Two-week recap

Written Saturday, 3 May 2008


About two weeks ago I was in my village, having a great time hanging out with my villagers.  But then I got in a fight with one of my sisters about her not respecting my personal space (grabbing my breasts again, but a different sister this time).  I was so mad I wanted to just take off to Tamba to get away for a while to cool off, even though I'd planned to stay in the village another week before going to Tamba.

But it also happened to be the same day I was finally getting a new thatch roof put on my hut, so all my stuff was sitting out in the yard while my hut was a foot deep in old thatch, dirt, and termites.  So I had to wait around til the roof was finished and I could put my stuff back in my hut.

Finally in the afternoon it was done, and just as I was about to bike out of the village, one of my host brothers called me over and told me that he and the other men in my host family were upset that I hadn't asked them to help out with thatching my hut (my counterpart and some of his friends did it).  Maybe he had a point, but it frustrated me that they hadn't said anything in the three months since I bought the thatch, during which time it's been leaning against my back fence, making it obvious to anyone who happens by that I was planning to re-do my roof.

Anyway, it was all just too much stress for one day.  I finally made it out of the village and up to Tamba, where I almost immediately started feeling better.  But I decided to stay for the whole week to get our (filthy, disgusting! frat-) house cleaned up before the new group of volunteers arrives in mid-May.

Then last weekend all of us Tamba volunteers spent two days cleaning up a park which we have decided to adopt in our neighborhood.  A bunch of kids came out to help us, and we had a lot of fun.  Hopefully the community will start using the park again now.

This week I am back in my village, hanging out and getting ready for the next baby weighing.  Then next week I am going on vacation to Kedougou and Guinea.

Just really integrated, or am I losing my mind?

Written Thursday, 17 April 2008


Yesterday, after a long day of biking in the hot sun, interviewing candidates for the SeneGAD scholarship, and greeting every single person I passed in Dialacoto, I was finally biking back to my village (at 3:30 pm – the hottest part of the day – not smart!) I passed a cow on my path, and I was on the verge of asking it "Do you have peace?" when my brain caught up to me and I remembered that while greetings are very important here, that doesn't include livestock.

I think I am losing my mind, at least temporarily because of the heat.  Or maybe I am just so integrated here that I am better at following the country's customs than even the locals are.  After all, who's more polite – someone who greets a cow, or someone who ignores it?

Scholarships for girls

Written Thursday, 17 April 2008


Peace Corps Senegal's "SeneGAD" program, which focuses on gender issues in development, offers scholarships for girls in middle school to help them stay in school and encourage girls to continue their education.  This past week my volunteer neighbor Fonsa and I have been carrying out our part of the program, having the girls with the best grades at the middle school in Dialacoto (the only middle school in the region until Missira, 40 km away) write essays about their plans for the future and then interviewing the girls individually.  The essays and interview information we'll send to Dakar, where a committee of Peace Corps volunteers will choose the scholarship winners.  (The number of winners varies depending on how much money SeneGAD has been able to fundraise, but should be at least one girl from each participating school).

This is a simple process for Americans, but for girls here, especially those from small and isolated villages, I think it is strange and intimidating.  Many of the girls have probably never been asked before "What do you want to do when you grow up?"  It is just a given – they will farm, get married, and have babies.  The girls who have made it as far as middle school – which is above the average education level in Senegal, although I think that is changing slowly – have probably been more exposed than the average girl to the idea of having a job when they grow up, but I think our questions were still hard for them.  They also seemed pretty intimidated by me and Fonsa, toubab authority figures  (which I find really funny – I have no authority at all here, where I am treated like a child most of the time because of my inability to speak the language properly and incompetence at cooking and other women's work).  So it was hard to get the girls to talk much at all, although two of the girls – one my host sister, and the other the host sister of a former volunteer – did much better.

Here are some of the girls' answers: they all said (except for one girl, who said she might be a doctor) that they want to be teachers when they finish school.  I am not sure if this is because of their lack of exposure to other sorts of jobs, or if their teachers coached them on questions we might ask and how to answer them, or if there is some other reason.  We also asked the girls if they could travel and go anywhere in the world they wanted, where would they go?  Most of the girls gave predictable answers of America or European countries, where they would find work, but one girl broke my heart, saying she just wants to visit Kedougou and Tamba because she has never even been that far away from home – and Tamba is only a 2 hour, $2 car ride away.  (Fonsa and I are now cooking up a plan to take her to Tamba this summer for a girls' leadership camp that another volunteer is organizing).  American parents will be jealous to know that most of the girls said one of their parents was their role model, but I was excited when one girl said her role model is a woman who used to be Minister for Families, because she fights for women's rights.

Overall, they were a great bunch of girls, and I wish we could do more to help them stay in school and not be forced into early marriages.

Baby weighing, Part 2

Written Thursday, 17 April 2008


Last week I did a second baby weighing, a month after the first one.  It went pretty well – we were able to get it all done in one day, instead of the two it took before, although this time fewer women brought their babies to be weighed.  The results were pretty good overall as well – most of the kids had gained ½ to 1 kilo from the month before, although there were a few who stayed the same or even lost weight, mainly because they'd been sick.  (Mangoes are in season now, abundant and free in the village – just pick one off a tree! – so it's easy for people to supplement their diets with them and get more vitamins than usual, but the kids will sometimes eat unripe ones, and then they get diarrhea).

My challenge now is to get more of the women to understand that it's the information they get from the baby weighing that is beneficial, rather than the act of weighing the babies itself – too many women seem to think that sticking the baby on the scale provides some benefit, like getting a vaccination, and they will leave before I can tell them how much the baby weights or where it lands on the growth charts.

New pictures

New pictures are up at http://picasaweb.google.com/aidworkr.

Independence Day

Saturday, 5 April 2008

Yesterday, the 4th of April, was Senegal's independence day. I went to Dialacoto to see the parade there; the kids marched by with their school clases, and the women with the women's groups (which mostly do gardening). My favorite was five guys who walked by with a fishing net and a basket; I guess they must have been the local fishermen, but they didn't have a sign.

In the afternoon I went to a "campement" (tourist hotel/campsite) with a couple of other volunteers, just to hang out for a while. We got lucky, and there were hippos playing in the river there – the first time I've been them. I took lots of pictures. Hopefully they'll be up soon.

Hitchhiking

Thursday, 3 April 2008

Yesterday I had my first real hitchhiking experience. I biked from Tamba to Missira with some other volunteers, but they were stopping there, so after that I was biking on my own to my village. But before I had gone very far one of the cotton company trucks pulled over and offered me a ride. It was hot and I was tired (plus hitchhiking is normal here), so I said yes.

They threw my bike in the back and I sat up in the cab with the two cotton company guys. I can't even remember when the last time was that I sat in a nice vehicle with real seats (rather than on a bench in the back of an Alham), but it was heaven.

The driver only spoke Wolof, so I couldn't really talk to him, but the other guy spoke French and he told me how he'd tried to immigrate illegally to Spain last year. He took the land route through Mauritania to Morocco, and then he took a small boat to Spain, where he was immediately taken into a Red Cross reception center. The trick there is to convince them that you are from a war-torn, unstable country, and then they can't deport you. But this guy made a mistake: they organized soccer games at the reception center, and while he was playing he accidentally spoke Wolof, tipping them off that he is from Senegal. So he got deported. Soon as he saves up enough money he's going to try again, though.

After only about 20 minutes (what would have taken me 2 hours on my bike, or an hour on an Alham), we got to my destination village and I got off. I really hope I can hitchhike again soon.

 

Bye bye, COSers

Thursday, 3 April 2008

This past weekend we had a party for the Tamba region "COSers" – volunteers who have finished their two years and reached their Close of Service. In just a few days or weeks (depending on the individual volunteer's scheduling) they will be hopping on a place and going back to "Amerik", as we call it here.

This group includes my closest volunteer neighbor, Dado. In about a month and a half a new volunteer will arrive to take her place in her village, and I will suddenly become the older, wiser volunteer, rather than one of the "babies".

It's weird to have so many volunteers going home to America and not be one of them. But hopefully my second year in Senegal will be even better than the first.

Marabouts and magic water

Thursday, 3 April 2008

Since I got discouraged about my village work recently, I decided I should spend more time on cultural experiences, at least until I get some new project ideas or enthusiasm for my old projects.

So last week I went to visit a marabout, who is like a Muslim shaman. They make charms and potions for just about anything – to help you get a job, to protect your health and keep bad spirits away, make someone fall in love with you, get revenge on your enemy… Of course something like killing your enemy is considered black magic, and many marabouts won't do that sort of thing.

The marabout I went to is a relative of one of my villagers, so we went together to see him at his house in Tamba. He sat on his prayer rug while we talked, and I told him that I wanted something to protect me from bandits when I'm traveling. He said no problem, he'd have it ready in a few hours, and then he left.

My village friend and I waited at the house, watching African movies on the TV and eating lunch. Finally in the afternoon the marabout came back. He had made a necklace for me out of snakeskin and some kind of hair. Presumably he said some prayers or incantations or something while he made it, but disappointingly I didn't get to see it because that part is secret. He told me that when I wear the necklace I will be protected against all physical threats, including bandits, wild animal attacks, and car crashes.

Then he told me he had also made me some magic good luck water as a gift. He poured the water out of the Fanta soda bottle it was in and into a gourd bowl, and then he placed a board over the bowl and told me to step on it. If the gourd didn't crack with my weight then that meant the magic water would work. So I stepped up onto the board. The gourd made a sound like it might crack, but it didn't. Then while I was still standing on it the marabout started saying incantations. Creepily, the wind picked up right then and blew really hard for a few seconds. The marabout said that was the spirits working. Then it was done, and he told me I could step off the board and poured the water back into the Fanta bottle. I'm supposed to wash with a little bit of it every day, and then whatever I do that day will be successful.

So that was my trip to the marabout. I haven't used the magic water at all, but I have been wearing the necklace. He also told me that it would be good if I would sacrifice a completely white sheep and not eat any of it myself except for the heart and liver, but I think I'm going to pass on that one.

Rain!

Wednesday, 26 March 2008

It rained here last night, completely out of season. That's the second time that's happened this year (the first was in February, when I was on my way up to Dakar for vacation). My villagers say it's not completely unheard of to get rain during the dry season, but it still makes me wonder about global warming. One of my village women told me yesterday that if it rained she was going to start getting her fields ready for planting, in case the rainy season comes [3 months] early this year.

Unfortunately the rain didn't make it much cooler. I had to sleep inside last night, and it was miserably hot and sticky.

If you really want to have lots of kids…

Tuesday, 25 March 2008

I read somewhere recently that if you rub the dirt from inside a termite mound on your skin it will keep mosquitoes from biting you. We have lots of termite mounds around here, so I decided to ask one of my villagers if they've ever heard of that.

He said he'd never heard of it, but that one thing they do believe about termite mounds, or termites more specifically, is that if you swallow whole the queen termite, who is always at the base of the mound and is about the size of a man's thumb, you are guaranteed to have lots of kids. My villager said one of his friends swallowed the queen termite, and now he has almost 20 kids (with 3 different wives).

So if you're looking for fertility treatment, this is probably the cheapest and easiest method. Although surely also the most disgusting. Ew.

Baby weighing

Written Monday, 11 March 2008

For two days this past week I went around my village with my counterpart and weighed all the kids we could find five years old and younger. We're going to re-weigh the kids every month. The idea, of course, is to track malnutrition levels in the village and to help mothers keep track of how their kids are doing and to motivate them to try harder to keep their kids well nourished.

This is what I found out from the first weighing: about 25% of the kids under five years old in my village are underweight/malnourished. I was a little surprised the percentage is so high since few of the kids here look malnourished, but during the weighings I discovered that a lot of the kids who look like a fairly healthy kid of a certain age are actually a lot older. So kids who look like they're 1 ½ or 2 years old are actually 3 years old or even older. They've just stopped growing, or at least aren't growing at a normal pace. It made me really sad to realize that.

There is a fairly large difference between boys and girls – 31% of the girls were malnourished, while only 19% of the boys were. I can't figure out why this is – from my own observations and also from asking my villagers about it, I know that boys and girls are given the same food in the same amounts. It's not like all the meat and other good food goes only to the boys.

Malnutrition problems start after babies are about 6 months old, when they are weaned. They get diarrhea from drinking dirty water and crawling around in and eating dirt. I think it is really this hygiene issue that is the problem, rather than not getting enough food or vitamins. We already talk to the women about filtering and bleaching their water, but I have no idea what to do about kids crawling around in and eating dirt. It is just the environment we live in here.

One difficulty with the weighings that might have thrown off the results (and I am hoping it did and the kids aren't as malnourished as these statistics show) is that the mothers often don't know how old their kids are. Birthdays aren't celebrated here, and people, especially the uneducated, which is basically all the women, aren't very familiar with the Western calendar. So unless the women brought their kid's vaccination card with their birthday on it, usually they could only tell us something like "He was born during the last rainy season." So I am hoping that some of the kids' ages were mid-guesstimated and they are actually younger, and consequently less underweight, than we recorded.

Next month, and every month from now on, we are going to re-weigh the kids to see if they are gaining weight from one month to the next.

Wife inheritance

Written Tuesday, 18 March 2008

There is an old custom here, which I believe is practiced throughout much of Africa (although I'm not positive, so don't quote me) that when a man dies, his brothers should marry his widows. In the West this is referred to as wife inheritance, and is usually viewed as an outdated, anti-feminist practice – the wives being passed around as if they were property to be inherited.

And maybe there's how it was in the past. Maybe there are still elements of that now. But I think the main purpose of the custom is to protect the widow and her children – rather than being just a "poor relation" dependent on the charity of others for survival, the widow, through marrying her late husband's brother, strengthens her ties to her husband's family and remains an integral part of that family. And any children she may have are more likely to be treated well by a step-father who is also their uncle (in West African tradition your father's brothers are considered to be also your fathers) than by a step-father who has no prior relation to them.

I bring all this up because my village host father is in the process of "inheriting" his deceased brother's wife. (Negotiations and arrangements are under way for the marriage). I am curious to see how it all works out and how our family dynamics will be affected.

The Affair of the Crinting

Sunday, 9 March 2008

The hut I am living in was built by my village for the previous volunteer, so now it is about 3 years old. Which means that the cement walls and floor are starting to crack and chip off, there are holes in the thatch roof where the rain will be able to come in when the rainy season starts (although the previous volunteer already had some of the thatch replaced last year), and the "crinting", the woven bamboo fencing for my backyard and latrine, is starting to fall apart. So I got permission from Peace Corps to pay to get everything repaired. Getting the cement and thatching was easy: I went to a store in Dialacoto and paid for the cement, and then paid for someone with a donkey cart to transport it back to my village. Same thing for the thatching: I paid some guys to cut some thatching grass out of the bush, and some other guys to transport it, and voila, a few days later it was sitting outside my hut.

The crinting, however, has been an entirely different story. Crinting is only made in a few villages around here (because of distance from the bamboo, I think), and the closest for me is a village about 10 km away. My host dad, the village chief, recommended a good crinting maker in the neighboring village, so one day, way back in January, my counterpart and I went to see him. He said he charges 1500 CFA, about $3, for each piece of crinting, which is about 10 feet long. We told him I needed 10. He said he could have them ready in 10 days. So we paid him a deposit of 7500 CFA, half the price of the 10 crinting pieces, and said we'd be back in 10 days to pay the rest and pick up the crinting.

My host dad had failed to mention to us, however, that while this guy makes good crinting, he's not exactly reliable. After a week, he sent someone to tell my counterpart that the crinting wouldn't be ready on the previously agreed date and gave a new date for when it would be ready. I figured this is just the way things work in Africa, and I wasn't bothered by it.

When the new deadline arrived, my counterpart and I biked over to the other village to get the crinting. But when we got there, his family said he was off in the bush making the crinting; he should be back at lunchtime. We said we'd wait. So we spent the whole morning just sitting there, with nothing to do but wait. The man wasn't back by lunchtime, though. So we had lunch with the village midwife, and then we waited some more.

Finally the crinting man showed up, and, as I had begun to suspect, the crinting wasn't ready. He gave us a new date when it would be ready, and we said fine, we'll be back then.

So it went for weeks. We'd show up in the morning, he'd be "out", we'd wait all day, and finally he'd show up and tell us he needed more time. One day we came in the morning and his family said he was out til the afternoon, so as usual we went to hang out at the midwife's compound. But then my counterpart decided to go back and check, "just in case" he'd come back early. Sure enough, his family had lied to us to cover for him, and he wasn't out at all but just hiding from us.

Finally I was fed up, and I told him that the next time I came he had better either have the crinting for me or else give me my deposit back, or else I was going to report him to the gendarmes. He agreed he would definitely either give me the crinting or the money.

So the next week we came back, determined to get one or the other. I thought that he would have been so scared after I mentioned the gendarmes that we would get whichever one (and I really didn't care which at this point) without any trouble.

But this guy was tougher than I thought. We showed up in the morning, and once again his family said he was out in the bush and would be back with the crinting by noon. This time we didn't go to the midwife's house to wait, but instead stayed at the crinting man's compound in ambush. But he wasn't back at noon. (I'm betting someone from the family warned him we were there and not to come back). His family told us, Well, definitely by 3:00 he'll be back. But 3:00 came and went. Definitely by 5:00. Ten they said, Well, sometime tonight. You can come back in the morning, and he'll be here. But I was really mad by then. (All day in the host sun with nothing to do made me cranky). So I reminded them that we had agreed that I would either get the crinting or my deposit back that day, or I was going to the gendarmes. I told them I'd better have received one or the other by 6:00 pm, or else.

So we sat there tensely for an hour, until 6 pm. Of course the man hadn't come back. I got up and told the family it was 6:00 and I was leaving. They tried to convince me to wait longer or come back in the morning, but I refused. (If I didn't leave then, I couldn't make it back to my village before dark, and the next day I was leaving for Tamba and then onwards for my much-awaited vacation).

So I left. When I got back to my village, my host sisters laughed at me, as they had been doing for weeks, for having wasted another whole day waiting for crinting I never received.

The next day I left for my vacation, determined not to worry any more about the crinting til I got back, and hoping that my counterpart and the crinting man would have resolved the situation by then.

Sure enough when I came back to my village this week, my counterpart told me he had gotten the deposit back from the crinting man (who I think was finally convinced that I was mad enough to report him to the gendarmes). He ordered the crinting from someone else, and a few days ago it was finally delivered to my hut.

So the crinting drama is finally over, and I didn't have to go to the gendarmes. (Would I really have reported the guy over stealing a $15 deposit? I'm not sure. I really don't know what the gendarmes would do about it – toss him in jail and throw away the key? Laugh at me and do nothing? Something in between?)

Now I just have to get someone to install the crinting and the thatch on my roof…

Competition!

Wednesday, 5 March 2008

I finally got back to my village last night after being gone for a few weeks for vacation, and this morning my counterpart came over to catch me up on what I've missed in the village while I've been gone and to talk about what activities we'll do over the next few days.

The big news: Kinkeliba, a private French hospital a few kilometers up the road, has hired and trained "relais" (health educators) to do health education classes and baby weighings in villages in the area, including my village.

This is exactly the same as what I'm supposed to be doing here, and as what volunteer relais trained by Africare, an American NGO working in the area, are supposed to do. Which brings me back to the question of what exactly is the point of me being here? And how is my counterpart, a volunteer relais trained by Africare, supposed to stay motivated to do health activities while he is not getting paid for it and someone else is? Should we just give up our activities and let the guy who is getting paid for it do them? Or continue our work, and compete with the other guy for popularity in the village?

However useless I feel, at least I can be pretty sure that health activities in the village won't just stop when I leave. Hopefully the village will benefit from all this competition between Peace Corps, NGOs, and private organizations.

Hot

written Sunday, 3 February 2008

 

The heat has come back - almost 100 degrees today.  Ick.  At least it's still cool at night, so far.

A surreal morning

written Friday, 1 February 2008

 

This morning as we were finishing up breakfast my host sisters chirpily asked me, "Do you want to go visit Mariama with us?  Her husband's brother beat her yesterday, so we're going to see how she's doing."

 

Um, okay.  So we trooped down to Mariama's and found her lying in bed in her hut.  Chirpy voices again: "Mariama, get up!  We brought you some porridge!"  But she just lay there and ignored us, so the women fed her baby, and then we sat around for a few minutes and chatted (with each other, not Mariama - she didn't talk the whole time) like it was a normal social visit.  And then it was time to go.  So we said good-bye and headed back home, greeting everyone along the way.

 

Sometimes here I feel like I'm losing my grip on what's normal...

Wildfire!

 Written Monday, 7 January 2008

 

Wildfires are a problem here after the rainy season ends, when all the grasses that grew with the rains become dry.  Today a wildfire came very close to the village, which is not uncommon, so the village chief rang the bell that is used to summon villagers for meetings and communal work, and everyone went out to fight the fire, the men with branches to beat it back and the women with buckets of water.

 

The men told me not to go, because toubabs are too delicate for hard work and all the smoke.  But I didn't want to miss out on the excitement, so I went along to take pictures.  The women gave me a hard time about not having brought a bucket of water, though.

 

The fire seems under control now, but there is a lot of wind today, so we'll see what happens.

Literacy

 Written Monday, 7 January 2008

 

I have started to teach one of my sisters, who never had a chance to go to school, how to write.  She is a really curious person and seems to really regret not having an education.  She is always asking me to teach her English words, but it is hard for her to remember them.  I've been wanting to teach her to read for a while, but wasn't really sure how to go about it since there aren't really any reading materials available in Jaxanke.  But finally it occurred to me that I should start by teaching her to write, and that will probably help her to remember letters better than just looking at them.

 

So I bought her a notebook and two pencils as a present, thinking that might be exciting for her – she's probably never owned school supplies before.  She seemed really pleased when I gave them to her and wanted to start the first lesson right away.  So I taught her A, B, and D (there's no confusing C in Jaxanke – just K or S to make those sounds), and we talked about words that have those sounds in them.  She was really quick to figure out about breaking up words into syllables to sound them out.

 

So I think the first lesson went really well, and she seemed happy.  I just hope she finds the time and the motivation to stick with it.

Taxes

written Monday, 7 January 2008

 

While I was in Missira I also stopped by the Rural Community (basically the county government) office, and they explained to me how taxes work here, which I had been wondering about for a long time.

 

In the rural villages, it is very simple.  Taxes are collected (by government officials with the help of the village chief, simply by going door to door) once a year.  Each family is supposed to pay 1000 CFA (about $2) for every person between the ages of 14 and 65 (or maybe it was 75 - I can't remember now).

 

There is no penalty for those who can't pay.  After all, what could the government do - foreclose on their hut?  So the government tries to motivate people to pay their taxes by awareness raising - teaching people that the taxes go to projects that benefit the community, like new wells, schools, and roads.

 

The rural community tax money is supplemented by money from the central government in Dakar (but where does that money come from?  Taxes on the richer Dakarois? foreign aid?  I'm not sure).  Most projects are funded through a sort of match grant system, where Dakar will pay, say, 90% of the costs and the rural community has to come up with 10%.  If the rural community can't pay their share, then the project doesn't happen.

 

So how effective is this essentially voluntary tax system?  It varies from year to year.  The official I was talking to said that in 2005 and 2006 about 95% of people paid their tax, but for 2007 hardly anyone paid.  Was that due to a bad harvest?  Were people just poorer?  No, he said, the harvest was fine.  It was due to a "variety of factors".  And that was all he would say about it.

 

Which made me think that maybe people had decided the rural community officials were corrupt and were "eating the money" (i.e. embezzling it), which is a common complaint among villagers, but I have no idea how widespread a problem it actually is.

 

There is another tax for people who live in "batiments" - concrete houses instead of huts - and I'm sure for people in towns the tax structure is different and probably less voluntary.  But that was all of my lesson for the day.

Taxes

written Monday, 7 January 2008

A really good day

written Saturday, 5 January 2008

 

Yesterday I biked from Tamba to Missira, about 35 km, with another volunteer.  It was so nice to be outside and getting exercise again after sitting around in Tamba for so long, and also to have company for the bike ride.  Along the way I noticed a tree with beautiful orange flowers on it, and I stopped to take a picture.  My friend found one of the flowers on the road, and we took it with us to give to the woman he buys sandwiches from, just as a small gesture of friendship.

 

So when we got to Missira we bought our bean sandwiches, and my friend gave the sandwich lady the flower.  He explained that in America men give women flowers as presents when they like them.  (She is older and married with kids, so she didn't take this the wrong way).  My friend wasn't expecting anything more than a thank you from her, but instead the present caused a big commotion.  The sandwich lady started calling everyone in the vicinity over to show them the flower and tell them that the toubab gave it to her.  Then there were lots of discussions about what tree it came from and what the point was of giving a present that couldn't be consumed and that would just go bad quickly.  It was a lot of fun to see how excited everyone got.

 

Soon after that I ran into the woman I always buy vegetables from at my weekly market.  She lives in Missira, but I've only seen her there before when I was on my way to Tamba.  When she realized I wasn't in a hurry to get anywhere for a while she grabbed me and took me to her house to be her special guest.  She introduced me to all her family and neighbors, and then stuffed me full of really good food, which I wasn't really hungry for, but I appreciated the thought.  She wanted me to stay and spend the night, but I told her I had to get home to my village.  I did promise to spend the night some other time, though.

 

Finally in the evening I made it home to my village, where I was so happy to see my friends and my own little hut again.

 

So, a perfect day: good weather, exercise, flowers, happy friendly people, good food, and my own bed to sleep in at the end of the day.

Stuck in Tamba

written Saturday, 5 January 2008

 

I went up to Tamba on Christmas Eve, planning to spend just two or three days in town for the Christmas holidays, since there wouldn't be any celebration happening in my village.  (Not that there was anything happening in Tamba either, since most volunteers were elsewhere, but at least I could have internet and good phone reception).  I really didn't want to be out of my village long, since I feel like I haven't spent enough time in my village lately and that is what I came to Africa to do.  But while I was in Tamba I was hoping to meet with the woman at the health department in charge of training midwives, in order to talk to her about training a girl from my village to be a midwife. 

 

I was hoping that since Christmas isn't a big holiday here that she would be able to meet with me right after, on the 26th, and then I could go home to my village.  But when I called the health department they told me she was out of town til the 31st, so I should wait until then.  So I waited in Tamba.

 

On the 31st I called again to set up an appointment, which I was finally able to get, but not until January 3rd.  So I waited some more.

 

Finally on the 3rd I went to my appointment, only to meet there the girl from my village who we were trying to get the midwife training for.  She'd already gotten permission and started the training a month ago, and just never bothered to tell me or anyone else from my village.  (She'd been visiting her parents, who live in Tamba, for a while, so that was how we didn't know).

 

So I felt a little ridiculous and superfluous, having wasted so much time in Tamba for nothing.  But I am trying to tell myself to be happy that this girl was motivated enough to take care of things herself, and also that we are about a month ahead of where I thought things stood.

 

In any case, I was finally able to come back to my village yesterday, and it is good to be back.

I'm back!

It seems like I've been away from my blog for a long time, although maybe it hasn't actually been longer than usual.  Anyway, I'm back, after a wonderful, much-needed vacation.

 

And now, for a few old entries that I forgot to post last time.

Traditional Medicine

Written Tuesday, 24 January 2008

 

 

Lately I've had a not very serious, but never-ending, cold.  I used up all the throat lozenges that Peace Corps gave me.  Stuck in my village with a scratchy throat and no throat lozenges = not fun.  So my counterpart offered to make me some traditional medicine – a particular kind of leaf, boiled in water, and then sugar added. 

 

I decided to try it.  It was a thick, syrupy drink the color of pond scum.  And tasted about like pond scum too.  And it did indeed make my scratchy throat feel better.  I still prefer throat lozenges, though.

Love potion!

Written Thursday, 24 January 2008

 

 

Recently one of my host sisters has stopped eating with my host family.  At every meal I would ask where she was – shouldn't we call her to come eat? – and someone would tell me she was full.  Very fishy, I thought.  She wasn't sick, so I started to think that maybe there had been a fight in the family and she was avoiding hanging out with them.

 

Finally one day I saw her eating breakfast at my counterpart's compound, so I decided to ask him why she is not eating with us anymore.  The answer was about the last thing I would ever have guessed: love potion!

 

A man in my village has asked her to marry him, and she has refused, saying she doesn't love him.  So this man went to a marabout (religious leader) and got him to make a gris-gris (magical/religious object) – essentially a love potion – to put in her food, so that she will fall in love with him and agree to marry him. 

 

My other host sisters, who do the cooking for the family, of course found out about the plot, and they warned her.  So now she is not eating with our family so that no one can slip her some love potion.  And soon she and her mother are even going to leave the village in order to escape from the threat.

 

Now I am worried – what if someone tries to slip me some love potion?  My host mom would probably let them do it if they gave her enough money.  Let's hope love potion doesn't work on toubabs.

Baboons!

Written Thursday, 24 January 2008

 

 

A few days ago I was biking back into my village from a neighboring volunteer's village, and I came upon a pack of at least thirty baboons crossing the road.  There were moms with little baby baboons on their back, and a giant dad baboon that must have weighed more than me.  They all moved away quickly when they heard me coming, so I didn't have to worry about them attacking me and I didn't have time to get a picture. 

 

This wasn't the first time I've seen the baboons, but it was just one of those moments where I realize how amazing it is that I'm living in an African village.

 

 

Clothes in trees, Part 2

Written Thursday, 24 January 2008

 

 

I wrote on this blog several months ago about how people hang discarded clothes in trees.  I asked around about why, and all I could get as an answer was that it is related to a taboo.  Well, I finally got a little more information.  The discarded clothes are hung in trees because if they are just thrown on the ground or burned, the former owner of the clothes, particularly if it is a child, will get sick.  Putting them in trees is supposed to protect them from getting burned accidentally, and thus protect the clothes owner from getting sick.

 

What happens if there is a wildfire and the clothes get burned while they're in the tree?  No clear answer.

Muslim New Year

Written Thursday, 24 January 2008

 

 

The Muslim New Year was last Friday.  At least here, it is not a big holiday like Korite or Tabaski, but it meant we got to eat meat with our lunch.  And in the afternoon, the women make dego, the Senegalese no-oven-required version of cookies, which is just corn, rice, or millet flour, or even a sort of paste made out of beans, mixed with water and sugar.  Then the village children run in packs from house to house demanding their share of dego.  It felt kind of like trick-or-treating on halloween.  And the adults go around asking their neighbors to forgive them for any wrongs they have committed against them.

Puppet show

Written Thursday, 24 January 2008

 

 

This past week a couple of other volunteers and I performed a puppet show on dental hygiene in our villages.  It was a lot of fun; I don't know if my villagers had ever seen puppets before.

 

It's funny how the things that sounded pointless or cheesy or lame to me before coming to Peace Corps, like teaching English or doing theater to teach health messages, turn out to be my favorite activities here. 

Stop touching my boobs!

Written Thursday, 24 January 2008

 

 

I had a classic Peace Corps freak-out moment recently.

 

I knew before coming here that Africans' sense of personal space is different from Americans', and I was prepared to try to adjust.  So when I got to my village and discovered that it is no big deal for people to touch women's breasts, it wasn't a surprise.  So I've gotten used to village women grabbing my breasts to compare my size with theirs, or to pretend that they're going to have me breastfeed a baby.  I even once had a woman at the market greet me by grabbing my breast and shaking it as if she were shaking my hand.  All of which I have endured and sometimes even been able to laugh at, although it always still feels weird to be touched like that.

 

But one day about a week ago one of my younger host sisters, who likes to push boundaries with me and see what she can get away with, decided to test how far I would let her get into my personal space by grabbing my breast and massaging it.  For whatever reason, instead of being able to ignore it or laugh it off, this time I just lost it.  I screamed at her and would even have hit her (not at all in character for me) if I had not had my hands full with holding a small child upside down by its feet at that moment (the kid was enjoying it, I wasn't torturing her or anything).

 

Everyone in Peace Corps has their story of losing control and acting out of character, no longer able to keep pretending to be the perfect, tolerant volunteer.  So this was mine.  My villagers seemed surprised to see me so angry, but they seemed to understand why – I was told later that at some point in the past (when the last volunteer was here? Before the first volunteer came?) they had a meeting to sensitize the whole village about Westerners' ideas of personal space.

 

Now everything is back to normal in my village, no weirdness with my villagers over the incident.  But no one has gotten in my personal space since then either, and I hope it stays that way.

 

 

Polygamy is depressing me

Written Thursday, 24 January 2008

 

 

Lately, all the men in my village seem to want to talk to me about is polygamy.  They want to explain to me all the reasons why polygamy is a good and necessary thing – like that the second (or third or fourth) wife can help the first wife with all the chores, and can do the cooking for the family if the first wife is sick.  And they tell me that having multiple wives can make a man's home life easier – if a man has only one wife, she might talk back to him or refuse to do chores or something, but if there are multiple wives, the wives will always be competing to be the husband's favorite and so they will be nicer to him.  And of course there is always the argument that men have wandering eyes, and it is better for them to marry multiple wives than to have affairs.

 

On top of these theoretical discussions, a couple of my host brothers (whose wives are some of my best friends in the village) have told me they are looking for second wives.  Nowhere in any of this talk is there any thought to how the wife feels.  If I try to bring it up, I am just told that polygamy is allowed by Islam and by the culture, and that the women are used to it, or accept it, or whatever.

 

It is really starting to depress me that no one cares about how the women feel about it.

New photos

New photos are up at http://picasaweb.google.com/aidworkr/Tabaski2007.

Tabaski pictures

Pictures are now posted from the Tabaski holiday at http://picasaweb.google.com/aidworkr/Tabaski2007.

Tabaski

Written Wednesday, December 26, 2007

 

 

Last Friday my village celebrated Tabaski, commemorating the story in the Bible (and I guess in the Koran) when Abraham was told by God to sacrifice his son Isaac, but then at the last minute he was allowed to sacrifice a sheep instead.   It's the most important holiday of the year here, but the celebration is almost exactly the same as Korite (the feast at the end of Ramadan) except that more money is spent on the feast and new clothes for everyone.  

 

So shortly after breakfast all the men and the older women went to a field to say Tabaski prayers.   I got to go too and take some pictures, which hopefully I'll upload soon.  After the prayers we started eating whatever food was already cooked, so in my family we ate couscous with oily macaroni (I hate the oily macaroni, but what can you do).   Soon afterwards I ate lunch with my family – a sheep they had sacrificed – and then my counterpart invited me to come eat with him, which I couldn't refuse, so I had a second meal of grilled sheep.

 

Throughout the day I was the official photographer – everyone wants a picture of themselves in their new pretty outfits – so I went around taking pictures of everyone, and they would tell me to come eat with them.   I was stuffed already, but it would have been insulting to refuse, so I would have about two bites each time.  I have definitely not had anywhere near this much meat since coming to Senegal.   It took my digestive system three days to recover from the shock.

 

Around noon we spotted smoke out in the bush.  It is not unusual at this time of year because it is common practice to set fires in the bush to clear away the undergrowth, but it was unusual on Tabaski because nobody was working that day.   So some men went out to investigate, and they came back and said that there was a wildfire threatening the banana plantation.  So some people went out to try to put it out, but I guess it wasn't a big threat because most people just carried on with Tabaski celebrations.   We found out a few days later, though, that in the neighboring village some people's cotton fields got burned up, which is really unfortunate.

 

At the end of the day, just as for Korite, the women dressed up in their new outfits (they had been wearing old clothes all day for cooking) and went around the village to greet people and apologize for sins of the past year (but mainly to show off their new clothes, I think).   This time I wore my blue boubou that I had made for swearing in, which none of my villagers had seen before.  They got a real kick out of seeing me dressed up like that, and everyone agreed that I was a "real African" now.

Wanted: labor-saving devices

written Sunday, 16 December 2007

 

My latest great idea for developing Senegal: hand-powered labor-saving devices.  Women here spend so many hours each day pounding corn (and other grains, but in my village, mainly corn) mortar and pestle style, sifting flour with little sieves (same style as people panning for gold in the 1800s), and cracking peanuts out of their shells, one by one, by hand.  Surely there's got to be a way to do these chores more quickly, without electricity or a giant machine (my village has an electric corn-grinding machine, but the villagers here can't afford to pay to use it all the time, and it seems to be broken half the time anyway).

 

If the women didn't have to spend so much time on these simple chores, who knows what else they might be doing?  Growing more food to feed their families better, maybe, or engaging in small business to earn money (like selling bean sandwiches and other tasty street foods to me!), or just getting to rest a little more - women here commonly work from 6 am to 8 pm or even later.  Even during their "down time" after lunch they are usually cracking peanuts or something.  And if the women weren't so overburdened that they need help from their kids just to get the daily done, then maybe parents would send more of their kids to school instead of keeping them home to work.  If it were physically possible to have outside employment and still get all the daily chores like cooking and washing done, maybe attitudes would change about women working outside the home, and about women's role in society in general.

 

I may be getting a little carried away here, but I don't think I'm entirely crazy.  So what I want is to find (or build, but I'm not much of an engineer/inventor, and anyway this isn't new technology I'm talking about, it's got to be out there somewhere) some sort of hand-operated grinder that would work for grinding corn and other grains.  Something that would be more efficient than mortar and pestle style pounding.  What did the pioneers use back in the day to grind grain, if they weren't close enough to a big mill?  Somehow I don't think it was the mortar and pestle things they have here.

 

If I could find something that might be the right thing, I'd get the women in my host family to test it out.  And if, miraculously, it was perfect and they loved it, maybe then I could get a bunch to sell to people here (more sustainable than just giving them away).  Or even better, maybe the village blacksmith could start manufacturing them and sell them.  And then, who knows, maybe it would help Senegal (and the rest of Africa, why not) develop.

 

I have a lot of crazy ideas.  But maybe, someday, one of my crazy ideas will be a crazy GREAT idea.  Who knows, maybe this is the one.  Anyway, anyone have any ideas for a corn grinder, or peanut cracker or flour sifter?

More integrating

written Sunday, 16 December 2007

 

I think a big part of the "cultural integration" here is learning to sit around a lot, with nothing much to do and nothing much to talk about (besides the standard, "You are sitting?" "Yes, I am sitting." and "The sun is hot today.") without going out of your mind.

 

Yesterday I was in Dialacoto with my volunteer neighbor Dado (her Senegalese name).  We had gone to talk to the principal of the middle school about organizing a ceremony/party for the girls who competed for a Peace Corps SeneGAD scholarship, to promote girls' education in the region.  After meeting with the principal, we had lunch at a "cheb shack" that we had been meaning to try out for a while (they had pretty good cheb u jen - rice and fish plate - at the standard price of $1), and then we found ourselves with nothing much to do and nowhere to go for a couple of hours, until it cooled off enough to bike back to our villages.  So we found ourselves a shady spot to sit and played MASH, which I don't think I've played since about third grade, for a good two hours.  (In case you don't know, MASH is a silly game to predict who you will marry, how many kids you will have, what job you will have, etc.).  We took our game seriously (as seriously as you can take MASH, anyway), and I wan't bored at all.

 

I feel like we earned some cultural integration points for entertaining ourselves so well for two hours.

 

Oh, and according to MASH, when I am grown up (whenever that is), I will work as a journalist earning $500 a year, have one kid, drive a Prius, and live in a mansion.  Not bad. (Guess my husband will be paying all the bills).

Pirogue to Europe

written Sunday, 16 December 2007

 

One of my good friends in my village, a guy who is about 20 years old, told me a few days ago that he will be leaving the village soon.  He is going to go spend some time with his family in his home village (he came here to work in the banana plantation), and then he is going to try to make it to Spain on one of the small pirogue boats that regularly carry illegal immigrants to Europe (and just as regularly sink or get lost at sea).  His family is going to give him the approximately $100 it costs to make the trip, and if all goes well, he will join relatives in Barcelona.

 

It's a very risky trip, plus of course illegal, so I felt obligated to try to talk him out of it.  I pointed out to him that there is a good chance he could drown, which of course he already knew.  He told me that his fate will be in the hands of God, and that he prefers to risk his life for a chance at a better future than to have a long life in the village with few opportunities and nothing much to look forward to.  I realized that I agree with him (at least on a theoretical level - life here isn't so bad, I think.  No one's starving), so what else could I say?

 

I just hope he makes it safely.

Living on less than $2 a day

written Sunday, 9 December 2007

 

Like everyone else, when I was in America I saw commercials requesting charitable contributions or sponsorships of children for various peoples around the world living on less than $2 a day.  I read articles with statistics about what percentage of the world's population is living on the equivalent of less than $2 a day.  And I would compare that to what I was spending on a just out of grad school, working at an NGO, with lots of student loans to pay back lifestyle in a big, expensive city: $2 a day just for internet in my apartment.  And it seemed clear to me: $2 a day to live on means you are POOR.

 

I still think $2 a day is not much to live on, but it is not at all clear to me how poor it means.  How are they calculating the $2?  Does it only include cash on hand for buying food or whatever, or are they also calculating in the per-night value of people's homes, or of food they haven't had to pay for (like if they grew it themselves)?  And when they say people are living on less than $2 a day, do they mean everyone, including children, has the equivalent of $2 a day for their needs, or do they mean wage-earners are earning (or farmers are producing the value of) $2 a day to support their whole families?

 

I have been wondering exactly what these statistics mean pretty much since arriving in Senegal, but I bring it up today because I was having a conversation with some of my village men this morning in which they told me that the going rate for unskilled labor around here (like helping farm someone's land, herd animals, or working as a driver or security guard in town) is 600 CFA a day - about $1.20.  Not much money at all.  And even less if you divide it among the many family members that a Senegalese wage-earner is usually supporting.  Sounds awfully poor.  But the situation is not quite so dire as that.  Except for in towns, land doesn't have to be bought or rented; permission to use it is granted by the village chief.  So in the villages the cost of housing is only the cost of the initial construction of the hut.  And then the food: most of it is grown by the family (ie the women), so that's essentially extra income.

 

So here is what I want to know: how does my village family measure up on the poverty scale?  We've got two adult men as wage earners (working in the banana plantation) to support a family of about 20 people.  The women in the family all farm (peanuts, corn, okra) in addition to doing all the household work, so that's a lot of food that they don't have to buy, and then of course you could calculate in the value of all the domestic work like cooking and washing clothes.  And then there's the value of their compound, which they don't have to pay rent for but also don't own so they can't sell it or use it as collateral for a loan.  So what would the statistics people say? Is my family living on $2.40 a day divided by 20 people?  Or would they calculate in the value of non-paid labor and other assets?  I guess what I really mean is, when they talk about people living on less than $2 a day, are they talking about people who have the standard of living of people here, or people who are a lot poorer?

 

What about a homeless person in, say, Washington DC, where I lived before coming here.  Suppose he receives "charitable contributions" from passersby of $2 a day.  Suppose he is also given a hot meal at a soup kitchen with a value of, say, $3, and spends the night in a shelter - we'll say the value is $5 - I have no idea what a shelter bed should be valued at.  Would the statistics people say he's living on $2 a day or $12?  And who would the stats people say has the higher standard of living? The homeless man may be consuming the equivalent of more money a day than my villagers, but I'd much rather be a Senegalese villager than a homeless person in DC.

 

Who are these "less than $2 a day" people?

new pics

New photos are up at http://picasaweb.google.com/aidworkr/December2007.  New blog entries coming soon (hopefully tomorrow).

New pictures!

New pictures up on http://picasaweb.google.com/aidworkr.  Afraid I haven't had time to organize and caption them all yet, but they're up there anyway.

Harvest time

written Tuesday, 4 December 2007

 

Right now everyone in my village is busy harvesting their crops.  The women in my family aren't even coming home for lunch anymore - instead, whoever is in charge of cooking that day brings their food out to the fields so they can eat quickly and then get back to work.

 

I asked why everyone is in such a rush to get their crops in - it's not as if they have to worry about them being buried under piles of snow if they wait too long.  I was told that they have to get them in before teh cows and other animals are let loose to graze in the fields.  But why can't they just wait to let the animals loose until everyone is done harvesting?  Well, they said, that is the way it is supposed to work, but in practice... the farmers had better just get their crops in as quickly as they can.

 

A few days ago I saw what they meant when a bunch of men gathered under the mango tree near my hut where the village chief likes to sit.  They were all yelling at each other, and I found out it was because a cow had gotten into someone's cotton field and destroyed part of the crop.  It reminded me of reading about conflicts between farmers and ranchers in the "Wild West".  Except here, I know both the cow owner and the farmer, and they know each other and have to live together in the same village.  Probably it was that way in the "Wild West" too, but it never seems that way in movies.  Anyway, there was no shoot-out this time, just a lot of yelling until finally the farmer said he would forgive the damage this time, but if it happens again he is going to make a formal complaint to the gendarmes.  Which was quite generous of him, I thought, considering how much people depend on their crops here.  Maybe the cow's owner will make it up to him by giving him milk or meat later.

Come back, Colonialism!?

written Sunday, 2 December 2007

 

Yesterday I was sitting and talking with some of the men from my village.  I asked how the harvest is coming and whether there has been a good yield this year (answer: my village has done pretty well, but some of the neighboring villages have done less well because they got less rain or planted too early or too late).  This led to a discussion of the economy and politics.  The men said that the problem is that here people don't vote based on issues and candidates' platforms.  Instead everyone votes the way they're paid to vote.  For example, during the recent presidential election campaign, they said Abdoulaye Wade gave the money to the presidents of each rural community (like counties in the US) to deliver votes for him.  Each rural community president keeps some of the money for himself and then gives some of the money to the chiefs of the villages in their district to deliver votes for Wade.  The chiefs distribute money in a similar (but smaller-scale) way. So everyone votes the way they are paid to vote, and that is how an election is won in Senegal.  But, they said, you can't blame Abdoulaye Wade.  If they were running for office they'd do the same thing.  That's just how it works here.

 

Then one of the men said if he could vote today on whether Senegal should be an independent country or whether it should go back to being a colony of France or some other Western nation, he would choose to be a colony again, because toubabs manage government and the economy better than Africans and with less corruption.

 

I asked him waht about all the problems of racism and human rights violations under colonialism?  He said, Oh, sure, that was bad.  But things have changed, and that wouldn't be a problem now.  Anyway, he'd be willing to risk it if it meant he could have a decent-paying job.

 

So I've got at least three votes for re-colonization.  So much for all the supposed anti-Americanism and anti-neo-colonialism around the world.  At least here it doesn't exist.

 

Anyone want a colony?

Progress report

written Saturday, 1 December 2007

 

Today in have been in Senegal 8 1/2 mnths, and in my village 6 1/2 months.  My first quarterly report to Peace Corps on the work I've been doing is due in a few days.  And a few days ago, my "ancienne" - the volunteer who lived in my village before me - came to visit, so we were able to talk about the work she did and what I'm doing, and the challenges we've faced.

 

All of which has gotten me thinking about what progress I've made here and where I am now.  First of all, language: after months of struggle and despairing that I would never be able to learn Mandinka/Jaxanke well enough to actually have conversations with people (because I learn best from books, and those are hard to come by in Mandinka), I have finally gotten to the point where I feel confident that I will be able to understand people and they will be able to understand me (although this may still require me asking people to repeat themselves several times, and a lot of bad grammar and ridiculous exaggerated charades on my part).  I still have a long way to go, but at least now I feel pretty confident that eventually I will get there.  And soon I want to start focusing more on learning Pulaar.

 

Second, cultural integration: my ancienne asked me what my biggest challenge has been since coming to the village, and it's definitely related to getting used to the village here (not living without electricity or running water, like I might have thoughts, or getting used to incredible poverty, because people mostly have enough of the basics here).  I'm still getting used to the Senegalese version of hospitality, where apparently it's not rude to put your guest on the spot and make them feel uncomfortable ("Your Jaxanke is really terrible." or "Do you know everyone's names? What's her name? How can you not know her name?") - not like Southern hospitality that I'm used to.  And I'm still getting used to being asked for money and presents all the time, from my host family, friends, and people I barely know.  It still makes me uncomfortable when I have to refuse, but I've been telling myself that if they're not embarrassed to ask, then I shouldn't be embarrassed to say no.  In general it's been a big surprise to me that people here don't seem to have much desire to be independent and to stand on their own two feet, unlike Americans.  Instead they want to find someone to take care of them, to take them to America or to send them a monthly remittance check.  (Of course I am just speaking in generalities here, and this doesn't apply to everyone).  The roughness with kids also took a lot of getting used to - how hard parents will hit kids who misbehave, how much kids fight between themselves, sometimes egged on by their parents, and how even small babies are sometimes smacked.  I've gotten used to most of it now though, since no one ever seems to really get hurt, and I mostly just ignore it.  I've still got a long way to go on this whole cultural integration thing, but I am getting more comfortable here, slowly.

 

Finally, work: I've done 15 health classes/plays/porridge demonstrations since I got here, plus gone to lots of meetings about health stuff in Dialacoto.  I don't know if any of it is making a difference, but we were told in training to expect that, so I'm going to just keep plugging along.  I'm still teaching my English class, which is fun and helps me to feel like I'm being productive when nothing else is going well here.  I'm down to two students right now, but some of my dropouts said they're coming back when harvest time is over, and the two village schoolteachers have said they want to join.  (Have I mentioned we finally got a second schoolteacher? And she's a woman, too!  I'm really happy about it.)  I am still working on getting a midwife trained for the village, but that involves dealing with Tamba bureaucracy and I can't get anything done while I"m in the village, so it's a slow process.  And I just got a scale for weighing babies from Africare (an American NGO), so in January we're going to start weighing all the children under five every month, to help mothers keep track of their kids' nutritional/health status, and to spot and deal with any malnutrition problems.

 

So everything here is going pretty well and seems to be on track, except for one thing: my own health.  I expected to be sicker than usual when I first got here because of the different food, climate, and general environment.  It didn't really happen, though.  The first couple of months I was hardly sick at all, and I felt great.  I even started to think maybe my body is better suited to an African climate than to America (especially because I hate cold weather).  But the last three months or so my good luck has run out, and I have been sick with various minor illnesses about every two weeks, for two or three days at a time.  Hopefully this has just been some sort of belated adjustment period for me, and I will go back to being healthy almost all the time.  If not, I'm not sure if I'll be able to stay here.  I don't think I can take two years of getting sick every two weeks.  But right now I am healthy, so I am feeling optimistic that it will all work out.

Strikes? Riots? Not here.

written Sunday, 25 November 2007

 

When I came to Tamba from the village a few days ago, I heard from other volunteers, and then read in an email from Peace Corps staff, that there have been lots of strikes in Dakar over the last few days, and even instances of people throwing rocks at police.

 

Strikes aren't anything new here - the teachers always seem to be on strike, seriously impeding children's ability to get an education here.  But this time it sounded like things might be serious - rocks thrown at police, the police responding with tear gas, Peace Corps advising volunteers not to travel to Dakar right now.

 

I've heard that the strikes and riots are about recent rises in the price of wheat flour and gas (gasoline or cooking gas, I'm not sure - could be both).  Also that President Wade is trying to cut the salaries of civil servents, that journalists have been tossed in jail, and even a rumor that he had had some shantytown market area of Dakar bulldozed, destroying people's businesses, supposedly because the corrugated metal and scrapwood buildings didn't fit with his idea of what Dakar is supposed to look like.

 

All rumors.  I have no idea what's true, except that I know that the price of flour, and thus bread, has gone up recently.  And it seems pretty safe to assume that gas prices are going up, because that's the world trend these days. (Neither are a big part of the economy in the villages here).  Beyond that, I don't know.  It's strange to think that I probably know less about what is going on in this country than someone in America with access to CNN and other news sources.

 

It is also strange to come from my very quiet village where nothing has changed to hear reports of chaos in Dakar.  It also makes me wonder about the nature of democracy in a place like this.  I've heard people say that the government could be forced to resign, or even that there could be a coup (I don't believe it).  But supposing that something like a government collapse is a possibility, what does it mean for democracy if the government's ability to survive depends only on keeping the people of Dakar happy?

 

I hope all this gets sorted out.  But in the meantime, I'd appreciate being sent any news clippings about what's going on.

America

written Sunday, 25 November 2007

 

I came up to Tamba on Wednesday to celebrate real Thanksgiving with other volunteers.  Thursday afternoon we all started working on making Thanksgiving food with locally-available ingredients (and with a little help from food packages from our families).  I was making my Thanksgiving potluck usual, pea casserole, with canned peas from the toubab store and those crunch onion things for the topping from a package from my parents.  But the cream of mushroom soup part was a challenge - I've always just used the canned stuff before, but of course that isn't available here.  And I hadn't wanted to ask my parents to mail some because the weight would make it really expensive.  So I'd decided to make that part from scratch, with canned mushrooms (from the toubab store), milk, and flour.

 

Mixing it up to the consistency of cream of mushroom soup turned out not to be very hard at all.  But to get it to taste right... hmm.  What spices to use?  We have a limited, somewhat random selection at the Tamba house.  I gave people tastes of my soup mixture and asked them what spices I should add.  My taste-testers inevitably said, "Well, what do you want it to taste like?"

 

"Like home," I said.

 

Which inspired me with my newest great business idea:  a spice mix called "America" that would be marketed to expats with the slogan, "Just a few sprinkles, and your food will taste just like home."

 

I told the other volunteers about my brilliant idea, and they said, "Great.  But what spices will be in it?"

 

I have no idea.  But if I ever figure that out, I'll be a millionaire.

Village Thanksgiving

Written Monday, 19 November 2007

 

 

Thanksgiving in the village turned out to be a success!  I spent the whole morning helping the women cook (okay, mostly watching – they still won't let me do much) and running to the boutique for more spices or tea or whatever.   And one of my volunteer neighbors came to celebrate with me, so that was really nice for me, although the other women kept complaining about us speaking English to each other.

 

Finally lunch was ready, and there was a ton of food for everyone, and it was delicious.   My sisters had told me to buy potatoes and sweet potatoes for the meal, and I'd wondered what they were going to do with them, since yassa doesn't usually have potatoes in it.  Turns out that they cut them up and fried them like French fries, and then sprinkled them on top of the yassa dish.  I think they were my favorite part of the meal (although the rest was really good too).

 

So I was happy, and all my village family and friends told me they were happy too, especially because there was enough to eat leftovers for dinner too.   It is traditional to give blessings for thanks here, so I was given lots of blessings for a long life, lots of money, and to find a good husband. 

 

I just might have to do this again next year.

Thanksgiving in the village

Written Wednesday, 14 November 2007

 

 

I was in Thies for Easter this year, so I got to learn about a wonderful Senegalese tradition of people of different religions sharing their holiday celebrations with each other.   My host family was Muslim and so they don't celebrate Easter, but Christian friends invited them over for their party and later sent over some of their special Easter food.   And apparently this is a really common thing to do in Senegal.  I think it's a really great way to promote religious tolerance – if everyone gets to enjoy the celebrations of each religion, then the more religions the merrier!

 

Anyway, so I think that is where I got my idea for celebrating Thanksgiving in the village.   I've been thinking about it for several months now, thinking that it would be a much more memorable holiday than just hanging out with other volunteers at the Peace Corps house (although in the end I've decided to do that too, so Thanksgiving in the village is going to be a week before real Thanksgiving).

 

The only thing that was ever really holding me back from committing to the village Thanksgiving plan was cost.   How much would it cost to hold a feast for all my village family and friends?  Answer: about a third of my monthly allowance from Peace Corps, which seems like a huge amount, but in "real life", less than $100.   Not bad.

 

Here's the breakdown for my village Thanksgiving feast of yassa:

 

n     1 medium-sized sheep (alive right now, but it won't be in the morning): $35

n     10 kilos of onions: $8

n     1 bottle of vinegar: $1

n     1 jar of mustard: $1.20

n     2 kilos of sweet potatoes: $1.60

n     2 kilos of Irish potatoes: $2.40

n     lots of pepper: $0.50

n     3 bulbs/heads/whatever they're called of garlic: $0.60

n     2 kilos of carrots: $1

n     20 bouillon cubes (in 2 flavors): $1

n     15 kilos of rice: $8.25

n     5 liters of vegetable oil: $9

n     1 kilo of kola nuts: $4

 

One of my host brothers went to the market to buy the sheep for me, since he is a better judge of sheep than I am, and also could get a better price than I, the "rich toubab" could.   When he brought the sheep home he came over and asked me if I wanted to see my sheep.  I said sure, but as soon as I saw it I realized that was a bad idea because I immediately felt an impulse to name it.   So I told my host brother it was going to make me sad, and I left.  I think he was very confused about my crazy toubab behavior.