“…in the jingle jangle morning I'll come followin you”

All the familiar signs of the current season are absent here. No festive music playing in stores, no frenzied shoppers racing about, no constant stream of advertising…
Only my wall calendar quietly tells me that a mere ten days are left before the biggest holiday in the Western world. A hint of cold wakes me up in the mornings these days, and I linger in bed to enjoy it, knowing that even as I shiver to take my bucket bath at 9 a.m., the midday sun will still beat down in its dry December warmth. I consider my situation, my distance from where I call home, and think about how much I miss bitter cold, frost on the grass, icicles hanging from heavy tree branches, a cup of hot chocolate in my cold hands. I miss feeling the excitement of an upcoming vacation, as even if I leave my site over the holiday I will still be in Senegal, and still a Peace Corps Volunteer, doing my job 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. As I’ve pointed out before, this job is one that has no boundaries, no “quitting time”. Whenever I interact with a Senegalese person I’m doing one part of my job, so that’s pretty much most of my time…

Maybe you’ve noticed my tone is not an eager, enthusiastic one today. I admit it: I am tired. I have been working almost constantly over the last month, with a few short breaks for Thanksgiving and Tabaski, and juggling increasingly frequent thoughts about how to concentrate on my current work while considering wrapping up my time here. People are starting to ask what I will do “after”, and I am hoping in the next few weeks to have some down time to start thinking about that. I got nastily sick two days before our big International Day of the Volunteer event, though fortunately recovering quickly, but I think whatever it was weakened my system because two days after the weekend of the IDV to-do I came down with a cold that came on strong and has hung on for the past week.

Being sick has forced me to take things easier over the last few days, and fortunately the pace of work has also obligingly decelerated, with only one major project now demanding my attention for the next few weeks. Our three days of International Day of the Volunteer “celebrations” (December 4-6) went over remarkably well I’d say, considering my extensive pre-event worries, and the city pulled off hosting several hundred people with only some slight delays in food preparation and last-minute ceremony lineup rearrangements. After much fretting, the part of the ceremony planned for PCVs to “present their experience in community environmental management” ended up getting skipped, so the SED APCD (Small Enterprise Development Assistant Program Country Director) didn’t get to speak about Peace Corps’ role in starting the city’s now-famous pilot waste management project, nor did I have to take a turn at the podium in front of over 300 people to say my rehearsed Wolof proverb (as the APCD had asked me to do, as a concluding remark). Later on that day however the local radio rep cornered me to get my word on the event, so after not-so-eloquently expressing my feelings (in Wolof, of course) about the importance of recognizing volunteer work, I finished with the proverb I’d memorized for the occasion: “Benn lam ci loxo, keleng du am” - meaning “One single bracelet on a hand will not make a sound.”

It’s a truth universally acknowledged - it takes many to really make something happen. One person can set off a course of action, but without the domino effect of others reacting, that single person’s effort will have little meaning. As Peace Corps Volunteers, we are sent out to our villages and towns alone, single bracelets. But as time passes and we integrate into our communities, gain respect and press on in our task to reinforce local capacities, we gather more and more bracelets around us. My time here is waning and I may wonder how much I have actually accomplished, but I am not dreading leaving this work behind, because although I will eventually go back to the States in a few short months, I have hope that the loss of my single bracelet will not mean the silencing of the jangle I have endeavored to set in motion.

holidays coast-to-coast

Baal ma, baal naa la. Yalla nu Yalla boole baal.
(Forgive me, I forgive you. May God forgive us all.)

These are the traditional words spoken on Tabaski, the Senegalese name for the Muslim celebration of Eid-Al-Adha, which commemorates the story of God asking Abraham to sacrifice his only son Ishmael to show his commitment to his faith, and at the last second sparing the boy by replacing him with a ram. It is considered the largest holiday in this mostly Muslim culture, and this year the day fell two days after one of the biggest holidays in American culture, Thanksgiving. Because of the proximity of the two days and my prior plans to participate in the U.S. Ambassador’s Thanksgiving dinner in Dakar, my host mother forgave me for staying in the capital to celebrate Tabaski with good friends instead of with my family at site, agreeing that traffic would probably be terrible if I tried to travel back to site right before Tabaski.

It was a strange inversion of emotion, another year of celebrating an American holiday in the midst of a foreign culture, and then participating as an American in a foreign holiday. I am thankful that I had the opportunity to spend Thanksgiving with other American friends, bake a few pies in a borrowed apartment, and sit around a table with others who share my tradition.

I ended up missing my family and friends more on Tabaski, however, than I did on Thanksgiving, a fact that may be hard to comprehend for some of you who will say, “but we don’t celebrate Tabaski.” It’s true that most of us in America don’t celebrate the equivalent of Tabaski, but because it is the biggest holiday here, (and here is where I am now, even though here is not where I’m from) even though I was with friends it felt like I should also have been with my family that day. The feelings of distance and separation from my loves ones that struck me on Thanksgiving were multiplied on Tabaski as I watched my African friends celebrate their blessings, forgive each other for their wrongs, and embrace the importance of being with family.

I’ve posted to my photo site pictures of Thanksgiving preparations and elegant Tabaski outfits, American friends and Senegalese.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/offtoseetheworld/

I’ll leave you today with this quote from a book I picked up over the holiday in our Peace Corps regional house library. After I read this I looked back to the first pages to check the publication date and was surprised to find “1958,” because I find these words just as relevant today as when they were first written half a century ago.

“The community today can be no single tradition; it is the planet. Daily the world grows smaller, leaving understanding the only bridge on which peace can find its home. But the annihilation of distance has caught us unprepared. Who today stands ready to accept the solemn equality of nations? Who does not have to fight an unconscious tendency to equate foreign with inferior? We live in a great century, but if it is to rise to its full opportunity, the scientific achievements of its first half must be matched by comparable achievements in human relations in its second. Those who listen in the present world work for peace, a peace built not upon ecclesiastical or political empire, but upon understanding and the mutual involvement in the lives of others that this brings. For understanding, at least in realms as inherently noble as the great faiths of mankind, brings respect, and respect prepares the way for a higher power, love - the only power that can quench the flames of fear, suspicion, and prejudice, and provide the means by which the peoples of this great earth can become one to one another.”

- Huston Smith, “The Religions of Man”

they say every day is a learning experience

After the school-focused trash awareness day I helped to organize last week, these students went home with a (hopefully) better understanding of waste management.
As for me, I went home with a better understanding of event management.
Here are a few things I won’t forget the next time…

1. Start by showing up an hour early for this big event you’ve helped plan, even if you know most of your invitees will be an hour late. You might find that no one has informed the caretaker that there will be 150 people showing up for an event in half an hour.

2. Be on good terms with said caretaker as you might need him to help you set up 100 chairs in the 15 minutes before 100 school kids show up to sit in them.

3. Make sure you have plenty of phone credit minutes on your cell so you can call everyone at the last minute to find out where they are and why they’re not where they’re supposed to be.



4. Remember if you’re screening a film to test run the projector during the day before. It’s easy to forget that at night you will see the movie better because it’s already dark out.

5. Have a backup plan in mind in case your 150-person group gets kicked out of their previously arranged room because the assistant mayor had scheduled a more important (i.e. international donor-led) meeting there already for the same day and the same time but had forgotten to tell you when you asked if you could have that room the week before.

6. Double-check your budget to include contingencies. You never know when your backup plan location’s power box might burst into flames and end up with your group getting blamed for it.

7. Always carry tape and scissors. Extension cords are often flimsy and unreliable.

8. Carry a copy of the event’s agreed-upon budget with you the day of, in case of last minute questions.



9. Wear comfortable clothes so you can move easily as you will likely be constantly sent on errands to keep things running smoothly.

10. Plan to serve your group’s meal in a secluded spot, as opposed to a site where another group is already having a seminar, if you don’t want to have other uninvited people partaking of your carefully budgeted food and beverages.

11. Carry extra cash with you in case you need to go out and buy more beverages for members of your group who were shorted (see number 10).

12. Repeat. Always carry tape and scissors.

13. If during the course of your event you’re giving out t-shirts, pens, notebooks or any other “goodies”, be prepared to fend off constant demands from onlookers for such items.

14. Keep track of all of the event’s attendees, but remember that it is likely many teachers only brought their students because they were promised money for transport and per diem.

15. Remind yourself that at least they came.

16. Be glad you did not have to write up a grant proposal request for this event, and that someone else will be in charge of writing the final report to the donor.

17. Remember to focus on what went right, not just on what went wrong!

stretched a little thin

There is kind of a ridiculous amount of stuff going on in my life right now, so again please excuse my long absence from this page. You may be wondering what I do with all this time I supposedly don’t have ;) Well. Here’s part of a letter I wrote last week to help explain. (Sorry Dad, hope you don’t mind…)

[dated November 9, 2009]

“Work has been keeping me super busy these last weeks, since October started pretty much, and school picked up. I’m working on three major projects right now. The first and ongoing one is this new committee we’ve started, a city-wide environmental education committee that regroups reps from all the 12 elementary and middle schools in [the city] with the objective to work together to more effectively teach environmental education. With this committee and the committee that manages the city’s pilot waste management project we are organizing a student “trash awareness day” this Wednesday, where we’ve invited 10 kids from each of the 12 schools, along with 2 teachers per school, and we’re going to show them a few short videos on trash and plastics recycling, then lead discussion sessions, give them lunch, and break into workshops to discuss solutions. I hope it goes well, we’ve been planning this for several weeks now and yet some major details (like who would be cooking lunch) were still up in the air as of today, 2 days before the planned event… I have to remember that this is Senegal and that’s the way so many things work here, but it’s still unsettling to me, the structured American…

Besides the committee, I’ve been roped into helping to plan this International Day of the Volunteer celebration, which will (Inch’Allah) take place in [my city] this December 5. It’s a big deal for the community, as this is the first year they’re doing this annual day’s celebration outside of the capital city, and all kinds of bigwigs are invited, ambassadors and other such VIPs. So that’s in the works as a 3-day affair intended to welcome as many as 500 people, and not too many weeks left before that.

My third project on tap is not easily summed up in one succinct sentence, but consists essentially of being a liaison and a facilitator, which is what I, as a Peace Corps volunteer, pride myself in being good at (if I do say so myself). But let me not speak too soon, as the major work of this project is yet to come. The city is expecting the arrival of a French film crew on November 21-ish: a group calling themselves Projet Esperanto, whose vision is to produce a short film, featuring children, focused on the importance of protecting the world’s precious water resources. Their plan is to film one part of their documentary/storytelling movie in 5 different francophone countries, spending a few weeks respectively in France, Morocco, Senegal, Guyana, and Guadeloupe. Through contacts with WWF (World Wildlife Fund) France and WWF Senegal, my site got chosen as their destination in Senegal, and with my position as Environmental Education volunteer here, the adjunct mayor asked me to work on this project with the project team once they come. I’m a little worried that I’m already pretty weighed down with work but I’m very excited to see how I can be of help, as a link between the filming team and the school they want to work with. To read more about their project, you can check out their website - http://www.projet-esperanto.fr/projet.htm - though it is in French ☺

As you can see I’m keeping myself busy. Or maybe it would be more correct to say that I’m being kept busy… At any rate, other than work, and the weather becoming much more agreeable, I am trying to find time to look ahead and start to consider my options for post-Peace Corps. This is not a simple task, as there are many factors involved, obviously, and it is difficult to find time to think about the future when I am so caught up in the present…”

** Now it’s already a week after our trash awareness day, I just typed up a report one of my work partners wrote on it, we are scheduling a follow-up & evaluation meeting with the CCEE (Community Committee for Environmental Education) for next week, and sending in the final details of budget expenses to the Italian NGO that financed all of it. The Projet Esperanto team is on track to moor their catamaran at the peninsula’s cape on Saturday or Sunday (they are traveling the most eco-friendly way, via boat), and I was in Dakar on Monday at the Peace Corps office talking with a 3rd year volunteer about expectations for the International Day of the Volunteer. Now if only I can steal away some time next week to run up to Dakar to celebrate Thanksgiving at the U.S. Ambassador’s residence with some other PCVs and ex-pats… maybe I can make it to Christmas with my head still attached to my body.

(And maybe sometime before New Year’s I’ll find the time to write up the required quarterly report about all of this…)

turando

It happened. After just over a year of living in a Senegalese community, I was honored in one of the kindest ways a Senegalese person can honor another person - by being chosen as a turando for their child. The word "turando" in Wolof translates literally as "to name with" - a namesake. So someone thought I was cool enough to name a child after. Well, sort of.

At first I thought he was kidding. My favorite teacher at the primary school I was working with all last year was already the proud father of a precocious 2-year-old boy when he told me in the spring that his wife Yacine was expecting. “If it’s a girl we’ll name it after you,” he kept saying. I joked that he shouldn’t really, feeling unworthy of such an honor. I often forgot, as the weeks went by, that Yacine was pregnant at all, as by mid-May she had gone to Kaolack to stay with her mother and I only occasionally got bits of news from Monsieur Ndiaye about how she was doing. Soon I got caught up in the busy-ness of May, and by June was preparing to leave for my 3-week trip home to the States. The week before I was set to leave for Dakar, I went to school one of the last mornings before my trip and heard the good news. Monsieur Ndiaye wasn’t there that day, but the other teachers told me: it was a boy!

The next afternoon I was walking home from the mayor’s office when Monsieur Ndiaye rode up next to me on his best friend Sarr’s bicycle. “The ngenté [baptism party] is next Tuesday!” he told me, excited. “You have to come!”
“Right!” I said. “Congratulations!”
And then I remembered to ask, “What did you name him?” not having gotten that answer out of the teachers at the school.
“We named him after you!” said Monsieur Ndiaye, as he pedaled slowly along with my walking pace.

Named him after me? I wondered how that could be. Which of my names had he chosen? And now I should be at the baptism but it really wasn’t convenient.
“Well,” I hesitated. “But where are you having the ngenté?”
“It’s in Kaolack,” he answered. “Because that’s where her family is.” Kaolack is a big, hot, smelly city in the interior of Senegal, about a 3-hour trip from my site, and not on the way to Dakar, where I had planned to spend the next few days before leaving for the States. I was already going to Thiès for a weekend before going to Dakar, and Kaolack would just be one more leg on a trip where I was already carrying so much baggage.

“I don’t think I’m going to make it,” I told him sadly. “I will come and see him when I get back,” I promised, disappointed that such an important thing had come up at such an inconvenient time. But as Monsieur Ndiaye had always shown himself to be flexible as we’d spent the last year working together on environmental lessons and the school’s student government, he accepted that I had previous plans and told me he and Yacine would wait for my visit. As we said our goodbyes I asked him again what the baby’s name was, and as he pedaled away up the street he called back at me, laughing, “I named him after you!”

Fast forward 2 months. I had been to America and come back, school was out for the summer, and I hadn’t seen Monsieur Ndiaye since the end of June. It was August, a few weeks after I got back to site, and I was walking around town when I saw him hanging out by the market. “Hey! Ngoné Ndiaye!” I walked over and remembered at once that I had, somewhere, a child supposedly named after me. A baby I hadn’t seen. A living growing person. I greeted Monsieur Ndiaye, found out that everyone wass doing well, and that Yacine was still in Kaolack. I got ready to leave and decided to try again. “So… are you going to tell me what the baby’s name is?”
“We named it after you!” he said. “Well, you and Sarr, because he’s my best friend… and Yacine’s dad…” and it turned out that I have the honor of being a 1/3 namesake.

It was several weeks later until I heard that Yacine was back from Kaolack, and a week after that when I finally got around to visiting. I had been putting it off, not knowing what to bring, what to give, not having gone to the baptism. I felt bad, a poor excuse for a namesake. That afternoon I convinced my sitemate to go with me and together we walked up the steps to the Ndiayes’ apartment, meeting Monsieur Ndiaye at the door.

“Hey, Ngoné Ndiaye!” We were led into the living room, his 2-year-old bouncing in from the balcony to greet us. Yacine came in from the kitchen, happy to see me, holding the baby, as I admitted I was ashamed for not having brought anything. “I didn’t know what to bring!” I told them.
And all at once they reassured me.
“No, no!” they said. “You came! That’s all you needed to do.”
Relieved, remembering why we were friends, I sat down on the couch as Yacine handed me the baby.

I bounced him on my knee and looked at his chubby cheeks.
“So, Mamadou Mour Alexis Ndiaye,” I cooed. “How are you doing?”

kaay fecc [come dance]

[I am now fully two months behind in blogs I’ve been wanting to post, as these last few weeks have suddenly burst into action and I am quickly becoming overwhelmed with work. You will forgive me then if for the moment I get caught up with these next few posts, even if they are dated now.]

So… It has recently come to my attention that not all parts of Senegal are familiar with an event that in my corner of the Petite-Côte region is called a “ngel.” Essentially it seems to be a tradition of the Serere ethnicity and is basically a big community dance party where people get together who are from the same “nawlé” (age group/generation) and often everyone will all buy the same matching fabric and then get different but coordinating outfits made. There’s traditional drumming and Serere singing, and everyone gathers in a big circle around a public place, either standing or sitting at the edges, until the music hits an irresistible pitch and you just have to run into the center of the spotlight, dance with all your might for a few crazy seconds, then run back to your seat. This continues as the music goes on, different people getting up at will, sometimes many at a time, women facing off against each other as they flail their skirts and shake their butts, eyes wild, sand flying, and the drums and electrified guitar play the same notes over and over, urging the dancers on.

As an outsider to this community, I had passed by many a ngel, watched a few from the crowd and admired many a finely-made coordinated outfit. But never had I been a part of one until the weekend of August 15 this year, which marked the annual city-wide party here, based originally on Assumption Day, a Catholic holiday, but over time gradually becoming a shared 3-day-long festival for the whole town, Muslim and Christian alike.

A few weeks beforehand my sisters were talking about the Ndoubab ngel that was planned for the weekend, and my host mom, Rama, said I should be part of it. Even though we live in Santhie II, a neighborhood in the north of town, my family is originally from one of the older quartiers, Ndoubab, a neighborhood where I have actually done most of my work here, as it is home to the school I have had most contact with, and is part of the city’s pilot waste management project.

Really I’m not usually big on the “cultural events” here - baptisms, weddings… they mostly entail getting dressed to the nines, eating lots of greasy rice and then sitting around forever, and, as the outsider, feeling more awkward and self-conscious than I already usually do, because I’m in the middle of a huge group of people who mostly don’t know me. But every now and then I give in to be “part of my family,” and since this seemed like a big deal to Rama, I agreed to go, handing over 2000 Fcfa (about $4.00 US) for the fabric that would match my sisters’.

A week later the fabric showed up, and two weeks later I picked up my dress at the tailor’s, a perfect fit. The next day, however, as I waited while Rama and the girls got ready, I wasn’t feeling in such a party mood. A giant crowd of people? Me the only white woman there? I usually try to keep a low profile as much as possible, and avoid situations where I might be singled out just because of my looks. I worried that I would feel out of place, even though this has so often been the case during my service. I put on my low-heeled fancy sandals and sat down in the hall, wiping the sweat off my melting face and catching my breath in my snugly tailor-fit dress.

My last-minute hesitation soon changed to proud excitement, however, the moment I walked out onto the sandy street behind Rama and my sisters to the oohs and ahhs of astonished neighbors. “Téy damay and ak samay doom yepp,” Rama told them. “Today I’m going out with all my children.”

From my journal 8/20/09

“It was one of those rare moments where I felt like I was really a member of this family. But even saying that sounds empty, doesn’t express the joy that filled me as I sat in that plastic chair next to Rama, part of a long line of Ndoubab women, with familiar faces all around me and the drums pounding along with the Serere songs as dusk fell on us, reunited in that timeless space for no other reason than to rejoice in being alive, being in harmony with each other, looking beautiful because we ARE beautiful, and expressing our love for each other, neighbors and friends.
I watched women rush into the circle, fecc (dance), and run out again, time after time, men who danced in solidarity, lines of people walking in rhythm, aligning and dispersing with the music.
Djibi the [charret driver] was there, part of the organizing group, and soon after the pulse got going he jumped into the sandy circle to dance a turn in the spotlight, moving closer and closer to where I was sitting as he did, until Rama nudged me to get up and I finally slid off my heels and out of my chair to join him out there, and there in front of the crowd I shook my ass as hard as I could, without a clue as to whether it looked like a good fecc, and really without even caring, and then ran back to my seat just as fast as I had left it, my heart racing.
That’s why people do this. Now I know.
It’s exhilarating. I felt so alive.”

backtracking part II.

The rainy season has all but passed now, the last precipitation here in this town being a week ago, with a dry spell of 2 weeks before that downpour. With the changing seasons comes a little relief from the heat, and the reminder of how nice it is to be able to wash clothes in the morning and hang them out with confidence that they will be dry by evening.

In a low-lying coastal city constant rains become more of a burden than a blessing, invading and inundating sandy soils that become puddles of stagnant mosquito-breeding water. Most of this country isn't built for rain, so when it comes and sticks around it causes issues that come up every year, as the season is only long enough for people to get fed up, complain, and then forget about solving problems once the skies clear up after a few months.

I for one am now happily looking forward to a good 6 months of dryness, after spending the last two weekends cleaning out mold that had built up on every possible surface in my room. And then soon enough I will go back to a country where people know what to do with rain :)

backtracking.

In all my self-centered musings in my endeavor to relate what life is like here for me, I realize I may have neglected to tell you about this country I am living in. Maybe you've gotten bits and pieces through the months. Maybe you are enjoying the vicarious experience without the aid of background information. So just to satisfy myself (always me, isn't it) I thought I'd backtrack a little to give you an idea of Senegal, the place. What it's like here, as compared to the States. What it looks like and acts like, what it feels like and sounds like and smells like. And since I have also been very bad at keeping up my photo link on Flickr, I think I'm just going to upload a few photos directly here, to save you time and give your reading more meaning, with every one of those 1000 other words.

So...
This is where I live.
Looking down my street.
The view from my roof.
And my always on-the-go dad Ibou in a rare moment of repose.

update.

Lately I've had a tendency to get caught up in my own world here, and in my own head, not getting out to take in what's in my own "backyard," let alone across the ocean from me. I apologize for disappearing off the map. I needed some time to work through the frustration of Ramadan, and the loneliness of losing my sitemate to COS (Close of Service) at the beginning of September. I retreated into myself for a little while, but thankfully I think things are starting to look up, with school beginning here this week and projects popping up left and right to be involved in. The weather also seems to have broken - we just survived an insufferably hot 2 weeks that finally ended with a short rain shower on Wednesday night, and since then the last two days have been much more bearable, with an almost cool breeze in the evenings.

I have a busy schedule the next few weeks, and am glad of it - it took a little while for things to pick back up again after summer school vacation and the end of Ramadan, almost 3 weeks ago, and I had been feeling very low and useless for a while. I am hopeful though that I can move forward now with the new energy of school starting again, and am looking at the next few months as a short amount of time to cover before rounding the bend into 2010. January is not so far away! 3 months, in terms of a 2-year contract, that is. And then it will not be very long at all before I have to wrap up my work here, which is a strange feeling, but a good one. Not that I don't feel my time here has been beneficial - but I have reached a point where I feel that anything more I could do now here would just be solidifying what I have already done, and laying a firm foundation for the volunteer who will come after me.

Maybe I am wishing time away, looking ahead so far, feeling tired, frustrated, and ready to "come home". But what are you going to do. I can only feel what I do. I have about 6 more months of working time here. I am proud of myself for coming this far. I honestly wasn't sure when I started this thing last year if I was going to be able to make it. I remember a certain teary phone call I made to my mother while I was still in Portland, as I'd left my house to walk out my uncertainty on a cold February day. Her support came warm on the other end, reassuring me, as she always has done, that I was "strong enough for this."

Yes, there are many ways I feel that in the last year and a half I could have done better work, more efficiently, more intelligently, differently. But then I've always been a perfectionist. It's not easy to look at my service now from a perspective of "what can I still do?" and "how can I best leave my work behind?" It's surreal to think that so much time has already passed, that I am starting to consider where to go "after".

There are many things I had planned to do that haven't panned out. Some things I could have pushed harder for, some things that were beyond my control. And there is still some time. But at the very least when I look back at what I have done here, I can see that I have gained the respect of my community, and made the importance of environmental education felt even more strongly than it had been before I came.
We'll see what the next 6 months bring. But if that is all I accomplish over 2 years, I think it will still be something to walk away from with pride.

"One man’s trash"

(7:30 pm, Day 28 of Ramadan 2009)

The sky a streaky slate, I can still make out bats in their nightly flight, winging their way towards dinner across the rooftops. I finish filling a bucket at the faucet out back and bring it inside to fill up my water filter, passing my brother as he wipes the crumbs from his evening breakfast off of the table and onto a metal platter. Every day sunset comes one minute earlier, so the rest of us are done already with our coffee and bread, the time for breaking fast now almost a half an hour ahead of where we started over three weeks ago. Seven-thirty doesn’t seem so late for the sun to be setting, and I am startled to realize we are nearing October, and in other parts of the world that means it’s almost autumn. Here though the only signs of changing seasons are the growing number of sunny days, clouds higher in the sky, fewer power outages, and increasingly frequent talk of going back to school.

It was perfect timing then when Wednesday just before sunset a truck showed up at the community center in town loaded full with boxes of school supplies. Through a work connection with the city’s main women’s group, a Spanish NGO had generously sent the materials by boat from the Canary Islands, and I was called in by the adjunct mayor to help supervise the receipt of the donation, inventory everything, and help decide how it should be divided up between the city’s schools.


When the head of the women’s group said she wanted my help, my first thought was actually, “great, as if I don’t already have enough work…” but once we started inventorying I felt proud to have been called into action as a privileged party, and could not deny the importance of the job I was being asked to do. An elite group we were, just three ladies from the women’s group, my counterpart and the ministry of youth agent, my counterpart’s son and the community center caretaker. The men did most of the lifting and sorting while the women scanned contents and labeled boxes. I kept notes on how many boxes of each kind of material we had, and also served as a kind of cultural anthropologist, as a few items were not so familiar to the Senegalese. I almost laughed out loud when the head of the women’s group triumphantly declared a particular box to be full of cans of disinfectant, when upon closer inspection I found it in fact to be hundreds of bottles of spray-on fake snow. I had a hard time explaining the exact purpose of that one to people who’ve never seen snow except on TV and who don’t even live in houses with glass windows.

Besides the excitement of knowing that so many more kids would be better equipped for learning this school year, I was thoroughly amused at the range of materials that these Europeans had deemed “out-dated” and “give-away”, laughing at how similar all of them were to what I knew growing up. I was transported back to third grade by a box of double-side holed, connected-but-perforated-at-the-top-and-bottom computer paper, as I remembered vividly the printer for our old Mac LCII using it when I was still playing “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?” on a black-and-white screen.


Watching these Senegalese discover their treasure was like seeing a group of scientists uncover a lost civilization, and I was the time-traveler caught in the middle, translating. But even with my intervention, it became evident that not everything would be used here as it had been intended there. A case of miniature magnifying glasses was not set aside for science classes but instead labeled “toys,” and glossy fax paper rolls were proclaimed “wrapping paper.” Poster paper, I was told, was not used for collages or science fairs but generally folded in half to make folders, and rubber bands were set aside to give to hairdressing salons - “for braiding.” Fortunately notebooks and pens are timelessly fashionable, even if everyone in Spain is long done being excited by Bon Jovi three-ring binders and Ricky Martin pencil cases.

After two days of systematic work, I counted a total of 475 boxes, give or take a few, including:

103 boxes of assorted kinds of binders and folders
52 boxes notebooks
26 boxes markers
25 boxes pens
5 cases pencil cases
5 boxes erasers
2 boxes push-pins
1 box kids backpacks
2 boxes mechanical pencil lead
0 boxes mechanical pencils
2 boxes fake snow


The tricky part now will be the dividing of the bounty, for which I’m sure there will be much discussion and hopefully not too much begging. (FYI there are 7 primary schools in my city, 3 middle schools and a high school.) So I’m interested to see how it’s going to go, and whether or not it will all just be given away, or if it will be, as one of the women mentioned, sold at a very minimal price. This was my first hands-on experience with charitable aid, and my only big let-down was my surprise at how little time it took the receivers of that aid to go from being excited over the gift to being critical of its contents. No sooner had we gotten fifty boxes in that they started to complain that there were too many binders, and in the end they were disappointed because there were no shoes. We were standing in a room half full to the ceiling with boxes of things they had just been given, and there they were looking the proverbial gift horse in the mouth. It made me just a little bit more jaded about development work.

I was also deeply saddened to learn that the Smurf pens didn’t work.
On the upside, a few thoughts:

1. Fasting is much easier when you spend the day doing interesting work.
2. “Boligrafo” is the word for pen in Spanish, and “archivadore” means binder.
3. “Mee-Kay” is a well-known character even in West Africa, as long as you don’t pronounce his name “Mickey”.

09/09/09

“I always hope that you remember
We'll never really learn the meaning of it all
What we have is strong and tender
So hold on”

“It’s about faith…” - Sade

Believing in something. Your work. Your family. Friends. Love. A greater power.
The promise of tomorrow.

Beliefs shape our world and keep us going, moving forward, looking ahead. Being here I have come to question myself over and over, what it is that I believe, my motives and my motivations, who this person really is who I call “me.” And usually a certain amount of introspection is a good thing, helpful growth. But the solitude and lack of structured work during these last few weeks has affected me negatively, with my perspective leaving me frustrated and angry, feeling that in this context of the holy Muslim month of Ramadan, where so many around me are searching for a closer connection to their spirituality, no one seemed to be respecting my right to believe what I believe, or valuing the individualism so sacred in my home country, itself founded under a creed of religious freedom.

The incessant questions of whether I was fasting and why not were wearing on me, and I felt myself under attack every hour of every day. I realized most Senegalese were just making conversation, pointing out one more difference that makes me stand out, not meaning to demean me or throw stones. But despite acknowledging the harmless nature of their questions, it just seemed too much to me, to add this to the already constant daily barrage of questions about where I’m going, what I’m doing, where my husband is, and when I will ever be able to cook fish and rice.

I thought the fact that I was white would be enough to excuse me from fasting, but even when I told people straight out that I was not Muslim, I was still pressured to fast “out of solidarity.” I decided to go ahead and fast for a few days, as I genuinely wanted to join in with my family and please them, but even then on days I was fasting I was ridiculed more often than not, only receiving nods from a few (my family, namely) for my willingness to want to share in one of their most important yearly rituals. Consequently after only a few days of Ramadan I started to become a much uglier person than I usually am, resentful of everyone who crossed my path. I began to wish that I could just spend every remaining day of the month holed up in my room in silence, lying on my bed in the fetal position, not having to go out and talk to anyone. I didn’t feel like writing emails or calling the States or writing on this blog. The effort to connect seemed too difficult.

The realization that I didn’t have the desire to get up and be a real person made me even angrier, angry at myself for my seeming inability to get over my issues and just keep moving. I lived through Ramadan in Senegal last year, after all. Why should this year be any different?

Maybe it's because I have been year a year and a half now, and the novelty has worn off. A year and a half of being under constant scrutiny has not been easy. Also it could be that I’m feeling more vulnerable and alone in my identity as an American, as my sitemate is COS’ing, (Close Of Service), leaving the country next week. The one other PCV living in my city, over the last year she was my closest American friend in country, my constant companion, my ear, my shoulder, my cards partner and go-to person for every small emergency, and now she’s finished her term, going back to the States, and I am left alone to face the last seven or so months of my service. Well technically, I will only be the only volunteer at my site just for the next six weeks, because in October a new SED (Small Enterprise Development) volunteer will be installing. I have no idea what kind of person this will be, or even if it’s a he or a she yet. I only hope we can get along half as well as I did with my COS’ing sitemate. I have to believe that we will. I have to believe that we will make it work.

“Gëm sa bopp.” That’s what my best Senegalese friend told me last night when I asked for advice about how to get out of my slump, how to face the never-ending questions, how to deal with my worry about an uncertain future, how to move forward. We talked for over two hours, as I recounted all my frustrations about dealing with Ramadan from a Western perspective, my unrelenting difficulties as an outsider, my crying need for simple acceptance as who I am. I let it all out, everything that had been weighing on me for weeks. We talked and talked, sharing truths and reasons; I stuttered along in my best Wolof, and the strain gradually lifted. And by the time we said goodnight at one a.m. I felt like I could breathe freely again. Drained but wiped clean, all that stinky funk aired out, I was ready to pick my moping self up and get on with life.

“Gëm sa bopp” means "believe in yourself."
Have faith in you. That’s where it has to start.

slow down, fast

pre-dawn breakfast
makes for quiet mornings

everyone is sleepy

rainy season clouds hover
muddy water lies idly in the streets

mosquitoes take their tithe
morning fades into afternoon

without fish or rice, we nap

until sunset beckons

dear readers...

I apologize for my long absence from this site, realizing it is August already and perhaps you’ve given up on me, but I assure you that I am in fact still in Senegal!
Many of you close to me know that the reason I did not write during most of July is not because I was overloaded with work or laid up with dengue fever, but because I spent that time doing something I did not think I would be able to do until next spring.
Yes folks, it’s true…
I went back to the United States of America.

My trip was made possible by the letters A and E and the number 13…
Just kidding :) So many people chipped in to help me come home for three weeks, I cannot thank them all enough. Family and friends, some of whom I was able to see while I was stateside, some not, but all of whom I love dearly and whose kindness I appreciate more than they can know. You know who you are!

I’ve been back in Senegal now for two weeks already, having arrived feeling refreshed and calm, and ready to jump back in. Good thing, because I spent my first week back helping to organize and prepare for a two-day conference of Environmental Education and Health Peace Corps Volunteers which then took place last week at my site, and entailed welcoming fifty PCVs and a handful of PC staff to my town and then ensuring they had everything they needed to successfully house and feed and train them, from Monday night through Thursday morning. I ended up with some overflow, hosting four friends (three EE and one Health PCV) at my house, and only yesterday did the last guest leave for Dakar, leaving me fairly exhausted but glad it had all gone remarkably well.

Now I am at the point where I have time to sit and assess where to go from here. For the first time seemingly since the week before I left for the States, I have time and space to myself to just think. I went back to America for a few reasons, not the least of which was to remember why I’d come to Senegal in the first place. Now that I’m back, and this work summit is over, I am looking at the coming months and formulating plans. Where do I go from here? What is the next step? And I’m just talking for the next few months here. Where I will go next year when my commitment here is fulfilled is still very much up in the air.

While I’m looking forward, I’ll let you look back. Before I even got to the airport, I had left site a week earlier to spend a weekend with my original Thies village host family for a baptism party, and then a few days with a good Senegalese friend’s family in Dakar. Now instead of simply summing up my experience of going back to the U.S. after over a year spent in this developing West African country, the following are some excerpts from my journal, to give you an idea of the range of my reactions, all candid, to the wonderful and surreal fact of my trip.

Saturday June 20, 2009

I’m sitting in a car waiting for two more seats to fill up before we can leave for Thies. Amazingly I ended up only paying 200 cfa for my huge bag, and though it’s already past 9 and I ideally wanted to leave two hours earlier, I am currently content to arrive in Thies whenever we get there, because I know no matter what my family there will be happy to see me. My beautiful yeere [clothing] is tucked carefully into my small backpack, folded into a plastic bag just for extra safekeeping. I ended up leaving the heeled sandals I’d bought for Tabaski, deciding it wasn’t worth lugging them around and that knowing the village is all suuf [sand] - I just didn’t want to. I’ll wear my gold Reef sandals instead, even though they’re not as fancy.

The reality of going on vacation is finally settling in, as I am actually all packed and here at the garage, having left my family at the side of the road next to Ndeye Siga’s breakfast shack, amidst well wishes and promises to greet all my family for them. I am really going to America. Really really really.

Monday 6/22

I feel like I need some time bu large to write about everything I felt and saw when I went back to my village, to my family in Keur Sadaro. My mind is full of them, and the trip to Thies and then Dakar, and I feel like the last few days have been moving in slow motion, as I feel acutely aware of every moment, taking everything in, feeling lighter and lighter every day as I shed layers of obligation, leaving work behind and stop trying to think about 10 things at once. I only have a few concrete things I know I’m coming back to, and the rest I’ll figure out when I’m back, next month. But for right now, I am in the moment, I’ve the sensation that time is advancing slowly to give me time to get it all done before I go, and yet… at the same time it’s Monday already, and I feel like it was just Friday.

Monday 6/29 3 am

There’s so much to say. For starters, I made it back to [my home town]. It’s pretty much the same as the way I left it…
It’s not as strange to be back here as I’d imagined it would be.
But it is weird. America is weird. I don’t know where to start talking about how I feel right now - like I’m back in this comfortable place, but it’s not my home anymore. I mean I kind of knew that that’s how it would be, but it’s weird […] To feel like “where I’m coming from” is literally so different now.

It is so green here. There’s green everywhere.
It’s raining again right now, and it’s perfect.
I love the rain.
This house is so cluttered - there’s so much STUFF everywhere, in every nook and cranny, I feel SURROUNDED.
I had ice cream twice in the last two days and I wasn’t really thrilled by it. I think I’m over ice cream.
I keep thinking about what [my Senegalese friends] would say, do, react to if [they] were seeing all this right now. What would [they] think of the Farmer’s Market. Of my aunt’s house. Of this house, where I grew up. Of this town.

People are fat here.
Everyone’s in their cars, not out on the streets.
It’s big and spread out.

Tuesday June 30

I’ve been gone from Senegal for 5 days now and I’ll admit I’m already kind of missing it. As sad as that sounds… I thought I’d be thrilled to be back here in America, in my childhood home, with my family and friends. But it’s weird, because I am not the same person I was when I was here the last time. I don’t have a life here now. My life is THERE now.

Tonight on the way home from the movies I made M. stop with me at Hess’s gas station just to go in and see what they had, and discovered that approximately half the shelves in the entire store were stocked with various forms of CANDY. I proceeded to stand in front of the biggest candy aisle for at least 5 minutes, pondering the best sugary snack choice to make, overcome by options, until I finally chose a Reese’s peanut butter bar-type thing to go along with the Sour Patch Kids I’d already chosen. But then I spotted the coffee corner of the store and M and I decided what we really wanted was iced coffee, so after a complicated process… we managed to mix ourselves satisfactory iced coffee drinks, at which point I decided I didn’t really want the candies after all and only paid the Indian guy at the counter for our two drinks.

It is strange to only have to take one shower a day, and to go to bed smelling as good at night as I did in the morning, strange and wonderful. It is strange to look at a 6-foot-wide display of candy and not to have an overwhelming desire to eat any one of the options in particular.

Friday July 3

This whole being away from Senegal is very weird, and I feel like I’m forgetting my Wolof, and people’s names in [site], and what my purpose is there... I miss feeling like I knew where I stood in life - even if I felt like I didn’t like where that was, at least I knew where I was. Two more weeks of this seems like such a long time. Dinaa fatte sama Wolof yepp! Dama ragal. Bilaahi. Xam naa suma demee foofu, suma gnibbee dina gnewat, InchAllah. [I’m going to forget all of my Wolof! I’m afraid. Swear to God. I know when I go there, when I go back it’ll come back, God willing.] Because it’ll be everywhere. And I know I should be relishing this, and I’m trying to. I’m taking in all the creature comforts, being cold, watching it rain, sleeping on a soft bed without a mosquito net and enjoying the quiet. I’m enjoying my hair not going anywhere throughout the day, and getting to spend time with my sisters. I’m enjoying eating what I want, when I want, and not being given any crap about when I wake up or how much (or how little) I eat.

This house has hardly changed since I was last here over a year ago […]
I don’t know what to say, except right now Senegal seems more real to me than this does.
All of this - there is so much extra.
Extra stuff, superficial stuff, it’s so easy to get caught up in it. In Senegal, there’s hardly any extra stuff. It’s the bare minimum. The essentials rekk [only]. And people have good lives, happy lives.

Was it Emerson or Thoreau who went to the woods to live? I can’t remember, but I know that’s why I went to Senegal. To live. And I feel like that’s where I’m finding life, what it really means to be alive. As much as it sucks sometimes, as I’m sweating through my clothes after just stepping out of the shower, or breathing in exhaust fumes off a Dakar street, being there makes me feel like I’m actually living my life, instead of just watching it pass me by from the comfort of a well-insulated middle-class American view. We are given so much as Americans, I feel like most of us don’t know how to make the best of it, and we’re always wanting more. It’s so true that being happy isn’t having what you want - it’s wanting what you have.

What am I going to do after Peace Corps? Everyone here is asking. I don’t know.

Monday July 13, 2009. 11:30 am

The good news is that I’m really looking forward to going back to Senegal (and have been for about a week). The bad news is that I’ve been spending a lot of money, and still have to spend more on sarice [presents] for Senegal, which I’m both excited about picking out and dreading giving out upon my return (along with the inevitably numerous questions of “ana sama sarice?” [where is my present?]) Oh well. It comes with the territory.
Good news: I have done almost everything I’d wanted to do while I was here, and I’ve eaten just about everything I really wanted to eat. In the process I’ve discovered that: I can take or leave ice cream, TV, and driving a car, that any of them can be enjoyable but that I don’t really crave them when they’re not around.
I’m really enjoying the all-around quiet, good coffee, and the cool temperatures, and the ability to sleep any time day or night without waking up all sweaty.

Today is our last full day of all 3 of us girls [sisters and me] together […] I did not expect to be able to spend so much time with my girls on this trip - it really has been fabulous.
So has the ability to totally forget about work for these few weeks. For the last year I haven’t been able to do that, even when I traveled I was always still in Senegal, with my work in Senegal never far from my mind. I think that’s what I needed most of everything - a mental break.

You know I think I miss it because that’s where my life is right now. That’s where I belong, where I have a place. I don’t have a place here right now. I got the chance to taste what it’s like, to see what I’d been missing. And it’s all still here. Not much has changed in a year. And by the time next year rolls around I doubt much more will have changed.

I know that before I left I was telling myself that I needed to go back to America so I could remember why I’d come to Senegal. And since I’ve been back in the States I’ve been constantly with D or M and haven’t really had much alone time to reflect on that. But I feel it all kind of coming together, all the reasons why I went. And the reasons why I went in the first place are not necessarily the same as the reasons why I want to go back now. I know that.

I want to go back now and DO a few things before I have to leave next spring. I want to go back now to keep challenging myself, to keep learning. I want to go back to see how those darned Environmental Olympics went, if they went at all. I want to go back to formulate a better plan for an EE club for this coming year […] I’m excited for our EE/Health summit, not just because we get to be hosts, and because all my friends will be there, but also because of what I hope to learn from it. And I am also just a little bit excited to start thinking about what I might be really interested in doing when my 2 years are up. But I need time and space to myself for that, and I know both of those are waiting for me back in Senegal.

wherever you go, here you are

- Who’s in the bathroom? I asked my mom Rama the other morning, as I prepared to take a bucket bath and found the door locked.
- Benn unka, she said.
- A gecko? I asked, amused that a gecko would be able to lock the door behind itself.
- Waaw, she said.
- A gecko? I repeated.
- Waaw, she said. Unka bi mooy Soukeye.
Yow xam nga unka begg na ndox. Soukeye, douche douche rekk!
““Yeah, Soukeye’s the gecko. You know how geckos like water, Soukeye’s always in the bathroom!”

My sister is 18 years old and stylish, so I’m not really surprised. But sometimes I get so caught up in the way things are different, that I’m caught off guard by the similarities that are universal. Like my father Ibou taking care of getting things fixed around the house. Our 2-year-old neighbor Awa who laughs at my mom Rama when she talks to her in a funny voice. A guy friend getting distracted from our conversation by a fancy car driving by. Kids losing concentration as the end of the school year nears.

It’s true that some things are the same everywhere you go. And I laugh at how people can be so seemingly different on the outside, and yet essentially so much alike.
Thinking of those similarities makes me remember that I am accepted here because I am just another person. I am a human, like everyone else. The people I respect the most here are those who see me just as a woman, and a friend. Those who see through the layers of color, nationality, and respective status, and realize that all of those things are merely illusory.

And the time passes. Each day I still leave the house to choruses of “Toubab, hey!” but I am still here. Those words haven’t killed me yet. Neither have the copious amounts of greasy rice I have consumed over the last 14 + months, the almost daily comments about the size of my derriere, the incessant curiosity about my lack of husband, or the view of my inability to cook fish and rice à la Senegalaise as a terrible failure on my part as a woman. The other day I told someone who was riding me about my inability to cook rice and fish, “Sama liggeey nekkul ci wagne wi.” [My work is not in the kitchen.] And he barely hesitated before saying “Yeah, well, you ought to be able to do everything, work, and cook, and clean,” and so on. And I just laughed, forgetting now what it was I answered to that. I laughed because it’s never enough to them.

Whatever I do here, it’s never enough. I go to school 5 days a week and try and do work there with the teachers. I attend almost every single meeting about this local trash management project. I learn Wolof. Am still learning. I learn enough Serere to be able to greet Sereres, and people tell me I should be able to speak Serere. I tell them all the Sereres speak Wolof, so what’s the point? I try and keep up with my French, which now has developed a West African accent. I come home and sweep my floor. Yes, I can sweep. On weekends I wash my own clothes, YES, by hand. YES, they’re clean. Plus if I do say so myself I am open and optimistic and encouraging and greet everyone I know whenever I see them and go out of my way to be polite most of the time. SO WHAT if I can’t cook ceebujen? Ten years from now, is that what they’re going to remember? I hope not.

The school year is, thankfully, coming to an end, and there is a general feeling of restlessness in the air, as students prepare for end-of-year exams and entrance tests into the next classes. The strikes that started the end of April ended two weeks ago, with a promise from the minister of education to give the primary school teachers a part of their salary bonus request now, and the rest incrementally next year and the year after. I’m looking at what worked this year and more importantly, what didn’t, and looking forward to summer activities. I’m thinking about how to fill the hours in July, August and September. And still wondering how it is June already. At any rate, it’s here. And through all the frustrations I’ve had since the school year started off limping back in October, I can’t say I’m not glad to see it end. Although it’s kind of scary to think that I only have one more school year to spend here - one more run from October ’09 to May-ish 2010, depending on when I decide to leave exactly.

I’m trying to gain some sense of perspective about all of it, these two years, this work, this experience and all it means. It’s certainly not an easy task, trying to remain balanced in this topsy-turvy world. Among the photos of family and calendar pages that I have posted on the walls of my room, there’s this quote I took from a friend (who is much better about writing internet updates than I am), who I know won’t mind if I post it here. It helps me sometimes just to take a deep breath.
It goes like this:

“Fill your bowl to the brim, and it will spill.
Keep sharpening your knife, and it will blunt.
Chase after money and security, and your heart will never unclench.
Care about people’s approval, and you will be their prisoner.
Do your work and then step back - the only path to serenity.”

- Lao-Tzu

more photos

I uploaded all the pictures I took from our Earth Day events at school. Check them out!

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

and I promise a real post soon...

all coming together...

Whew! Tomorrow is May already, hard to believe. I am still here in Senegal, and this month I actually did a few things, if I do say so myself. So to fill you in, here are some highlights of the last few weeks.

On April 12 we did celebrate Easter here (if some of you were wondering), since my community is split Christian/Muslim, and I got to enjoy the visible harmony between the ethnicities that live here. Christians invited Muslim family and friends to spend the day at their houses, both religions went out on Saturday to take advantage of the holiday by dancing the night away at the local club, and many Muslims prepared a traditional sweet peanut butter/millet/baobab juice soup to be doled out to all of their Christian kin. I ended up spending the day at the nicest place in town, in fact, as my host mom happens to be the younger sister of the wife of the mayor. Lucky me! So I got dolled up along with my sisters and we enjoyed a delicious lunch and dinner there, just hanging out with family, despite my host family being Muslim and the mayor’s Christian. Here’s me and my sisters just before we went out for the day:


The day after Easter was the last of school break, which had been going on for 2 weeks (Senegal observes Christian holidays in the school calendar because their first president was Christian). And then the very next day I hopped a car to Thies, as I had been asked to help out again with the newest group of Peace Corps trainees, this time for the few days of Counterpart Workshop.

from my journal, Tuesday 4/14:
“Back in Thies to help with counterpart workshop, and I’m happy to feel valued here, for my year of experience, though I feel I left site today with hopes that a lot of good things will get started by the time I come back Saturday, and seriously doubt that most of it will in fact happen. If only it weren’t Earth Day next week, and if it hadn’t just been Easter break for the last two weeks…it’s just poor timing…”

But being in Thies was a good break, and I felt useful at counterpart workshop, being a go-between for the training staff, visiting work partners and the soon-to-be-volunteers.

And somehow I came back to site Saturday to find my teachers assembling a group of CM2 (like U.S. 6th grade) kids to start rehearsing a skit. Monday I easily convinced two other teachers to go with me to visit the chairman of the big market to ask permission to bring kids over to do a cleanup. We got him to agree to give us soap and bleach for hand-washing afterwards, and pay for gasoline to burn the piles of trash that the kids would rake together. By Tuesday the theater group was finding themselves costumes and a group of girls had a dance number ready. A list was compiled of one boy from each class who was going to fight in the wrestling match (lutte). And then Wednesday came, a day I’d been fretting about for at least a month, feeling like if I didn’t do something with my school for this one day that’s all about the environment, then I’d be a BAD environmental education volunteer.
And surprise: it wasn’t a disaster.


from my journal Thursday 4/23
“So. Yesterday was Earth Day. And a success!
The set-setal [cleanup] was fairly organized, kids brought brooms and rakes and the teachers supervised, we got eau de javel [bleach] and soap from Cheikh Diop at the marché and the kids washed their hands, the dance troupe performed (rather racily and scantily clad for some), the skit went on, and though getting cut off prematurely, was still mostly appreciated, and of course the lutte was the highlight. Director Diedhiou said a few closing words, and I financed the purchase of 150 0.5 liter sachets of water for the two CM2 classes who had cleaned up behind the marché. All in all, I’d call it a success. And I was the instigator! It all came together at the last minute, and though certainly there were things that could have been improved upon, I am happy with the way it all turned out. This was a major effort, and everyone at school really put their all into it, without asking for anything in return. I feel like I earned my pay this week! I did something visible, tangible, and I feel good about it. Now to settle down and work on lessons in the classroom…”

It turned out the timing was good after all, as Tuesday this week all the primary school teachers in the community started to strike.

That’s news from this side of the ocean. Here are a few pictures of Earth Day ’09, and I’ll post the whole lot on my Flickr photo page, so don’t forget to check it out!

taking time

There is an old man who sits across the street from the local hospital in the mornings, who I once stopped and talked with, and who now greets me every time I see him with a cordial, "Obama!"
I can't help but smile, as any greeting that doesn't start with "Toubab!" is greatly appreciated, but one that recognizes me by association with my native land is even sweeter.

He reminded me yesterday of how important it is to simply get out of the house and walk around town, taking the time to stop and greet people, even if I don't remember everyone’s name, and to respond to greetings from others with a smile and a wave, even if I continue on my path without stopping. I had been getting wrapped up in my own world lately, and lost perspective about why it is that I am here. These people are why I am here, what my work is for, who I should be caring about.

Sometimes it’s getting away that makes you realize why you want to be here. I got back yesterday from almost four days away from site, making the trip out for the weekend to Dakar for a regional volunteer meeting on Saturday, and staying on for just a few days of feeling like an independent American. I hadn’t realized how much I needed to refuel my batteries, to spend some precious quality time away from site, to just stay at the regional house and run on my own schedule, doing whatever I wanted, eating whatever and whenever I wanted, sleeping whenever I wanted, and just being me. I was staying at site feeling like I needed to get things done, but I had no motivation to do them. Being back now I feel more at peace with being here, less stressed, and just motivated enough to keep me going for a while.

Sunday I spent the whole afternoon doing nothing but reading Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World,” which I picked up from the regional house library. After finishing the book, I was struck by how unsettled it made me, as reminiscent as it was of certain aspects of my Peace Corps experience. The “civilized world” versus the “savage reservation,” the triumph of the mechanical over the emotional, the power of conditioning trumping instinct… all of it echoed with a strange parallel to the reality I am now living. Huxley’s description of the “savage reservation” in comparison to his futuristic “civilized England” made me think about the typical, fresh-out-of-college American PCV when he first sets foot in a remote African village, how like the Alpha Bernard Marx when he first sees the pueblo on the reservation, how like Beta Lenina Crowne when she witnesses their rain dance.

And how strange it is that I should still feel this way in 2009, that we should have such disparity between the “developed” and “developing” worlds. Huxley wrote in the 1930’s that he had projected this distopia for 600 years in the future. It’s more than scary then that not even a century has passed since his vision, and the world is already in such a divided state of advancement.

But progress is a relative term. Huxley’s words narrated by the Savage resonated with me, as he spoke of “really living” and of claiming the right to experience joy and sorrow, passion and pain, even though in the “civilized” world those emotions would be a recipe for disastrous “instability.” In this fictional far future, everyone is conditioned (from the earliest stages of fetal life) not to have strong feelings about anything or anyone, keeping everything in a “perfect” state of balance and stability. But I agree with what Huxley was saying - that you can only feel true joy if you’ve been to the depths of sorrow, can only experience real passion after temptation and self-denial.
So as tragic as it was, I understood how the Savage could not continue to live in the “civilized world” - because being a feeling person in an unfeeling world is living torture.

If progress means losing all sense of what it is to be alive, then I too would rather be “savage” than “civilized.”

3/28/09

I expected that at this point in my Peace Corps service I would feel more of a sense of accomplishment and pride. I have been here for one full year now, and you’d think that should amount to something. A year, you say. Twelve months spent in a foreign country, learning to adapt and adjust and integrate and respect and speak and work and LIVE.

Instead of rejoicing though, and giving myself some credit for this, lately I’ve been beating myself up and feeling an overwhelming sense of guilt; feeling like I’m not doing all the work I want to be doing, and having a hard time feeling like I’m getting any work done at all. On top of that I feel like I am spending less time being social with my Senegalese friends, and seem to be falling behind in my correspondence to friends and family back in the States. I apologize to those of you whom I haven’t emailed back in many weeks, or perhaps months - but remind myself, and you, that this is one of the reasons I started this blog in the first place ☺. So I hope you’ll forgive me, as communication Stateside sometimes falls last on my priorities list.

As for work, I would have thought by now that I would be full-on gung ho about what I’m doing here, and it’s hard to admit that I’m not exactly. There are some things that I’ve done that have really been exciting, but others I am involved in that I feel like are just putting one foot in front of the other and keeping plodding along. I suppose that’s development work for you, though, it IS hit-or-miss, and sometimes it IS just about simply showing up and keeping encouraging people to do the same. It’s just hard to realize that, though, being so ingrained in my American ways, with our focus on results-driven work. I’ve had to realize that the word “work” is not always defined the same way here, and that “success” has different barometers and criteria.

I was warned before I came about the intangibility of much the work I would be taking on here, how physical, measurable results are not necessarily the usual end product of two years of Peace Corps service. But knowing about something and living it are two very different things. Working in education as my main focus here, I know I am aiming for long-term results, ones that may very well not be seen in the next year I’m here. Despite the warning, it’s a difficult reality to come to terms with.

Last week I was invited to go back to Thies to help with training of the newest group of Peace Corps (soon-to-be) volunteers. It was a peculiar feeling, to be the “experienced” volunteer, and to be asked questions like I was the expert, when I know now how much I still don’t know, and there’s so much I feel I haven’t done. But these trainees had been in country for just three weeks so far, so my scope of knowledge about Senegal and Peace Corps far surpassed theirs, which was again, surreal. This is the second group of new volunteers that have come into country since I did, but the last one six months ago didn’t have as big of an impact on me emotionally. They were exciting and fresh, but after six months me and my stage-mates were still just getting our feet wet.

This year mark is a strange coming-of-age, a time to look back, and ahead, to assess how far I’ve come, where I am now, and where I still want to go. The group of volunteers who were a year ahead of us and helped with our training a year ago are in the process of leaving the country now (COS’ing - Close of Service), and saying goodbye to them makes me think about how fast time has been flying. I just hope that a year from now, when it’s my time to go, I can walk away and say, “Yes, I did something too.”

365 days

This past Friday marked my 1 year anniversary of being in Senegal.
One year ago I started this adventure, along with the rest of my training group. We came together for staging in Philadelphia, met each other for the first time, with all of our physical and mental baggage, with all of our optimism and dread, anxieties and excitement and eager naiveté.

I can still see the carpeted hallways of that Holiday Inn in the historic district, the pink hue of the conference room, and the flip chart paper we taped to the walls, with our hearts out there in the open, having been asked to draw our hopes and fears. We rode the bus to New York, checked in all our luggage, and boarded the plane. And after over 36 hours of being in transit, we landed in the still warm night of Dakar.

There were so many times in the last year when I thought I was surely not going to make it this far, when I doubted all the reasons I had for coming, and wanted nothing more than to go home. And I don't think that those moments of doubt are completely behind me - but I know now what to expect. I don't expect to encounter too many new challenges and changes over the next year. Just the same challenges, over and over, ad infinitum. That will be the biggest challenge perhaps: knowing what I'm facing, and keeping optimistic in spite of it. In spite of everything.

I still think this is the right decision for me, to be here, now. Yes, I do miss America and my friends and family there sometimes so much that it seems like my heart is just going to burst. But if I think about leaving here right now I am filled with an equally deep sadness, because there is still so much I want to try to do here before I would feel at peace with stepping away and moving on. I feel that here is where my life is now.

So I stay on, and look ahead. To this next year. May it be everything I hope it can be.

dreamstate

I didn’t sleep well Wednesday night, through a combination of drinking too much water right before bed and it being unseasonably warm all of a sudden. Probably because of these factors, I dreamed, vividly. My dreams here in Africa seem to me to be more often than not transparently symbolic of my anxieties and neuroses of waking life, and this one was no different. The following is the actual, honest-to-goodness, true dream, as well as I can remember it.
…….

The set-up: I was getting ready to go on a trip, with many other people. I was excited of course, and a little nervous, because we were going back to America. The trip was just going to be a visit, a week or so, not permanently leaving Senegal, so I wasn’t sweating it too much, but as we were advancing towards the security gate, I realized I didn’t know where my boarding pass was, or my driver’s license, or passport.

I started ransacking all of my bags looking for these critical papers, not coming up with anything even as the crowd thinned out and fewer and fewer people stayed nearby to help me search. My bags didn’t seem to be proper suitcases, just large plastic bags full of random stuff, but finally I turned up a scrap of paper on which I had scribbled in pen the flight information and my ticket numbers, and hoped that would suffice as a boarding pass. I continued to go through all of my things, which seemed like a ridiculous amount for only a weeklong trip, and as the minutes ticked by I became more and more certain that I was going to miss my flight. Somehow my mother was there too, my real American mother, and she offered to look through her baggage too in hopes of turning up something that could prove my identity. So we delved into her bags, together pulling out what must have been several kilos of large onions, until she had her hands around the biggest onion of all, which she pulled apart to reveal a few small books that she had tucked inside the cleverly-cut vegetable. I saw my monthly planner among her other closely guarded treasures, and reached for it, my hope rising. “I already looked in it,” she said to me. But I smiled, taking it from her and flipping the book open to its back flap, where the inside pocket divulged my coveted driver’s license, as well as the IDs of a few other PCVs, which I had apparently been holding onto for safe-keeping.

I sighed in relief, having feared my precious ID lost. But after a minute of calm, I looked around me, realizing everyone else was gone already. The hour continued to advance, and I still didn’t have my passport. My mother drifted out of the scene, and I drifted closer to waking, seeming once more to be alone, with no one left to help me search for the one last document I knew I needed to board the plane. I started to lose hope that I would be able to make this flight, and soon I woke, before I could find my passport, before I could go anywhere, my feet still on the ground here in Senegal.
…….

I’m not going to list the numerous links I can find here between my imaginative subconscious and its origins in reality (because they seem obvious to me, as I know myself so well) but I would be interested to know what you, dear readers, see, if you feel like commenting. Maybe the next time I will write about something actually related to the “work” I do here, Inch’Allah. Until then…

February 28

It’s just past 7:30 pm, and as I come up to the roof of my family’s house to catch the last rays of light fading out over the ocean, I hear the dusk call to prayer sounding from the nearby mosque. Palm trees’ dark frames are silhouetted against the darkening sky and the cool evening wind carries the voices of children from up the sandy street as they kick around a ball. Half a block over there is a single lightbulb illuminating a foosball table, surrounded by boys, each eager to have a turn, and as the day turns into night the cloudless sky reveals the first sliver of a new moon. I look out at the sea, the horizon blurred now in darkness, and think about how many miles away is America, and how distant it seems from the reality I’m living.

I can barely make out the palm trees now, but the waves continue to break on the shore and the boys clack and conk their miniature footballers and a baby cries a few houses down. A megaphone mounted on a car passes by and fades into the wind, a sheep bleats, and a car honks from the road, half a kilometer away. And then, quiet. I look up to realize the power is out, only the second time that’s happened in the evening for several months. An almost daily occurrence in the rainy season, since the arrival of cool dry days we have become accustomed to having regular power again. But by the time I stop to think about it, I see the light in our courtyard, the street lamps power on, and the voice from the mosque loudspeaker calls the faithful for one last time today.

The wind is picking up, making me eager to go downstairs and put on a jacket, heat a pot of water to warm up my bucket bath and take a shower. Tomorrow is Sunday, a day I try to set aside to not do work, and I’ve been invited to lunch at my counterpart’s house. In the evening there’s a lutte, a traditional Senegalese wrestling match that I might go to, over at the middle school. I have a few lesson plans to look over that one of the teachers at the elementary school I’m working with prepared yesterday, and I might wash some clothes.

Brr! The breeze makes me shiver in my short sleeves and jeans, and I am enjoying every minute of the cold that I thought so many months ago was not even possible. What wonderful joy it is to step out of the shower these days and not immediately start sweating again! I missed actually wanting to wear layers of clothes. I know the hot season will come again soon, but for the time being I am reveling in my element, and laughing at the Senegalese who look so out of place bundled up like Eskimos in their puffy fleeces and gloves, at 50 degrees F. These hot season people don’t know what to do with the cold. “America is much colder than Senegal!” I tell them. But then it’s their turn to laugh at me, when they see me in my sweatshirt and jacket, hands in my pockets, elbows tucked into my sides. “Leegi miin naa tangaay bi!” I say, in my defense. “I got used to the heat!”

the one-eyed man leading the blind

Or something like that... So a recent graduate from my university contacted me a few weeks ago to get some advice on Peace Corps, as she is getting ready to join in a few months and naturally wanted to get as much first-hand information as possible. After writing her back, I thought it
might be interesting to share, and she agreed to me posting this here, so here you go.

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Feb. 18

Hi Alexis,

Thanks for getting back to me! I'm excited to read the blogs--I find it helpful to hear about volunteers' experiences.

I was invited to go on a program in Sub-Saharan Africa this upcoming June, but am only finishing up my health forms now, so it looks like my slot will be filled by the time I'm done with the application process. I am not sure when my next program will start, but I do hope to go to Africa. I will most likely be working in community development/education.

In my months of considering the program, I have created many personal fears and doubts. I feel inexperienced since I have yet to specialize in a specific skill (my major was International Relations). Hence why I considered going back to school first to get an advanced degree. Furthermore, I struggle with the fact that I don't want to go on just a two-year self journey, but rather make a difference and create change. I guess I have felt those feelings from my past volunteer experiences (I did the Bucknell Brigade in Nicaragua and spent last summer filming a documentary in Nicaragua), where there were times I felt inadequate and not helpful at all. Do you feel this way at all? Were you hesitant to join?

Thank you for sharing your experience with me, I appreciate it. What are your biggest challenges? Do you feel like you have changed a lot?

B.

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Feb. 26

Hi B,

It sounds like you already have more experience than I did coming into
my Peace Corps service, with the Bucknell Brigade and visiting a
developing country. I had several friends while I was at Bucknell who
helped with the Brigade, though at that time I was not yet seriously
considering Peace Corps. Before I got here I had only been to Europe,
and not even close to any developing countries. My major at Bucknell
was a double, environmental studies and French, but like yours, I
didn’t feel (and still don’t) that that qualified me to do anything
specific at all. I didn’t want to teach French, and only had vague
ideas about working in the vast “environmental” field.

I graduated from Bucknell in 2004 and worked various jobs for a few
years, until the spring of 2007 when I decided to apply to Peace
Corps. I am glad that I had a few years out of college before I came,
but from my experience here, I can tell you that Peace Corps teaches
you just about everything you need to know to do your job. So don’t
worry too much about having specific skills before you come.

One of the things that pushed me to try and join Peace Corps was the
desire to do something useful and helpful to people, to really make a
difference. I think I was most hesitant about whether or not I would
make a good volunteer, whether I could “cut it”, whether or not I was
strong enough to live two years away from my family and friends and
rough it. I think if you didn’t have fears and doubts you wouldn’t be
normal! I didn’t dwell too much on my past experiences and knowledge
while I was in the application process, but when I got here I found a
range of people as my fellow trainees, some less and some more
experienced than me.

Honestly, there are many times here when I have felt inadequate and
not helpful at all. But I don’t think having an advanced degree would
have helped that. There are basic things you have to overcome, that
simply take time, patience, and determination. It is hard being an
outsider trying to make change, and it takes a lot of work to get to a
point where you are accepted and respected by your community, enough
that they will listen to what you have to say. It is a constant
struggle to feel like you are doing something helpful, and one of my
biggest challenges is changing my perception of what is “help”, seeing
that sometimes just being present is what matters. I work every day to
create structure for myself, since there is so much freedom in this
job, it is difficult to find focus. And every day I still meet people
who don’t know why I’m here or what my job is, and they simply dismiss
me, judging me based solely on the color of my skin. But perhaps the
biggest challenge is in fact feeling like what I am doing has some
kind of impact, and that all the months that I have been here are not
for nothing.

As for changes, there is no question that I am not the same person I
was a year ago when I was getting ready to leave for Senegal. The way
I look at the world now is forever different. It’s hard to say exactly
how, but I know that I like who I am now more than who I was when I
got here, and it’s true that ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you
stronger’. Often I meet new Senegalese people and they ask about what
I’m doing here, and one of the first things they assume is that I am a
student. “Are you learning?” they ask. And although that is not
technically what I am doing here, I usually answer “yes.” Because
every day I’m here I learn something new; about Senegal, about the
Senegalese, and about myself.

At this point, I do not hesitate to say that joining Peace Corps is
one of, if not the, best decision I have ever made. Yes, there were
times (and are still times) when I think, wow, what the hell am I
doing here? and all I can think about is going home. I’m not going to
lie about that. I don’t know a single volunteer who hasn’t at one
point seriously thought about going home. But the wonders, the joys,
the things you get a chance to be a part of here, the opportunities
you have to touch people’s lives, and to have your life changed by
others, I think it makes it all worth it. I feel like I have done more
‘living’ in the last year than in the three before it. I still have a
year left in my service, and there is a lot I hope to get done. It
takes time to get integrated into your community, to learn the
language, to find out where you belong and what you can do. So if I
can give you any advice, it’s that you need to be patient. And
forgiving. Not just of others, but especially of yourself.

I wish you the best of luck, and if you have other questions, feel
free to shoot me a note.
Take care,
Alexis