More Hong Kong photos

Hong Kong photo

A picture from my July trip to Hong Kong, for your viewing pleasure.

Exciting/scary

For the past two days I've been in a training course on conflict assessment and programming (in which we learn how to assess what's driving the conflict, the key actors, overall context, and mitigating factors, and then to design programs to mitigate the conflict).  Throughout the training we used the current situation in Sri Lanka as a case study, determining what the conflict is really about, what opportunities may exist right now, and what sort of programs we would like to implement there.  I really enjoy doing case studies, so this was a lot of fun for me, but the best part was I realized that soon, when I go overseas to work in the Mission, I could be doing work just like this.  But it won't be a case study, it will be for real, and whatever programs I design could actually be implemented!

Very exciting, but also a lot of responsibility...

Swearing In

My training class, along with Alonso Fulgham, USAID's Acting Administrator, and a couple of other important people, just after our swearing-in ceremony, on the very first day.

Training

So far all my time at work has been taken up with training - the first five weeks were "orientation", which was a lot of information from Human Resources about how the Foreign Service works and there were lots of forms to fill out, and then there were lots of sessions to give us a general introduction to the agency, with information about what the different bureaus do, etc. At the end of the five weeks we had a graduation ceremony, which is where they told us what country we've each been assigned to.

Since then, for the past three weeks, I've been in training provided by my bureau (Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance) to learn how to do my job. We've learned how to assess the democracy and governance situation in a country, how to evaluate the impact of programs, and lots of other stuff. The classes have almost all been really interesting, but I have to admit that after eight weeks now of sitting and watching powerpoints all day, I'm having a hard time paying attention.

But for the next two days at least, there will be a change of pace: we're moving on from democracy and governance to conflict management & mitigation, which I think I'll find a bit more interesting (not that D&G wasn't, but it's just not my main interest), and it's also going to be at a different location, which I'm hoping will be cheerier than our cold, dreary basement room.

Also they've said they're going to feed us breakfast, lunch, and a snack for the next two days, which seems so fancy after the past eight weeks of not even being provided coffee or water cooler water. (I've been spending $1.80 a day in the cafeteria on coffee, but I figure it's not so bad since I bring my own lunch and I've been biking to work. Although I can definitely make myself feel guilty by thinking about what my host family could do with an extra $1.80 a day). Anyway, all you taxpayers out there worried about government wastefulness, I haven't seen it at USAID - I mean really, not even water coolers?

Anyway, back to my point about training: two more weeks of training to go, and then, theoretically at least, I will move on to doing some actual job-related work. Inshallah. But I really only have a few weeks in October where that might happen, and then I have a couple weeks of disaster assistance training, and then I'll start full-time language training.

Busy busy busy. But I'm loving it (okay, maybe not all the powerpoints, but in general). And I'm so impressed with how smart and knowledgeable about their jobs everyone at USAID is, it makes me feel like I've really picked a good place to work.

Conflict in Uganda

Recently there's been conflict in Uganda between the Ugandan government and followers of a traditional ruler of the Baganda people.

Guess I won't be bored in my job...

Drought, famine in northern Kenya

I've started trying to read up a bit about Kenya and the whole east and central Africa region in preparation for my assignment out there, and it sounds like things are getting pretty bad out there now. There's a drought, and people are dying.

Update

I found out this past week that I'll be working in the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) - yay! And I just found out on Friday that my first assignment will be to Nairobi, Kenya, to work at the regional mission for East Africa. Also yay! So I am a very happy girl.

I think I'll be moving to Kenya sometime early next year (February/March/April) depending on if they want me to learn Swahili or just improve my French for future postings. Our five weeks of orientation training are finally over, so starting Monday and for the next several months, I'll be doing technical training (like how to do conflict assessments, design programs, and do monitoring and evaluation) and rotations in different offices, which is basically like short internships. Hopefully it will all be very interesting and I'll learn a lot.

What hasn't happened yet is meeting my supervisor. We've got a meeting scheduled for tomorrow, so fingers crossed that it goes well and we get along.

I'm back!

...And, I'm back! Finally!

I think I mentioned before that I had gotten a job with USAID (the U.S. Agency for International Development - a cross between being a diplomat and a Peace Corps Volunteer). Well, I'm now three weeks into the job, and it's going well so far (more on that below). And, best of all - okay, not best of all, because having a job I think I'm going to love and having my first paycheck for it coming next week are in the best of all category - but anyway, in the good news section, is that I have been told officially that I may continue to write a public blog, although of course I have to be careful about what I say so I don't get myself in trouble and get fired. (Did you notice my disclaimer on the sidebar that says this is a personal website and doesn't represent the views of the U.S. government?) So I will not be telling you, for example, which governments are corrupt dictatorships. You probably already have a good idea, but if not, you can look up reports from Human Rights Watch and Transparency International. Hopefully I will still find lots of interesting things to write about, although with my impending elite diplomat lifestyle they will probably not have quite the same flavor as my village stories from Peace Corps.

So, on to what I've been up to in the last few weeks. Over the last few decades USAID has been shrinking, and now the government has decided to reverse this trend and hire lots of people. And I'm one of them. Right now I'm in a five-week orientation class for new foreign service employees. We have a great mix in the class of junior- and mid-level hires, and lots of different job titles - Health Officers, Education Officers, Agriculture Officers, Economists, Engineers... and Crisis, Stabilization, and Governance Officers, of which I am one. I think uniquely among all these job titles, my position is nebulous as I (and others with the same title) will be further specialized within this category into Democracy and Governance, Humanitarian Assistance, or Conflict Mitigation fields. I don't know yet what specialization I'm going to be assigned (I think I'll find out on Monday), but I'm really hoping for humanitarian assistance or conflict mitigation. Fingers crossed.

Anyway, the last few weeks has been pretty standard orientation stuff - lots of human resources forms and information (they keep talking about planning for retirement, which is a little freaky for those of us in the under-30 category), Powerpoint briefings on what the different USAID offices do, team-building exercises, etc. Two more weeks of this, and then on August 21st we'll have a graduation ceremony and find out what countries we're being assigned to first. As for me, I don't really care what country I go to, as long as there are interesting projects for me to work on. Although I did tell them I hate being cold, and so I'd prefer to go somewhere with a warm climate.

Okay, enough for now. Hopefully more regular posting to come.

The American Dream

For the past two weeks I was working as a "Cultural Adviser" (i.e. glorified chaperone) for groups of high school exchange students visiting D.C. for a few days before heading back to their home countries. During that time, there were of course lots of conversations with the students about how their year in America had gone, how they felt about their experiences here, etc. Including a lot of talk about the "American Dream".

I learned back in elementary school that the American Dream was about opportunity and social mobility - you could come to America as a poor immigrant with nothing, and work hard, and become rich. Or you could grow up in poverty in rural America, have little formal schooling, and one day become President of the United States (like Abraham Lincoln).

But the American Dream that these kids talked about was something different, and I really enjoyed hearing their interpretations of it. Most humorously, a lot of the boys talked about American girls as the American Dream. As in, how they're going to miss the American Dream when they go back home! I'm not sure if girls are the American Dream because of being (to them) exotic-looking and therefore especially beautiful, or if it's more about the rules of boy-girl relationships in the U.S. being (in general) more relaxed than in their home countries. In any case, I enjoyed that interpretation of the American Dream.

More seriously, one of the activities we did with one group of the students was a reception with a couple of U.S. Senators who sponsored the bill to create the exchange program, and one of the students (a girl from Morocco) gave a beautiful speech about what coming to America had meant to her. I wish I had the text, because it was really a great speech, especially for a high school student (I couldn't have done as well). But in any case, in it she mentioned the American Dream - before coming here she had seen American tv and movies, and she thought the American Dream was about having a nice life, with a nice house and car and all the other luxuries we take for granted in this country. But she said after living here for a year she'd realized that the American Dream is something much deeper than that, that it is about freedom and respecting each other in spite of whatever differences we may have.

So I learned a lot from these kids in the past few weeks. And they also made me feel quite "proud to be an American" (I can't hear that phrase without having the song pop into my head).

Help the Dialacoto Health Workers Association

It seems that I have left Senegal, but Senegal has not yet left me.  A "Peace Corps Partnership Project" which I had been working on since last August with my volunteer neighbor Hawa Ba has finally been approved.  Which means that the Powers That Be in Peace Corps have decided that it's a worthwhile project, posted it online, and we can now solicit funds for it from friends, family, and the public. 

A little background: Peace Corps Partnerships is one of the primary ways for Volunteers to get funding for projects.  It's supposed to be a little more formal and legit than Volunteers just asking their friends and family to send them money - the project has to be vetted by Peace Corps to ensure it's a good project, and all donations are tax-deductible, like giving to any charity.  This particular project is to help a Health Workers Association in the Dialacoto area where my village is located, get some supplies to extend their health education, sanitation, and income generating projects.  The funds will go toward getting each member of the association a bicycle to use to travel to villages in the area where they work (which especially benefits the women members, by the way, as they are the least likely to own or have access to a bicycle), and to buying supplies like shovels and rakes, which will be used to keep the villages clean and for gardening activities like the mango orchard they started last year.  You can read more details about the project here. 

I didn't start working on this project until I'd been in my village for over a year because I wanted to make sure that any big projects that I did would be things that would really be useful and would benefit the community.  And I wanted the idea for a project to come from someone in the community, rather from me, in order to ensure that it was something people really wanted.  So this project was finally proposed to me last August by the president of the Health Workers Association, and the Association is contributing 25% of the funds for the project, so I feel pretty confident that this is something that people really want and that will be useful.

So that is my spiel.  Please consider contributing whatever you feel comfortable with. 

Back to America!

After a week of much paperwork, running around, and stress in Dakar, last Friday night it was finally time for me to go to the airport, hop on a plane, and come home to the U.S.  I got lucky in that an American woman I'm friends with who works at the embassy in Dakar was flying to the U.S. the same night, so we went to the airport together.  Everyone there knows her because she flies so often, so she gets VIP treatment, not having to stand in lines with the masses.  And since I was with her, I got the VIP treatment too!  Someone came over and told me to give him my  passport and he would take care of everything, which he did.  It made the whole experience so much more survivable, especially since it was 3 am and I was exhausted.  The flight was fine, except that Delta's "dinner" meal (served at about 4 am Dakar time) was ham sandwiches.  On a flight from a country that is 95% Muslim!  A woman across the aisle from me complained, and the stewardess (or air hostess, or whatever you're supposed to call them) told her she should have ordered a special meal ahead of time.  That made me kind of mad.  On a flight from a Muslim country a non-pork meal should not be considered a special request!  I didn't specially request not to be served monkey eyeball soup, (a la Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom), but I was still be pretty shocked if they had served it on a flight to America, especially as the only meal option.

Okay, enough ranting about Delta's cultural insensitivity.  I'm back in America  now, and everything seems pretty normal, not too much culture shock, except: all the electronic noise! Heating fans, TVs, kitchen timers, phones ringing... sitting inside my friend's apartment, all these background noises that I would never have noticed before are making me feel like I am inside a bomb that's about to go off.  And it's very hard to concentrate.  I used to be an excellent multi-tasker, but now everything is distracting me so I can't pay attention to anything for more than half a second, so I can't keep up with conversations, and I am feeling lost and confused...  But I have confidence I will get used to all this again, and everything will be fine.  Inshallah!

Goodbye, Tambacounda

Yesterday I made the 10-hour Tamba-to-Dakar trip for the very last time (not counting possible trips back to visit someday). Everyone keeps asking me how it feels to have left my village, to know that I may never again see people who have been my family and friends for the past two years. The truth is, I don't know. I think I should be feeling really sad about saying goodbye to them all and to the incredible life I have been living for the last two years. Probably I will feel that eventually, maybe on the plane home, maybe later. But right now mostly I just feel relieved to have gotten the stressful goodbyes over and to finally be released from the never-ending village guilt.

And I wish I could say that my village goodbyes had gone well, that they were heartwarming and had left me with a warm fuzzy feeling. I wish that they had been. Instead, when I told my villagers it was my last week, all I got was people coming to my hut or pulling me aside to tell me, "When you leave, I want you to give me x. Okay?  Don't forget!  I've got dibs!"  The closest I got to anything like an "I'll miss you" was my host mother saying "What am I going to do when you're gone? We're not getting another volunteer after you, so who's going to give me money for going to the doctor and buying spices?"

After a couple days of that, I just couldn't take it anymore.  All I'd wanted was to have some quality time in my village, doing normal village things with my friends and family.  But except for the kids, who were adorable as always, I couldn't enjoy anyone's company because all they wanted to talk about was what presents I would give them.  So I decided it was time to leave, before the goodbyes could turn me bitter about my whole Peace Corps experience.  So I told my village I had to change plans and leave in the morning, instead of two days later as I had originally planned.  And then I finally got the nice goodbyes.  I invited my sisters over to my hut after dinner, planning to tell them that they could divide up all the stuff in my hut among themselves.  So they came over, but instead of immediately looking over my stuff and arguing over who got what as I had expected them to do, they just sat on my bed and wanted to talk.  So I ended up having a really nice last evening with my sisters, which made up a lot for the last couple of days.  And then in the morning I got up and biked out of the village before anyone was up (as I had told them I was planning to do) so there wouldn't be any chance for my nice goodbye to be ruined by more "gimme gimme".

So I guess the way my service ended was pretty typical of my whole experience in Senegal: lots of stress and frustration, with some really nice moments thrown in to make it all worth it.  

Rescuing the devil cat baby

When I arrived back in my village for the last time, after my very long trip to Thies and Dakar and America, I was greeted, as usual, with chants of “Khadija came! Khadija came!” and then the various kids I am friends with ran over and insisted on rolling my bike into my hut for me and sweeping out my hut and yard.

This time they decided to do a very thorough cleaning of my yard, so they tilted up my rotten, termite-infested outside bed to rake out underneath it as well. And there they discovered three adorable, tiny kittens, which looked exactly like the devil-cat that was once the bane of my existence, so I am sure they are her children. I should clarify, though: to me, the kittens looked adorable; to the kids helping clean up my hut, apparently they looked like evil monsters which must be immediately exterminated before they are able to carry out their dastardly plan to destroy the universe. I know this because immediately the kids started screaming, chasing after the cats, throwing things at them, and one child even tried to stomp on them. Which made me think of serial killers – don't they, as children, supposedly enjoy torturing and killing small animals? Probably this is a cultural thing that does not translate, though. At least I really hope so, or else a good proportion of my village kids are growing up to be serial killers.

Two of the kittens managed to run into the inside room of my hut, where the kids know they are not allowed to go. They asked me if I wanted to make an exception and let them in, just this once, so that they could de-monsterify my hut for me; I declined. The other kitten had escaped under my fence, out into the village somewhere. Or so I thought, until a while later when I was taking my bucket shower and heard a meowing somewhere around. At first I thought it was somewhere on the other side of the fence, crying because it couldn't find its brother and sister (still hiding behind a cardboard box in my hut). Eventually I realized, though, that the sound was coming from underneath me, from the pit of my latrine. The kitten must have fallen (or jumped) down the poop hole when the kids were chasing it.

This realization made me very sad. There was no way it would be able to climb out, which meant it would die down there, and probably I would have to listen to it cry and die slowly over the next few days. I considered the options: lower a bucket down the poop hole, somehow lure the cat into it, and haul it up? But the hole is too small for a bucket. Break the concrete floor of the latrine to make a bigger hole? Not very feasible, and anyway falling concrete would probably end up falling on the kitten and kill it. Throw some rat poison down the hole, so at least the cat would die quicker and hopefully less painfully? If I couldn't think of any other options, then yes.

But first I decided to go see if my friend Mamadou had any ideas. Given the kids' reactions to the kittens, I wasn't expecting a lot of sympathy from him for the cat's situation, but I thought it wouldn't hurt to try. Sure enough, he had an idea: we could lower a pole down the hole which the cat could then climb up. So we tried that, but none of the poles were long enough to reach the bottom of the pit. So then we attached two poles together with wire, and this time it was long enough. But I didn't hear the cat trying to climb it. Mamadou said the cat was probably just too scared and we should go away and leave it alone for a while, and then the cat would come out. So we went.

But when I came back later to check, the cat was still down there. I thought the pole was probably too narrow and hard for the cat to get its claws into, so I pulled the pole back out of the hole, found a big rope, and wrapped it around and around the pole, so that the cat would have something to stick its claws into. Then I put the pole back down the hole. This time the cat immediately jumped onto it and started climbing up. Soon it was out.

When I told this story later to other Volunteers, their first question was, “So then you adopted the kitten, right?” I will admit that I thought about it – after all, I'd saved its life. Seems like it must be meant to be my pet. But then I thought, what? Adopt a feral, poop-covered kitten, when I have only a few days left to live in the village? Get it all used to humans, so when I leave it will be an easier target for the possibly-future-serial-killer children? I don't think so.

So the cat ran off, and I never saw it again. But I like to imagine that it cleaned the poop off itself (although I don't like to imagine the actual process of it using its tongue to lick the poop off its body!), and found a nice, happy place to live. And hopefully will grow up to be something nicer than its mother the devil-cat.

Parade for Hu Jintao

While I was in Dakar in February, my friends and I happened upon a parade to welcome Hu Jintao (and more Chinese money) to Senegal. Some photos from the event:

I had to fight off about five Senegalese women to get this shirt (they were throwing them into the crowd):

Amerik!

A few quick observations from my first time back in America after almost two years:

1. America is freezing, freezing cold.
2. The food is amazing. I ate broccoli, cooked various ways, every day for a week. (Also I ate a lot of other stuff, none of which was rice or peanuts!)
3. Hot showers are very, very nice.
4. Technology has progressed so much in the last two years. And I want it all.
5. Malls are nice. There are lots of pretty things, and you can look at them, even try things on, without people getting in your face trying to sell them to you. But things are expensive. I missed being able to bargain on prices with the salespeople.
6. American refrigerators have so much food in them I almost went into shock.
7. Traveling in America is amazing. You get a whole seat to yourself, and there are seatbelts, and the vehicles have shocks, and there are a minimal number of potholes in the roads.
8. Where are the talibe begger children to eat my leftovers?
9. Why aren't strangers on the street or in the metro talking to me, asking me personal questions like whether I have a husband? I miss them.

So after two weeks in America I was ready to come back to Senegal, but now I miss all the nice things that are there. (And of course it was nice seeing my family and friends!)

I got a job!

I'm afraid it's been approximately forever, or exactly one month, since I last managed to post. Apologies to all the millions anxiously awaiting my pearls of wisdom.

Anyway, I have had a good reason for not posting. Which is, that I've been incredibly busy and also didn't want to say too much about what was going on until I knew how it was going to turn out. But now it's done, so I will tell:

Way back last June-ish I applied for a dream job: Crisis, Stabilization, and Governance Officer in the USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development, which is like grown-up Peace Corps) foreign service. But months went by and I never heard anything, so I kinda gave up on it. Then just before Christmas I received an email saying that they wanted me to come to Washington, D.C. for an interview. Very exciting! There was lots of paperwork that had to be done beforehand, so I had to give up my planned Christmas vacation to Mali and instead go to Dakar. Not going to Mali was a big disappointment, but definitely worth it for the possibility of an amazing job. Plus, who knows, maybe I'll have another chance to go to Mali someday.

So I got all my paperwork done in Dakar over Christmas, then went back to my village for a short time to do the girls' leadership camp that Hawa Ba and I had been planning for a long time. Then it was back up to Thies and Dakar, and then flying to America for my interview. I had two days to get my hair cut, get some interview clothes, and in general to make myself civilized and presentable for the interview. Then there was the interview, which lasted two days, during which I struggled to remember how to speak proper English using words over two syllables long.

I didn't think the interview went that great, but at least it got me back to America for the first time in two years. Afterwards I flew to Tennessee to see my family, which was very nice, and then after a week of eating non-stop and complaining about the cold American weather it was time to come back to Senegal and anxiously wait to find out if I got the job.

Which I finally heard about on Friday: someone called me on my cell phone and said "Congratulations...crackle crackle...continuing...crackle crackle... pre-employment process." Took me a little while to decode, but I finally realized: I got the job!!! It's contingent on getting security and medical clearances, so not quite in the bag yet, but hopefully it won't take too long for all of that to get worked out.

In the meantime, I've got until March 15 to finish up Peace Corps...

Trying to break some future wives

This past weekend Hawa Ba, Sira Sanokho, and I did some "girls' empowerment" (i.e. wife-breaking, to the Senegalese) activities at the middle school in our region.  It was really stressful, especially when we showed up at the school on Thursday (two days before our events were supposed to happen) to reconfirm everything with the school principal, only to find out he had gone off to Dakar for vacation and had done none of the things he had promised to do to get things ready.  (I have not yet forgiven him, probably never will).  But luckily the teachers at the school were really nice and willing to help out, so we were able to make the activities happen anyway.

First, Saturday afternoon as the kids were getting out of class for the day, we had a ceremony to recognize the girls who had the top grades in each class.  We gave a little speech about how the education of girls is important for the development of the country, and how these girls have worked really hard and should be congratulated on their achievements.  The whole idea, of course, being to boost the girls' self-esteem and encourage other girls to stay in school and study hard too.

Then that evening we showed a film (made by Peace Corps volunteers!) in the middle of Dialacoto about the importance of girls staying in school and getting an education.  There weren't that many girls who were able to come watch it (since we had to show it after dark and it's not really safe for them to be out by themselves at night), but there were tons of boys and men watching, which I think is also a good thing.


Then on Sunday the Peace Corps Cross-Cultural Trainer, who also does a lot of work with Senegalese girls, came from Thies to talk to our girls about staying in school and how to deal with common challenges Senegalese girls face.  The girls were really quiet for her whole talk, so we worried a little bit that they weren't finding it very interesting, but at the end when they were asked for a second time what they wanted to be when they grew up, one of the girls changed her original answer, a teacher, to a trainer who will teach women to know who they are, which is what our speaker had told the girls her job was.  So I think maybe it really made a difference to them after all.

That was my last big activity that I had planned before the end of my Peace Corps service (coming up frighteningly soon!), so it was really nice to finish on such a good note.

Happy holidays

The last day I was in Thies for Operation Smile I got an email inviting me for an interview for a job I had applied for, way back over six months ago. So I came up to Dakar to do some paperwork, and I've been really busy trying to get ready for the interview (which I'm trying not to get my hopes up about - I'll say more if I get the job). But I did find some time over Christmas and New Year's to have some fun, so here are some pictures for you to enjoy!

Just before Christmas, the nice American expat whose house I've been staying at in Dakar took us to Keur Moussa monastery to see an interesting fusion of traditional Catholic mass with African music, and afterward we went to Bandia Nature Reserve, where we saw


giraffes!


ostriches!


warthogs!


monkeys!


horse antelope!


and rhinos!

Then for New Year's, Mariama and I went to St. Louis, where we


rode horses on the beach! (Which I've always wanted to do).

And then we went to this weird place called Lompoul, which is a mini-desert in the middle of Senegal, and we


rode camels!

Overall, an excellent, excellent last holiday in Senegal!  Happy (very late) holidays, everyone!

Maybe the best thing I've done in my entire life

This is Adama. He lives in a village about 40 km away from mine. I saw him once when I was in his village to do some health education activities, and then coincidentally just a short time after that I got an email about an NGO called Operation Smile coming to Senegal to do free operations on kids with cleft lips and cleft palates.

So once I had all the information about Operation Smile, I decided to go back to his village to talk to his family about taking him to Thies to get the operation. I knew they probably wouldn't have the money for the car ticket up there (about $20 one way, per person), so I decided if they couldn't afford it I would just pay for it myself.

So I went to his village and talked to his mom, Fili. She said they'd taken Adama to the hospital in Tamba when he was a baby, but they couldn't do anything for him there, and his father is deceased and he has seven brothers and sisters, and the family can't afford to do anything else. And his mom has never been farther away from her village than Tamba, which is about a four hour car ride away. But we talked it over, and finally agreed that if Fili's older brother, who lives in Tamba, agreed, then I would take Adama, his mom Fili, and baby sister Penda (who is still breastfeeding and so has to stay with her mom) up to Thies to see if he could get the operation.

So we went up to Thies, along with my friend Mariama Keita, who was going to help out as a translator at the hospital. It was a pretty stressful few days for me, being responsible for a family who've never been out of Tamba and who only speak Mandinka, which hardly anyone in Thies speaks. Poor little Adama was scared about the operation and kept asking his mom when they could go back to their village.

But in the end, it all worked out great: Adama got his operation, everyone was happy, and after a few days they got to go back home.



The day after the operation, when Adama was released from the hospital, I took the family to spend the day with my Thies host family, who also speak Mandinka, because I thought they'd be more comfortable there (plus my host mom is an amazing cook). At one point it occurred to me that Adama probably hadn't seen his new face in a mirror yet, so I offered him a little compact from my purse. He took it over to the doorway for better light, and then just stared at his face for about two minutes.

Then when we were at the garage in Thies waiting for our car to be ready to go to Tamba, Adama said that he wanted to spend the 1000 CFA ($2) that my Thies host mom gave him for the trip on buying sunglasses and a mirror. So Mariama and I helped him buy those things from the vendors wandering around the garage. So then Adama was all spiffed up and ready to go back to his village and impress his friends with his new look:

I can't think of anything better I've done in my entire life than taking Adama to get that operation. I just wish I was going to be in Senegal long enough to see him when his face is completely healed up.

My ancestors are Pulaars!

Written Wednesday, 26 November 2008

 

 

On my way up to the Futa, the northern, really Sahel edge-of-the-desert part of Senegal, to visit a friend and celebrate Thanksgiving, we passed a village called Semme.  Which is what my family's last name was, hundreds of years ago when my ancestors immigrated to America.

 

Which leads me to think that maybe my ancestors were Pulaar!  Or, a little more seriously, maybe relatives of my ancestors colonized this part of Senegal!

 

Or, much more probably but also much less interestingly, maybe semme is a word in Pulaar that I don't know, and it has nothing to do with my family.  But I like my first explanation the best.

Universal experience

Written Saturday, 22 November 2008

 

 

I just finished reading a book about a (Canadian version of Peace Corps) volunteer in Bhutan.  It's funny to read about someone in such a different place and discover that our experiences have been almost exactly the same – the strangeness of the place at arrival, being scared of weird diseases and parasites, thinking you'll never find anything in common to talk about with the locals… and then gradually, gradually getting so comfortable that it's America that begins to seem like the alien place, and how will I ever fit in there again?

 

So when I got to the middle of the book I found myself anxious to find out what happened as if it would tell me how things are going to turn out for me here.  But at the end in the story the volunteer gets married to a local Bhutanese man and has a baby, and that is definitely not what I'm going to do.

 

So I guess I'm just going to have to figure out the next six months for myself.

Letter to President Obama from the villagers of Cour Bambey

Written Friday, 14 November 2008

 

 

Here is the letter composed by the villagers of Cour Bambey (which I also emailed to Obama on his campaign website):

 

13 November 2008

 

Dear Mr. President Obama,

 

The day of the 13th of November is the world day of the celebration of Obama.  We are behind you.  You touch us in our hearts.  All of the population of Cour Bambey is very happy and congratulates you on your victory.  Before we did not know you, but you have touched our hearts and it is as if we are all in America.

 

The population is ready to invite you to Cour Bambey, which is found 47 kilometers from Tambacounda.  We want development, including natural resources, education, health, potable water, water towers and faucets, and above all we want a strong relationship between our village and America.  Cour Bambey is in the locality of Sinthian Coundara in the region of Kolda.

 

We wish you much success with your work, that you work hard and listen well to the people of America.  We ask that you help the women with their gardening projects.  And above all we hope that you bring peace in the world.  The economic crisis hits us here too – the rice and gas are very expensive.  You must help us.  In the village here, there is no one in America.  Help us to send two or three people to go to America to see the conditions there.

 

Now we understand American democracy thanks to Peace Corps.  We really hope that in Cour Bambey it continues to have much success.  Thank you very much for having sent us Mariama Keita (Holly Packard), who has given us a party.  And also Khadija Tandian (Rebecca Semmes).  They have done a lot to help us.

 

We were not able to vote on paper for Obama, but we have voted for you in our hearts.  We all greet you.  We are very tired with work, but we all greet you and we hope that you can help us to be less tired.

 

Sincerely,

 

The People of Cour Bambey

Obama victory party in Cour Bambey

Written Friday, 14 November 2008

 

 

Yesterday my friend "Mariama Keita" and I held an Obama victory party in Mariama's village, and then we decided to write an article for Sabaar, Peace Corps Senegal's volunteer-run newsletter, about it.  Here is the article:

 

Senegalese Villagers Sacrifice Goat for Obama

 

Cour Bambey, Senegal – In celebration of the election of America's first sorta-black president, the villagers of Cour Bambey sacrificed a scrawny goat, danced to Beach Boys music, and wrote a letter inviting their quasi-African brother to visit the village.

 

The fete was first conceived one sleepless, sweltering night sitting around the radio.  PCV Holly Packard vowed that if Senator Obama won on election night, she would provide livestock and dance tunes to celebrate.  Since this required no effort on their part and could result in meat in the bowl, the villagers were vraiment d'accord, quoi.

 

So when the election results were finally announced in the wee hours of the morning November 5, the Cour Bambeyans' joy in the renewed proof of democracy and equality in America was augmented by the knowledge that they would soon be getting some good eatin'.

 

True to her word, PCV Packard and her trusty accomplice PCV Rebecca Semmes rolled up on their metal horses a few days later with all the party fixins.  (PCV Mary O'Brien was supposed to complete the celebratory trifecta, but she didn't come because she hates freedom).  Strapped to the backs of overloaded velos were ten kilos of vegetables, six bottles of bubbles (generously donated by PCV Tracy MacDonald), various decorative Obama paraphernalia, and some tunes with a tiny, tiny speaker.

 

The smallish goat chosen to be sacrificed on the alter of American democracy sat tied to a post, anticipating the outcome of its glorious martyrdom. (70 virgin lady goats?)  The villagers spent the day dancing to the sounds of the '60s and extolling the virtues of America and its first sorta-kinda-black president elect.

 

PCV Packard, unwilling to lose even one day in her mission to develop the shit out of Senegal, continued her work as a playground extension agent by teaching the children how to blow bubbles.  Terrified at first, the kiddies soon acclimated to the wondrous new game, and then started a small riot in their quest to pop as many bubbles as possible.

 

PCV Semmes recorded the event for posterity and the Sabaar using her mad photography skills, and then aided the village elders in composing a congratulatory letter to President-Elect Obama with her incroyable orthographic abilities.

 

Through no fault of PCVs Packard and Semmes or of the Beach Boys, lunch wasn't ready until 7 p.m. (It is unclear at this time whether fault lies with freedom-hating PCV O'Brien).  When lunch was finally served, it was met by enthusiastic chants of "O-BA-MA! O-BA-MA!"  After the meal, the village men adjourned to the mosque to pray for the success and long life of the new American President.

 

Their mission of spreading democracy and freedom to the people of Cour Bambey accomplished, PCVs Packard and Semmes retired to Packard's hut for a celebratory meal of instant mashed potatoes and lukewarm Tang.  At the late late hour of 8 p.m., they closed their eyes, full of starch, Jadida, and the sense of a job well done.

Election reactions

I've been in Dakar this week for meetings, so Tuesday night I was able to go to an expat election party in town.  I wanted to stay up all night and watch the election, but I just didn't make it.  (Plus I had an important meeting the next day I didn't want to be too exhausted for).

 

So I went to bed around 2:30 am, by which time Obama was significantly ahead, but it still wasn't a sure thing.  I happened to wake up sometime between 4:00 and 5:00, so I quickly checked the computer, saw that Obama won, thought "Yay!", and went back to sleep.

 

Wednesday morning I decided not to change out of my Obama t-shirt (given to me by a PCV who got a couple while on vacation in America) because I was just too happy.  So walking around the neighborhood to get breakfast and do some errands I attracted a lot of "congratulations!" and "good job!" type comments from Senegalese, plus a lot of typical "give me your shirt!" comments, which I am choosing to interpret as "I like Obama too".

 

I only met one dissenter, a security guard at the Peace Corps office who I am friends with.  He congratulated me, but said he supported McCain.  When I asked him why, his answer was basically that he likes to root for the underdog.

 

Reactions from the village coming next week (or at least, as soon after next week as I can get back to the internet).

Financial crisis in Senegal

NPR has a story about how the global financial crisis is affecting Senegal.  I haven't managed to listen to it yet (technical issues), but it's NPR, so I'm sure it's good.

Article about sexual exploitation in African schools

Here is a good article from the UN's news service about sexual exploitation in African schools - a big problem here in Senegal.

Video about girls' education in Senegal

Now available on the web: a (really great) documentary created by Peace Corps Volunteers about girls' education in Senegal.  It's called "Elle Travaille, Elle Vit" (She works, She lives); it's in French with English subtitles.  Watch it here!

Woohoo!

I am so excited about the election!!!

Potential disaster

I'm in Dakar this week for some meetings, and as usual, I was super excited about coming to Dakar for two reasons: unlimited free internet at the Peace Corps office (although it's still slow and clunky), and great food options.

 

So yesterday in pursuit of food happiness, I went to a little Indian grocery store down the street from the office and stocked up on some food to eat over the next couple days.  I got some ramen noodles, some microwavable Indian food meals, and some other odds and ends, including real milk to put in my tea (I always use powdered milk in Tamba and the village). 

 

And then I discovered that whenever I consume the milk, which tastes AMAZING and has definitely not gone bad, it upsets my stomach.  So now I am worried that in my year and a half of hardly ever having any real milk I might have become lactose intolerant.  Which would be a disaster, because having hot tea with milk is very important to my sanity.  All the other dairy stuff I could give up, but not milk in my tea. 

 

So now I am really, really hoping that this is just a temporary thing (like maybe I've got parasites again and they don't like milk) or else that I just need to get used to dairy again.  The alternative is just too sad to contemplate.

Bucket down

Written Thursday, 30 October 2008

 

I just went to the well to get water, and as I always do, I set my empty bucket on the concrete ledge of the well. Maybe I'm psychic, because I noticed that the ledge in that spot wasn't quite flat, and I thought how easy it would be for the bucket to fall into the well.  Psychic maybe, but not smart enough to move it to another spot.  Sure enough, a second later the rope knocked into it and it fell in.

 

I'd been all alone at the well, but as soon as the bucket fell in, even though it hardly makes any noise, I was suddenly surrounded by women laughing at me, asking how I'm going to get my bucket back and offering to toss me down the well to go after it.

 

Luckily, I have a backup bucket, so I was still able to get water for my bath, although It's going to be a little complicated next time I have to do laundry.  So the real outcome of this is that I am once again left feeling ridiculous, with what seems like half the village laughing at me for my inability to do simple village-woman tasks.  Poo.

Bye bye, Rain

Written Tuesday, 28 October 2008

 

Rainy season is finally over.  The grass is turning brown and dying, which makes me sad, but my clothes no longer smell perpetually like mildew, which is definitely good.  The plague of frogs should end soon (also good), but then there will be the harmattan wind that gets dust in my eyes and makes biking even short distances a miserable chore (bad).  I'm looking forward to cold nights and drinking my coffee in the morning without sweat pouring down my face, but not to taking cold showers in cool weather.

 

All in all I think I like rainy season and cold season about equally, but rainy season has been going on for a while and I always like change, so hurray for cold season coming!

 

Traditional names

Written Tuesday, 28 October 2008

 

Children here who aren't given Muslim (or Christian) names are given traditional names relating to the circumstances of their birth: Sunkaro, which means Ramadan, for those born during that month; Penda, third girl child; Sori, Came Early; Meeta, Took a Long Time.  Today I heard a new one which I really liked: Nyaato, Future.  Sometimes the names tell you something about how the parents felt about their new child, and this one seems very hopeful to me.

Into the Wild

Written Friday, 24 October 2008

 

Yesterday at the house in Tamba I watched a movie called Into the Wild, about a guy who decides to give up civilization and go live in the wilderness in Alaska, because he thinks that if he surrounds himself with nature he will learn something about Truth.

 

I don't care much about the search for Truth, I'm too pragmatic for that, but the movie definitely made heading off into the wilderness look like fun.  And today, biking back to my village from Tamba, I was thinking that these have been some of my favorite experiences in Africa – just biking along, looking at the beautiful scenery, dancing (the top half of me anyway) to the music on my ipod, and greeting villagers as I pass by. 

 

I want to find a way to continue having this lifestyle, lots of freedom and time outdoors, after Peace Corps.  (Has Peace Corps turned me into a dirty hippy, or "hip" as one of my guides in Morocco called it? Maybe.  But I bet lots of freedom and outdoor time sound pretty good to just about everyone, and I'm still a big fan of showers.)  I haven't had much success so far in thinking of a way to make it happen, though.  You get nice long summer vacations with teaching, but I just don't enjoy that enough.  You can write from anywhere, but I'm not talented enough to make a living at it (although if you could learn to write by reading books, I'd probably have won the Nobel Prize for Literature by now).  Living off my trust fund would work great, except that I haven't got one.

 

So for now I'm stuck.  But at least I've got another six months or so of my nice Peace Corps life left, before I have to go back to being a grown-up.

What I've been up to lately

written Friday, 24 October 2008

 

I'm still feuding with my counterpart about me supposedly not having done anything for the village (i.e. given them piles of money), so I haven't taught any more health classes, which we always do together.  I don't feel bad about it, though, because I think the women here know by now everything I have to teach them on that subject.  (Whether they're actually implementing the lessons – washing their hands with soap, etc. – is another issue, of course).

 

So instead I've been spending my time working on a proposal to get funding to buy bikes and gardening supplies for a health workers' association I've been working with for the past year.  Even though the proposal process is quite straightforward, it's requiring a lot of running around, meeting with people and visiting shops in Tamba to find out how much the equipment will cost.

 

I've also been going to schools to give Michelle Sylvester scholarships to this year's winners.  Which is also turning out to require a ridiculous amount of running around (mainly because Senegalese schools don't stick to a fixed calendar regarding when the first day of school is going to be – it's just somewhere post-Korite and at the end of farming season, whenever the principal and teachers and kids decide to show up).

 

So I've been busy, but not so much in my village.  I wish I were spending more time here with my host family and friends, but I decided it's more important to me to be doing work.

Khadija's ambulance service

written Tuesday, 14 October 2008

 

This morning after breakfast the village imam came and told me that his 12-year-old daughter is sick with malaria.  He had money to pay for the doctor, but no way to get her to the health post ten kilometers away.  Of course I offered to take her on my bike, as he was clearly hoping, so about 9 am we set off, with my passenger sitting on the luggage rack behind my seat.

 

This is the first time I've carried almost a full-grown person on my bike for any real distance, and it is hard!  Of course it didn't help that the "road" we were taking is just a dirt trail through the woods, or that it rained yesterday so the path is just a mud swamp in places.  But eventually we made it to the health post, where I paid 100 CFA (about 25 cents) for a consultation, and after not too long a wait we saw the doctor who promptly confirmed she has malaria (although he didn't bother to do a blood test to check for sure).

 

So she got a shot in her leg and about four different kinds of pills and syrups to take (which cost 4500 CFA, about ten dollars – two dollars more than her dad gave me, but luckily I brought my own money too just in case).  Then since it was midday and hot and she was clearly exhausted (besides making you feel awful, malaria causes anemia as the parasites break open your red blood cells) we went to her relatives' house in a village close by and rested for a while, and then I biked us home again.

 

I'm really glad that my villagers come to me when they're sick and need help getting to the doctor, but I wish we had a better way to get people out than by donkey cart, which takes forever, or on the back of a bike, which is just exhausting. 

Sick

written Saturday, 4 October 2008

I take it back about the Korite meat not making me sick.  Apparently it was just taking a while for the bacteria to multiply enough in my body to make me miserable.  Poo.

Korite

Written Friday, 3 October 2008

 

Yesterday was Korite, or "prayer day" as it is called in Mandinka, the holiday marking the end of Ramadan.  We celebrated a day later than we had been hoping to because the moon didn't come out on Tuesday night to mark the end of Ramadan.  (I am told that the Koran says that either you or someone you trust must see the moon, so now there is a debate about whether the government or a meteorologist on the radio or TV can count as someone you trust.  My village, at least this time around, decided that since no one in the village had seen the moon we would wait an extra day.)

 

So we celebrated yesterday, but everyone complained that it wasn't much of a party this year because no one has any money – higher food and gas prices and a poor global economy have translated into no Korite bonus from the banana plantation owner for my villagers this year.  So instead of slaughtering a sheep my family just bought a few kilos of meat from somewhere (which tasted really bad – I'm relieved I'm not sick today) and I bought them vegetables.  In the evening there was a soccer match (my friend's team won!), and that was it for our holiday.

 

I'm really glad to get back to a normal, non-fasting schedule.  I was really missing being able to buy bean sandwiches during the day when I'm in town.

Alternate Universe

written Tuesday, 30 September 2008

 

Today was one of the rare days here when the night's rain continued into the morning, which meant that I could sleep in an extra 30 minutes (because you can't do anything here when it rains) and then enjoy a leisurely morning of fixing my own breakfast (French cereal I bought in Tamba at the bargain price of $9 a box, with powdered milk and a cup of instant coffee) and listening to the news on BBC World Radio.  In other words, this morning was what passes for heaven in my current life.

 

Until the chief's sister, the oldest woman in my village – whose actual age could be anywhere between 50 and 100 – passed by my hut in the middle of a loud argument with one of the men in her family.  Before long, half the village was gathered 100 feet from my hut, watching and taking part in the argument.

 

So much for my peaceful morning.

 

Then my "tooma", namesake, a girl about my age with two (illegitimate) children, was taken into one of the huts, and then I could hear her screaming.  She was being beaten.  Not too badly, though, I think – they sounded more like screams of protest, or for attention and pity, than screams of real pain.

 

The beating didn't last long, and then the crowd broke up, off to do their usual morning chores.

 

Since my tooma appeared to have been the focus of the argument I had a pretty good idea what it was about, but I still wanted to find out for sure, so later I asked my sister.  She said, "You know she's not married and she's got two kids already? Well now there's going to be a third baby.  That's very bad.  That's why they beat her."

 

"Okay," I said, "maybe having babies when she isn't married isn't good, but beating women is bad.  In America you can go to prison for that."

 

"Why is it bad? She shouldn't be having kids without a husband to provide for them.  She's making more mouths to feed, more expenses that her father and brothers will have to pay for.  Of course they have the right to beat her."

 

And for a minute, I thought that argument made perfect sense.  She's making extra expenses for the family, not so different from if she'd run up the credit cards.  Of course they'll punish her.

 

And then the American, non-Senegalized portion of my brain kicked in: she is an adult! And it is wrong to beat women!

 

But even now, having had all day to think about it, I still can't think of a good argument to make to my sister or anyone else here for why it is wrong.  All I can come up with is that it just IS.

 

Some days it really scares me when I realize that this alternate universe I am living in, known as Africa, seems normal to me.  Of course I pull all my water from a well and carry it back to my hut on my head.  Of course I eat leftovers out of complete strangers' bowls at restaurants – they left vegetables!  Of course I only wear skirts long enough to at least cover my knees.  Of course a woman's family has the right to beat her if she gets pregnant and she isn't married…

 

I'm going to need some cultural reintegration therapy when I get back to the US.

 

Peanut sheller

Finally got pictures of the peanut sheller in action posted at http://picasaweb.google.com/aidworkr/PeanutSheller#.  Enjoy!

Also there are photos of my trip to Morocco at http://picasaweb.google.com/aidworkr/Morocco#.  I'd been waiting for Sira Ba, my travel partner, to upload hers (because she has all the pics of me riding Bobby the Camel, but despite the fact that she is now in America apparently she doesn't have much internet access, so she hasn't posted them yet), but I will just put another post up when Bobby the Camel photos are available.

computer problems

The computer at the Peace Corps house in Tamba (which wasn't hooked up to internet, but which I could type things on, save on a flash drive, and copy onto a computer at an internet cafe) has died and been taken off to Dakar to get fixed.  Which means that to use a computer I have to be in an internet cafe, which is inevitably full of guys playing video games and blaring Akon music, and where the keyboards are French style, so the letters are all in the wrong place, which slows me down and drives me nuts. 

 

Which is all to say that I'm sorry I'm not posting much right now, but I'm writing things in a notebook to copy onto a computer whenever I have access to one in a more conducive environment, so you'll be hearing from me again someday (probably around Nov. 3 when I have to be in Dakar for a meeting).