Baby porridge demonstration

Written Thursday, 13 September 2007

 

 

Tuesday I did my first official health activity in the village as a Peace Corps volunteer (the 2 ½ months I was in the village before I went back to Thies I was supposed to be working on learning the language and "integrating", not doing health activities) – I taught some women how to make a simple baby porridge out of corn meal, peanut butter, and bananas.

 

Malnutrition is a big problem here for babies, mainly because they aren't fed the right foods during weaning, rather than because of not getting fed enough food.   (They tend to get a lot of carbohydrates like corn meal and rice, and not enough proteins or fruits and vegetables).

 

The meeting for my porridge demonstration was, as meetings always seem to be here, a little chaotic.   We had planned to start the meeting at 3:00, but at 2:30 my counterpart showed up and said it looked like it was going to rain and we should start the meeting now (we were going to have the meeting under a tree in front of my hut).   So I grabbed my gas stove and other cooking supplies and rushed out.  Amazingly, the women were already there – usually we have to wait around for people to show up, and meetings start about an hour after they're scheduled.  

 

I was a little nervous about how the porridge would turn out, since I hadn't actually made it before – I was going off a recipe from Peace Corps.   It was too watery at first, but after cooking it a while longer it thickened up and actually turned out pretty well, except that the women inevitably said that it wasn't sugary enough.   But the women seemed to understand the recipe, and the babies seemed to like it, so I'm counting my first activity as a success, as far as successes go in Peace Corps anyway – I don't know yet if any of the women will actually make it for their kids.   But I'm hoping they will.

Back to the village

Written Friday, 7 September 2007

 

 

Wednesday it was finally time for me to go back to the village, after being gone for over a month.   Around 5 pm I went to the garage in Tamba to catch an Alham (it's not safe to bike the road toward my village in the afternoons – apparently there are bandits – and anyway I had a lot of stuff).   Even though the car was almost full when I got there, we didn't leave til almost 6:00.  Then there were the usual stops at the gas station and at the police checkpoint for the driver to have his papers checked.   Then it seemed we were finally on our way.

 

But no.  After driving for only about ten minutes, one of the tires blew out.   (I for some reason immediately thought we had been shot at and jumped.  All the Senegalese in the car had a good time laughing at me for that one).   So we pulled over and everyone piled out, and they put on the spare tire.  Finally we got going again, but by the time we made it to Missira – about halfway to my village – it was after 7:00 and already getting dark.  I didn't want to make the thirty minute bike ride from the main road to my village in pitch blackness, so I decided to stay in Missira and spend the night at another volunteer's hut.

 

So Thursday morning I loaded up my bike and rode to my village, finally arriving about 18 hours after I'd originally planned to.   I feel like that's pretty typical of life here.  I was really happy to see my host family and other villagers, which was a relief because I wasn't entirely sure if I'd be happy to come back or if I'd feel like I was going back to prison.   Probably some of the feelings of being in prison will come back in time (hopefully not until it's about time to go to Tamba again), but for now I'm really happy to be back.

I really hope it doesn't happen to me...

One of the annoying things about the rainy season, besides all the mosquitoes and flies, is how difficult it is to do laundry.  You do your laundry on a sunny morning, thinking maybe it won't rain today, or at least maybe your clothes will be dry before it rains.  But inevitably, it will begin pouring with no warning while your clothes are still hanging on the line.

 

Leaving you with a choice: leave them hanging on the line, waiting for the sun to come out and give them a second chance at drying again, or bring them inside and hang them up, where they won't dry very well, but at least they won't get any wetter.

 

Sounds like just one of the many challenges of simple daily living here.  But there is an evil twist: mango flies!  They will lay eggs in your clothes while they are hanging up to dry.  If the sun is out, it kills the eggs, which are too small to see, so you will never know and it will never matter.  But during the rainy season, lacking that bright hot sun to dry your clothes, the eggs don't die.  They lie in wait for you to put on your clothes, and then they hatch and the little maggots burrow into your skin to continue growing, creating giant painful bumps that they will eventually pop out of.  Or that you will pop yourself, thinking it is a boil or something, only to discover a little maggot wriggling around inside you that you must pull out with tweezers.

 

Such has been the sad, sad (disgusting!) fate of a fellow volunteer, who shall remain anonymous to protect his privacy (although I think he has written about it on his own blog). 

 

Just when we were all starting to calm down about our fears about parasites and malaria.  Now I am freaking out about mango fly larvae popping out of me.  EW!

A short update

written 1 September 2007

 

The training in Thies ended last Saturday, so Sunday morning I took a "sept-place" (a station wagon that holds seven passengers) back to Tamba.   That meant waking up at 5:00, getting to the Thies garage by 5:30, haggling with the sept-place driver about how much I had to pay for my luggage (the ticket for the seat is a fixed price, but you always have to haggle over the luggage charge).   Then we had to sit there until the car filled up, which in this case wasn't until 7 am.

 

Finally at 7:00 we left, but only made it about an hour and a half until the tire went flat.   Then we had to wait for about 45 minutes for the driver to change the tire.  Finally we were on our way again, but a few hours later, something went wrong with the engine.   The driver pulled us over, got out and looked under the hood, and then discovered that the engine wouldn't start.

 

We were in the middle of nowhere, and I wondered what would happen if he couldn't get the car going again.   It's not like there are lots of tow trucks and emergency services available here.  But no one else was panicking, so I just sat and waited too.  

 

Finally the driver decided that maybe the car would start if it was moving, so he got the men passengers to push the car back onto the road and then get it rolling a bit.   Sure enough, the engine caught, and then the men had to chase after the car and jump in it while it was moving.  It felt like a scene out of Little Miss Sunshine.

 

When we got to the next town, the driver decided he wanted to stop and tinker with the engine again.   So we stopped again.  For over an hour.  I don't think he really managed to fix anything, but finally we were on our way again (starting normally this time, instead of Little Miss Sunshine style), and this time we made it all the way to the outskirts of Tamba, where we had to stop so the driver could show his papers to the police at a checkpoint. (I don't understand this checkpoint system inside the country – sometimes the drivers have to stop, and sometimes they don't.   And it's not at all clear to me what the point is.  But anyway…) The checkpoints only take a minute, but when our driver came back to the car he discovered that the car wouldn't start.   I was so tired and frustrated (and feeling sick with the beginnings of a sinus infection) at this point that I could have just cried – we were so close to finally getting there! 

 

But after only a few minutes, we finally got a rolling start again, and then soon arrived at the Tamba garage, only eleven hours after leaving Tamba (the trip should have taken five or six hours).   I took a taxi to the Peace Corps house in Tamba, where I pretty much just collapsed, and where I have been holed up ever since with a sinus infection.   Hopefully I'll be heading back to my village in a few days.

 

Oh, and PS: my host family in Thies is doing well, but they haven't had any luck in finding a new house to move to.   So now they are planning go ahead and move to Mbour, where they had planned to move in a few years when my host father retires.  (My host father will have to find a place for himself in Thies for his job, and then he will go to Mbour on the weekends to see his family).   The kids aren't very happy about the move, because they like Thies and all their friends are there, but hopefully they will adjust quickly.  (I will admit that I am a little bit excited about the plan, because Mbour is on the beach, and I have a standing invitation to go stay with my host family anytime).

pictures and update on my host family

I have been able to post some pictures from the flood on picasaweb: http://picasaweb.google.com/aidworkr/Flood.

 

My host family is slowly getting their house cleaned up and getting back to normal.  They spent about four or five days this week just washing clothes and other items (by hand, because that's how it's done here, so it's really hard work).  They called a mason to their house to look at the collapsed outer wall and the giant crack in the living room wall.  The mason will rebuild the outer wall, and he said that the crack indicates some structural damage, so he will have to knock out that whole section of wall, insert some steel beams for support, and then rebuild the wall.  Luckily (at least for my host family) the house is rented, so my host family doesn't have to pay for those repairs.  But it sounds like it will be quite a while before the house is in pre-flood conditions.  They are continuing to search for a new house to move into, since my host mother feels that the current house is just not safe enough anymore, but since many families have been flooded and are now looking to move, they haven't been able to find a new house to move to yet.

 

Many, many thanks to all of you who have so generously contributed to help my family.  So far your contributions have enabled them to re-supply themselves with food and to buy new mats to cover the concrete floors, replacing those that were ruined.  I still have another installment of your contributions to give them (as soon as I can get to the bank - hopefully tomorrow), which will help them to replace their bed mattresses. (I hate that all week they have had to choose between sleeping on the hard concrete floor and sleeping on damp, stinky mattresses).

 

My host family has asked me to tell everyone how grateful they are, and to say that they wish everyone long lives and lots of money (and for me, they told me they are also praying for me to get a good husband!).

Flooded!

written Monday, 13 August 2007

 

 

I am currently in Thies for a few weeks of training.  Since it is farther north in the country than my site in Tamba, the rainy season hasn't really started here (the rains start earliest in the south and move north).   So it has been really hot here, hotter even than my village is right now, which I was surprised by.

 

But yesterday evening it finally rained a bit here, just for about an hour in the late afternoon.   Everyone was so happy to have some rain to cool things off a bit, even though it does make the mosquitoes worse.

 

I went to bed last night just a little after 9 pm, happy that for once it was cool enough to get a good night's sleep - the two nights before that I hardly slept because it was just so hot.

 

But the lovely cooling rain soon turned into a downpour.  Around 1 or 2 am (I looked at my watch, but with all the excitement later I've forgotten what it said) my host family came banging on my door to wake me up.   When I stood up to answer the door, my feet stepped into two or three inches of water.  I opened my bedroom door and saw that the rest of the house was flooded too.

 

My host family immediately rushed into my room and started trying to move my things to higher places to save them.   I grabbed my purse and various electronic items (camera, cell phone, a laptop I had borrowed from another volunteer for the weekend and was horrified at the possibility that it might be destroyed by the water), and then I urged my family to leave my stuff and go take care of their own stuff.   But they insisted on trying to rescue the rest of my stuff (just clothes, toiletry items, and some books) which by now were floating around in the rising water in my room.  

 

When my family was finally satisfied that my stuff was protected as much as possible, we went into the living room and stacked tables on top of chairs (the chairs were actually sturdier than the tables, so it made sense to do it in that order) to try to have a dry place to sit.

 

Within an hour the water had risen almost to my hips, and looking out the window at the street, it looked like it was even deeper there.   The water was moving fast, carrying lots of random objects, like a refrigerator.  My host mother wanted to send one of her boys out to try to get a taxi to take me to the Peace Corps center, but I insisted that it was too dangerous to go out and that I would stay with them.  

 

I worried that soon the water would be so deep that we would have to swim out of the house and climb up onto the roof.   And I worried that we could be electrocuted sitting in all that water (I was sitting on a metal table with my feet in the water), since I could see streetlights not too far away, meaning that the city hadn't cut off electricity to our neighborhood, even though the power was out in our house.

 

And I felt terrible for my family, sitting there and watching everything they owned floating (or sinking) in the dirty brown water.   But my host family continued to amaze me with their kindness and selflessness - all night long, they just kept telling me how sorry they were that my stuff had gotten wet and that I wasn't getting any sleep.   As if their only concern in the world was their duties as hosts. 

 

After a few hours the water finally began to recede, so that at about 5 am we could go out onto the porch and look at the yard. My host brothers went over to the door to the compound and started bailing water into the street.   We discovered that one of the walls separating my family's compound from the neighbors had collapsed, blocking the door to the latrine (rather an urgent priority of mine at the time, having been up all night - where do you go to the bathroom when you are standing in standing water? I figured out the answer, but I will spare you the details).

 

Around 6 am I called Peace Corps and was told that they would send a driver to pick me up at 7:00, and since I obviously could not continue to stay at my host family's flooded house, I will stay at the Peace Corps training center, until other arrangements can be made.  

 

So at 7:00 I left my host family, who continued to be amazingly selfless, refusing to give me my filthy, soaked clothes, insisting that they would wash them - even though I insisted that I could do it myself, knowing that they certainly have enough other work to do.

 

So I am fine, having suffered little more than the inconvenience of a night of no sleep, lots of mosquito bites, and no clean clothes of my own to change into (a friend brought me clothes to wear).   But my poor host family's house is ruined - aside from the collapsed outer wall, there are now some ominous cracks in the walls of the house.  And of course all their stuff is soaked and filthy.

 

I know they will salvage everything they possibly can - they were talking optimistically about putting the bed mattresses in the sun to dry, but given how filthy the water was, I doubt they will ever be usable again.   My host family rents their house, and my host mother is hoping to find a new house to move to, since this one doesn't seem safe anymore.  But moving will be expensive, and they don't have any insurance to help with the cost of replacing their belongings (when I asked if they had insurance, they laughed and said 'This is Africa').   And all their neighbors are in the same boat, so the African tradition of solidarity and helping each other out won't help much here.

 

So please, if you feel inclined to help, get in touch with my mom (if you know me) or email me at aidworkr@gmail.com .  I know that my host family would really appreciate the help.  And being the kind of people they are, I know they will share any assistance they receive with their neighbors.

new pictures!

New pictures up at http://picasaweb.google.com/aidworkr - in the album called July 2007.

Beach and more training

written Wednesday, 8 August 2007

 

 

This month I am back in Thies for more training, but before coming here I went to the beach for a few days for a little relaxing time with the other volunteers.   Unfortunately, during the rainy season apparently the ocean gets really rough, so it was too dangerous to do much more than get my feet wet.  And I felt really anxious and antsy the whole weekend for no reason, which I am blaming on my malaria medicine.  So it didn't turn out to be a very relaxing weekend, but it was still fun.

 

Now back in Thies I am really happy to see my old host family again.  It was a bit of a shock seeing the 2 year old girl again - she is so much bigger than the 2 year olds in my village.   I hadn't realized I was getting used to children being underweight and malnourished.

 

I have started learning Pulafuuta this week, which is a dialect of Pulaar and is spoken by the majority of people in my village.   The Pulaar people are nomadic herders and can be found in just about every country in Africa, so if I continue to work in Africa after Peace Corps it might come in handy.  But aside from practicality, it is a very pretty and funny language (the way some of the words are pronounced sounds like they have a hiccup in the middle of them), and I am having fun learning it.   And I can't wait to go back to my village at the end of the month and impress my villagers with my new skills.

A scary moment and some hard questions

written Thursday, 2 August 2007

 

 

One of the children in my village, whose parents I am good friends with, had a fever and other malaria symptoms for several days.   I knew he was sick, but I didn't push his family to take him to the health post because I figured they know better than I do how seriously to take malaria. 

 

But then Tuesday night the dad asked me to come over and look at his child.  He was covered with a sheet to keep flies from bothering him while he slept, and when I pulled the sheet down I saw that he was covered in blood.   I couldn't tell at first where the blood was coming from, but it turned out it was from a bloody nose. 

 

I hadn't heard of nosebleeds as a symptom of malaria before, but it really scared me.  (Plus I embarrassed myself from becoming very close to fainting from seeing all that blood - I had to sit down and put my head down for a minute).   I wondered if it meant that his fever had gotten so high it was popping his blood vessels somehow, or if it meant he had something worse than malaria, and might have internal bleeding.   (I have a tendency to imagine the worse-case scenario).   I told his dad the boy should be taken to the health post immediately, but his dad said they would have to wait til the morning - it was already getting dark, and there was no way to get him there except by donkey cart, which would be a really difficult trip to make at night.

 

Besides being terrified that the boy wouldn't make it til morning (it seemed like he had lost an awful lot of blood, and he was very weak), I couldn't help but think what if I were the person who was so sick - would I be stranded like this?   But no, I wouldn't - because the gendarmes would come in their truck to get me, or Peace Corps would find another way to get me help.  And because I have money.

 

The unfairness and wrongness of my life, as an American, being valued more highly than this little Senegalese boy's, is not something that hasn't occurred to me before, and you could even say that that has something to do with why I am in Peace Corps.   But that day the wrongness of it was staring me in the face, as I sat with the little boy and wondered if he was going to make it til morning. 

 

I feel like I should do something about it, but I don't know what.  How does one protest such a situation? Refuse to get medical care when I need it? That won't help any.   I can't trade my health care coverage or situation in life with anyone else.  So for now, I am just sitting here, feeling powerless and guilty.

 

Luckily this story has a happy ending: the family finally got the boy to the health post, where he was given medicine and is on his way to a full recovery.

An NGO comes to the village

written Thursday, 2 August 2007

 

 

On Monday a woman from a Belgian NGO came to my village and held a meeting.  The NGO wants to give the women's group in my village two machines, one that will produce a bio-diesel fuel out of a plant that the NGO wants my village to start growing, and a second machine that is basically a generator that will run on the bio-fuel that the first machine produces and which can then be used to power a grinder or water pump.

 

After explaining what the NGO was offering to do, the woman asked my villagers if they were interested in the project.   Of course they said yes - to them, this is like presents falling from the sky, and they risk nothing if the project doesn't work out.

 

I thought it was a rather strange way to operate - coming to the village and telling them what present they could have, and asking them if they wanted it, rather than having a real discussion with the village about what they need.   But the machines sound like they could be useful - my village could certainly use a water pump.

 

Unfortunately, though, the plant which the NGO wants my village to grow for bio-fuel is believed by the villagers to house evil spirits.   It is said that anyone who grows such a plant will soon find themselves forced to leave their home and village.  But no one told the toubab NGO woman this, because she just wouldn't understand.   (I got told about it, because I am "integrated" in the village.  This sort of insider information is exactly why I was interested in doing Peace Corps).

 

So there is a good chance the project will fail, because of the NGO's failure to understand local beliefs.   This seems typical to me of aid to Africa - good intentions, but not quite on the mark.  But there is hope - the villagers are discussing whether it will be okay to grow the plant, as long as they plant it far enough away from the village so that the evil spirits will not reach the village.   So we'll see.

Working in the fields

written Sunday, 29 July 2007

 

 

Yesterday for the first time I went and worked in the fields with one of my sisters, weeding around the peanut plants.   It was really hard work - I only lasted about two hours and my entire body hurts today - but it was fun.  I'm going back again today.

 

It made me think of my grandpa who just died - he used to grow peanuts (and other things) before he switched to raising cattle.   I wonder if he would have been happy to know that I'm learning how to farm.

Milk

written Sunday, 29 July 2007

 

 

We have had a lot of rain in the past week, which is really making things grow.  Which means that the cows are now able to get enough to eat so they can be milked.   So we have started having sour milk in our porridge some mornings.  Can't say I like it very much - the sour flavor makes me worry it will make me sick - I don't know what they do to make it sour, unless it's just from leaving it sitting around in the heat for a day or two, but it's definitely not pasteurized or refrigerated.   But I guess it's a good addition to the corn and peanuts diet.

Traveling adventures

written Thursday, 26 July 2007

 

 

I decided to go up to Tamba on Monday so I could check my mail and email and just have a break from the village.   But since I will be leaving next week to go up to Thies for another month of training, I didn't want to stay in Tamba for very long.  So I decided to take an "Alham" car instead of doing my usual four hour bike ride each way so that I could go up to Tamba and come back to the village all in one day.

 

So Monday morning I woke up early and biked the 8 km from my village to the main road.  I had been told that the first car should come by around 7 am, and it was only a little after 6:00 (I'd woken up earlier than I meant to - just couldn't sleep), so I decided to bike another 30 minutes down the road and wait for the car in front of the hospital.

 

When I got to the hospital I pulled over, leaned my bike against a tree, and waited for a car to come by.   Sure enough, right around 7:00, an Alham came by.  I waved it down, and the ticket/loading man asked me where I was going.

 

"Tamba," I said.

 

"That'll be keme fula," - two hundred - which, of course, according to the completely logical rule that all numbers must be multiplied by 5 when referring to money, meant that it cost 1000 CFA, about $2.   It's a fixed price (unless they try to charge you the higher toubab price, but this guy didn't), so I didn't have to haggle.  I said okay, and he tossed my bike on top of the van and told me where to sit - a middle row (the safest place to be in case of a wreck) with only women (which I assumed was to preevent any potential shenanigans by the men passengers and which I appreciated).

 

I tried to pay him as soon as we got going, but he wouldn't accept it.  Then about 20 minutes later he tapped me on the shoulder, which meant I was supposed to pay.   I'm not sure why they don't want to be paid right away, but my theory for now is that it is in case the car breaks down, that you don't pay until they've taken you far enough that they wouldn't have to deal with giving you a refund.   Or maybe he just needed to find change.

 

The rest of the trip to Tamba was quiet and uneventful, except for when a passenger got on carrying a live chicken (held upside down by its feet), so for a few seconds there was a chicken squawking and flapping around my head.

 

In the afternoon, around 3 pm, I went to the "garage" where all the cars leaving Tamba depart from, to try to get a ride back to my village.   As soon as I got into the garage parking lot area, several men ran up and tried to take my bike and bags for me, asking me where I wanted to go.  I think they get paid some kind of commission by the car owners for finding them passengers, but I made sure to keep a careful eye on my stuff so it wouldn't disappear.  I told the men where I was going, and they took me over to a car going that way.   I bought a ticket (a scrap of paper with "1000 CFA" and the date scribbled on it by the ticket boy), and they tossed my bike up on top of the car.   Now I just had to wait - we'd be leaving just as soon as there were enough passengers to fill the car.

 

- Which took a really long time.  I sat on a bench and talked to a nice old man who told me he drives an Alham to Kedougou (he was waiting for his car to fill up too).   He also told me he is a former soldier, having fought for the French army in Algeria during its war for independence.  I wanted to ask him what it felt like to be from a colonized country, fighting to prevent the independence of another colonized country, but I didn't get the chance.   Maybe next time I am at the garage I will ask him.

 

I did ask him about his pension, though, since I had read before coming to Senegal that there is discussion of increasing the pension paid to former French army soldiers from Senegal and other former colonies so that it is equal to the pension paid to French soldiers. (The argument, of course, is that soldiers from the colonies did the same jobs and took the same risks, and therefore should be paid the same.   The counterargument from the French government is that the cost of living is lower in countries such as Senegal, so an equal pension isn't necessary).   The man told me that his pension from the French government is very good, but that they haven't raised it yet to match French soldiers' pensions.

 

While I was talking to the former soldier, another old man came over and pretended to be interested in talking to me, but pretty soon he was just asking for things:

 

"Give me your sunglasses."

 

"No."

 

"Then give me your flip-flops."

 

"No."

 

"Then give me your change purse."

 

"No."

 

"Then give me your tote bag."

 

"No."

 

"Then buy me some kola nuts."

 

"No."

 

These conversations still make me feel awkward and uncomfortable, even though I keep telling myself to get over it since the other person never seems to be embarrassed or uncomfortable at all.   Anyway, eventually he gave up and went away, and soon after that my car finally had enough passengers so we could leave.

 

It was already 5:30, and I needed to be home by 8:00 at the very latest in order to be home before dark and in time for dinner.   Luckily there weren't any major delays along the way, so I got dropped off at the turnoff to my village just before 7:00.  I still had a 30 minute bike ride up the dirt road to my village, though, and it was starting to look like rain.

 

I told myself not to worry, though, since it has been looking like rain for a week and not raining, and anyway if it did start to rain there was nothing I could do, I still had to make it home that night.   As fate would have it, the long-awaited rain finally came after I had been biking for only a few minutes.  I was soaked almost immediately, which was actually pretty nice - I haven't been that completely weet for months, including when I take bucket baths (the heat just evaporates the water right off me, so I never manage to have more than one arm or leg wet at a time).   The dirt road quickly turned into a creek which I couldn't see the bottom of.  So the rest of the ride back was a lot more exciting than usual, although I worried about the books I was carrying getting wet.

 

But the books stayed dry, and I made it home in time for a nice hot meal of futoo nin sosoo (cornmeal with bean sauce - one of my favorite dishes).   I missed taking a nice warm shower though, since my "shower" is an open air latrine and any attempts to wash out there would have just meant getting rained on some more.   So I just wiped off the mud with a dirty t-shirt and changed into dry clothes.

 

And then I went to bed, feeling happy that I had had a "real Peace Corps experience" adventure that day.

Why Goats Can Climb Trees, But Not Very Well

written Friday, 20 July 2007

 

 

Recently one of the goats in my village died by hanging itself - it was tied up so that it wouldn't wander off, but the rope came loose.   The goat jumped up into the low branches of a small tree to eat the leaves, and when it tried to jump down again, the rope, which was still tied around its neck, got caught on a branch, and so the goat strangled to death.

 

(I asked if the goat would be eaten, since it was a healthy goat, but I was told no, because to eat it, it would have had to have been killed according to the rules of Islam - with its throat cut while it was facing east and a prayer was being said).

 

Anyway, so while the goat's hanging itself was being discussed, my host father decided to tell me a traditional fable: Why Goats Can Climb Trees, But Not Very Well.

 

Goat and Money were friends, and one day Goat asked Monkey to teeach him how to climb trees, so that he could eat the tasty leaves in the higher branches.   Monkey agreed and the next day began to give Goat lessons.

 

After a few lessons, Monkey told Goat that once he had learned to climb trees well it would be Goat's turn to teach someone how to climb trees.   Monkey asked Goat who he would teach.  Goat replied that he would teach his friend Dog.

 

"Oh no!" Monkey said.  "I do not like Dog!  He chases me, and the only way I can escape is to climb up into a tree.  If you teach Dog how to climb trees, then I will no longer be able to escape from him."

 

Goat said all right, he would not teach Dog how to climb trees.  But Monkey was not satisfied.   He was afraid Dog would talk Goat into teaching him, even though Goat promised Monkey he would not.  So Monkey decided not to give Goat any more lessons in tree climbing.

 

And that is why goats can climb trees, but not very well.

 

Waiting for rain

written Wednesday, 18 July 2007

 

 

In the last few weeks we've had a lot of clouds and even lightning, but very little rain.  I don't know if people are really worried yet, but they are saying that if the rains don't come soon, the peanuts, the main cash crop for this village, won't grow.   So we are waiting, hoping for rain.

Almost internet

written Monday, 16 July 2007

 

 

A few days ago one of my villagers told me that there is now an internet cafe in Missira, which is about halfway between my village and Tamba.   I was skeptical about his claim because Missira is just a small town with little infrastructure, but I couldn't help getting my hopes up a little - Missira is close enough that I can bike there and back to my village in a day, so if there were internet there I could be online as often as once a week.   In the words of one of my volunteer neighbors who I spread the rumor to, internet in Missira would change EVERYTHING!

 

I had already been planning to go up to Missira yesterday (Sunday), just to get out of the village for a day and get some exercise, but the possibility of internet made the plan much more exciting.   In Missira I met up with some other volunteers and then went with one of them to hunt down the alleged cybercafe.  It didn't take us long to find the building, with a big "Cybercafe/Telecenter" sign painted on it.   Unfortunately, it was all closed up.  But the question remained: was it closed for good, or just closed for the day?

 

So we asked some men who were sitting in the shade of nearby trees.  They said yes, the place is in business, and one of them said he knows the owner and he insisted on calling him and seeing if the guy could come and open up for us.   Unfortunately, the owner turned out to be out of town.  But then the man we were talking to said he knows the president of the local middle school, and he would get him to open the school for us and let us use the computers there.

 

Of course we protested that we didn't want him to go to so much trouble (plus I was 95% sure that while they have computers at the school, they don't have an internet connection).   But the man insisted, so we went up to the school, where, sure enough, there were computers but no internet.  But after the man had gone to so much trouble for us, we didn't want to tell him that it actually wasn't helpful at all, so we stayed for a while and preteended to do work on the computers.

 

The way even complete strangers will go so much out of their way to help people out is one of my favorite things about Senegalese culture (along with being the most religiously and ethnically tolerant place I've ever been).

 

Anyway, so I'm still not sure if the cybercafe in Missira is functioning, since the man we were talking to clearly doesn't know the difference between computers and internet.   But I'm still hoping thhe rumor will turn out to be true.

New lunch food

written Saturday, 14 July 2007

 

 

Yesterday we had something new for lunch - "tuwoo".  It is made of corn ground up into a fine flour, then cooked with water until it is the consistency of reheated instant mashed potatoes, with the inevitable peanut sauce poured on top.   Not my favorite meal, but still a welcome change from maffe.

Genies

written Friday, 13 July 2007

 

 

Today some of my villagers told me that our village is full of bad genies, and that there are dragons (yes, the fire-breathing kind) living in the bush.   I'm not sure if they were trying to warn me against them, or if they just thought I'd be interested to know about it.  They told me that genies live in trees and water, and you can find out if there are bad genies around by going out late at night and looking for signs such as sparks or strange noises.

 

One of the men told me about a genie he had seen: he was traveling along the road one day when he passed a man dressed in a white boubou and carrying a sack.   The man's feet were turned around so that the heels were in front and toes in back.  He greeted the man, but the man did not respond (incredibly rude here).   Then the man reached up and grabbed the branch of a tree, pulled himself up, and disappeared!

 

My villager knew then that it was a genie he had seen, and he was afraid that it meant he was going to die.   But so far, nothing has happened to him.

Sleeping in

written Friday, 13 July 2007

 

 

It occurred to me recently that I haven't slept past 6:30 am in the almost two months I've been living in the village (including when I go to Tamba - I just can't sleep there).   And I haven't slept past 8 am or had a day to lie around and do nothing since I came to Senegal.  I miss having weekends.

Money issues

written Thursday, 12 July 2007

 

 

I am starting to feel very worn down and stressed by people demanding money from me.  It has gone from being just people I know well in the village asking for money for important things like to buy medicine, to people I don't know well at all demanding money for trivial things like snacks at the weekly market.

 

I know that people expecting me to buy things for them stems from the communal culture here, where everything is shared and people are expected to help out those less fortunate. (For example, if someone comes along while you are eating, you must invite them to share the meal with you, even if you already don't have enough for yourself).   But it is still very jarring to me to have people come and demand money from me as if they have a right to it. - For example, when I was at the well getting water yesterday, a woman I know only slightly asked if I was planning to go to the weekly market the next day.   When I said yes, she said that I must buy clothes for her children.  When I said I don't have the money for that, she started berating me, saying yes, you do have the money!

 

And then, how to ever make people understand that even though I am a "rich toubab" I am living on a small Peace Corps allowance, which is calculated to be enough to provide for my basic needs but not those of the whole village?

 

Maybe I am just being a stingy American.  But it is hard trying to make friends and integrate into a community when it feels as if everyone is primarily interested in what money and gifts they can get out of you.   And I am wondering if this "Donne moi un cadeau" (Give me a present) culture exists in all poor countries, as a logical effort to take advantage of every opportunity (i.e . toubabs) that presents itself, or if this is only an African, West African, or Senegalese phenomenon.

A beautiful day

written Tuesday, 10 July 2007

 

 

Last night it rained, and this morning when I woke up it was still drizzly and gray - what in the US I would have described as gloomy.   But after months of nothing but bright, sunny days, this morning's weather seems just beautiful to me. (And it doesn't hurt that with the cooler air I slept better last night than I have in weeks, in spite of having to get up in the middle of the night when the rain started to relocate from my outside bed to my inside bed).

Girls' education and marriage

written Monday, 9 July 2007

 

 

I talked with my counterpart recently about the very low level of girls' education in the village and throughout Senegal.   He said of course part of the problem is money - if a family can't afford to educate all the children, then preference is almost always given to the boys.  But he said it is also because families worry that if a girl is educated, she is more likely to refuse to marry the person her parents choose for her, particularly if the chosen husband is less educated than she is.   Educated women are also less attractive as wives to many men because they are less likely to let the man be the uncontested boss of the house, as he is traditionally supposed to be.   Not surprising informatiion, but it still depressed me.

 

But I was cheered up when my sister who just had the baby and who never went to school, told me taht she wants all her kids (including the girl) to go to university.   I hope they do.

Toubab sighting

written Monday, 9 July 2007

 

 

A few weeks ago I was in a neighboring small town at the market and saw another toubab - a girl around my age wearing a pagne like the local women wear, so probably not a tourist.   I wondered what she was doing there and if she might be living in the area, and she clearly noticed me too.

 

I couldn't make up my mind whether to go talk to her or not - it seems tantamount to saying, "Hey, you're white like me!   Let's be friends!"  As if that meant we would automatically have more in common with each other than with the Senegalese.  But then it also seems weird to ignore each other.

 

In the end, we said hi, but that was it.  What is the correct protocol for these situations?

Restless

written Monday, 9 July 2007

 

 

I'm getting very restless, tired of having nothing to do every day but sit around and talk with people.   I'm still learning a lot from my conversations, but I wish I had a project to work on so that at the end of the day I could feel that I had accomplished something more than just having talked to X number of people.

A funny thing to be happy about

written Sunday, 8 July 2007

 

 

The last time I went up to Tamba I got miserably sick with stomach troubles after I'd been there just a day.   At first I thought it was because I'd overeaten on all the lovely food available in Tamba - spaghetti, peas, hamburgers, beans... And I was so sad, thinking that my stomach just couldn't handle non-village food anymore.

 

But almost a week later I was still sick, so the Peace Corps Medical Officer put me on antibiotics, which fixed me right up.   Which means that I really did eat something bad, and not just too much food that my stomach isn't used to anymore.  Which means I don't have to give up eating hamburgers and chawarmas when I go to Tamba!

 

I think this is the first time I have ever been happy to have had food poisoning.

 

 

You know you're living in an African village when...

written Friday, 6 July 2007

 

 

• You give up your alarm clock in favor of the more reliable and effective braying donkeys.
• At least once a day you must chase a sheep out of your hut.
• Your idea of a special holiday treat is chicken livers and sheep intestines.
• When you are sick, complete strangers will walk up to you and ask "How's the diarrhea?"
• You eat food the consistency of thick soup with your hands out of a bowl shared with at least eight other people.
• You have more family members than you can count, and your cousins are also your in-laws.
• When traveling, it sems perfectly natural to stop at a stranger's house and ask to use the bathroom, and then to stay for lunch or even spend the night.
• When you are peed on by a baby, you just pour some water over the wet spot and go on with your day, thinking that, hey, pee is sterile, and not much else in your environment can have that said of it.
• You haven't properly greeted someone until you have asked them how their spouse, parents, kids, siblings, and sheep are doing, and noted that it's been a long time since you saw them last, even though you just saw them yesterday.
• "You are sitting?" "Yes, I am sitting." is considered perfectly good conversatiion.
• When you say you are full, you are told to keep eating until your ears pop out of your head.
• When the temperature drops to 80 degrees Fahrenheit, you start looking for your sweater.
• When you see chicken feet or sheep's ears on the ground, you think, "Who's having a feast and how come I haven't been invited?"

A little more local history

written Tuesday, 26 June 2007

 

 

I found out today how my village got its (two) names.  Originally a woodcarver settled here with his family, because there are a lot of trees here (for Senegal, anyway) and it is close to the river, so it was an ideal location for carving pirogues (like canoes) and other things and then sending them down the river.   So the area here came to be known as what translates to "the woodcarver's place".

 

But eventually the woodcarver moved away, and the place was uninhabited for a while, until my host family moved here from a nearby village in search of more land to farm.   They renamed the area "New Medina" (after Medina in Saudi Arabia where the Prophet Muhammad was born - there are gazillions of Medina Somethings in Senegal).   But everyone still knows the village as "the woodcarver's place".

 

Baptism

written Tuesday, 26 June 2007

 

 

Yesterday was the baptism of my host sister's new baby.  The celebration lasted all day.   The highlights: the women spend most of the day cooking, talking, and singing traditional songs, while the men are more involved in the ritual, religious aspects: prayers, sacrificing sheep, and naming the baby.  

 

They named her Tigidanke, which is the first time I've heard that name.  Apparently it was the name of some important woman in the history of Islam.   Anyway, it sounds to me a lot like the Jaxanke word for peanut butter, tigo dekko.  So I've started calling her Peanut Butter as a nickname.

 

Since they sacrificed a sheep, we had meat for lunch, approximately one bite per person (plus lots of rice, of course).   I was allotted something shaped like a tube which I suspect was a piece of intestine.  I didn't want to be rude and refuse it, so I ate it.   In case you are wondering: it wasn't as gross as you might think, but I would definitely prefer not to repeat the experience.

 

In the afternoon the baby's head was shaved, which I think is like the Catholic sprinkling of the baby with waterr - it is supposed to symbolize the baby becoming a Muslim.

 

After dinner there was dancing (to cassette tapes on a boom box powered by a car battery), but I didn't stay long because all the "party food" had left me feeling a little sick.

Meeting observations

written Monday, 25 June 2007

 

 

I was at another meeting yesterday of the village health volunteers, who have decided to create a formal association - mainly in hopes of being able to get money from NGOs.   Anyway, a couple of funny things I noticed:

 

No matter how many times a group has met and in spite of everyone knowing everyone else, meetings must always start with a ten minute discussion of what language to conduct the meeting in.

 

Although all the meeting attendees were local villagers (except for me) with probably only middle-school level educations, if even that, they really like giving long, formal speeches - i.e. thanks to everyone for coming, I'm so glad to be here, I think this is a really important meeting, here is my position on the issues....  I felt like I was back at the UN meetings I used to go to when I was interning with the State Department.

Hoping for a good harvest

written Monday, 25 June 2007

 

 

Yesterday my village held a ceremony at the mosque to pray for rains and a good harvest.  Unfortunately, like all the religious ceremonies (at least all that I've experienced so far), it was men only, so I didn't get to see anything.   They did tell me, though, that they sacrificed a sheep.

I am a pushover

written Friday, 22 June 2007

 

 

...because I just can't say no.  So much for all my hard thinnking about whether helping out financially is a good idea.   One of my good friends in the village asked me yesterday if I would like him 50,000 CFA (about $100 - a  lot of money here, and lot of money for me on my Peace Corps allowance) so that he could afford to cultivate more land this year.   Apparently the field is all ready to be planted, but he doesn't have the money for the seeds, fertilizer, etc.

 

I gave him the money.  I let him know that it's a lot of money for me too - and actually I haven't given it all to him yet - I will have to go to the bank in Tamba, as I don't keep that kind of money lying around in the village.   I don't really expect him to pay it back.  I am hoping that this money will at the very least allow his family to eat a little better for the coming year, and at best he will be able to sell enough of what he grows to be able to cultivate more land next year without a loan, and gradually be able to improve his whole economic situation.

 

I know that's being very optimistic, and there's a good chance that the money won't have any long-term effect at all.   And also that the loan could cause me problems, if other people find out about it and want loans too, which I just can't afford.

 

All the other volunteers I've talked to about this say they basically never give people money or buy them things, other than their contribution to their host families' groceres, because it will cause problems.   Maybe my approach has been tried in the past, and it was a disaster, and that's why no one does it anymore.  But just maybe everyone has assumed it will be a disaster and not even tried it; and maybe it will turn out well.

 

Either way, I think Peace Corps is the time for me to try things out and make mistakes and learn.  I want to try to learn more about microfinance.

A little farming lore

written Thursday, 21 June 2007

 

 

I was complaining today about ants in my hut (because one bit me on the foot, and I wanted to find out how to get rid of them), and I was told that when the ants are all out, scurrying around to get food to take back to the ant hills, it means it's going to rain.

 

I was also told that if you look at what kind of grain the ants are carrying - rice, corn, or millet - that is the crop you should grow that year because if the ants are storing it that means it will grow really well.

New food for lunch

written Thursday, 21 June 2007

 

 

Today for lunch we had something new: "satoo", which is basically grits with a peanut sauce.  Sounds weird, but it was pretty good.  I liked it better than the maffe (rice with fishy tasting peanut sauce) that we usually have for lunch.

 

And just to clarify a bit, in spite of the fact that there are only about five ingredients in village food (rice, corn, peanuts, onions, and "Jumbo" - a bouillon cube used in everything for flavor - plus fish or sheep/goat once in a while), all the dishes taste completely different.   The peanut sauces for lunch and dinner are different (dinner is better) and the corn in the breakfast "moono" porridge, lunch "satoo", and dinner "futoo" all have different textures and taste different.

 

Anyway, I was wondering if the change in the lunch menu means that my family can't afford rice anymore.   It is the beginning of the planting season now, which means it is also the beginning of the hungry season, as people begin to run out of what they harvested last year.  I've been told that it's getting harder to find peanuts and corn to buy, because no one is willing to sell what little they have.

 

I am not sure how this fits with my family running out of rice while they still have corn to eat, since they raise the corn themselves but have to buy the rice (rice is grown in some parts of Senegal, but what I have seen here is all imported from Thailand), but I am going to try to find out what's going on.

A little bit of history

written Thursday, 21 June 2007

 

 

I have been told that all the fields around the nearby town where the weekly market is held used to be a plantation belonging to a white man which grew some sort of fiber for making sacks (cotton?), and the local people were forced to work there without pay (aka slavery).   When Senegal became independent in 1960 (or 1961? I can't remember) the plantation owner was going to have to start paying his workers, so he couldn't make a profit anymore and went out of business.

New baby!

written Thursday, 21 June 2007

 

 

My host sister had her baby on Monday (while I was in Tamba, so I didn't see any childbirth stuff).  The baby is a girl, and she will be given a name at her baptism on Monday, seven days after the birth.

 

So far at least, she has very light skin, so some of the women were joking that she must be my baby.  Her mom was quick to point out, though, that her hair is much darker than mine - so I can't have her!

Big Love

written Thursday, 21 June 2007

 

 

While I was in Tamba for a few days staying at the Peace Corps regional house, I watched a few episodes of the HBO series Big Love, a show about a fictional polygamous Mormon family, on DVD with some other volunteers.   I'd seen one or two episodes in the US before coming here, and as I was watching it I was struck by how much the show is based on the assumption that the audience will find polygamy to be bizarre and possibly wrong or repugnant.   The show made me realize how much I have gotten used to polygamy here, so it just doesn't seem like a big deal to me at all (although still not for me).