jenaba Sabaly” and then nothing else. I wanted to punch him after the first five minutes. But I also wanted video of him playing the kora (the big gourd). When I finally got it and showed them (a woman sang with him) the 10 second clip they started berating me for money. This only made them more obnoxious as they were informing me that all the other volunteers they had met gave them money. I talked to all these alleged other volunteers and none of them even saw this dude so I have no idea how he got their names. I finally gave them about 10 cents and then they left. Afterward I asked my mom if they were really related to my dad and she said they weren’t. The guy was just the older brother of one of my dad’s best friends…ridiculous.

I went to spend the afternoon in a compound that I don’t visit very frequently and while I was there twin goats were born!

Regarding the weather. It has started to get cold here, at night anyway. But the cold came super quickly. One night I was sleeping with no sheet in shorts and a tank top and the next night I had to get out of bed to put on a long sleeve shirt, a sweater, pants, and socks. The following night I had to bust out my nice warm sleeping bag. Granted, it is still hot during the day but at least sleeping is now comfortable!

I saw a pumpkin/squash tree. Literally, huge green pumpkins growing out of a tree. I am still confused about this sight.

At the well the other day I saw a very cute sight. The little girl whom I secretly refer to as ‘Stitch,’ because her eyes are closer to her ears than each other (she is really adorable and her name is Hocha), came with her mom to the well. Her mom was carrying a huge 5-10 gallon benoir on her head but Hocha wanted to help. She carried a coffee can of water on her head...it was adorable.

Senegalese people are hilariously catty. I went to eat at a neighboring compound and when I got back to my compound both of my moms were like, “what did you eat? O…you ate leaf sauce? Not maffe gerte? And you didn’t drink tea! O that’s not good.” Unless you ate maffe gerte and drank tea they are pretty sure you had a terrible afternoon.

Senegalese people also enjoy terrifying their children. Inevitably, if a small child is terrified of me (due to my glaring whiteness) his or her mother will try to force the child into my lap. The more terrified the child, the harder the mother will work to get the kid onto my lap. So in the end the child is screaming and crying and clawing it’s mother’s back in an effort to stay away while the mother is laughingly trying to get them off and I am sitting there trying to absorb the sun’s rays as quickly as possible in an effort to become darker.

I ate a dish called labu again (I believe last time I mentioned this I described it as super hot wings without the wings). I was informed labu is used as a medicine for colds - since hot stuff makes your nose run. Yes, this food is so spicy it can CURE colds. Also along the lines of spicy food, my younger siblings made a “salad” the other day. Tomatoes, onions, a super sour citrus fruit, hot peppers and salt. It tasted just like salad…if salad was a shot of tequila.

While visiting my road town I watched a small child pick up fresh cow poop with his hands and carry it out of the compound. Apparently my brother does this too.

While reading a funny book in front of my hut I was frequently laughing out loud. This made my family wonder what on earth I was doing (since they think the only form of reading is studying). I continued to attract a lot of attention and eventually a guy who can read English but not understand it came up and asked if he could read what I was reading. I said sure, only to remember that the passage I was reading was a bit blunt and sexually inappropriate for out-loud reading. But I couldn’t really explain so I let him read out loud which of course caused me to go into more fits of laughter. No one had any idea what was so funny but that saved me from being terribly embarrassed. On a different note…this book, in its infinite wisdom mentioned the importance of having Wawa Iced Tea in your fridge at all times. In case you want to read this awesome book which refers specifically to Wawa…it’s called “Dave Barry’s Complete Guide to Guys” by Dave Barry.

Village life serves as a daily reminder to me that Senegalese people think I have the physical abilities of a 4 yr old (just because I talk like one). I spent an hour or two sitting with my grandmother pulling peanuts off the peanut plants. This literally involved sitting and not much else. However when I was done and went to crack the peanuts my whole family emphatically stated that I must be exhausted and it was vital that I take a break. I insisted that sitting for two hours, while physically challenging, had not caused me to reach my limit and continued to crack peanuts. Since I am improving my peanut cracking technique I had a substantial pile of peanuts which also inspired awe. Granted my pile was 1/16 the size of my 5 year old sister’s pile.

I believe I have mentioned fish balls before (meatballs made with fish…I don’t know what you were thinking). I just learned how they are made. The night I watched was special because instead of the normal fish that we buy, we had faro fish – as in the seasonal river is drying up so all the mud-hopper kind of fish that live in super shallow water can be caught – since they no longer have any water. Making fish balls means pounding up a whole fish and then adding onions, bouillon flavoring, corn flour, salt, pepper and wait for it…peanut butter. Yum.

Tabaski (big Muslim holiday) was very much like Korite and Ramadan minus the fasting (which is fine by me). Prepping for these holidays reminds me of horse shows because people are up braiding hair all night. Lauren Fitz would be in high demand here come holiday time.

Tabaski was also fun because it felt kind of like Christmas Eve – mostly and only because we went to midnight church. Which only convinced me that Africans (in America and Africa), regardless of the religion, have way more fun in church than white people. There was singing and chanting and laughing and snapping and swaying – it was pretty cool minus the fact that it went on for hours upon hours. The most important part of Tabaski though (besides the food), seems to be the clothes. My dad (a tailor) sewed for over 30 hours in a row and I still don’t think he finished. My sister paid 2x what an outfit is usually worth (a ridiculous amount of money here) to get fabric sent to a tailor in Kolda (since the power in our road town was out and she wanted embroidery). The importance of the new outfit is that it is needed for trick or treating. Ok, so they don’t really trick or treat, but during the day they put on their new outfits and walk to all the compounds to greet everyone and say prayers for everyone and it feels like trick or treating.

In honor of harvest time I would like to summarize how hard the Senegalese people work for rice (a food with almost no nutritional value). First the women mix up the faro mud – they do this with little hand tools that require bending over all day. Then they plant the seeds, and they have to be planted in excruciatingly straight rows with exactly x centimeters between each seed. Then for months the women go out every day and weed the faro because rice is pathetic and can’t handle a little competition. The weeds look alarmingly like the rice – so much so that I am fairly sure I can’t tell the difference. Then after all this work they cut the rice down and bundle it up. They let it dry, then all the kids beat the daylights out of it with sticks (even my 1or 2 year old sister helps with a little twig while I fear for her life as she is inches away from the swinging rice pounding sticks of death). Then they pick up the stalks and put them in a pounding container to pound it in the more traditional sense to make sure all the rice falls off. Then the rice that has fallen off is swept into a huge pile on the ground. The women then shake the junk and bad rice out using a basket and a complicated wrist motion which I am fairly certain I will never master. Then they sweep the dirt ground clean and sprinkle the rice out to dry in the sun. Then they sweep that up and steam the rice and then in the afternoon they pound the seed coats off the rice and then the use that ridiculous wrist shake to separate the coats from the rice…and then it looks like the rice we buy in the store…except it is not in a convenient boiling bag.

The other night I was playing with the only 2 siblings remaining in my house (excluding the toddler), as the rest left for school. We played tag and my bro hid behind a fence and made me scream so loud as to cause the rest of my family to fall to the ground in fits of laughter. I also learned how to play a Senegalese version of Enie Meanie Minie Mo. Except the losers in this game have to sit with their butts in the air and get tickled (keel-ay keel-ay in Pulaar). I lost a lot.

I ate a raw sweet potato. Surprisingly delicious. I didn’t know what I was eating so I was surprised after it was cooked to learn that it was a sweet potato. It kind of tasted like a really crispy but rather unflavorful apple. But it made yummy sweet potato fries!

I have mentioned some ridiculous things little kids chew on, but I saw a new one, cigarette butts J yum.

My older brother and I walked over to a village 3 kilometers from ours around noon. It must have been around 90 degrees in the sun (which is where we were) and he wore pants, a short sleeve shirt, a jacket with a collar (zipped up) and a ski hat. I was the only one sweating. He also just got a camera phone (essentially our family’s first camera) and found that is was completely necessary to take a picture of me with every person we met.

And finally, in true Peace Corps fashion I continue to have fun digestive adventures. In an effort to cure the latest case I didn’t eat for 30 some hours. My Senegalese mothers were extremely unhappy about this and I am surprised they didn’t force feed me. They were very cute though because they made my favorite meal and teased me and waved it under my nose and said they were going to eat it all so I better join in. I just barely resisted. But they gave me lots to eat in the morning!

Happy Belated Thanksgiving! We killed and plucked a turkey in the spirit of the day.

All the Men, Women and Children…and the Americans too!

So I have talked a bit about how crazy Senegalese families are…but recently I thought of an outrageous way to explain family here. One women (her name is Djonfollo or Keba or Kajatu) in my compound (she is essentially one of my Mom’s but is really my brother’s wife) lives with her two mother in laws and her father in law. Her husband doesn’t even live with us – he only visits occasionally. On top of that he has a girlfriend in the town where he normally lives (I don’t think Keba actually knows this for sure). She raises their 18 month old daughter with the help of her mother in laws and rarely sees her own family as they live in another village. On top of that she does most of the cooking and cleaning for the whole family…talk about a raw deal! Try to picture your life in that situation…o and she also lives with one grandmother in law…

Remember that stuff called gak…or that green stuff every Nickelodeon contestant would inevitably be slimed with? Well I had that for lunch. It’s called Canye although I would argue it tasted more like sticky cucumber that pepper but regardless…it’s a slime green snot sauce you eat with rice…surprisingly edible. If you want a taste of something nasty try some laalo. This is the epitome of dark green nastinesses you put in health food shakes…or so I assume. The problem is that here they serve it over something like really dry cream of wheat…with more salt than you can imagine…for breakfast (in this state it is called Toure). The first time my family served it I ate as little as possible. It really is just dried up leaves pounded and then turned into a jellylike substance with boiling water. The second time it dawned on me that laalo is probably loaded with vitamins so in the interest of one of my fingernails (which is either riddled with fungus or falling off due to vitamin deficiency) I ate a whole bowl while being a good volunteer and repeating over and over again how good laalo is and how many vitamins it must have. Toure is still disgusting and my fingernail is still in a strange state…

On another food related note…Senegalese people just love spicy food…I like it every once in a while but I’m not particularly awesome at eating spiciness (although maybe after 2 years that will change). Moral of the story…the other night we had a little pre-dinner snack called lammi. Lammi is super duper extraordinarily hot wings without the wings. It makes your nose run and your eyes water but is actually good. Even my Senegalese family was coughing…we were like this is so cough, cough…good…cough, grunt, spasm. Also, Senegalese eat limes…just limes.

The Senegalese do something really cool called a kiile! All the women and men have either rice faros or fields. Usually they work them alone but on big days when they need help all the villagers go to one person’s field or faro to help out! Afterward they all come over and eat massive quantities of oily rice (ceeb – pronounced cheb). It was a cool example of helping out your neighbor with a little party tacked on! You also need an amusingly big pot to cook rice for 17 people.

I went out to milk the cows a few weeks ago – not fun! Gross - And this coming from a girl who would be unfazed by sleeping in a horses’ stall. Cow diarrhea everywhere and flies and nastiness. I even tried milking the cow but can’t say I was particularly fond of that task. Touching the cow udders was strange but was actually unpleasant because I felt as though I was sitting in poo while I milked Bessie…The upside of this was that I got fresh real milk later in the day. Also – I thought it was interesting to note that the word for milking in Pulaar is the “ing" form of the word milk as well.

A little insight into Senegalese housekeeping – A Senegalese Martha Stewart moment if you will. There are no trashcans really. If I have trash in my compound – a corn husk, peanut shells, spice wrappers, plastic bags, I just drop it where I am standing. So does everyone else…every morning one of my Moms or the kids sweep up the whole compound. Let me know how this housekeeping method works out for you in America…

Also – you might like to know that the day before the end of Ramadan – you should have cleaned ALL of the clothing and linens in your house. Imagine washing all the clothing and linens in your house…by hand. My Senegalese family pulled a lot of water that day.

Korite was a pretty cool experience…it is the celebration of the end of Ramadan which meant I had to try to learn a whole new set of Arabic phrases…Arabic is a crazy mouthful of syllables and I’m pretty sure I failed spectacularly at learning them!

In America holidays are highly food centric but in Senegal there is really nothing except the food to mark holiday time. And holidays aren’t so much parties as much as they are just normal days with abundant quantities of rice… To illustrate – on Korite Eve, the most exciting thing for the kids to do was watch me cook pre-dinner. Fascinating. I made a delicious potato/squash/noodle/onion dish fried in oil and Senegalese spices. And gave myself food poisoning…no one else, just me. That meal was in and out in under an hour. That was my first food poisoning in Senegal – go Kelly! Also, I am fairly certain my family enjoyed my cheap tomato soup packet more…probably because it was like eating milk and salt.

One night of Korite we also had spaghetti sandwiches (eating pasta without bread here is considered mostly crazy). They were delicious but eating oily spaghetti with your hands and a piece of bread is quite the challenge. That same night people kept showing up at our house with bowls of food. When I asked why my family was like on Korite you give food to the elders. So thanks to grandma Kande we had lots of eats! One thing was like millet with a watery sauce but somehow it tasted like a taco.

Another cool Korite tradition is greeting all your neighbors. Throughout the 2 day celebration everyone gets dressed up and then goes door to door around the village to shake hands.

I watched my grandma in Senegal spin cotton into thread! It is a crazy process and the cotton really looks like white cotton candy before it is spun. It looks very difficult and I have a video that will make its way to America eventually. They use the thread my grandmother spins to stitch broken gourd bowls together.

In preparation for the arrival of the nurse at the Thiewal Lao health post I have been spending some time shadowing other health post workers. I actually went with one of my relais to learn how to do malaria rapid tests so villagers don’t have to bike 18k to get medication when they have malaria. The amount of disturbing things that happened in the brief time I spent at the health post is disturbing.

· They bite the end of the needle to get the cap off (this is a tiny cap so you are almost guaranteed to get some of your spit on the needle

· Blood spilled on the floor – just a little but no one cleaned it up

· The used sharps get thrown in a mesh trashcan with everything else

· The testing supplies fell on the filthy floor multiple times – no worries, they just picked all the now unsterile stuff up and put it back in the bag

· They didn’t wear gloves, ever

· They didn’t wash their hands, EVER

· The nurse is actually the mid-wife

· The doctor is actually a nurse

· The doctor very rarely even touched the patient

· After my relais (who has no practical health training) watched the test performed once he did the rest of the tests for the day (including all the poor terrified sick little kids) which meant many people had to be stabbed multiple times

· No patient confidentiality

· The patients usually don’t even know what they have when they leave the office

· For each patient the doctor writes one 11” line of info, and that is it

· No medical history is available or consulted prior to the appointment

· No physical exam aside from temperature (all day I only saw maybe 3 physicals)

· They only have one thermometer – when it breaks they use the back of their hand

· Each patient has about 5 minutes with the doctor – this is not so much lack of time as that the doctor wants to spend the afternoon playing cards

· Every 3^rd or 4^th patient during rainy season has malaria (which is ridiculous since every Senegalese was given a mosquito net and most have more than they need)

· They give out medicine like candy (like we do as well - only it is worse since here it is often cheap ineffective medicine prescribed for an inadequately diagnosed disease and on top of that the patients can barely afford it. And the doctor doesn’t explain if the medicine is absolutely necessary or not. Nor does he explain how to take it – though I believe the pharmacist does

So…that’s awesome. I did see something funny at the doctor, although it had nothing to do with the doctor. Someone came on a motorcycle wearing chemistry lab goggles. If only I had thought to bring mine to Senegal! Could someone send them pronto so I could use them as a fashion slash motorcycle accessory J

On my own personal medical front – I went to the Peace Corps doctors complaining of an earache. The medical officer looked in my ear and was like yep – it’s all bloody back there. These words of comfort for some reason sent me reeling (I have never been a very calm patient – especially when there is no reason to freak out) and I had to leave her office mid appointment to avoid fainting. Very strange. So when I became unparanoid again I went back and got an appointment with a Senegalese ENT 2 days later. In the meantime I continued to feel like one half of me was on an airplane and to eat Tylenol like candy. The perks of this were getting to stay in the air-conditioned and couch furnished med-hut! The doctor turned out to be a cool guy. He was European but born in a Senegalese village – since he really only spoke French and Wolof I couldn’t really figure out why but that was still interesting. He was very nice and I could watch on a screen as he examined the inside of my ear – which was super cool. He said I had something white like cotton stuck in my ear drum so I got some codeine and ear drops! When I came back 5 days later he flushed my ear with water! This is a ridiculous experience and I advise you all to go get something stuck in your ear so you can have it washed out. I laughed so hard I cried because the sensation was so funny. I still don’t know for sure what it was although another volunteer said in his old village (this is his second time in Peace Corps – the newest stage here has someone on his 3^rd tour!) the women pounded grain in a separate area to avoid getting rice chaff in everyone’s ears. Since my women pound all day right in my compound maybe it was rice chaff?

On my way home from the doctor in Dakar I went to visit two of my friends in their villages which was very fun. Amanda lives in a Pulafuta village which is similar to my Fulakunda village (both are Pulaar dialects) so I could kind of speak with them. We played board games and generally had a lot of tickle fights with the little kids! She has an adorable pre-school in her village (which is really random especially because the pre-school may be better than some of the middle schools I have seen). Then I went to visit Spence to see his new puppy Koba. She can’t walk properly, possibly because she was kicked by the little kids, but she is getting better. Her name also derives from the fact that she can’t hold her butt up properly. Spence claims Koba means big butt in his language Jaxankey (Djahonk-a). Amanda and Spence’s names in village are Isatu Ba and Babanding something or other. Just in case you are thinking about adopting a Senegalese name.

I recently heard an awesome story about a current volunteer. When you buy bean sandwiches here they wrap the sandwiches in old paper. One volunteer got her bean sandwich only to find it was wrapped in her most recent gynecological results…hilarious and disturbing.

Returning to village was fun – the 18 month old basically cried her eyes out because she was scared of the white person. She is usually scared of me but the separation made her react much more violently! I got my siblings to run with me a bit. My younger brother went one day and even though it was really hard to make him finish after me I did it because he has a little attitude and I decided it was worth the effort to learn that a girl could beat him…I then proceeded to secretly collapse in my hut. My oldest sister also started running with me but she will be living in another village now that school is starting. She even did a full yoga practice with me – it is hard enough to lead yoga in English – try it in Pulaar! I also saw a bird that looked just like Zazoo from the Lion King! And I had allergies or malaria for about 2 days. Since I take malaria meds I can still get it but it would only be very mild. It felt like I had allergies but since at least 2 people in my family currently have malaria it seems quite possible that I actually had malaria.

A really big shot government official was supposed to come to the village next to mine to talk about my village (no idea why he wasn’t supposed to come to my village) so I went to that volunteer’s house for the day. I arrived all nasty and sweaty from biking only to find everyone in her village all dressed up and pretty so I borrowed Senegalese dress clothes from her and we hung out for the festivities. Of course there were INSANE amounts of oily rice and they even killed a cow for the occasion. It was 103 degrees outside but we went to stand and watch the festivities. The village won’t let the women sit so my neighbor refuses to sit even if they offer her a chair. She says she will only sit if the other women can sit as well which puts them in a predicament since they really want her to sit. But generally they won’t let the other women sit so we stood! They made a line of people wearing soccer jerseys for the official to walk through when he arrived and there were drums and whistles and dancing for hours. And for some reason a bunch of the women cross-dress and make crazy hats for ceremonies like this. So they were all dancing up a storm and we were watching and the guy (Becaye Diop) finally came although it wasn’t the guy…it was just his people. So that was a bit of a disappointment and we couldn’t hear him talking anyway so we have no idea what happened. All we heard was “look, all the men, women and children have come out today for this celebration…and even the Americans – with a gesture at the two white crazies in the crowd. Of course at this moment Amanda (my nearest neighbor – village name is Namoo, which is actually Pulaar for right hand) was doing something with her shoes since they were only speaking Pulaar and she is a Mandinka speaker, but I managed to get her attention so we could look cool for half a second.

On a totally different note, I went to visit a health post in a village about 20k from mine and didn’t have a place to eat lunch. I knew one of the kids who lives in the house behind mine was visiting family in the village I was at (Fafakurou) so I asked if anyone knew her family and they took me to their house where I ate lunch. Only in Senegal can you go to a complete stranger’s house and get invited to lunch! And this is far from the first time I’ve done this.

Back to my village. By super old great grandmother still works really hard in her rice farro so I try to help her out with stretches when she is sore. The other day I gave her a back massage and she was like no it hurts here. She kept moving my hand around until finally she pointed out the chest pain she had been having for a few days and asked me to essentially give her a breast massage. Clearly in my American way I was quite disturbed by this but I was like Kelly, if you want to be a doctor you better get over this so I did it. I was laughing a lot and when I tried to explain how strange this was to an American my whole Senegalese family was laughing too.

As I mentioned before – at least 2 people in my compound have malaria. They get it diagnosed by the “doctor,” a man named Mali Balde with NO practical knowledge or experience in medicine. He gives them meds which I suppose is good for now. I went to check out his hut and see the meds. Nothing was expired and his hut looked about as clean as one of the health huts near me so I decided to let him be until the Thiewal Lao doctor actually arrives. He was giving penicillin injections to villagers who were sore from field work…AWESOME. I tried to politely ask him not to do this and compromised by telling him when penicillin might be effective. No idea if he will listen, we shall have to see. Anyway – back to malaria, before the kids had medicine I suggested to my moms that the kids get under a net as soon as it gets dark. The mosquitoes that carry malaria only come out at night. It is advertised as being important to sleep under your net but that does not acknowledge the fact that Senegalese people often don’t sleep until early morning. So I explained that if the sick kids were bitten and then the same mosquito bit someone else then a new person would have malaria. My moms nodded and said ok. No one moved. So I explained this to my sick siblings, asking if they wanted to get someone else sick. They heartily said no, they didn’t want to make anyone else sick…they also continued to not move. Eventually I gave up. I understand why they don’t go under the nets as soon as it gets dark. They would have to change their whole daily schedule drastically and I am not pushing them to do that, but it would be nice if the sick kids at least lay under the nets. O well – just keep pushing little by little.

In another shining example of health and hygiene – I saw my older brother lick his daughter’s foot clean…lovely. Apparently she had spilled porridge on it. Literally – toes in his mouth.

I now have a Pulaar tutor in village. Souleyman Diallo. He is a relais at the health post and is a very helpful dedicated tutor. For 30 bucks a month he spends 2 hours with me 4 days a week practicing Pulaar. He is especially amusing however because he doesn’t understand that Pulaar is what I don’t understand. He seems to think I need a well rounded education – he asks me to practice my handwriting (something I usually refuse to do) and also my long division. I don’t remember how to do long division (at least it took me a few tries) and Souleyman is very adept at picking numbers which are all but impossible to divide in your head and generally have infinite decimal endings. I decided to let him keep quizzing my basic math skills because I figure it is good for my brain and sometimes he gives me Pulaar word problems which are really good for my market Pulaar!

As for projects! Solar panels are being installed at my health post without my help – which is awesome! And as for other projects my action plan will be evaluated in 2 days but I imagine I will be doing the following

· Train Relais and Health Committee on how to perform their jobs efficiently and effectively – I really want the relais to give awesome presentations so I will work with each relais on their own specialty presentation and hopefully help them start presenting on their own. The Health Committee has to learn how to run the health post well so I will probably be trying to help them observe other health posts

· Help the villagers to learn why certain practices are unhealthy and to initiate some behavior change

· Make some repairs and additions to the health hut – although the NGO that helped build the health post seems to be taking care of this

· Build a new women’s garden so they can supplement their own diets and sell vegetables to surrounding villages

· Making school more interesting so kids don’t drop out – Olympic Day, Science Day kind of stuff and Pen Pals with Michele’s class

· Adult Class – a once a week night class for village adults to learn to write Pulaar and read and write French and maybe a little English. I might also step in to do some biology education

· Gardening – helping my counterpart to act like a gardening relais – someone who can give gardening demonstrations to surrounding villages

· Animal Rights – I want to try to encourage better care of animals here

· Food security – maybe find a way to make the backbreaking rice farro work a little bit easier (possibly with better tools)

· AIDS Awareness – AIDS concert!

That’s all for now – sorry if I repeated anything from an earlier blog and you are a champ if you read all of this because it is 6 pages long…

Dakar is NOT Senegal

I just spent a month out of village, including about a week and a half in Dakar, the capitol of Senegal…and going back to village was so different that I’m fairly sure I experienced culture shock. Anyway, back to the beginning of this little NotSenegal adventure!

After spending the night having an awesome campfire in a friends’ village we all headed to the beach – where we used to go when we were in training! We spend the night in really cute huts that were Senegalese but clean and adorable. And spent 2 days on the beach…before we left we visited our host families from training and ate at my favorite Senegalese burger shack J

Next we headed on over to training. We were supposed to stay with new host families but after a few days the training staff let us stay at the center – basically this means we got more time to hang out with other Americans and eat/cook American food – always a bonus! But my new host family was pretty cool – they made a rice dish for dinner that was essentially rice pudding – fantastic! And we had mangos every night for dessert. This family speaks an insane number of languages between them. They kind of spoke English and fluently spoke Catalonian, Spanish, Zarma, Pulaar, Wolof, and French. I was impressed. They also had 2 computers, a TV and real chairs! My older host brother lives in Spain and yearly brings a bunch of Spanish students to the Senegalese village where he was born, to do volunteer work. We actually ran into the bus filled with the kids on this trip and my host brother, on our way back to Kolda after visiting Dakar…it’s a small Senegal.

Overall, in-service training was about as uneventful as pre-service training so I was pretty glad when it ended. At this point I headed over to Dakar with a couple of other volunteers to help at an English Camp run by the US Embassy – so we were interacting with Senegalese high school and middle school students BUT got to speak English the whole time. Also, before camp started we got a CATERED meal…the appetizer was so big we thought it was the meal and I couldn’t finish eating…AMAZING. English camp pretty much just consists of the volunteers and campers playing games while speaking English for 4 hours a day…and it’s over by 1 PM…which means we played games all morning and then lounged around all afternoon. Also at English camp I had the pleasure of meeting such celebrities as Young Money, Birdman, Ciara, and Rihanna among others…this is because we asked the kids to pick English names…and apparently most of the English names they know are the names of hip hop and rap artists. There were a ton of volunteers in Dakar for the weekend because one group was having their close of service conference plus the English camp volunteers and the people who live in Dakar were all there. So every afternoon consisted of sitting by the pool at the American club…or swimming in it, and playing volleyball and chillin. We had a trivia night, which my team won, no thanks to me, followed by an amazing party thrown by some Belgians for some independence day or birthday or something or other. We dubbed it the Bouncy Fun Party…because there was a dance floor, trampolines AND two enormous inflatable slides! Plus there was alcohol… I made some sweet dancing Belgian friends after busting out the worm on the dance floor. They also played the World Cup Shakira song Waka Waka no less than 3 times…which was awesome since we had spent the previous month perfecting the dance. Also on the way home one slightly drunken volunteer informed the cab that he once ate so many mangos that he smelled like mangos, this was amusing. The next night was a rather enormous outdoor dance party dubbed KouelGraul or something to that effect. In between dance parties and camp we ate at delicious restaurants and frequented the grocery store…the real life grocery store that is. Don’t take your friendly neighborhood super market for granted! The first time I step foot in an American supermarket I’m going to bend down and kiss the floor…this is not a joke. There was also a Guess store in the “supermarket” (it’s called Casino)…I could have bought one dress with all the money I get for 3 months…tempting.

I also could have helped with a basketball camp in Dakar but I chose to chill by the pool instead. I would have missed meeting Dwight Howard…had he not slept in and missed his plane. The volunteers who helped did meet some other NBA players though.

Anyway, the fun had to come to an end so I headed on home with a station wagon full of volunteers. When biking home the grasses and crops had grown so crazily that I biked right past my village…only to realize I must have missed it about 20 minutes later. Coming home to village was a huge shock, not least because it’s Ramadan! This means we eat breakfast around 5:30AM and then don’t eat again until 7:30 PM. I of course sneak food in my room or eat lunch with the little kids. The adults can’t even swallow their own spit. I can’t imagine working in the fields in the crazy heat without drinking and on top of that spitting frequently; but they do it. The perks of Ramadan are that we have bread and coffee every night to break the fast AND we have 2 dinners! This lasts for a whole joyous month!

As for my garden…FAIL. When I left my garden decided mostly to not grow (with the pumpkins, squash and corn being the exceptions) and my pepiniere was overrun as no one weeded it. Of 500 sacks only 24 trees survived L At least that was enough to give each family in my village a tree! Another FAIL would be the stealing of my cell phone…mostly because I knew when it happened and saw the guy but I only checked for my wallet…anyway, got a new phone now, same number!

And finally…hate to end this post on a sobering note but it’s a crazy sad fact that is worth sharing. I have been talking to the villagers to try and decide my projects for the next 2 years and have just begun realizing how prevalent child mortality is in Senegal. My family has 8 living children currently…6 other children were also born but died before reaching 1 yr old. Thus I will be pressing pretty hard to improve maternal and infant health.

As for other projects – I think I will be working with the relais (Senegalese villagers who volunteer to help with health education and are associated with health posts) and training some of them in specific areas so they can speak with villagers about certain health topics. The hope is that after I leave they can continue educating other villagers. I will also be working with groups of women to help them start small businesses and helping with a weekly class for the adults in my village since many of them wish they could have a shot at school. I am also thinking of putting on an AIDS concert with a volunteer friend of mine! So lots to do J

Love From Senegal!!!!!

PS - New Pics on FB

Lylonggylongals, Lenggy Lenggies, and Warthogs…Amongst Other Things

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!

Barack Obama, Dinner & a Show

I don't know why...but one of my Senegalese moms absolutely cannot say the name Barack Obama enough. At least once a day I happen upon her, holding the 1 year Mariama and chanting Barack Obama, Barack Obama like a strange lullaby. The reason is mysterious...maybe she wants Mariama's first words to be the name of the American president?

Regarding biking in the world of Senegalese...it’s quite a hilarious experience. I think we all know I'm a tid bit competitive...which is why I find biking in the country amusing...maybe? The men here (most of the other people on bikes) seem to take it as a personal insult if I pass them on my bike. I will just be cruising along and surprise, some dude starts pedaling like crazy to try and win the unspoken competition. I like to work hard enough just to keep them hanging...try to wear them down a little. Mind you this is not really fair...the bikes here are pretty terrible (not Peace Corps bikes but the bikes owned by the Senegalese). If the wheels are fortunate enough to be located in the same vertical plane, then the chain is certain to be useless...my brother has to pedal backward as much as he does forward to keep the chain from falling off. Also...Senegalese people have no concept of pushing onself to the physical limit for no reason (ie my Senegalese brother getting changed into work out clothes...doing 5 push-ups...and then changing back to regular clothes and drinking some tea). They live extremely hard lives but there is a difference between working hard to survive and working hard to compete...you have a choice when you're competing...not so much when you are trying to live. Anyway...while riding into my road town last week and having one of these amusing Senegalese man versus Kelly battles I was informed by my brother that I am a good racer. He said the guy I was racing was very tired. Again, amusing since I bike at a snail’s pace compared to most biking Americans :) ooo...and their bikes also don't have breaks...unless you count using your feet in a Fred Flintstone-like manner

Rainy season is coming! Little did I know there was more nastiness in store than expected (I should be used to this by now). Now I have been wondering why on earth we eat dinner around 9 PM…it seems like since it’s pretty hard to see and batteries are expensive eating earlier would be logical. It would seem far more logical if Americans ate at 9 and Senegalese ate at 6 but I decided to stop pondering the question, until the first day after my first real Thunderstorm. The storm itself was quite the experience...massive lightning is cool and all...when you aren’t in a hut with a grass roof. And insane wind can also be an adventure…when there is something holding your roof onto the rest of your house/hut…since I have an unrestrained grass roof this new kind of raging Senegalese Thunderstorm was not exactly a calming experience…o and the rain pounding on the roof knocks the earwigs out of the roof so they can crawl between your toes or on your face. This has not happened to me yet...though it happened to the girl who lives 6k away from me, and I did have the lovely experience of reaching for an itch last night in the dark only to close my hand on a grasshopper…crawl in the dark into another room to find my flashlight…examine my bedsheet and find 2 grasshopppers! O joy ;) Anyway, back to dinner…the day after the storm the bug population exploded. At dinner time we opened the bowl and turned on our flashlight and it was dinner AND a show! I say a show because there were at least 10 winged bugs crawling among the couscous and another 5 more floating dead in the dinner sauce…we fished them out and moved indoors…but indoors here is about the equivalent of a screened in porch with large holes in the screening. Let’s just say I didn’t chew my dinner and instead swallowed mouthfuls whole. Again I ask…why not eat when it’s not necessary to attract the bugs with light?

On a less buggy note, I planted somewhere between 500 and 1,000 trees last week with the help of 2 teachers, my counterpart and a million screaming children. It was hardddddd work but it feels pretty good to be able to say I planted that many trees J We will have to see how they grow up as they are safe in their little tree nursery right now!

Food Fantasies

So….official village life! I was supposed to stay in village for 5 weeks but had to come to Kolda and stay at the regional house so I could get my money from the bank…very amusing as I needed help figuring out how to write a check.

Anyway, the day you first go to village is called install. Basically we get dragged around to meet a bunch of pseudo official government reps…boring BUT they all have air conditioning!!!

I am starting to settle into a routine…kind of. I generally wake up around 6 or 7 but lie in bed and read for an hour or 2. Go for a run or walk. Then go to the well, which is in the compound next to mine, 3 or 4 times, carrying the water on my head!!! Eat breakfast with the family – usually a kind of millet porridge or peanut porridge, salty and not amazing but edible. Currently I am starting to garden so I do a little work digging or something and alternate with reading breaks cause it’s really too hot to work consistently. I walk around and talk to the people in my village to try to see what my project for the next 2 years will be. Around 2:30 its lunch time and its usually village rice (which is like unfluffy half grains of rice) or millet (sand-like) with a peanut butter or leaf sauce on top…and always a few rocks or crunchy unknown ingredients… Continue doing whatever I was doing before. Around 6 I take a bucket bath (not that bad actually minus being attacked by flies and the occasional fear of a neighbor climbing the tree overlooking my douche looking for leaves for dinner) and then usually watch my moms prepare dinner and end up laying on the shade structure until 9ish when we have dinner…at which point I promptly go to bed. I slept SO MUCH here, I don’t know if it’s the heat or my immune system doing overtime but I’m constantly tired! It’s getting old.

Regarding what I’m supposed to be doing here…which I find more and more is just encouraging behavior change with a vengeance. It’s difficult because almost immediately after telling you they can’t afford soap to wash their hands and wounds with they will buy cigarettes. Even my grandma (she’s a traditional medicine healer) chews snuff…she claims it’s for her health…as it keeps her teeth from hurting… But to be fair, we do it in America too…I worked with a guy who owned every gaming system on the planet but had no health insurance…seems kind of ridiculous to me…but I guess we all do stuff no one else understands.

Also, it’s hard to change behavior when you can’t offer a good alternative. Kids in America have clean places to keep clean toys and when they are teething it’s relatively easy to give them a healthy teething option. Here, people can’t afford teething toys and they can’t keep them clean. So how can I tell a mom to tell her child to stop chewing on that rusty old knife that was just lying on the ground being splattered with cow poo? She doesn’t have the time or resources to dedicate to an alternative and when I take away the knife people usually just laugh and pick something else off the ground to give the child…mind boggling.

They also can’t afford diapers…which means when the baby sitting on the shade structure poos, Mom just picks her up and walks away. 10 seconds later a group of kids plays cards literally on top of the spot where the baby was. In other words the remaining poo is being rubbed onto the cards and touched by everyone… and no one thinks to clean it up unless it’s a very obvious mess.

I went to a “stay in school” talk organized by one of the volunteers. The woman leading the talk asked the elementary school age (this is a wide age range here as ages are a little fuzzy here) kids who in the class was married. I thought she was joking until 4 girls in a class of maybe 40 raised their hands. Two 12 yr olds and two 13 year olds, MARRIED! It’s horrifying but it’s culture. Many girls, women , and even men don’t want things like this happening but no one stands up for the girls when the time comes and the marriages continue…makes it pretty hard to stay in school. One volunteer tells me her counterpart loves talking about what a wonderful idea family planning is but he has the biggest family in his village and shows no signs of slowing.

So…that was some negative stuff but I promise this culture is also amazing in so many ways. Just last week someone in my family got married! This means eating a ton! Corn porridge for breakfast along with warm condensed sugar milk and a small piece of bread to dunk in it. Corn porridge is what corn pops would be if they became porridge! We typically had 2 lunches and 2 dinners and one day we even had 3 dinners…this lasts for 3 days! They also have huge dance parties every night…unfortunately I had some pretty nice sun sickness (complete with rash and fever) and felt too tired to dance for the whole 3 days…not cool L

People here like to ask you if you are having fun. They say “Ana noosa?” While this literally translates to are you having fun, what they really mean is are you eating your money? They love asking white people this…apparently having fun can only be done if you are throwing away your money. I just tell them I have no money…which really is not such a big lie.

I saw kids with a bike wheel rim and a stick running around rolling the wheel with the stick…I thought that only happened in Colonial Williamsburg?

And now…Food Crushes, I no longer think about finding a boyfriend…no no, I’m far busier trying to decide what food I am most desperately craving at any given moment. Two weeks of village food and I’ve lost it…I spent 45 minutes the other night staring at the sky thinking about food only to realize that 45 minutes had just passed…its absurd. The thing is…I eat large quantities of food…there is just a lack of nutrition. You know how your stomach doesn’t feel full until you’ve ingested all the nutrients you are craving…well my stomach can be visibly protruding and still be saying “Kelly, I’m HUNGRY. Aren’t you forgetting something…I don’t know, protein? Dairy? VEGETABLES!?” Thus the weight gain that will inevitably happen since I must eat massive quantities of rice in order to double cross my stomach. As of now I’ve lost weight…this is because I no longer have any muscle mass. I sit and stare at my legs and wonder who they belong to.