Monday, December 22, 2008

Tabaski

(Excerpt from my journal, Tuesday Dec. 9)

This morning I watched our neighbor Biram Ndiaye kill our sheep by slitting its throat with a machete, practically beheading it, while my brother held it down with the help of another neighborhood boy. They had dug a small hole in the sand to let the blood pool down into the earth, and after Biram had finished, he wiped the blade on the sheep’s cheek as it was still convulsing in its last breaths.

I watched as the animal pulsed and spurted blood, helpless and all but dead, my brother Pape calmly pressing it firmly to the ground, his knees on its stomach, his hands on its neck and rump. And then it was still, lifeless. No longer a creature with needs but a piece of meat ready to be butchered. I stood there one more long moment in morbid fascination, then turned away.

Today is a holiday to celebrate man’s devotion and absolute obedience to God. Understandably, it is one of (if not the) most important holidays for these Muslim Senegalese. Tabaski means "sacrifice" in Wolof, as the story goes, God asked Abraham to kill his only son, Ismael, and Abraham was ready to do it, when at the very last instant God replaced the baby with a ram - hence the reason for the killing of the sheep. I believe the holiday is called Eid al-Adha in other Islamic countries, and it takes place approximately two months after the end of Ramadan. In many ways it was very similar to Korité, the end-of-Ramadan fête: the preparation of the meal, the greetings of family and friends, the ritual sayings of forgiveness and blessing, the wearing of one’s best and finest to visit loved ones, and the giving away of what one has enough of to spare.

Today somehow, though, I am missing my American family more than I did on Thanksgiving. Perhaps because then I was surrounded by my peers and we all felt the same way. Here I am among family too, but as the “adopted” child I feel the odd one out especially on holidays like this one. I’ll put on my fancy clothes later and go out, but where I want to be today is thousands of miles away and an ocean apart.

1:30 pm. Haven’t eaten lunch yet, though it’s just about ready. I’m not really hungry, especially after watching my sister Deanor slice apart the sheep’s heart, and Rama and our friend Sophia saw through the tendons of its knees. All I could think about was how it would feel to have someone slice up my knees, and as they grappled to separate the tightly stretched muscles, I decided to leave the kitchen.
I think I will eat mostly fries for lunch, as potatoes are a tuber with no possible human resemblance.

I’d like to stay in my room for the rest of the day today but as I’m not actually sick, I know that’s not an option, and even if I were throwing up they’d probably try and make me come out anyway. Maybe I’ll feel better once I take a shower.
The house still smells like charred flesh. Lunch is over now, and I could hardly eat any meat. I had fries and four pieces of bread, and they just kept telling me to eat, eat! as they sat there gnawing on fatty bones. “Thanks,” I said. “My stomach was kind of unwell this morning.”

I finally got a hold of my village sister from Thiès on the phone, and she was happy to hear from me. “Naka Tabaski bi?” (How is Tabaski?) “How is the family? Are they all in peace?”

And now I can hear my family here shouting at each other - now it feels like a real holiday. It’s not a holiday without family stress and drama… Some things are universal.

1 a.m. Ended up putting on my new Senegalese clothes and going out around 7:15, stopping first at my counterpart’s house, then meeting up with my sitemate at her friend’s house so we could go around town together. After greeting everyone in that house, we went on to pass her house (no one was home but the kids), stopped by our ancien volunteer’s host family, but they had gone to Fatick to spend the holiday, so then I suggested we go visit Kinne Ndiaye, who is the president of the PTA for the school where I spend most of my time. She was home, wearing a beautiful bazin fabric boubou, and was delighted to see us. I accidentally almost sat on a darling tiny sleeping baby on the bed, but otherwise it was an excellent visit.

After Kinne’s we walked to my sitemate’s counterpart’s house, then another work friend’s place, and finally ended up at my namesake (Mame Ngoné)’s compound around 11 pm, an obligatory stop but nevertheless a pleasant one.

Everyone was glad to see me, and admired the red choup fabric of my embroidered long-sleeved top and pants. It felt good to know that I know people here now, that I have family and friends, and people know me. When I finally got home just before midnight, I was happy and tired, and content that despite all my annoyance at the earlier part of the day, it had turned better than just fine after all.

catching up

I realize I haven’t posted anything in several weeks, and December is flying by! So here are some entries from my journal to fill in a bit what I’ve been up to lately.

(Excerpt from Wednesday Dec. 3)

Last night a family three houses down from ours had their house burn down.
And I slept through the whole thing.
I woke up this morning at 6:30, peed, went back to sleep, and at 7:30 got up again, greeting my host mother Rama after I’d brushed my teeth. “Did you sleep well?” she asked, the usual morning question. I had in fact slept soundly. “Yes,” I replied, “very well. And you?” To which she replied, essentially, “Not a wink! I was up all night.” I asked why, and she proceeded to recount to me the story of the nosie, the flames, the whole family rushing out with water, buckets… how my sister had been so frightened by the blaring light at her window that she had practically fainted. And I just stood there astonished, and guilty that I had not heard anything, that I could have peacefully slumbered while an entire family not half a block away scrambled to save their few belongings from an accidental near-deadly blaze.

“Nothing made it out,” Rama continued. “Everyone is fine, Alhamdulilah, but nothing, NOTHING is left.” I just kept on standing there in her doorway, numb to the strangeness of such a close encounter. I had only ever known one family personally back home who had had their house burn down. But now here I was, putting on my sweatshirt to venture out into the still cool morning to follow my mother around the block. To see for myself the awful damage. It was a family compound made up of wooden poles supporting corrugated aluminum roofs, some in straw even, the perfect starter for a low-burning candle flame. As I stood there, watching the family pick through pieces of rubble and ash, I didn’t have anything to say. Other neighbors were standing close by, and a door-to-door clothes salesman I know came over to greet me, telling me how he had brought water from his family’s house two blocks away but it hadn’t been enough. There just hadn’t been enough water, he said. And then he told me how the family’s cooking gas had exploded from the heat and almost reached a nearby parked car with the flames.
And I slept through all of it.

I watched as Rama stepped through the scene, talking to the family, staying where I was, a short distance away. Feeling like a voyeur, like one of those people who stops traffic when they slow down their car to gape at the wreck. Only I felt especially wrong being there, being white, not being from here, not knowing this family well, hardly at all. A young man in his 20’s or so asked me how I was (usual greeting - “Nanga def?”) then continued with another normal phrase: “Yaangiy noos?” (This literally translates to “Are you having fun? / Are you having a good time?”) I surveyed the damage, the family standing around, still cold from the night, with nothing left but the clothes on their backs, and I looked at the man. “Noosuma dara,” I replied. (No, I’m not having fun at all.) He seemed surprised by this response, telling me I should be “noos”ing more (always the response to someone saying they’re not having fun) and I just looked at him again, and back at the trash heap that had just yesterday been a home. “Yow, mën nga noos, yow?” I shot back at him. (Are you able to enjoy yourself, you?) “Sure, yeah,” he replied. “Why aren’t you?” he continued. “Ana xaalis bi?”

And this (after the fact that I had slept through the blazing fire and all accompanying noise and neighbors roused to aid) was perhaps the most frustrating part of the morning for me. Because I understand that “Yaangiy noos?” is one of the many standard greetings, and you are never supposed to say “Waaw, maangiy noos” (Yes, I’m having a good time) because in this society it is assumed/culturally ingrained that you are only capable of really having a good time if you have money. (And the general populace never does seem to have any.) So in asking me “Ana xaalis bi?” (Where is the money? / Where’s your money? / How’s your pocket looking? or whatever you want to translate it as…) he seemed to be saying to me, “You, you have no excuse not to be enjoying yourself, because obviously you have money. (You’re white.) So don’t go pretending that you can’t have yourself a good time whenever you want.”

I was struck by the coldness of his blunt question, and all I could think to say was a simple “Xaalis amul.” (There’s no money.) Turning away from him, I thought that standing there, I felt more out of place than ever, and even less understanding of a culture that can stand in front of a burned down house and ask another onlooker lightly if she’s having a good time.

Maybe it’s part of an unspoken understanding, an implicit set of rules that everyone follows, to keep emotions in check, never to show your vulnerability. It’s like what a good friend of mine was talking about in a recent email to me, about the people she met in the Czech Republic. I suppose it makes sense - life is hard, people die quickly, houses burn down easily. And if every time you let it get to you? and ask why? That’s a short path to depression. And who wants to live that way? No, much better to move on, say “Yalla moo ko def,” and just keep going. “It was God’s doing,” they say, throwing up their hands.

But to ask me then, at that moment, how/where my money was, though part of the normal greetings repertoire, seemed particularly cruel. I’d barely gotten up, hadn’t eaten breakfast yet, and yet here there was already someone ready to jab me in the stomach when I wasn’t looking. As if my relative affluence could shield me from having feelings. As if somehow I had a say in the choice of the color of my skin, the country in which I had been born, and the fact that our two situations were so vastly different. As if somehow, somewhere along the line of my creation, my parents had traded in my heart to replace it with cold hard cash.

Some people resent me just for being here, and I resent that. They don’t know me, don’t know who I am or what I’m doing here. They assume, and they judge, basing their quick conclusions solely on the color of my skin. It seems like a reverse racism (or is it just plain old racism?), this one bred from a history of colonialism and imperial sovereignty. It’s a strange feeling to be the minority. And to know that as much as I can dress like them, eat like them, and speak like them, I will never be one of them.

Monday, December 1, 2008

màngi sant.

Wrapping up a quiet weekend, it was good to relax and have downtime after getting back from four days away from site. This week I go back to work refreshed, ready to tackle a busy schedule and start work in earnest (Inch’Allah!) It was wonderful to get away for a bit though, as Tuesday I left my coastal town south of Dakar to travel about nine hours north (on good road, so you estimate the mileage) to a town near the border of Mauritania, where about a third of all the Peace Corps Volunteers in Senegal were gathering to celebrate that quintessential American holiday, Thanksgiving.

The volunteers who live in that region did a stellar job of organizing the preparation of food and drink for almost fifty people, especially considering they basically only had one oven, one stovetop, and one fridge to work with. As much as possible was prepared ahead of time, and the lineup of pies on game day was a sight to see. The boys were in charge of buying turkeys, and on the morning of the feast they killed and plucked them, later grilling two and deep-frying one. We had chickens as well, and as it’s still watermelon season here, there was a fruit salad served in a watermelon cut like a basket, and other treats such as a delicious assortment of cookies, homemade stuffing (and Stovetop that someone had thoughtfully sent from America), mashed sweet potatoes, squash, carrots, care package canned cranberry sauce, green beans “White House” and a cheesy corn casserole. Dinner was served around 3 pm, and sitting down on mats outside the house, surrounded by many friends (and a warm 95 degrees), I tucked into my plate. Thousands of miles away from my family who would be preparing their own meal in the house where I grew up, I thought about where I was and where I had come from, this year thankful for so many things.

First, for the courage that got me here.
For my family and friends who encouraged me to pursue this experience, and whose words, priceless and necessary, continue to keep up my spirits.
For the new family that I now belong to, my Peace Corps fellows. As immutable as blood, we share this experience, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
For the hospitality and forgivingness of my Senegalese host families, both here at site, and in Thiès; that they now call me sister, daughter, friend.
To everyone who sent me birthday wishes over the last few weeks, especially my dearest who actually sent packages - you know who you are ;) and how much I love you.
For my relative health, and that the “cold season” has finally arrived!
(Friday morning at 7:30 it was 66 degrees in Ndioum.)
For cell phones, computers, and postage stamps; that they keep us connected and bridge the gap that can seem so wide at times.
For John F. Kennedy, whose vision is still alive today, and for Barack Obama; may he live up to what we hope for him.
And for patience, perseverance, perspective, and a sense of humor.

This year I have gone so far, and grown so much. For everything and everyone that has made (and continues to make) that possible, thanks. merci. jërëjef.

p.s. I wish I could post a few photos, but unfortunately both my digital and film cameras are currently "en panne" - that is, not working. So you'll have to trust my words for now, and when some of my friends upload some photos, I'll link them here. Until then...

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

a harsh reality.

Tomorrow I will have been in this country eight months, and yet I still feel so far away from achieving any kind of sustainable “progress”. The longer I’m here, the more I realize that two years is a drop in the bucket in terms of making lasting change, and the only thing certain to benefit from my two years here is me.

I should preface this by saying that my role here is not supposed to be a teacher. I am supposed to be helping teachers, and working with students in an environmental club, but right now I am still observing classes, so I can see how the teachers work and how I can start to help. Therefore, as you will see, this morning I was faced with a harsh reality as I stood in front of a CP (Classe Préparatoire) class of 80 kindergarten-aged kids. That’s right, eighty. In one class. After 45 minutes of not teaching them, as the teacher seemed to be more importantly occupied filling out paperwork reporting for the Department of Education, I asked the teacher if the kids didn’t have anything they were supposed to be doing. “No,” he replied, “And when they get out their slates it just makes so much noise.”

“They don’t have anything to work on?” I asked again. “Nothing to practice?” To which the teacher replied by going up to the big board, drawing two long horizontal lines across one section of it, and filled those in with short vertical lines all the way across, like train tracks. He then told the kids to copy that onto their chalkboards, after which time Ngoné (me), he said, would come check on their work.

After several minutes had gone by, and I could see about two-thirds of them had at least tried to draw something, I started walking around and looking, speaking to them in Wolof mostly because although they’re supposed to be learning French in school, at this age most of them don’t understand it yet. The only thing in French most of them seemed to understand well were “oui,” “non,” “bonjour,” “je me leve,” and “je m’assois.” I channeled my best teacher self and patrolled the room, trying to explain in a mixture of Wolof and French why one child’s drawing was lovely but that it didn’t match what the teacher had drawn on the board, because the teacher’s was straight across and the child’s went diagonally across her chalkboard. How do you say “diagonal” in French even?

Other students had drawn their train tracks across the top of their slates, whereas the teacher had drawn his in the middle of the board. I tried to explain how to leave space on top and underneath the tracks to some, while for others the issue was that they had drawn the slats of the tracks jutting out of either side of the rails. Really not as easy as I had first thought, as I walked around the room realizing that though I was able to translate for some kids into Wolof, there were also Sereres and Pulaars in the class, and they would just have to make do with my hand gestures, as I was having enough trouble not knowing the word in Wolof for “straight”. After I managed to get the kids to erase their boards and put them away, it became apparent to me that that this was not only a lesson in drawing, it was simultaneously a lesson in hand-eye coordination, listening comprehension, and French vocabulary. That’s a lot to handle at once for 5-year-olds.

Only shortly before this semi-forced temporary (I hope) substitute teacher role was given to me, I had been minding my own business, taking notes on the class and sitting quietly watching the students and teacher, recollecting what I remembered learning in kindergarten. I calculated that it was twenty years ago exactly when I myself was learning the colors, how to tie my shoes, counting using small plastic dinosaurs (color blue), and reading aloud “The Tale of Jemima Puddle Duck” to my class. I feel like my own kindergarten class was much better behaved than this one that I found myself in front of today, and certainly achieved more progress on a daily basis, but then again, my class was taught in our native language, we got nap time, and cinnamon toast on special occasions, and although we did have three Ashleys, our classroom didn’t have to contain more than 30 children.

A little bit of perspective there, then, as I walked out of the classroom at break time thinking about how in America there would be four teachers to handle the number of kids I had just left.

Sunday, November 9, 2008

so this is what it feels like to be busy...

These days I don't know where time is going. It seems to be over 2 weeks since I posted last, and there is more to report than would conveniently fit into one post. I'll do a little catching up, then hope to be more frequent in the months to come.

The good news is that the reason I haven't posted recently is because work is really picking up, Alhamdulilah! School has begun officially for everyone here, meaning that my job as an environmental education volunteer has finally started in earnest. These days I’m going to the elementary school I’ve been assigned to work with almost every day, Monday to Friday, observing classes, getting a feel for teaching methods and styles, and talking with the teachers during class breaks about their expectations and frustrations. After a few weeks of observation, I want to start talking with the teachers about how to incorporate more environmentally related topics into their lessons, and in the meantime I’m also working with the teacher advisor to the student government to use the structure already in place as a launching pad for a separate environmental club.

The past three days I was invited to attend a seminar on waste management in Senegal, and yesterday I made it to my second meeting of a young journalists group, composed of middle and high school students, to whom I hope to serve as a kind of counselor/advisor. Their meeting was held at the CLAC, which stands for “Centre de Lecture et d’Animation Culturelle”, and which is, by all accounts, a library. Needless to say, if you know me, you know that I was thrilled to find that such an institution already exists here, and I have great hopes to work with the folks there as well, as time goes on.

And after over a month of feeling unfocused and somewhat directionless, my motivation got a much needed boost last week when my program supervisor came to visit me here at site. We talked about how things are going and what is expected of me, workwise. He expounded upon several projects that I could get involved in or start up myself, and reassured me that feeling like I had accomplished nothing thus far was absolutely normal. That afternoon we went to the school and he spoke to the director and teachers about my role at the school, what my job actually is, and what Peace Corps means by “environmental education.” The visit was affirming, as after I had spent the last few months only feeling like there is so much I cannot do, I was happily reminded of all there is that I can, in fact, do.

That's the basic gist of what has been happening here with me. On a side note, I have been constantly congratulated since Wednesday on Obama's win, as if it was personally due to my influence that all of America is celebrating. All of Senegal seemed to have been praying for it, and it has been very interesting to be here to see, as my friend Jen said, "the African reaction" to the election results. As for my personal reaction, this is my blog so I can say that since Wednesday morning, I have up to this point in my life never been prouder to call myself an American.

Best wishes to all in the States and beyond, and more posts to come soon, I hope, as I establish a semi-regular schedule for myself and try to make time for everything I want to be doing!

Monday, October 20, 2008

may the force of Africa be with you

We are all excited here, even so far away, for the showdown on election day. Volunteers and Senegalese alike, that is. Believe it or not, even somewhere so far away-seeming as West Africa, people are excited for American change.

Even my host father, Ibou, a normally very serious and sometimes severe man, has been making jokes recently, like when I got back to the house one evening last week, after being out all day.

(note: Ndiaye is my last name, taken from my host father's. 2. one way to honor someone when you are greeting them is to repeat their last name, as they repeat yours. 3: obviously this is translated from the original Wolof)

Ibou: (as he sees me) Oh, who is this? (pretending to be surprised to see me, like I've been gone so long) Ndiaye, Ndiaye, Ndiaye. (extending his hand)
Me: (taking his hand, shaking it) Ndiaye, Ndiaye, Ndiaye.
Ibou: Well, Ngoné Ndiaye, how are you?
Me: I am here, Ibou Ndiaye, how are you? Did you pass the day in peace?
Ibou: I am here, peace only. And you? How are you? I hope you are well?
Me: Peace only, thanks be to God. I am very well. I hope everyone here is well?
Ibou: Yes, indeed, praise the Lord, we are all in peace.
But where did you go today?
Me: Well, I went to the school, talked with Monsieur Loum, went to the mayor's office, to the market... and then stopped by Gnilan's... and after that... (thinking in an English/Wolof blur) After that, now I'm here.
Ibou: Did you see the mayor?
Me: No, we didn't see the mayor. You know, he's never there. But I saw Mamadou Sarr, and we talked about the trash project.
Ibou: Oh, good. (seeming to be actually interested in the events of my day.) Ok.
Because you missed Barack Obama. He came to visit you, but you were out.
Me: What? Wait, who came?
Ibou: Obama, Obama, Barack Obama.
Me: Oh really, he came here, to the house?
Ibou: Yes, here! He greeted your mother, and your sisters Soukeye and Deanor, and your brother, Pape Sambou... but I said you were out, and I didn't know when you'd be back.
Me: Really? (laughing a little)
(then more seriously) That's too bad. Maybe he'll stop by again soon.
Ibou: (straight-faced) I don't know, he said he had to go to France tomorrow.
(and then a minute later, he laughs)

Friday, October 17, 2008

just some new photos.


I just uploaded a bunch of photos from Korite, so check them out. Pretty outfits, people I know, and so on. Enjoy!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/offtoseetheworld/

me and my sister Deanor, in our Korite best.

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

7 months in.

This post is overdue, but I wanted to note that ... Ramadan is finally over! Hooray!

At the end of the month, we did not eat our sheep after all. Because the day after the feast to celebrate the end of the fast, our sheep gave birth. In our backyard. I am not used to seeing animals actually bring offspring into the world, so it was a bit of a new thing to me. That whole day was a lesson in patience and cultural adaptation, really. The day after Korite, I hoped to be able to do some laundry in the morning, all quiet-like. But first my brother had untied the sheep in the backyard, where the faucet is to get water, and I was slightly distracted from filling my bucket by the head and foot of a miniature sheep stickily protruding from the once singular sheep's back end.

Almost as soon as the entire small creature was exposed to air, storm clouds started to rapidly gather overhead, dashing my hopes of line-drying my wet clothes, and starting my whole family to worrying about whether this newborn should be left out in the downpour. Meanwhile, there had been a funeral for an elderly woman who had lived next door, and the mourners who had filled the street were starting to pile into our house at the first sight of gray sky. After some minutes of rapid discussion, the back door was opened and mother and baby were herded into our small kitchen just as the first drops were starting to fall. Closing the door behind them, I tried to make my way back through the corridor to my room, almost tripping over people filling up the hallway, looking at me oddly, not knowing that I actually live there, and had much more right to be in the hallway than they did, even if I am a white person in a black world.

Needless to say... I only managed to get 2 shirts and 2 pants washed and suffered much indignation at feeling unwanted in my own house (after carefully fostering a sense of belonging over the last several months). By late afternoon I finally got out into town and away from the bedlam, had a successful trip to the market and visited with my sitemate who was sympathetic to my cause. All in all, at least it was a story to tell! Days like these make me rethink how "adjusted" I really am so far here. The next time a farm animal gives birth in my kitchen maybe I'll be a little less surprised!

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Baax na, wante lan ngay DEF?

In recent letters from home, I have been asked what it is that I actually DO on a daily basis. This is a difficult question to answer, for several reasons, but I shall give as accurate an account as I possible can, at this point.

First, it should be noted that I don’t really have a “normal schedule” as it were, nothing like a 9-5 job - but then you probably already assumed as much, seeing as I am a Peace Corps Volunteer.
Second, I should note that I also have been here just over 6 months now - the first 2 months were training only, the second 2 ½ were an adjustment phase, the month following I was back in training, and this past month has been Ramadan. All of which is to say that my work here has not actually, technically begun yet. My technical work, that is.

Remember way back in February or March, when I posted the 3 goals of Peace Corps? The first goal involves providing countries in need with trained workers, and so on.
The second goal involves giving host country nationals a more educated idea of America and Americans, and the third goal involves giving Americans a better idea of what the host country and its people are like.

Since the night I stepped off the plane in Dakar, I have been accomplishing the second and third goals of Peace Corps, through interacting with Senegalese people and through my communications with my American friends and family back home. I concede that my “first goal” accomplishments are much fewer, but as an environmental education volunteer, that work is soon to start in earnest, once the school year opens in two weeks.

Once we get there, I’ll keep you updated on what my day-to-day work is like. As for now, I can give you not so much an average daily schedule, but a list of things that I have done (and continue to do) since being here in my site. My role here is to help the elementary level school teachers to implement more environmental education curriculum into their classes, and I am also helping with the implementation of a current pilot project to separate, collect and properly dispose of the city’s household trash. This project is currently being implemented in 4 of this city of 40,000’s 27 neighborhoods. So yes, there is work to be done.

Technical work-related things I may do on a daily basis therefore include:

Attend meetings with the pilot project management committee
Go to women’s group meetings to observe the explanation of trash separation
Talk with my school counterpart, the director of one of the elementary schools
- about how the project can be relayed into school curriculum
- about community sensibilization
- about Wolof vocabulary, grammar and usage
Study my Wolof notes
Participate in community clean-ups
Talk with school teachers on an informal, social basis
Attend meetings at the Mayor’s office to talk about funding for the project
Visit the local Marine Preserve office, talk with guys there about what they’re doing about resource conservation, and so on…

Up until now you could say I have been listening, watching, observing, absorbing, learning, asking questions, and processing information. So soon I hope to actually start “doing”.

Monday, September 22, 2008

if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Ramadan, Part III

Disclaimer: the following is not meant to disrespect any religious beliefs. I am only posting this to try and give an idea about what my personal experience is like living where I do know, having coming from where I do. That being said…

Imagine a scenario such as this. You are a new teaching assistant at a rural college, where you have been happily working for a few months. Just as you are starting to feel like you know your way around campus and are comfortable with the professors, one of the deans passing in the hallway tells you, “Oh by the way, starting Tuesday we will celebrate our annual chalkless month. One month without using chalk from your first 8 am class all through the end of your evening seminars. It’s great, you’ll like it. It’s not easy to give up chalk, but we do it to honor the Earth from which chalk originates. Then at the end of the month we throw a big party where we chalk up the whole campus. Can’t you just see it now?”

“Thanks, Dean,” you say, all the while thinking that the whole thing sounds pretty silly. “Give up chalk,” you think to yourself. “Why, I use chalk so much I don’t know what I’d do without it. And besides, no one gives up chalk for a whole month where I come from. I don’t know anyone who has. I’ll just keep using chalk, thank you very much.”

So the chalkless month begins, and each day your students and fellow teachers greet you, asking about the weather and how the chalklessness is going. “It goes,” you say, slightly uncomfortable, knowing their chalk is stashed away, while your hands are still caked in powdery white. “So, you’re not using it, right?” they say, happy that you are still new to town and yet eager to fit in. “Well…” you mumble, and then admit that you have yet to be able to give it up, that you’re just not used to it, and that it’s not a tradition you are familiar with. “But you can try it,” they respond, “help us out, support us. Try it for a day, at least,” they urge, seeming to take so much joy in their temporary boycott.

Each day the conversation is the same, morning and afternoon and evening, for two weeks running. You start to wonder if it is really worth the grief you’re getting, being the only one who’s still using chalk. It’s starting to wear on you. Maybe there’s something in this whole giving-up-chalk thing, you start to think. The other professors seem to still be able to hold classes, you see, the students aren’t rioting, and in fact everyone all around seems to pay a little bit more attention to their studies. One morning you happen to wake up earlier than usual, and think that if you just went ahead and prepared your lesson with markers on flip chart paper, you could leave the chalk alone for the day.

So you do. Your students come into the classroom for the first class of the day and greet you heartily when they see your clean, chalk-free hands, and your conscience feels clearer, knowing you are not still doing something that everyone else around you has, for the time being, given up. By the end of the day you are laughing with your adjunct professor, who invites you to sit in on his evening seminar. “Just wait til the end of class,” he says. “At 9 o’clock on the dot I give every student a piece of chalk and let them go at it on the board. After all day without chalk, they love it.”

You see that this is true. At the end of the day, having been deprived of your usual, everyday chalk, you realize how much you take chalk for granted. When the professor hands you a piece so you can join in with the students up at the board, you take it in your hand with a newfound respect, and are almost giddy at the aspect of actually using it. “So this is why they do it,” you think to yourself. Your head is swimming a bit from the sudden flurry of chalk dust, but you see the point as you wipe your hands on your pants and head home to prepare the next day’s lesson.

Sunday, September 14, 2008

but what IS Ramadan really about?

Here are a few links with information about the holy Muslim month of Ramadan, for those interested:

http://http://www.bbc.co.uk/birmingham/content/articles/2005/09/27/idiots_guide_to_ramadhan_faith_feature.shtml (this article is a few years old but funny and informative - note, this year Ramadan falls in September, not October)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramadan

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Ramadan

22 more days
how many hours can I sleep
not as many as they can
every conversation now a religious debate
as if daily marriage proposals weren't enough

22 more days
each another reminder of how much I stand out
next month will they forget that I ate

22 more days
no one is working like they used to
children are still not back in school
hours at the cybercafé
in the street with games
pushing shoving hungry/stop staring over my shoulder

22 more days
until life goes back to what is normal anyway
religious beliefs can take a backseat
i can stop hiding my water bottle from the sun/
and feeling bad that I am not hungry

22 more days

Sunday, August 31, 2008

starting out small.

week three of IST we got out of the training center and got our hands dirty planting some trees. the soil was harder than ideal, lacking rain for several days past, but we put a few plants into the ground, and with a little luck, some of us will go on to do likewise in our own corners of Senegal.

all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

the second weekend of IST we organized a talent show, and acts ranged from card tricks and magic cookies to song and dance numbers based on classic Disney movie tunes with revised Peace Corps-parodied lyrics. we finished off the night with a dance party, of course.





a break from training, with sand and sweets.

the first weekend of IST I took a short trip to the beach with two friends. you wouldn't believe how much a simple thing like baking cookies is transformed into a luxurious pleasure when you live in a country where ovens are a rarity!

back to site update.

Our second, shorter, follow-up training is over, another time marker past. After almost four weeks away, I am back at my site, in a room I can call mine, and a city that knows my name. It feels good to be back, and also, selfishly, to know that people noticed that I had been away.

My transition back to free-flowing, unstructured time at site from the rigid, hourly-planned schedule of IST was eased by the visit of one of my best friends from our training stage, and the opportunity to show her around town also led to the realization about how much I already know about this place I now call home, and how many things here I hold dear. Though it was not always fun, being away for IST was useful in many ways, not the least of which was to get perspective away from site and come back with refined ideas and motivation to really begin working. A few more days of adjustment back to site, then hopefully I’ll be ready to start making plans. Thank you also to everyone who sent me letters while I was out of site - it made coming back that much sweeter. A full mailbox is cause for several days of joy, don’t underestimate it. And keep it up!

So, for a quick recap of time in country to date:

- 8 weeks PST (Pre-Service-Training), Thiès Training Center. (Getting ready to go out into the country on our own. Language, cross-culture, safety, health and technical training.)
- Swearing-In. (We became “real” volunteers!)
- Installation at site. (A few days of not knowing anyone’s name, and mild to severe panic.)
- 12 weeks at site (Figuring out town, meeting people, settling in. Technically not allowed to start any projects during this time.)
- 3 weeks IST (In-Service-Training), back in Thiès. (More technical training, plus a little language, and a safety, culture, and health session or two.)
- And now… back at site to stay and work, until spring COS (Close of Service) 2010, Inch’Allah.

Next Saturday will mark my first 6 months in country, and two days before that the newest group of trainees should be touching down in Dakar to start their Peace Corps experience. It’s strange and awesome to think that I will no longer be one of the greenest volunteers in Senegal - and that 6 months have already gone by so fast.

Sunday, August 10, 2008

from Beijing to Dakar to the U.S.A.

Three months at site, getting adjusted, starting a new life, feeling comfortable - and now we’re back in Thiès again, with training classes at the center and beds for the night back in our original homestay villages. I feel like the city mouse is a country mouse again, switching back to rural living, and it is a strange feeling to have this transient stay, 3 weeks only, back in a place I felt I left forever when the Land Rover drove us away back in May.

The best part of IST (In-Service-Training) so far, however, has been the comfortable time we get to spend with each other, fellow volunteers, all 34 of us who trained together now back here to continue to learn, and laugh, together. Three months away from each other has only brought us back with even more cohesion, and Friday’s opening Olympics ceremony was a moment to enjoy, as most of us crowded around the training center’s one TV after lunch, jointly commentating on the French-dubbed broadcast. We may not be this quick at our repartee in local languages yet, but it felt like home again to be around people who get the kind of humor that I so often miss at site.

- These are awful costumes.
- Yeah, Hungary, come on.
- I guess somebody got a discount…

- Yay, Togo.
- That was half-hearted.
- Yay, TOGO!!

- Sweet, it’s Iceland!
- He’s got a nice mustache.
- Like a used-car salesman.
- Nice coordinated dancing. Good job, Iceland.

- What do you call people from Guam?
- Guamese? Guamish? Guamians? Guamrats?

- Jordan should field a team with one guy, named Jordan.
- (Voice of sports announcer…) “Chad plays Jordan today.”
- Yes, but where are they from??

A few more countries parade through, including Finland and the United Arab Republic… and then:
- Who really cares?? I just want to see America!!

- Cook Islands! They’re the only country that’s a sentence!

- United Arab Emirates.
- They have more money than the rest of them.

Three guys jumping up and down wearing obviously homemade hats the color of their flag sparked a “Nicely done, Argentina!”

- Palau. Where’s that?
- Another Pacific island country, right?
- It’s one of those dots.
- That guy’s like, “This flag is bigger than my country!”

- Somalia! How does Somalia get in without an organized government?!

And as we were waiting, and waiting, and waiting to see Senegal march in, our next class had started and we were still watching:
- Let’s go, Senegal!
- Yeah, come on, we’re on a time schedule.

Then someone cynically (but not without reason) remarked,
- Eh, they’ll probably show up tomorrow.

07/30/08

After half a year in one of the wettest cities on the West Coast, then coming here to four months of incessant heat and dryness, I am rejoicing in the fact that the rainy season is now in full force. Just this past week it rained for the first time during the day, and my younger sister and I took advantage of our newly cemented drainage spout to shower under the gutter in front of the house. The day-time rains have become more frequent, which unfortunately means that the accompanying flooding in the lowest lying, poorly drained areas of town has also become obvious, and not everyone is as delighted to see the rain as I am. Many of the newer parts of the city are hard to get around in, and with the standing water, mosquitoes are rampant.

Just the other day (well, about a month ago now really) I went to a part of the city I hadn’t seen before, but had heard much about - the area of town where women smoke and dry thousands of fish every day to later sell them to be trucked east further into country, or exported to Mali, Guinea, and Burkino Faso.

The area of town is called “Xelkom,” (pronounced ‘Helcom’), and in fact the adjective ‘hellish’ would not be far wrong. My counterpart walked me around, and with my little notebook and pen in hand, I felt like a scientist making observations, seeing from the outside, looking but not touching, thinking and not knowing what to feel. It’s the equivalent of a factory, only outdoors and totally unregulated. No health sanctions, no supervisors, no cleanup at the end of the day, no coffee breaks. All the detritus from the smoking fish falling to the ground, caked into the earth, rotting and mixing with horse manure from the constant tread of charettes hauling fish from the port.
And now that it’s the rainy season…imagine what happens to that wretched mixture of decaying fish guts and fecal matter.
Take a minute...
That’s right.

It’s interesting to me, introspectively, how terrible this situation seems to me, and yet how it is still possible that I continue on with my own life, wanting to stay as oblivious as possible. Those women are out there every day, dawn to dusk probably, some with babies on their backs, in the smoking inferno, breaking their backs to scrape by a living in near squalor. And yet I can sit on my mostly comfortable and relatively very clean bed, under a mosquito net, in a room all to myself that would likely sleep as many as five children over by Xelkom. How can my conscience rest easy knowing that so close by there are people who have it much worse off than I do? I don’t know. Somehow it does.

I guess if I had to be upset about everyone in the world who has it much worse than I do, I’d never get any sleep at all. My stomach would always be uneasy, and I think I’d always feel off-balance. Somehow now I’m reminded of Ralph Nader and the speech he gave during my college graduation. He urged us to find one thing to be passionate about, and to pursue that cause to the best of our ability. I think he’s onto something there. You can’t be passionate about every cause - at least I know I’d wear out that way. You can be compassionate about many, true. But I think the way you can live with yourself is to commit yourself to something you believe in, that you love doing, do that thing to the best of your ability, and know that in doing that thing, you’re doing your part to help the world in the best way you can. I think that’s what “saving the world” comes down to, in a nutshell. Each person does what he can, where he can, all the while trying to keep in mind that he is a member of this 'global humanity'.

Saturday, July 19, 2008

a small circle of life.

My schedule has been, believe it or not, rather full recently. The volunteer who was here at my site for a full tour and some (2+ years) before me just left last week, so helping her get ready to go over the last few weeks was no small task, nor was the passing on of necessary information, pertinent to continuing the excellent and by no means easy work here that she began. That being said, this post is over a week old. But no matter. It's not like I live somewhere where I could have Internet at my fingertips every single day. I mean, this is Peace Corps after all.

Wednesday for lunch we ate another one of our chickens. When I went around back of the house after lunch to draw water, the other two (of the original four we’ve been raising in our little backyard for the past month or so) were huddled together next to our sheep, as if worried they’d be next. I didn’t witness the transformation of live animal to delicious meal, but after lunch there were a few stray gray feathers still laying on the sandy ground next to the back door, and even if I hadn’t asked my sister if it was one of ours, I would have been able to count that now only two of the original four were left strutting around behind the house. Anyway, it’s a novelty to me, being a born-and-raised suburbanite. Raising animals for food is something I grew up thinking other people did, but now that I’m in the midst of it, it seems perfectly natural. Here it’s nothing like the factory-farming culture in most of the States, where we’re generally so removed from our food sources and usually have only half an idea of what goes on between the birth of an animal and its arrival on our dinner plate.

On a less serious note, after lunch I was helping take our little wooden stools that we sit on around the bowl back to the kitchen. Coming back to the front room, I stopped for a moment to find the source of something sticky between my foot and my sandal. My sister saw me and asked, "Li lan la?" (What’s that?)
"Ceeb," I answered, having found a grain of rice stuck to the sole of my foot.
She laughed and said, "Sa tank bi da’y lekk." (Your foot, it’s eating.)

I’m so glad my family has a sense of humor. She’s the one I joke around with about the cockroaches in the bathroom, when the electricity goes out at night and there’s no light to chase them back into their corners. One night a few weeks ago she was making dinner, and after having come back from the bathroom I heard her say to our other sister that there were cockroaches in the bathroom. "Really???" I said, laughing, surprised that she had seemingly never noticed this very obvious fact before. So a bit later on I went to the bathroom and after coming out told her, "The cockroaches said hi." (Or literally in Wolof, "The cockroaches greeted you.") She laughed and said, "Oh really? What did they say? Nanga def? (How’s it going?)"
"Yep, they said, nanga def?" I replied, in a small cockroachy voice. I guess I don’t know what cockroaches would sound like if they could talk, I haven’t watched any of those Pixar bug movies. I don’t exactly like them now, sure, but I guess I don’t despise them anymore. They’ve just become part of my everyday life. As long as they don’t run into my feet…
And as long as the geckos stay out of my bath bucket, I’m ok with them too.

Chickens and cockroaches and geckos and sheep... No lions and tigers and bears (oh my!) but an assorted menagerie nonetheless. More news soon!

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

road-weary but happy for now.


This past week has found me in a much better state of mind, first due to the long-overdue purchase of a small gas burner, whose presence in my life here cannot be understated (cooking for myself makes me feel like a grownup again), and second thanks to the fact that this week we non-Senegalese here got together to celebrate the most American of American holidays, the 4th of July.

Every year the PCVs in the Kedougou region of Senegal throw a party for the 4th, inviting all the volunteers in country. That means this year about 155 PCVs were invited, and about half of those actually came. I had been debated whether or not I would go - my site being about as far away from Kedougou as you can go and still be in Senegal. Finally, one of my good friends from training who I hadn’t seen since then convinced me to go. So after a little bit of planning and my trip to the bank for the month accomplished, I told my family and my counterparts, packed up a bag, swept and mopped and bugsprayed my room, and I was on my way.

Public transportation here is not that bad, and relatively speaking I’ve heard it beats the heck out of a lot of other African countries. Still, “not that bad” is also a relative term, and when you get car sick like I do, 8 hours in the back seat of a not-very-well-padded sept-place over 200 km of pothole-ridden road is not exactly a pleasure cruise. All told, from my site to Kedougou means about 16 hours of road, which we split up into two days going, and two coming back. About 8 hours of that is bad road, 2 hours’ worth is decent, and the rest is good, even, hole-free/American standard pavement.

Despite the route, the trip was worth it to me to see all the people I hadn’t seen since PST, and even to meet a few new ones. The event was held at the Kedougou Regional House, also known as the CTC, because it has formerly been a Training Center for various Peace Corps activities. This place is a little hard to believe - let’s say for brevity’s sake that it looks like someone took apart the treehouse from Disney’s Swiss Family Robinson and put about five of those round thatch-roofed huts down on a good stretch of green leafy land, threw some mountains in the background, painted it all brightly, threw in a bunch of hammocks and set a bunch of gangly bike-happy Peace Corps volunteers loose in it.

The outdoor shower alone sets it apart from the other regional houses I’ve seen so far in country, and I was in awe of the kitchen, which is about four times the size of the kitchen at the Dakar regional house. This was helpful when it came time to prepare food for the 70-some hungry volunteers who showed up. The Kedougou guys had planned well in advance, and when we arrived Thursday afternoon they were already butchering the pig they had bought for the fête, and baking bread to eat with the bucket bath-sized tub of hummus they had prepared. Giant bowls of mangoes had been cut up to make a cobbler, and another baignoir was already full of macaroni salad. Many people had already arrived by then, most in small groups from the different regions of the country, though a few close by came in Friday. I had traveled with four other volunteers, which made the trip somewhat easier, because we had each other to complain to. Once we got there, though, there wasn’t too much complaining going around.

Thursday night we were on our own for dinner so we went to one of the nice places in town where we had heard you could get warthog sandwiches. Because who can resist a warthog sandwich? The sandwich was very delicious indeed, even more so because most of us don’t get that much meat on a regular basis. At any rate, it tasted like pulled pork, good and tender, and a good twenty of us or so were there, reveling in each other’s company and catching up on the last few months.

The next day was the 4th, and throughout the day people came and stayed, eating, drinking, and listening to a great soundtrack of American music pumped through Senegalese-rented speakers. There were horseshoes around back, a foosball table someone had acquired, and sometime mid-afternoon there was a water balloon fight, followed shortly by a grand piñata spectacle. When it got dark, the music changed to dancing tempo, and around 9:30 a few fireworks even made an appearance, somehow having been obtained in or around Kaolack, I believe. A few times during the day I actually forgot I wasn’t in America.

Saturday we stayed until the afternoon, then started our trip back. From Kedougou back to Tambacounda, the road passes through a national reserve, which is actually a World Heritage Site, and this time we saw warthogs and baboons, crossing the road. We stayed the night at the Tamba regional house - on the roof, because all the beds were taken with everyone traveling back to their sites. Sunday we left the Tamba garage at 7:30 am, and I got back home 12 hours later, tired, and very dirty from all the dust on the Tamba - Kaolack road. The dirt made it seem like I had gained an extra layer of tan when I stepped out of the sept-place, but when I took my blessed bucket bath that night it all washed off, and it felt so good to be clean, after so much time on the road.

So now I’m back at site, digging in to get some assessments done in these few weeks left in July, because come August I go back to Thiès for another three weeks of training - IST - in-service-training. It feels good to be back, and I’m certainly glad to be sleeping in my own bed in my own room after five nights away. One more week from today and I’ll have been at site two months, and in Senegal for four. Mungiy dox, ndank ndank.
(It’s working, little by little.)

Saturday, June 28, 2008

















part of a big neighborhood cleanup... hopefully I'll get more pictures up soon.

flashback to 6 weeks in country... now 6 weeks at site.


Yesterday I finally broke down and bought myself insecticide spray. This isn't the stuff you spray on yourself to gently ward off insects. No. This is the stuff you spray around when you have the intention of actually causing their untimely death.

My room had become a breeding ground for flies, and I couldn't even sit for one minute inside without feeling like I was being molested every five seconds by a hairy, brainless, six-legged creature. So I went to our closest corner store right before lunch, and just before sitting down to the bowl with my family, I sprayed it in my room: all around the window, the edges of my bed, and around the door, closing it behind me. Half an hour later, full of delicious rice and fish, I opened up the door to my room to count twenty - that's right, twenty - dead flies on my floor. I had to go get a broom to sweep them all out, a few of them still twitching. Ooh. I know some people believe all life is sacred, but I just don't know what purpose in life flies serve, except to annoy human beings and other animals. And perhaps I'm killing some of my own brain cells with this anti-fly toxin, but it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make to be able to have some peace of mine, which is so precious to me here.

So you may rightfully now ask, what have I been doing the last six weeks here at site that I need peace of mind?
Just the usual stuff: getting out into the community seven days a week, trying to get a feel for what my job is, getting to know my city and the people in it.
Things are getting easier, bit by bit, and more and more people are starting to know me. The routes I traverse every day are becoming friendlier. But every day that I walk down a new street, I still feel as if I were a dancing bear who escaped from the circus. Some kids run towards the bear with gleeful smiles and yells, because they think that it's neat that the bear can dance. Many people expect the bear to do other tricks, but the bear doesn't know any of the ones they like. Some little children are afraid of the bear and run away, because they've never seen one in real life. Other older people look at the bear with scorn, as if it were in bad taste for the bear to go out in public, especially unaccompanied by its trainers. So it happens that by the end of many days, the bear just wishes it could go back to the circus, because at least there it felt accepted and praised for what it was.

But since the circus is far away and the bear knows that being here now is more important, it tries to find ways to blend in, to walk on all fours, to change its ways to make itself more acceptable and not so bizarre. Maybe one day, if the bear works hard enough, people will stop pointing it out as odd, and maybe the bear will even earn a few real friends before it goes back to the circus. But for now, at the end of the day, no matter what it does, few people can get past the fact that the bear is still a bear.

Saturday, June 21, 2008

3 buckets, 1 bar of soap, and a load of vindication

To start, it needs to be mentioned that my Senegalese family is very well off by this country’s standards, and coming here from my village outside of Thiès it felt a little like I transitioned from country mouse to city mouse. Here I live in a small family (6 people), with one daughter going to school full-time and another part-time, and a well-to-do father who can afford to pay for a housegirl to come to clean, wash, and cook every morning to afternoon, except Sundays. So when I approached the topic of washing my clothes about a month ago, my host mother asked me if I could wash clothes, and I said, “well, yes,” but she didn’t really believe me. So she told me I could give my clothes to A., our housegirl, and she would wash them once a week or once every other week, for 1500 cfa each time (about 4 dollars US). I agreed to this, because 1. I had seen how much work it seemed to be to wash clothes here by hand, 2. I had heard of other volunteers who also paid someone in their family to do their wash, and 3. I was also sure that A. could do a quicker and more efficient job than I.

Since this agreement, I have given my clothes to A. twice, both times getting them back pressed and dirt-free, but smelling like what we had for dinner the night before. The other day I figured out that the reason the clothes smell like cooking is because the charcoal A. uses to heat the iron she uses for pressing is the same charcoal she uses to grill fish for our lunch. But besides the smell (I’m used to washed clothes smelling like soap, not fish), it was really starting to wear on me that no one around here thinks I can do anything a woman should be able to do, by Senegalese standards. And they not only think that, they constantly point it out. Again, and again. And again.

So the other day after lunch, I bought some bar soap at the boutique and set myself up around the back of the house, with my two buckets and my clothes, ready to prove that I really am useful and can do something for myself. I filled up the one bucket with water from the faucet at the back of the house, and had barely started to scrub the first piece of clothing when my very critical father poked his head out of the kitchen door, saying just “Men nga foot?”
(meaning “Can you wash?”)
To which I replied, already tired of this line of questioning, “Waaw, men naa.”
(Yes, I can.)

He said something to the effect of “hmm,” left, and I started to scrub the wet clothes with the soap when the younger of my two sisters, S., came around back. Looking at my work with a discerning but kind eye, she took the soap from me and rubbed it across a wet skirt, squinching and squelching the cloth with the necessary sound that seems to be an essential criteria for cleanliness in this country.
“Defal kom bi,” she said, (Do it like this), and then went about her business.
Ok, ok, I thought, but really I can do this myself.

I kept at it, but soon after, A. came back behind the house to feed our local inmates on Death Row - four chickens and a very noisy sheep. Since it looked to me like she was confused about what I appeared to be doing, I said that I was washing my clothes, that I thought she had enough work to do, and that I had time - have time - to do it myself. After this short speech, she told me I should “bay ko” (leave it) until the next day, and she would do it. But I said “no, no,” and insisted that I wanted to do it, that I had the time to do it, and that I would do it. At that point she decided that if I was going to do it, I should do it right, so she also proceeded to take the soap from me, unsatisfied with my scrubbed and squelching, showing me, just as S. had, how to soap and squish and wring out my clothes.
“Defal kom bi,” she said, looking at me and laughing a little, like she does when I’m sure she thinks I’m a little crazy, or stupid, or both.

So I kept going, and going, as A. went back and forth in her chores, periodically checking on my progress, and later showing me the “best” way to then hang my clothes on the line. “Do you want them to dry?” she asked me, and I said “Waaw,” (Yes), wishing there was a Wolof equivalent for “duh.” She replied to this by silently pointing me to the clothespins, and rearranging all the clothes I had already put on the line.

At one point my brother even came around back and gave my work an approving smile, and it seemed everyone had checked in on me when finally I was putting the last of the clothes on the line. A. came back just then to put the chickens away and sweep the yard before going home for the day. After she shooed the chickens back into their pen, she took a look at the line, inspecting my work. I followed her eyes as they looked critically at the clothes I had worked so hard on to prove that I can, at least, do one thing that as a woman I am supposed to be able to do. After a moment of decision, she said simply, in a tone of voice that could have been either a question or a statement of surprise,
“Men nga foot?”
(which depending on context can mean either “Can you wash?” or “You can wash”)
And since I wasn’t sure which it was, I said to her, “Men naa foot?”
(Can I wash?)
To which she replied, turning to me with words that never sounded so sweet,
“Waaw. Set na.”
(Yes. It’s clean.)

june 18.

I’ve been in Senegal for three months now, and I’m starting to feel like I actually live here: like this is normal, and this is familiar. I’m not saying that all the novelty has worn off, but I think at this point the initial period of shock and rapid adjustment is over. The beginning is the hardest, many volunteers say - I guess I can’t know yet, but the way it’s going now I would tend to agree. I’m starting to feel like I’m actually part of this community - a newcomer for sure, but in many ways I’m an active citizen, and people are starting not only to recognize me, but to respect me, and to know why I’m here.

This past weekend I left my site to go to a regional welcome party/meeting, and then spent two days in Dakar, visiting with other volunteers. It was great to spend time with my friends in country, share our trials and tribulations since we’d last seen each other, and just relax, but when Tuesday morning came and I had to go back to site, I felt hesitation. By the time I had made it to the garage, though, and was seated in a sept-place, all I wanted to do was get back. The traffic leaving Dakar took us an hour to get through (which I hear is about average), but an hour and a half later we pulled into town, and when I walked into my house and my host mother was there to greet me, it felt like home.

More to come in a bit. Just wanted to put this out there.

Friday, June 6, 2008


the right words to communicate

Technically I’m supposed to be at another meeting right now, but as no one would give me a straight answer as to why I was supposed to be there, I took that as a sign that that it was not actually mandatory for me. That, and the fact that when I called my counterpart, his wife answered the phone, saying that he had gone to a different meeting. But lest you think that I take every opportunity to slack off from work, I did spend the last two full days at a seminar on the problems of youth in the city, and participated in brainstorming sessions about what we, as various representatives of the services offered to young people, can do about those problems. I got the chance to meet many important and relevant people to my job as an environmental education volunteer, and got a brainful of Wolof and a lot of very rapid French. Then this morning I showed up for a meeting at the mayor’s office, but unbeknownst to me, the hour had been pushed back so far that 10 minutes after I arrived, the meeting was over. I was able to profit from my presence anyway by using the wireless internet there at City Hall - that is, until the power went out again an hour later.

My last post took 3 days to put up on the blog because we’ve been having long periods of electricity outages here in town, which are apparently region-wide, not just across the city. It’s something else to live in a village, where you’re used to not having electricity, but when you’ve come to take it for granted, and then it’s not there, well…
I do apologize and tip my hat to my friends and all Senegalese who live every day without power.

Unfortunately for us here, the plumbing system that runs the faucets is linked to the power generator, so when there’s no power, there’s also no water. We have a little well in our backyard area, for backup, but our neighbors on the island don’t have wells, so they have to come over the bridge to the mainland when the power cuts out, to fetch water to take back to the island to wash, cook, clean and flush. Makes “island life” sound a little less romantic, doesn’t it.

Speaking of romance, I continue to be grilled about my lack of husband, and more recently, lack of children. Yesterday, I was talking to a colleague of my counterpart, an older man who I had up until yesterday seen a few times but never spoken to, as he didn’t seem to be interested in talking to me. I was waiting outside my counterpart’s office at the elementary school when one little child who had been playing in the schoolyard came up to me with a dear look on his face, not saying a word, but just staring. I started to talk to him in Wolof, asking him his name, if he was having fun, and so on, and this colleague of my counterpart’s asked me (in Wolof as well) if I wanted to keep him - the boy. I laughed, saying no, of course. He asked me then if I had any children, and I said no, again with a smile, because children are one of the furthest things from my mind while I myself feel like a child much of the time in this foreign country.

“Don’t you want children?” he then continued, and I said, “Maybe, one day.” And then he asked if I would carry my children on my back, like women do here, and I said “yes, or maybe in front,” but he thought that was a bad idea, and insisted that in back was better. Then - and this is where I was almost laughing out loud, because 1. The question would be considered very personal in the U.S. and 2. I understood it quite plainly in Wolof - he asked if I would breast-feed my children, when I have them. And I told him, with a smile on my face because I could hardly believe that I was having this conversation in Wolof with a near stranger, that if I have children I will certainly breast-feed them, because it’s good for the health of the child. He approved of that, saying that mother’s milk is better than cow’s or even goat’s milk. I learned later from my counterpart that this particular guy is a “griot,” a member of Senegal’s traditional caste of storytellers and singers, and he is invited to events because he (and I quote my counterpart) “knows exactly what words to use to communicate.”

So I apologize to anyone out there who may have just been given too much information, but I wanted to share some insight into the forward-ness, as well as the priorities of some people here, and my personal triumph that I was able to communicate so much. There is still so much I don’t understand, but I’m feeling a little bit more involved in what’s going on around me, and as noted, increasingly holding my own against the constant barrage of gender-based questions. Wish me luck on keeping it up.

the electricity is out again…

Every day I’m here I feel like I’m being tested in different ways, and I’ve slowly come to realize that I need to develop coping strategies now, early on, before the incessant pressure builds to a breaking point. Patience and flexibility are two of my biggest challenges here, and I can feel that I am changing, gradually, but noticeably, because of my constant efforts towards a greater capacity for both.

I don’t think I’ve written about the “toubab” issue yet, but it is probably the toughest obstacle I feel like I’m facing in the process of integration into my community. A “toubab”, as I may have mentioned in previous posts, is the Senegalese word for foreigner, but more specifically it refers to “white person”. My site is a small city, and as such it unfortunately makes it impossible for me to stop and greet every small child who yells “Toubab!” at me as I pass. This wasn’t an issue in the village I lived in during training, because it was small enough that everyone very soon knew my name. Here though, the situation is different. I often walk to get where I’m going, but I also ride my Peace Corps-issue bike, including regulation helmet, and that provokes just as much public attention, though I can get out of earshot faster on bike than on foot.

I have come to terms with the fact that although the children on my street now know my name, most of the city children will continue to call “Toubab, toubab, toubab, toubab, toubab!” whenever I pass, on foot or on bike, every day of every month for the rest of the two years that I am here. I am therefore determined not to hear each mocking, accusatory call of “Toubab!” but will pretend instead to hear “Lexie!” as if each child were greeting me by my most real name. Hopefully this will ease my frustration at the accumulation of deriding exclamations. I’ll let you know how it goes.

As for flexibility, I’m learning that here more than anywhere else I’ve been it pays to go with the flow, and have a plan B. Perhaps you were planning on going to the internet café and just as you were ready to leave the electricity cut out again all over town. Or maybe you thought your whole day was going to be devoted to working on a school project but all the schools are on strike and no one is around to participate. Yesterday I had no plans for the afternoon at all, and when I asked my sister in the morning why she wasn’t at school and she answered that there was a “physical education day,” I decided to go see what that was about, feeling sorry that I had missed the previous week’s race at her middle school.

So after lunch we walked over to the fields (a.k.a. big sandy expanses) behind the lycée (the high school), and there I discovered all of the girls in troisième (9th grade) from all three of the local middle schools gathered to do their end-of-year P.E. tests. These consisted of shot put, 100-meter dash, high jump, and something they termed “roulade” - which was kind of a short gymnastic/balance routine, including tumbling and cartwheels. From 3:30 until after 7pm I watched, cheered, and laughed along with the girls, as each took her turn, and all encouraged the rest.

I could have left at any time, but I stayed along with my sister until the last jump had been attempted, and all the scores reported. It took me back to my days of middle school gym class, running “in-and-out” laps, and made me laugh to remember who I was over 10 years ago. So I may not have started out my day planning to stand in the sun for four hours watching teenage strangers try to jump a 4-foot-high rope… but it was honestly one of the best afternoons I’ve spent here so far.

Friday, May 23, 2008

where is my husband?

A week into my life here at site, and what I’ve been doing mostly would be considered “getting to know my site.” That means I do a lot of walking around town, greeting people, having short conversations with strangers on the street, and hanging out with my Senegalese host family. I also have been spending some time with my sitemate, talking about culture, logistics of living here, and so on, and trying to get up to speed with the particulars of the current project she and two other PCVs here helped to get going.

I can’t say I’ve done the same thing any day since I’ve been here, which is a relief from training, though I do encounter the same questions from almost anyone who talks to me for more than a few minutes. When they find out I can speak Wolof, a little, nine times out of ten I get some variation on the following:

Q. Where is your husband? (alternatively, Do you have a husband?)
A. Usually I say I don’t have one. Twice so far I’ve made up nonexistent boyfriends, but I’m not very good at lying, especially in Wolof, so I usually just go with the truth.

Q. Why don’t you have a husband?
A. Mostly I say I don’t have time for one. Sometimes I say I just don’t want one. Sometimes I’ll go with a line I learned from another PCV, and say I already have two husbands, in the States, and the guy usually laughs, and says that’s bad, and I say, well men can have two wives here, why can’t women have two husbands?

Q. Can you cook ceebujën? (the traditional Senegalese fish and rice)
A. No, I cannot. And I really have no desire to learn how, but I don’t say that. Fortunately my lovely family here cooks lots of things other than ceebujën. I think this question is just to tease me, to see how Senegalese I am - i.e. if I can already speak Wolof, then maybe I can cook them dinner.

Q. What can you cook?
A. Usually the quick answer I give is eggs, and pasta. But those are easy! people say, and it’s true. But it’s more difficult to get across the fact (in witty repartee) that at home I use cookbooks, and if I can read the instructions, then I can usually cook it. There’s not really any such thing as a cookbook here, so if you can’t cook something from memory, you’re not any kind of cook.

Q. Can you pray?
A. No, not the way Muslims pray here. This is a question less often asked, but I’ve gotten it twice in the last few days, and I think it is also to tease me about being white and Western and living in an African, 90% Muslim culture. There are Christians living here in my town, many fewer than Muslims, but they are accepted and the two groups live together peacefully. If I wanted to go to church, I could, though the service would be Catholic.

The husband question is the most ubiquitous, because a 25-year-old woman without a husband is very rare in Senegal. I always laugh it off, especially when the guy asking the question then offers to be my husband, which just seems ridiculous at first, but then you get used to the fact that it’s all part of how they joke around here. Everyone seems to also love to ask me if I can cook Senegalese dishes, probably also because cooking is solely women’s domain here, and a very large part of their lives. Again, I deflect those questions with humor, because it’s way too early for frustration.

My patience and sense of humor will definitely be tested and tried time and again before I return to the land where it’s perfectly acceptable to be an unmarried woman, where no one but me should care if I can cook, and where my religion is my own business.