Baby with a rock in his ear

written 27 June 2008

 

Yesterday my sister came into my hut and told me her almost-two-year-old baby had stuck a peanut in his ear.  I grabbed a flashlight and aimed it at his ear, and sure enough, there was something in his ear.  Way, way down in his ear, so far it looked like it was in the middle of his head.  Definitely not something we were going to be able to get out ourselves.  So I told her she had to take him to the health post in Dialacoto.  She agreed, but there was a problem: she doesn't know how to ride a bike, and rainy/farming season has started, so everyone's out working in the fields, so a donkey cart is out of the question.  So she asked me if I would take him.  I said sure, no problem, thinking he could ride on the luggage rack on the back of my bike (I've taken him on short joy rides around the village that way, which he loves, so I know he's old enough to hold on).  But my sister said no, the ride to Dialacoto is too far, he will fall asleep and fall off the bike.  He has to be carried tied onto someone's back, traditional style.  So I said okay, fine.  My sister of course didn't think a toubab could handle carrying a baby African-style that far, so she insisted on my 15-year-old sister (who does know how to ride a bike) going along as a backup baby carrier.

 

So we tied the baby (who was being very quiet rather than screaming his head off, as I'd been afraid he would – Alhamdoulilah!) onto my back, and we were off, ten kilometers in the middle of a hot African day to the Dialacoto health post.

 

When we got there, the nurse looked at the baby almost right away, but he said that the peanut was too far down in the baby's head for him to get it out – he was afraid of puncturing his ear drum.  We'd have to take him to the hospital in Tamba, where they'd have more equipment and could anesthetize him if necessary.

 

Tamba is far.  And anesthesia is probably really expensive.  And we'd have to go back to the village and get his mom, and then get her out to the road somehow (on the back of my bike? I'm not sure I'm strong enough to carry an adult over the mountain to the main road on my bike). I did not want to have to do that. 

 

So I asked the nurse if they might be able to help him at Kinkeliba, the private French hospital about 15 kilometers up the road.  This was somewhat of a risky question, because the nurse is essentially in competition with the hospital, and I've heard that he doesn't take it very kindly when his patients go there.  But I really did not want to have to take the baby to Tamba, and I figured hopefully he couldn't get too mad, since I'd come to him first and we were going to have to go somewhere else for care regardless.  Luckily, he didn't seem offended, and just said, sure, give it a shot.

 

While I was at the health post, the two other volunteers in Dialacoto region, Fonsa and new volunteer Hawa, happened by, and I was able to talk them into coming with me to Kinkeliba (officially so that we could all learn more about health services available in the area, but really just to keep me company).  And I got even luckier in that there was an Africare (an American NGO) car heading that way, so we were able to hitch a ride. 

 

My back-up baby carrier of a sister, however, punked out on me, not wanting to go to Kinkeliba because it would be a long bike ride back.  So I told her fine, I could just meet her back in my village.  But she said she was scared to bike back to the village by herself (because there could be bandits on the road), so she made me promise to come all the way back to Dialacoto, which is several kilometers past the turn-off to my village, to pick her up after we were finished at Kinkeliba.

 

So a few minutes later we arrived at the hospital, which didn't seem to have any other patients so we were able to see a doctor right away.  He shot water into the baby's ear with a little pump to try to squirt the peanut out.  It wasn't successful, but it did make the peanut move enough so that he was then able to get it out with some tweezers.  And it turned out to be a rock rather than a peanut, which is probably a good thing because that means there won't be any crumbs left in his ear to cause an infection.   So the baby was once again good as new, and it only cost me $2.

 

It was about 1:30 by then, hot as the surface of the sun, so I was not about to bike the 20 kilometers back to Dialacoto, and then another 10 kilometers to my village, with a baby on my back, just yet.  So Fonsa and Hawa and I bought lunch from the hospital canteen (rice with vegetables), and relaxed in the shade while the baby took a nap.  Then at about 4:30 we biked (with the baby tied on my back) back to Dialacoto, where my friends left me to go home to their own villages, and where I discovered that my punk of a sister, who I had been counting on to carry the baby the last ten kilometers home, had left and gone home without me.  So I had to carry the baby the rest of the way home.  Did I mention that this baby weighs nine kilos and that it was hot out?

 

But eventually I made it back with both me and the baby still in one piece (or rather two pieces, one each), and his mom was waiting for us right at the edge of the village and was so happy to have her baby back minus foreign objects in his head. 

 

So it turned out to be a good day: baby cured, I earned lots of points with my host family for taking care of him, the baby didn't cry all day long (he also didn't talk, as he usually does – he seemed a little shell-shocked, but he's since back to his usual self), and I definitely win the Peace Corps hard-coreness competition for biking with a baby on my back for 35 kilometers.

I broke a man’s wife

25 June 2008

 

One of my first projects in my village was to get a woman sent to Tamba to be trained as a matron, or midwife.  The project was started by my ancienne, the volunteer who came before me, so I didn't actually have to do much work for it, but in any case the villagers give me credit for it.

 

Which is relevant to this story because the woman's training was supposed to last six months, which means she should have finished in May.  It is now the end of June, and she hasn't come back to the village.  Now my counterpart tells me that the woman's husband is going around complaining that I "broke his wife", meaning that now that she's had this training, she wants to stay in Tamba where life is a little cushier and where it will be easier for her to earn money with her new skills, rather than come back to the village and cook and clean for her husband all day long.

 

Can't say I blame her.

 

So when my counterpart came and told me that I am being accused of breaking this man's wife, even though I know it could have serious repercussions for my ability to work in my village (theoretically, if word of this gets around, the men might forbid their wives from working with me, although I don't really think that will happen), I could not help but laugh.  And smile and feel proud of myself. 

 

So my counterpart said that I have to fix this problem.  I have to prove that while I did help this woman go to Tamba and get matron training, that I always intended for her to come back and that I was not trying to help her leave her husband or otherwise "break" her.  And truthfully, I do want her to come back and provide matron services to the pregnant women in my village, because my village needs that.  I just don't happen to feel too sorry for her husband, who in any case has another wife to cook and clean for him (I suspect that it is really this wife, who is probably tired of being responsible for all the chores, who is pressuring her husband to complain about the other wife not being back yet).

 

So I called Sira, the woman who is getting trained, to ask about when she is coming home.  She said the training isn't finished yet, and she'll be home as soon as it's over.  Which may or may not be true, but in any case I did my part and could then tell her husband that I told her to come back when her training is done. 

 

So hopefully she will be back in the village soon, and this whole drama will be over.  Except that I have found a new mission for the rest of my service: break as many wives as possible.

 

--written by Rebecca Semmes, Professional Wife Breaker

International politics, from the perspective of my villagers

written 24 June 2008

 

Someone in my host family has a lighter with a flashlight built into it that projects an image of Saddam Hussein's face.

 

"Do you know who that is?" I am asked.

 

"Yes, it is Saddam Hussein," I say.

 

"The president of Iraq!"

 

"The former president of Iraq.  Now he is dead," I say.

 

"Yes, because the Americans killed him.  He was a good president because he made Iraq produce oil, but then the Americans killed him, and now there is no more oil from Iraq."

 

"He killed many Iraqis so that he could stay in power," I say.

 

"Oh.  Then he is not good?"

 

"No," I say.

 

"Do you know who Bin Laden is?  Did he kill many Americans?"

 

"Yes, he killed many Americans."

 

"Do you know why the Americans can't catch him?"

 

"Why's that?"

 

"Because he is a sorcerer, and he can change himself into a bug or even into dirt, so whenever the soldiers are coming he just changes himself into a rock or something until they are gone again."

I want to take my sister (and the cute babies) back to America with me

24 June 2008

 

Yesterday one of my host sisters, who is about 15 years old, came to visit me in my hut.  She is the first girl in my family, and probably in my village, to get an education.  All the women who are older than her, even just by a few years, have never been to school.  They can't even write their names.  So it is a huge feat that this girl, my sister, has managed to make it all the way to middle school (most kids, and especially girls, drop out after primary school, if they go to school at all) and even to be one of the top students in her class.

 

So while my sister was in my hut, I asked her how school was going and her plans for next year (she will be in the equivalent of 9^th grade).  She's been living in a neighboring village with relatives during the school year, so as to have a shorter commute to the middle school.  She told me she'd like to go to school in Tamba next year because the relatives she's living with now make her do so many chores that she never has time to study.  But no one has offered her a place to live in Tamba so far, and there's no particular reason to think another host family would give her fewer chores.  And in any case, in the next few years her family will most likely decide she's had enough education and they will arrange a marriage for her to a second or third cousin.  And then, as my other sisters were teasing her last night, all she will do all day is cook.

 

So I started thinking about whether there is anything I can do.  Pay to send her to school in Tamba?  Wouldn't solve the problem of the chores, or the looming arranged marriage.  Take her back to America with me?  Her family would love it, but I haven't got the means to support myself yet, much less someone else.  So I'm still thinking.

The American Club

Written 28 June 2008

 

While I was in Dakar, I went one day to The American Club, which is essentially a country club for expats.  From what I understand, it was originally only open to Americans (hence the name, which was actually changed some years ago because of security concerns, but everyone still calls it The American Club), but now it's open to all expats.  It's got tennis courts, and a pool, and a little canteen that sells American food like hamburgers.  And Peace Corps Volunteers can get in free, no membership hassle required.

 

Unlike the Senegalese, who (I am told, I haven't actually read the rule book) can't get in at all.  Not as a monthly dues-paying member, and not as the guest of a member.  Which just seems awfully racist to me.  So here's my problem: I like the American Club.  It's nice to have a place to go where I can speak English, and not be hassled by people asking me for money or to take them to America, and where I can wear culturally inappropriate clothes (like a swimsuit).  But it feels like I'm patronizing a white-only establishment during American Jim Crow times or South African apartheid (not that I ever experienced either of those).

 

So, tell me: is it wrong to have a club only for expats?  What if it were a club only for doctors or lawyers?  No one would care about that.  So is a club only for expats any different?  (Or maybe no one does care, except for me.  It's not as if the Senegalese are staging a protest outside the door).

 

So someone please tell me if it is okay for me to go there, because I like it and would like to go back, but I don't want to support racism.

Dakar Mid-Service Health Exam

Shortly after getting back from my vacation in Guinea, I had to go up to Dakar to get my last vaccination (of about 50 I've had to get since coming here, or so it seems anyway), and also for my mid-service health exam.  The Peace Corps nurse checked my vital signs, proving that I'm still alive, and tested me for tuberculosis (which you can get from drinking raw milk, which I do every chance I get, which isn't that often) and for schistosomiasis (which is a parasite you can get from swimming in infested water, which I did in Kedougou).  She also offered to test me for giardia and amoebas, but I haven't had any stomach problems at all lately, so I decided to pass on that one.

 

After three wonderful days of cool Dakar weather, good food, and all the internet I wanted I got my test results back: I am TB and parasite free!  Alhamdoulilah!  (Not that I was worried, and anyway if I had been infected I would just have gotten treated, no big deal, but it's nice to know for sure).

Guinea vacation day 12: Senegal border to Kolda

So after just a few hours of sleeping in the dirt, we got up and went to the gendarmes' "office" to get cleared to cross the border.  I wasn't worried at all – I had a valid visa for Senegal, and supposing they wanted to give me a hard time for not having a Guinean visa, what were they going to do – deport me?  The (Guinean) border guard was not so friendly this time, and did, in fact, give me a hard time – he kept asking me where my visa was, and I just kept pointing to my Senegal visa, pretending not to understand.  Mostly I think he was just worried about doing his paperwork – he had to record our names in his book, along with passport info, our parents' names, where we were born, our favorite color, lots of other random information, and our visa number – which I of course didn't have.  The driver of our car was very anxious to leave and kept telling me that I should just "buy a visa" (i.e. bribe the gendarme) so that we could go.  But I wasn't in such a rush and wasn't worried about being thrown in Guinean jail (Etienne, our trusty Peace Corps Security Officer, would have gotten me out), so I just waited until finally the gendarme gave up and said I could go. 

 

So then we piled back into the car, drove a few more hours until we got to Diaobe (I still don't know where it is really), and then from there we took another car to Kolda, and that was the end of my beautiful Guinea vacation. 

Guinea vacation day 11: Labe to the Senegal border

We went to the garage in Labe early in the morning to try to get a car back to Senegal.  We asked for a car to Kolda, but we were told the only car to Senegal was only going as far as Diaobe.  We had no idea where Diaobe is, so we tried looking on our Lonely Planet map, but it wasn't there.  Finally we decided that wherever Diaobe is, at least it's back in Senegal, and from there we could probably get another car to Kolda or Tamba.  So we bought tickets.  And then we waited for the car to fill up so we could go.  And waited.  And waited. 

 

The car didn't fill up until about 2 p.m., and then the car driver decided to go fill it up with gas and tweak the engine a bit in preparation for the trip.  Why he couldn't have taken care of that during the incredibly long morning we spent waiting, I don't know.

But in the meantime, while we sat around waiting all day, we chatted with some of the guys hanging out by the garage.  At one point we asked how long it would take to get to Diaobe, and we were told we should be there by 8:00 or 9:00.  Just after dark – not so bad, I thought.  And then they clarified: 8:00 or 9:00 the next morning.  We'd be spending all night in the car.  Ouch.  Plus, thinking back to how bad the road was between Kedougou and Maali, we thought it was probably not the most prudent thing to be driving over those mountains in the dark.  But we had no choice, unless we wanted to bike the 200 or so kilometers back.  So a rickety car on bad roads over steep mountains at night it was.

 

We also talked for a while with a young Sierra Leonean guy, who told us he had been on his way from Sierra Leone to Gambia to try to find work, but he had been robbed and now was stranded in Guinea, and couldn't communicate with people at all to ask for help or work (Sierra Leone is Anglophone, and this guy didn't even know basic French phrases like "I'm hungry").  Of course he was hoping that Sira and I, the rich toubab tourists, would give him $50 or so for a bus to Gambia. 

 

Sira and I decided that there probably at least some truth to his story – it's pretty common for African migrants to head out without enough money to get all the way to their destination.  They go as far as they can go until the money runs out, and then try to find work wherever they are to pay for the next leg of their trip.  So we figured something like that had probably happened to this guy.  He was definitely going to have a hard time without knowing even basic French, though.  So Sira and I wrote down for him (he was literate) some basic French phrases, like 'I'm hungry' and 'I want a job', we gave him the name of some NGOs in the area who might be able to help him, and Sira gave him a couple dollars so he could try calling his family to get them to wire him money.  After he got the money he left, and I figured we probably wouldn't see him again or ever know if he had just been scamming us, but a little while later (as we were still sitting around waiting for our car to fill up) he came back.  At first we thought, oh no, he's coming to ask for more money.  But instead he said that he had used the money Sira gave him to get in touch with a relative in Gambia who is now going to wire him money to he can get to Banjul.  So he was really happy, and he thanked us for helping him, so we got to feel happy too.

 

Finally, finally, around 3 p.m. the car was full and gassed up, and we could get on our way.  Of course there was the inevitable annoyance of a man trying to convince us that because we are female we should give up our good middle-row seats to the supposedly superior men, and we should sit in the back.  But we refused, and finally the guy gave up and got in the car so we could go.  Even though we were going to Senegal, they still had us seated Guinea-style, with nine passengers in the car instead of seven.  So it was going to be a very comfy ride.  (Yes, I am being facetious).  Sira had the window seat, so to give herself a little extra room, she rode most of the way with her head poking out the window (like a dog, I teased her).  When we stopped for the first break, I got to see the result of that great idea: she looked like she'd been down a brown-colored coal mine, her face was so heavily covered with road dust.  (Us toubabs are always looking filthy and sweaty here, whereas the Africans, except for the children, always look immaculate, even when they've been working all morning.  I don't know how they do it.)

 

The guy who had been trying to convince us that women belong in the back was sitting next to me, and not long into the trip he fell asleep, and soon his head started leaning over onto my shoulder.  Normally I wouldn't mind; I'm used to carrying random kids on my lap and having strangers sleep on my shoulders on my Alham ride between my village and Tamba, but this guy had really annoyed me with all his "women belong in the back" arguments, so I was not going to let him sleep on my shoulder.  So I pushed him off my shoulder towards the guy on the other side of him.  This would have woken a normal person up, but he didn't stir at all.  And pretty soon he was drifting into my space again.  So I shoved him over again, a little harder this time.  Still didn't stir.  This guy is a narcoleptic!  He kept leaning over onto my shoulder, and I kept shoving him off and getting more and more annoyed.  Then I decided to get a little tougher: I popped him on the side of the head with my book.  Still didn't wake him up, but everyone else in the car thought it was really funny.  So we passed the next half hour of the ride with me periodically smacking him with my book and everyone else in the car laughing their heads off.  And the guy, completely unaware, sleeping through the whole thing.  Finally the car stopped for another break, and I convinced Sira to trade seats with me before I murdered the guy. 

 

Around 8 p.m. it started getting dark.  I was scared that we would drive off a cliff from not being able to see very far ahead with the car's pitiful headlights, but I consoled myself by thinking that if that happened, the driver would die too, and he surely didn't want that, so hopefully he would be careful.  And of course it turned out that nothing scary happened at all.

 

Around 1 a.m. we got to the border crossing for Senegal: a string across the road with a sign hanging from it that said Stop.  There was absolutely no one around.  The driver stopped the car and told us to get out.  At first I thought that he was going to go wake up whichever gendarme was on night duty so we could cross the border, but no.  There is no gendarme on night duty, and the regular gendarme would probably not be happy if we woke him up in the middle of the night.  So how about we sneak across the very high-security border, by untying the string across the road?  No again.  The driver said we would just have to wait for the gendarme to wake up in the morning and let us across the border.  Right.  Okay.  So what are we supposed to do until then?  The driver goes and gets a mat out of the car and lies down on it by the side of the road.  It took my brain a minute to process it, but I finally figured it out: we were going to spend the night by the side of the road, with no shelter or stick bed or mosquito net or anything.  And Sira's and my bags were strapped up on top of the car with everyone else's luggage, so we couldn't even get to them to use the clothes as a pillow.  Sira dug a couple of plastic bags out of her purse, and we laid them on the ground so at least we didn't have our heads in the dirt.  And then we lay down on the ground and went to sleep. 

 

Peace Corps volunteers are always telling each other these sorts of stories, implicitly adding up points to see who is more "hard core".  I decided that sleeping in the dirt at a border crossing, on our way to we didn't even know exactly where, put Sira and me way ahead of everyone else in the competition. 

Guinea vacation day 10: Pita and Labe

Sira and I decided that we had seen all the sights in Guinea that we really wanted to see, so we got up early in the morning to start making our way back to Senegal.  We decided to bike to Pita, 53 kilometers away.  It was a perfect ride, almost entirely downhill, so we made it in just a few hours. 

 

In Pita we got lunch at a roadside stand (rice and meat) and guzzled down some bissap (hibiscus flower) juice.  While I was drinking, I felt something solid in my mouth – a bug.  Nice.  Shortly afterward, Sira and I both had stomach aches.  I don't know if it was the meat or the buggy bissap, but we both recovered after an hour or so.

 

From Pita we took a car to Labe, and this time stayed at the Peace Corps "house" – the Hotel La Campagne.  It was easily the nicest place we stayed at in Guinea, and even had a mosquito net for the bed.  We had pizza again for dinner, but theirs wasn't quite as good as at the other place.

Guinea vacation day 9: Dalaba

We decided to go back to the Pont de Dieu and spend another day swimming and reading, since it had been so nice the day before.  Unfortunately, this time when we got there, there were Guineans doing laundry in the best swimming hole.  So we didn't have it all to ourselves this time, but we were able to swim in another swimming hole, and we still had a nice time. 

 

Back at the hotel in the evening, we had millet again for dinner, and then we watched the Guinean (state-run) news on tv, which was mostly footage of the president receiving several new ambassadors.  Not too exciting.

Guinea vacation day 8: Dalaba

After breakfast, as Sira and I were getting ready to go out and do some sightseeing, a Guinean girl came to our room and just stood awkwardly in the doorway.  I couldn't tell if she worked at the hotel, or was a guest, or what. 

 

"Can I help you?" I asked. 

 

"Do you speak French?" she asks me. 

 

"Yes." 

 

So she came up very close to me and whispered in my ear, "I trust you." 

 

"Um, okay, thanks.  But can I help you with something?"

 

"I trust you." 

 

All this time she is looking around at our stuff in the room, and I start to think she's here to look around and see what might be worth stealing after we've left.  Sira sees that I am getting nowhere communicating with this girl, so she tries to speak to her in Pulaar.  No luck.  Finally we get the girl to leave, and Sira and I decide to take all our valuables with us while we're out for the day, even though we don't feel super secure carrying it all around with us, either. 

 

Then as we are almost ready to go, one of the European tourists we had made friends with came to me and asked if I had had rubber straps on the luggage rack on my bike (which was locked up in the courtyard of the hotel).  I had.  She told me that the man they had hired to drive them to some nearby waterfalls for the day (who, coincidentally, was the same man who drove us the day before from Pita to Dalaba) had just taken them off my bike and stuck them in his pocket.  Of course he was still at the hotel, waiting for the tourists to be ready to go, so I went and found him and asked him if he had stolen my bike straps.  He gave them back without any fuss, and I lectured him a bit, asking him what he thought he was doing, taking other people's things.

 

I was starting to think that people in Dalaba are just weird.

 

Finally we were able to leave the hotel, and we went first to the tourism office, where the European tourists had told us they sell a booklet with instructions for going on hikes in the area.  (Although they warned us that the instructions included lots of things like, "turn right at the red door" when the red door had long ago been painted another color or taken down altogether).

 

So we got the booklet and decided to try biking to the "Pont de Dieu" (Bridge of God).  The directions, of course, told us to get there by taking the road heading south out of town and then turning off into the bush, when in actuality we should have taken the road north out of town.  So it took us a while, but we were able to ask people along the way for directions, so we made it eventually.  And discovered that the Pont de Dieu is a natural rock bridge over a pretty little waterfall with some nice little swimming holes.  And absolutely no one else around!  So Sira and I decided to spend the rest of the afternoon there, just swimming and lying on the rocks and reading. 

 

In the late afternoon we biked back into Dalaba, this time along the correct path, which took us through bamboo groves and a pine forest – beautiful!  We got dinner from a restaurant shack right next to the hotel: millet with fresh onion and tomato, only about $1 for enough for four of us (we invited two of the tourist girls to eat with us, so they could tell us their horror story about their day with the crazy driver who stole my bike straps).  Guinean food is delicious. And so cheap!  If I could get a good internet connection, and a job I could do over the internet, I think I would live there. 

Guinea vacation day 7: Douki to Dalaba

The next morning we skipped hiking and went straight into the village to try to get a car back to Pita.  We had to wait for several hours, but a car did finally come, and we were able to get to Pita, and from there to take another car to Dalaba. 

 

In Dalaba we found a nice, cheap hotel to stay at - $2 a night per person.  There were some European tourists staying there, the first other toubabs we had seen on our trip, so we had a nice time talking with them.  Then we biked into town to find dinner.  We had roasted corn on the cob – a treat, since it won't be in season in Senegal until September or so – and we also found a woman selling beans, but they weren't as good as the ones in Mali.

 

By the time we had finished dinner it was already dark, and we still had to bike back across town to our hotel.  Of course there were no streetlights, and we hadn't thought to bring flashlights since it was daylight when we left.  There was, however, a storm approaching, so there were occasional flashes of lightning to light our way.  And my friend Sira apparently can see in the dark, because she zoomed off at full speed back toward the hotel, while I came along slowly behind her, afraid of falling into a hole or making a wrong turn in the pitch dark.  So of course we got separated, and with my bad sense of direction, I missed a turn, which I realized when the paved road turned into dirt again.  So I spent about an hour wandering through the town in the dark, occasionally stopping and asking people which direction the hotel was in.  I wasn't too worried though – I knew I would either make it there eventually, or (probably if it started pouring) I would find somewhere else to spend the night.  But eventually I made it back to the hotel, where Sira was amazed to learn that I don't have x-ray laser night vision like she does.

Guinea vacation day 6: Douki

The next morning, after breakfast of bread and wild honey, Hassan's brother Abdul Rahim took us on the "Indiana Jones" hike, down into the valley where it feels like a rain forest, and then Hassan took us on another hike down a mountainside with beautiful views but if you slipped you were doomed.  (Luckily, we didn't slip).

 

After hiking we had lunch back at the guesthouse - chewy, pounded manioc balls in a peanut sauce.  Not my favorite, but at least it was something different.  Then we went up to the main road to try to get a car back to Pita.  We sat by the road and waited for hours, but no car ever came.  So it was back to Hassan's to spend another night, but he was nice and gave us a discount this time. 

Guinea vacation day 5: Pita and Douki

We decided not to spend any time in Labe, since both Sira and I pretty much hated it as soon as we got there (except for the delicious pizza!).  So we went to the garage and took a car to a small town called Pita (cost us about $3 each), where we planned to get a second car out to a small village called Douki, which according to Lonely Planet has a guesthouse with a "luxurious hut" right on the edge of "Guinea's Grand Canyon". 

 

When we got to Pita we started asking around at the garage for the car that goes to Douki.  The first guy we talked to tried to tell us there is no regular car to Douki, and that we would have to hire out a whole car (his, presumably) to get there.  Luckily we have lived in Africa longer than five minutes, so we knew not to believe him and we went and asked around some more until we found the car.  It took a few hours for the car to fill with passengers and be ready to go, but we had a good time waiting because everyone in Pita (except for the one guy who tried to rip us off) was really friendly.

 

We discovered that in Guinea, the station wagons that in Senegal are known as "7 places" are instead "9 places" because they cram four people into the middle row and two people into the front passenger seat.  However, this can actually make the ride more comfortable - as you are bouncing over giant rocks and potholes, the extra person in the row means that you are crammed in so tightly that there is no room for your body to be sliding around or bouncing up and hitting your head on the roof.  There was some sort of mix up with selling tickets for our car, so when we were ready to go the driver discovered that there were ten people with tickets instead of the regulation nine.  What to do with the extra person?  Have him ride on the roof, of course!

 

After about two hours bouncing up a rocky mountain road, we arrived in Douki.  The villagers pointed us the way to Hassan Bah's guesthouse, about 2 km down a path.  In ten minutes we were there - and discovered that the "luxurious hut" which was going to cost us about $20 each a night was just a regular hut, no fancier than my hut in my village.  And the mattress was just rice sacks sewn together and filled with straw.  And Guinea's Grand Canyon? Nowhere to be seen. 

 

We were pretty disappointed and grumpy to discover that this place was not what we had been expecting.  Luckily, Hassan Bah, the owner of the "guesthouse" showed up right away to take us on a hike.  Which turned out to be absolutely beautiful, which cheered us up right away.  (Although Sira still tried to convince Hassan that $20 a night was way too much to charge people, especially us poor Peace Corps volunteers, to sleep in a hut and eat village food.  But Hassan didn't budge.)

 

We discovered that Hassan Bah considers part of his job to be entertainment, and that he is just Americanized enough to be hilarious.  He grew up in Sierra Leone and worked on cargo ships for years, so he's a lot more worldly than your average villager.  He can juggle and walk on his hands, and he loves making up acronyms: HCH is Hard Core Hiker, and WB is Water Bottle (which he can carry on his head with no hands).  Cigarettes are Cancer Sticks. 

 

So we had a great time, and when we got back from the hike, Hassan's wife had dinner ready for us: the standard Guinean dish of rice with a manioc leaf and peanut sauce.

 

Then it was off to bed on our straw mattresses.

Guinea vacation day 4

The next morning we got up early to finish our bike trip to Labe.  We had planned to give the school principal a little money to thank him for putting us up for the night and giving us dinner, but before we got a chance he pulled me aside and asked me if I could return his hospitality by paying to get his motorcycle fixed.  According to at least Senegalese rules, it is pretty rude to ask for anything in return for hospitality, so Sira and I were surprised and put off by his request.  We decided to just give him the amount we had already planned on, about $5.

 

So we gave him the money and took off.  The villagers had told us that we had about 4 km left of uphill, and after that it would pretty much downhill all the way to Labe.  But it turned out to be the longest 4 km in the world.  For the next two hours we were pushing, and occasionally trying to ride and quickly giving up, our bikes straight uphill.  After about an hour we stopped to take a break and eat a mango, and while we were sitting by the side of the road, who should come zipping up on his motorcycle but the school principal.  He told us that he really appreciated the money we had given him, but he really needed a lot more money to get his motorcycle fixed.  The motorcycle that he had just ridden up the mountain to catch us.  We were so surprised to see him and be asked for money again that we gave him some.  And immediately regretted it.  I am still kicking myself a little bit for giving it to him.  But maybe karma will even things out in the end.

 

So then we continued on.  Uphill.  We passed a house with a big orange grove and stopped to ask if they would sell us some.  We agreed on a price (forget now what it was) for 5 oranges, but then the woman gave us a bunch more for free!  They were the first oranges I've had in months - you can buy them sometimes in Tamba, but they're imported so they're pretty expensive.

 

Finally, about 2 pm, we made it to Labe.  I didn't like the town - there were lots of empty, half-built houses on the way in and it felt kind of creepy.  And then when we got downtown there was terrible air pollution from cars, the worst I've experienced in Africa.  But maybe I just didn't like the city because I was so tired.  We stopped at a restaurant shack and had lunch - sweet potato leaf sauce over rice - very good!  Then we started asking around for where the Peace Corps house is, but people either didn't know or they told us it was in the opposite direction from where the last person we'd asked had told us.  Finally a kid told us he would take us.  But then he just took us to a hotel.  So we thanked him and he left, and then we went inside to ask the hotel owner if he knew the Peace Corps house.  Found out there is no Peace Corps house; in Guinea, volunteers just get vouchers to stay at a hotel.  Score one more point for Senegal.

 

We decided to stay at the hotel we were at, just because we were there and too tired to go looking around town for another place.  They let us stay in a tent in their courtyard for $5 each, and we spent the rest of the afternoon doing laundry (by hand, in a bucket, of course, but at least they had tap water instead of a well).  That evening for dinner we had pizza in the restaurant hotel - a special treat after our two days of riding bikes straight uphill, and it turned out to be the best pizza I've had in Africa.

Guinea vacation day 3

The third day of our vacation my friend Sira and I decided that we would bike to the town of Labe, about 120 km away.  I was pretty intimidated by this plan, but Sira really wanted to do it and I didn't want to be a party pooper.  And Mali is a higher elevation than Labe, so we hoped that it would be a fairly easy, mostly downhill ride.  And I've often ridden between Tamba and my village, which is 70 km and takes only four hours, so we thought we could make it to Labe in one day.

 

So we got up early, stopped for breakfast in town (just coffee and bread) and by 8:30 we were off.  The first several hours were great - mostly downhill, and we were able to go fast enough to get a nice breeze, and there was lots of shade and almost no traffic on the road.  We passed through several villages that just reeked of vinegar.  It took us a while to figure out what it was, but finally we realized that the smell was coming from rotting mangoes.  They have so many mangoes that not only can the people not eat them all, but the goats and sheep can't either!  This is unimaginable luxury in Senegal.  We stopped in one village and asked a woman if she would fill up our water bottles (we had little chlorine pills to put in them so we wouldn't get amoebas or anything else).  After she filled them up we tried to give her about $0.10 to thank her, but she didn't want to take it - giving water to travelers is just expected here.  Finally she agreed to take it, but insisted on giving us some mangoes - and they turned out to be the best mangoes I have ever eaten.  I started thinking about moving to Guinea - I could live there a really long time with almost no money, with food as cheap as it is.  Only problem is I couldn't live without internet!

 

The good times couldn't last forever though, so by about 1 pm, just as it was starting to get pretty hot, we came out of our nice mountains onto a flat plain with no shade.  No more coasting downhill, and pretty soon we were going uphill.  The soft dirt and gravel road made it really hard to get traction for the bikes, so we ended up having to push them uphill a lot.  It was hot and exhausting.  We would push our bikes up a hill, praying that around the curve the road was flat or even downhill.  And every time, it was just more uphill.  For hours.  And every time we would stop for a few minutes to rest, gnats would attack us, trying to get into our eyes and nose, forcing us to get up and keep going.  I was hating life.  If I had been by myself, I think I might have just given up, laid down by the side of the road and cried.  Or at least tried to hitch a ride on a passing truck.  But I wasn't going to be a wimp in front of my friend, so I kept going.

 

By 4 pm we had only made it about 80 km (compare that to the 70 km in 4 hours I can do in nice flat Tamba!), so we decided it was time to give up for the day.  We started looking for a village where we could ask to spend the night.  The first place we stopped, hardly more than one family, and the woman we spoke to said that all the men were away from the village, so she couldn't give us permission to stay here.  So we had to keep going.  Up the never-ending mountain.  Did I mention I was hating life?

 

But at the next village we came to we had better luck.  The villagers said that we could sleep at their primary school, where the school principal and his family also live.  So they opened up one of the classrooms for us, and we set up our tent inside (mainly to keep bugs out).  The principal's wife gave us dinner - a sauce made of cassava leaves and crushed peanuts over rice.  It was delicious.  It would probably have been polite for us to sit around the fire and socialize with the family a bit, but we were both too exhausted.  Hopefully the family didn't think we were too rude for going to bed right away. 

Guinea vacation day 2

We got up early and went into town to find breakfast - rice and peanut porridge from a woman on the street.  Then we went to the tourist office, where we met a very friendly old man who wanted to escort us all over town.  We had a hard time getting rid of him, but after about an hour we finally succeeded.  We visited the women's cooperative, which was recommended by our guidebook, but instead of women we found one man weaving cloth.  We watched him for a while and bought some cloth as a souvenir.

 

Walking around town, I passed the first woman I've ever seen wearing a full burqa - everything was covered up except for her hands and her eyes.  She even had socks on with her sandals.  I wondered where she's from, why she wears a burqa when no one else does.  I suppose it would probably not have been rude at all, but just very African of us, to go up to her and start asking her personal questions, but the burqa was kind of intimidating so we didn't talk to her.

 

On the other end of the spectrum, we also saw the first drunk person I've seen in Africa.  In Senegal, Christians or Muslims who aren't particularly observant may drink at home or in bars, but no one dares to go out in public intoxicated.  So score one point for Senegal over Guinea.

 

In the afternoon we went for a hike with a local guy we hired as our guide to see the "Dame de Mali" (Lady of Mali), a cliff with the profile of a woman's face that is supposedly entirely natural, not man-made.  The resemblance was so clear, though, that I'm a little skeptical about it being natural.

 

Some first impressions of Guinea:  It's beautiful!  The mountains and greenness and cooler weather were a wonderful change from dusty brown Tamba.  It seemed a lot cleaner too, probably because trash and dirt get washed down the mountains by the rain.  The guidebooks made us think that Guinea was going to be a lot poorer than Senegal, but in Mali everyone lived in nice "batiment" (brick and concrete) houses, and the kids looked much more well-fed, probably because there are so many more mangoes and other fruit growing everywhere.  Another nice change was that there were no "talibes", beggar children asking for money.  Bad news for me, though, only Pulaar is spoken in the region.  Even Jaxankes I met only spoke Pulaar!  So I had a hard time talking to people unless they spoke French, but luckily I had my Pulaar-speaking friend Sira with me, and by the end of the trip I was able to learn a few Pulaar phrases.

 

So the final score at the end of my first day: Guinea 5, Senegal 2.

Guinea trip photos

Photos from my Guinea trip are finally up!

New photos posted

Photos from my trip to Bassari country in Kedougou are up!

Vacation Part 2: Guinea. Day 1

 

 

To get to Guinea, my volunteer friend "Sira Ba" and I took a car from Kedougou, in Senegal, to the town of Mali in the Fuuta Djalon mountains of Guinea.  Mali is the highest-elevation town in the country, and since we were planning on doing a lot of biking on this trip, we decided to start from the highest point possible, so we'd be going downhill as much as possible.

 

We left Kedougou around 9 in the morning, riding in a Land Rover with 10 other people plus 5 kids stuffed in the back.  As soon as we left the city of Kedougou the road was no longer a road but just a dirt track.  We were constantly swerving around trees and boulders and driving through enormous potholes.  It wasn't long before three people in the back of the car with us were hanging out the windows to vomit.  The road soon became very steep, and we were often on the edge of the mountain with only a few inches of dirt road between us and falling into the valley far far below.  Kind of terrifying, but also beautiful.  And we were lucky to have a great driver.  Twice the road became so steep and narrow that they had us all get out of the car to lighten its load, and we walked up the mountain, and then the car followed behind us. 

 

We only passed a handful of villages along the way, each at least an hour's drive away from the next.  I think those villages must rely almost entirely on what the villagers can grow and produce themselves, since it would be so difficult and expensive to bring supplies out.  But I did find out later that there are footpaths between Kedougou and Mali that are a lot more direct than going by the "road", so the villages aren't quite as isolated as they seemed at first.

 

I didn't have a visa for Guinea as I was technically supposed to since I had just decided at pretty much the last minute to go on this trip with my friend and hadn't had the time to go all the way up to Dakar to get one.  But I had heard other volunteers had been able to get into Guinea without visas, and I talked to the frontier police in Kedougou and the guy there told me I could get across legally by just filling out some paperwork if I crossed through one of three border checkpoints.  I wasn't sure if he really knew what he was talking about, though.

 

So when we got to the border crossing (which was just the gendarme's hut in the first village we came to in Guinea) I didn't know what was going to happen.  I wasn't too nervous, though, because I figured the worst that could happen was that he wouldn't let me in, and I would have to get my bike and other stuff off the car and bike back to Kedougou. 

 

The border guard was really young, probably just hired recently, and he was really nice and seemed like he was just trying to do a good job.  He told me, "I'm sorry, but you need a visa to get into Guinea.  You have to get it in Dakar.  We don't sell them here."  I had planned to try bribing the guard if necessary, but this guy was so nice, I didn't want to be the one to corrupt him.  So I just said, "I understand.  But since I'm here (out in the middle of nowhere) what do you want me to do?"  But he just kept repeating, "You have to get a visa in Dakar"; so I kept repeating, "I understand.  What should I do now?"  After ten or fifteen minutes of this, he stamped my passport and said I could go.  So I hit the jackpot: I saved about $100 by not buying a visa (plus the $50 or so it would have cost me to make the trip to Dakar), didn't break any laws by bribing public officials, got into Guinea, and even had a stamp in my passport to show that I had entered the country legally, in case any police demanded my passport later on during the trip.  The only downside was that my volunteer friend "Sira" was a little indignant that she had spent so much money getting a real visa, while I had managed to waltz into the country without spending a dime.  But she was glad I wasn't getting sent back and leaving her to vacation alone, so there were no real hard feelings.

 

We finally made it to Mali about 5:30, just as it was starting to rain (I had forgotten what it feels like to be cold!).  Any town in Senegal when we arrive at the garage, we are immediately surrounded by people yelling at us – talibe beggars asking for money, taxi drivers asking where we want to go, random guys wanting to "help" us with our bags.  But the Mali garage wasn't like that at all – no one bothered us or even stared at us.  We were able to get our bags together in peace and then decide what to do next (first priority: exchange money; second: find a place to stay for the night; third: find food).

 

Exchanging money was easy; even the exchange rate was simple – just add an extra zero to CFAs (so 100 CFA = 1000 Guinea francs).  Nearly all their money is paper though, rather than coins (the equivalent of a nickel is a paper bill), and the bills they gave us were all small denominations (about $1), so even exchanging a relatively small amount of money we ended up with a suitcase-size stack of Guinea money.  (And there was no room in my backpack for it – how could I have guessed when I packed that I would need to leave room for piles of money?) 

 

Finding the hostel was a little harder.  We had seen a sign for it as we drove in, and we stopped several times to ask for directions, but the problem was that there were no real roads, just rocks everywhere.  So it was hard to follow directions – turn right at the big rock?  What?  But we finally found it.  Turns out it is owned by a Finnish woman (found that out after noticing that all the books on the bookshelf were in Finnish), but she wasn't there, just a young Guinean guy who was ethnically Jaxanke but only spoke Pulaar, like everyone else in northern Guinea – disappointing for me.  We talked him into letting us sleep in our tent on the grounds rather than in a room for half price – about $3 each. 

 

Then we walked back into town to find dinner.  First we found something like hush puppies dipped in a delicious hot sauce, which was a good snack, and then we hit the jackpot – a woman selling plates of beans with fresh tomatoes, onions, and avocado on top.  It was delicious, much better than Senegalese beans which are always really oily.  And it was only 3000 francs, about $0.75, for enough food for two of us (Senegalese meals are always about 500 CFA/$1 per person).  I think I might have to move to Mali just so I can eat those beans every day.  And with those prices, I could live there for a really long time on almost nothing.

 

After dinner we went back to the hostel (getting lost in the dark several times along the way) and went to bed.  A great first day in Guinea.

Vacation Part 1: Basari Country

Written Saturday, 31 May 2008

 

 

Every year the Basari people, who live in the mountainy southern region of Senegal and who have (for the most part) retained their traditional animist beliefs and cultural practices, hold an initiation ceremony for their boys who are coming of age.  This has become a bit of a tourist spectacle, which for the most part I think the Basari people welcome because they make money out of it, charging tourists for the privilege of taking pictures of the ceremony and selling them food and souvenirs.

 

I was really excited to go to the initiation ceremony because I love all that kind of cultural stuff, and especially because since the village I live in doesn't practice traditions like that since it is populated mostly by migrants of different ethnic groups from all over Senegal and West Africa, so there is not as much of a sense of community and tradition as in other villages. 

 

So for part 1 of my vacation, I took a car down to Kedougou with a couple other volunteers.  I got my first warthog sandwich (finally!) for dinner that night – delicious! Then we spent the night at the Peace Corps house in Kedougou, and in the morning got up and started the 80 km bike ride out to Basari country, where the initiation festival was supposed to happen.  We biked about 40 km the first day, to a Jaxanke village where another volunteer used to live.  (She had to relocate to another village because the first village doesn't have a well and gets their water from the river, which is a health no-no for volunteers because of parasites and other contaminants in the water).  So we had a nice time in that village, talking to the villagers and comparing their village to ours (such beautiful, neat fences they had around all their fields and compounds!  We were all a little jealous.)

 

We spent the night in a hut that the village teacher lives in (the teacher was away), and then the next morning we got up and biked the last 40 km to Salemata, the last town on the road to Basari country.  When we got to Salemata we were of course filthy and hot and tired from biking all morning on a dirt road, so we were really lucky to run into a man who some of the other volunteers knew (he drives one of the 7-place cars between Tamba and Kedougou) who took us to the house of a friend of his where we could wash up, eat lunch, and relax until later in the afternoon when it was cool enough to continue our trip.  (We bought rice, meat, and other ingredients for the family, so we wouldn't be burdening them by eating all their food).

 

Later in the day, when we had rested and the sun was finally cooling down a bit (that's how you say it in Mandinka – "the sun is hot today" or "the sun is cold today") we left our bikes at the nice villager's house and hiked 6 km up into the mountains where the Basari people live.  Six kilometers doesn't sound very far, but it seemed like we were climbing at a 45-degree grade most of the time, and after already having biked all morning, it was pretty tough. 

 

But after about two hours, we finally made it.  Only to be told that the village where we were wasn't participating in the initiation ceremony that year, either because they couldn't afford it because of a bad harvest or because they didn't have enough boys to take part (we were told both reasons, and I don't know which one is correct).  And the two villages in the area that were still participating weren't holding their ceremony until a week later. 

 

So we were unlucky, and all very disappointed.  But we made the best of it, having fun talking to the villagers and drinking palm wine which they make and sell by the gourd bowl (not my favorite taste, but it was interesting to try).  One of the village men tried to sell us a traditional musical instrument called an etumbuh, which I wasn't particularly interested in buying but I did ask if I could take a picture of him playing it.  I thought he said yes, so I snapped the picture, but apparently I had misunderstood and he (pretended to) get mad at me for taking the picture without permission and then guilted me into buying an etumbuh to make up for my breach of conduct.  I thought he was going to make me pay a really high price for it, since I was sort of obligated to buy it after taking the picture, but instead he gave me the best price of any of the volunteers, 500 CFA (about $1).

 

The next day, the owner of the "campement" (hut hotel) that we stayed at sat down with us and told us about the initiation ceremony and other Basari traditions.  So we actually were able to learn a lot, and in some ways I think it was better that we were there when they weren't having the ceremony because this way the villagers had time to talk to us.  Part of the deal for getting a good price at the campement was that we would look at the art and jewelry that the villagers had for sale; no commitment to buy, of course.  I wasn't planning on getting anything, because I didn't want to collect random tourist junk, but then the stuff turned out to be really beautiful, all made by hand, and I really liked that you bought directly from the villager who had made it, not at all like buying from a tourist shop in Dakar.  So I ended up getting a few things that I will decorate my future apartment with (all at the reduced "Peace Corps price", although I didn't bargain very hard because I really liked the villagers and I figured that this tourist money is helping them to maintain their traditional practices).

 

After that we hiked back to Salemata – only took an hour this time since we were going downhill – where we picked up our bikes, and then we took a car back to Kedougou, with a crazy driver who insisted on driving really fast on the windy, potholed dirt road.  We were all afraid we were going to get killed, and we asked him to slow down several times, but since we'd already paid him up front he didn't have any incentive to listen to us.  But we were lucky and made it back to Kedougou in one piece.  No tip for the driver!

 

So that was my Basari vacation.  I'd really like to go back there and learn more about their animist traditions, which is so different from the mostly Muslim Senegalese culture I am used to.  I'm thinking I might try again to go to the festival next year, right before my Peace Corps service is over.

 

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.