A busy week

Written Thursday, November 8, 2007

 

 

It's been a really busy week and a half or so.   Monday last week, just after I came back from a trip to Tamba, there was a big ceremony in a neighboring village to celebrate the reconstruction of their primary school by the French army.   So I spent the day at the party, where they had lots of speeches (by government people, French army people, and a local school teacher), traditional dancing (some of the French soldiers danced, and the villagers thought their dance moves were hilarious), and tons of food, including more meat per person than I have ever seen in Senegal.

 

Just after that, a couple of American college students who are studying abroad in Dakar came to stay with me for a few days so they could experience village life.   I had a lot of fun showing them around.  I have to say they were much less overwhelmed by the whole experience than I was when I went on my "demyst" trip when I first arrived in Senegal; but then, they have already been in country for two months, whereas I had been here only about two days.   We spent a lot of time at the river trying to spot hippos (which I still haven't seen this whole time I've been here), but the hippos didn't cooperate.   Some monkeys did come out on the other side of the river and chase each other around for a while, keeping us entertained while we waited for the hippos that never showed up.

 

After the college students left, it was time for me to get back to real work.   So my village counterpart and I have restarted holding health classes for women, and we are also going to start going around to each compound to talk with women individually about their health concerns.   And now I am in Tamba for a few days seeing if we can finally make some progress on getting a matron (like a midwife, but with less training than a real midwife) trained for our village.  

 

And after what a nice new school the neighboring village has, my village chief (who is also my host dad) has asked me to check into getting the French army, or an NGO or someone, to fix up our school as well.   Our school is not in terrible shape, but currently not all the children in the village are able to go to school because there is not enough classroom space (or so they tell me – my first step is going to be to verify this), and there is only one teacher to teach all the primary grades.   So next week I'm going to try to check into what our school really needs, whether it's more classroom space, or just a second teacher (which we are supposed to have, but the last teacher got sick and left and never got replaced, leaving us with just one).

 

Before moving to the village, I heard from so many volunteers that I needed to be prepared to have lots of free time on my hands – that I would be reading a lot, and sleeping a lot, and would need to make a lot of effort to come up with activities to keep myself busy.   Well, I've been living in the village almost six months now, and that hasn't happened yet.  I am feeling a little cheated.   I could really use a nap.