“…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”