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'.