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.

I Promise This One is Short! (Well...shorter)

I am now an official Peace Corps Volunteer...I can (theoretically) speak Pulaar at an intermediate mid level so i get to go to village! The swearing in ceremony was at the U.S. Embassador's house, so we got meet her and eat yummy food. We took the same governmental oath that president takes AND got a police escort to the ceremony (ok so it was one guy on a moped but still!)

The morning after swearing-in I took a sept place (sketchy old station wagon - 7 places) to Kolda! The trip went much smoother than our last trip to Kolda...don't worry the roads were still bumpy like whoa...even a jeep would struggle on these roads...BUT we didn't have to wait 5 hours to cross the Gambia river (we didn't have to wait at all) AND we go tthe legendary Gambia chicken sandwiches...and they were deliscious! While crossing the Gambian border we also meet a guard who went to school in America for 5 years, played basketball and worked at macy's in new york!

Since then I have been chilling at the regional house...each ergion has a regional house, which is like mini America for all the volunteers in the region. we watch movies, have dance parties which involve sweating profusely, sleep on the roof and eat yummy stuff...we roasted a pig yesterday (and by we I mean the other volunteers, I just helped with the eating). i bought a crazy amount of things to furnish my new hut...including trunks, which is what we use to store stuff here...its awesome cause I feel like I'm going to Hogwarts...I got my trunk, my broom, my new robes (so what if Senegalese clothes aren't exactly wizard robes). Also, my stagemates (people I was in training with) decided to split the stage into houses...I am apparently Griffindor since I have half a thumb and that constitutes bravery.

Anyway...I leave for my permanent site (Thiewal Lao) tomorrow! I don't think I will have internet access for 5 weeks although I could find it if I go out of my way a bit so we shall see! don't forget to check out the World Cup (soccer...not quidditch) cause it's in Africa!!!!!

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!

Hut Sweet Hut!

So I finally meet my permanent Senegalese family (the family I will live with for 2 years). They gave my a new name, so now my name is Jeneba Sabaly! To get to Thiewal Lao (my new home) I had to drive across Senegal in a Peace Corps car, which involved waiting in the 100 plus degree heat for 5 hours while we waited to cross the Gambia River. The fastest way to the Kolda Region (where Thiewal Lao is located) requires crossing the Gambia...a ridiculous nonsensical tiny country in the middle of Senegal. The current volunteers promised us the best chicken sandwiches ever when we were in the Ferry waiting line...they lied, which broke our hearts. Traveling across Senegal also requires traveling on the most ridiculously bumpy paved and unpaved roads...roads which are also seriously lacking in law enforcement. In a Peace Corps car the ride isn't terrible but for most of my trips from now on I will be in the back of an ancient station wagon known here as a sept-place (7 seats). Also, on the way back to the Peace Corps Training Center (a 10 hour drive in the fast Peace Corps car), there were 10 people plus a dog in our toyota SUV which confortably fits 5 people. And I don't mean a Schnitzel sized dog...I mean a thirty-forty pound dog...awesome! Also our air conditioner broke...apparently a situation like that still beats a sept place ride, I'll let you know once I have that experience.

Once I got to my site I met my nearest white person/peace corp vol neighbor (6k from me through the bush). She has a Senegalese dog named Nacho and I spent my 5 days in Kolda living in her village while visiting surrounding villages. Aside from literally reaching 120 degrees in the middle of the day, there is also a constant buzzing in your ears whenever you are in Kolda...due to the evil flies. There are also bugs everywhere and apprently it will only get way worse when rainy season starts. We saw a dead scorpion while strolling through the woods searching for cashew apples and mangoes to pick and eat off the trees...it was gross. Also saw some rather intimidating spiders and learned that having bats and lizards in your room is commonplace. One volunteer even had a snake in her room...but that is abnormal, so are scorpions...hopefully. On the other hand, there are much nicer animals all over the place...including the roosters that seem a little confused about when dawn actually occurs. Cows just wander around along with goats, sheep, etc. I even carried a little baby goat. everyone sleeps outside here and Amanda (my nearest neighbor) said she used to wake up with a cow ten inches from her face on a regular basis. Many other things impede your sleeping...like the goats which sound like yelling children all night and the sheep which sound like drunken freshmen all night long. Also the mosque seems to feel that chanting all night is a neccessity. Even the cows make awful noises after one of the cows is killed. Its crazy...luckily I sleep like a rock.

While in village I also ate bush rabbit, freshly killed by amanda's dog, Nacho. Bush rabbit is vile...I had to hold my hand over my mouth to avoid choking the meat back into the bowl...yum. Otherwise the food in village (peanut butter or leaf sauce over rice) was delicious! Even the village water is good. I am supposed to only drink filtered water but when you run out of filtered water and are traveling you kind of have to drink straight well water. I have now had unfiltered well water in 3 villages and I'm still alive!

To get food like bread or coffee I have to bike 18k along a bush path to my road town (Dabo). Luckily I have an amazing brand new bike! My road town has a weekly market where I can get any of the Senegalese things I may be craving...like bissap juice/ice bags...basically a sandwich big filled with frozen bissap juice or any of a variety of yummy Senegalese juices. I can get coffee and a bean or egg sandwich any day of the week in my road town. Also, another volunteer lives in the town and he has electricity!

While in village I also had to practice my Senegaleseness and greet EVERYONE...not only everyone in my village but also everyone in the next door village. In the space of 2 days I figure I shook hands with somewhere between 500-1000 people. I visited each families compound, sat down for about 2 minutes awkwardly then moved on. The sitting down is apparently a very important component of the greeting. I was allowed to hold a baby that was less than one day old! On that note...a week or two ago some people started speaking to me in Woloof (I didn't understand a word) but I somehow agreed to go visit their house. So I followed them around town (at this point i didn't even know where I was going) and into their house, at which point I had to sit down of course. The two women proceeded to hand me both of their children, I think 4 and 5 months old. We do not share a common language at all and I had no idea who these two women were. I sat there for about 10 minutes and finally just stood up handed the babies back and left...even now i don't know who they were or why that happened...hilarious.

Anyway back to the village visit...my new Senegalese mom (one of 3) reminds me of Lynne Hathaway...which is interesting. I have now reached such a state of horselessness that while biking the other day I heard I sound coming from behind be...I though one of the bikes had a flat tire...turns out it was a cantering horse...

Also, i decided that the well pump in my training village was placed their by coach Kish...for a pump it is distrubingly like rowing...and its also ridiculously hard to use. I get the pleasure of using this pump everyday.

Sorry for the long update...lots happened in the past few days, hope that all made sense!

peace out girl/boy scouts