entering the home stretch

“Ngoné Ndiaye! Gej naa la gis!
Mais yow foo nekkoon? Xanaa nekkofiiwoon? Defee naa ne danga dellu dekk bi té taggatoo ma!”

[Ngoné Ndiaye! It’s been such a long time since I’ve seen you! Where have you been? Were you not here? I thought maybe you went back to your country and didn’t say goodbye!]

I know, it’s been a long time.

That’s what you get when you leave site for over two weeks. It’s the longest I’d been away since last summer, when I went to the States for 3 weeks. Usually I only leave town for a few days at a time, go to the capital, visit friends. But I had good reasons to be away so long this time.

I’d planned to be gone for at least ten days, with my original training group’s 3-day COS conference in Dakar, then 2 days of All-Volunteer conference, 3 days of WAIST, with a day to get in and a day to leisurely come back to site. And then a week and a half before all that started, I ended up falling victim to what was diagnosed as carbon monoxide poisoning, and spent an extra 5 days in Dakar recovering at the PC office Med hut, before all the rest of my planned activities… (I’m pretty much better now)
And once WAIST was over I took two more days to get some things done at our PC office, and finally came back on Thursday to Joal (my site), my dusty room, and my happy host family.

[Sorry for the acronyms: COS = Close of Service
WAIST = West Africa Invitational Softball Tournament
PC = you should know by now = Peace Corps]

[for more details on our COS conference and WAIST,
check out my friend Bethany's blog ]

Two weeks is a long time to be away, and I had let myself get pretty disconnected.
Dakar, the capital, is still Senegal, but parts of it are very Western. Spending almost a week in the Peace Corps office, three days being put up in a posh hotel for COS conference (thank you, US tax dollars) and then another five days at an American-Senegalese couple’s place in US Embassy housing (thanks to the great homestay program instituted by our PC country director)… well, it honestly felt more like America than Senegal.

I suppose I needed that.
Though I have taken mini-breaks every now and then since last summer’s big “vacation”, I was feeling run down, tired, and pretty much just ready to get the heck outta here. I spent most of January feeling like I was just treading water, being physically present but mentally distant, defining in essence the ubiquitous Wolof phrase, “Maangiy fii rekk” - I am here only. I found myself at a loss for work, after the busy-ness of the past few months, yet not so eager to start anything new. Then just after New Year’s I was presented with a proposition by my supervisor to consider extending my service for another year, to be the Environmental Ed program assistant, based in Dakar.
And as run down and fed up as I felt, I almost decided to say yes.
Until I made a spur of the moment visit to a PCV friend in Thiès and realized that staying another year here would be exactly the opposite of what I want.
It’s not that this is such a terrible place - don’t get me wrong. But two years is enough.

My brain was telling me logically that I should do it, that a third year here would indeed be a good job opportunity, a potential for more growth, and so on and so on. I would have gotten a month-long paid leave to go home before starting the third year, and once back in Senegal, a nice set-up with my own apartment in Dakar, more administrative duties, more freedom and a continued PC-paid living allowance and health benefits.

But after all but making the decision to stay, I realized that it was not what I wanted.
And as one of my goals for my Peace Corps service was to stop doing things just because I think I “should”, and only do things that I really “want” to do, once I had let myself be honest and admit that what I really wanted was to go home, I felt a huge burden lifted, and knew I had made the right decision.

January was tough in many ways, but mostly in battling my own thoughts. I got up every day and went to City Hall, met with my counterpart and work partners, listened much, talked a little. But I can’t say I accomplished anything great. I managed to organize one meeting of the CCEE - Comité Communal d’Education Environnementale. But since that meeting we haven’t had another, I’ve been away, more than a month has gone by and we haven’t done anything we talked about doing during that January meeting. And now it’s almost March, and I am looking at the home stretch: finishing my service, figuring out how to give some closure to my time here, passing on projects and allowing myself to accept that it’s OK that there are things I didn’t do.

I sat down in my little corner office at City Hall yesterday (yes, technically I have an office, though it’s not where I spend most of my time) and looked at my calendar. Before we left COS conference we were supposed to choose a COS date, let the administration know when we would be closing up shop. The official COS date for my training group is May 8 - that is the date around which most of us will be leaving country. We swore in officially as volunteers on May 9, 2008, so two years after that we will have completed our allotted time. We are allowed to leave up to 30 days before or 30 days after that date, with a few exceptions, so considering when I want to be here at site for the week or so site visit in April of my incoming replacement, plus time to finish up, say goodbyes, etc, I chose May 20 as my COS date. That doesn’t mean I will be necessarily flying back to the States that day, but unless anything changes in the meantime, it will be my last official day as a PCV.

May 20. I looked at my calendar, then at my packet of COS’ing information, calculating days and timing of closing-out medical appointments, reports that will need to be written, books to be returned, goodbyes to be said. I’ll probably leave Joal a good ten days before my COS date, to get everything done in Dakar that will need to be done before I can leave. I looked back at my calendar, counting the weeks. Counting the days. Eleven weeks at site. Take out Sundays, a Saturday here and there… that leaves about 60 working days. Sixty days.
After so much time, just two more months.

performance review

In an effort to show that I have actually been doing something here besides whining about the heat and fighting off constant marriage proposals, here is a copy of my supervisor's comments from my latest quarterly report, which I wrote for the months of September, October and November (and submitted in January, just a little late.) It's not exactly current news, but I thought I'd share anyway.


Date: February 3, 2010

TO: Alexis Zackey, PCV Joal

From: Mamadou Diaw, APCD/NRM

Subject: Quarterly report

Dear Alexis,

Thanks for submitting your quarterly report that is very detailed and well written as usual. I Hope that you are continuing to do well both socially and professionally.
Here are my comments on your report.

Activities:
1. Helped write and carry out a short survey to determine the reason for the decline of sales of the compost sold at the solid waste management facility
Problems/ Challenges: Finding honest, unbiased information in a small community was very difficult. She found that local farmers did not understand that buying the compost locally would help their community. Even though the survey was completed, the group in charge of the waste management facility has not yet met to discuss the results of the survey.
2. The Joal EE committee planned a workshop for all 12 primary and middle schools , this was funded by a local Italian NGO, LVIA. Students watched the solid waste management documentary, viewed a sketch by the local theatre troupe and then broke up into “work groups” which presented at the end of the day.
Problems/ Challenges: The regular large meeting stresses, and problems trying to get the teachers to take ownership of the committee that they see as being run by the volunteer. Also, those that were voted as the group coordinators are too busy with other work to devote extra time to the committee.

Secondary Projects:
-helped to host International Volunteer day in Joal. This was a success as it generated revenue for the community and was able to increase awareness of volunteer work and its importance throughout the local Joal community as well as those attending the conference. [blog post about IVD here]
- helped facilitate a French children’s documentary on environmental awareness (can PC get a copy of this?) [read more about Projet Esperanto here]

Future plans:
-drawing a work plan for PCV replacement
-continued work with the CCEE-Comite Communal d’Education Environmentale) to create other activities to be carried out before the end of the school year

Comments: Congratulations on another successful quarter at site. Your time in the Peace Corps has been exemplary in both local, community support and programmatic level. As for your primary activities, I agree that the survey is an excellent idea, but difficult to implement. When you do meet with the waste management committee to talk about the results of the survey, you might want to think of creating a sort of awareness/advertising campaign for the composted fertilizer. This would allow local farmers to take notice of the impact the composted fertilizer will make on their crops and the fact that they are supporting their local community when they buy the product.

The workshop that you facilitated with your CCEE group sounds like an intense undertaking. I was impressed to hear how flexible you were in implementing the program and how it all seemed to work out well. I did notice you added a per diem in the budget for the officials and teachers. This may have a negative effect for future conferences and programs of this nature if they think that they will always receive per diem for their attendance. This should also be addressed in your next CCEE meeting. I understand your concern for sustainability with the CCEE as this is always a difficult concept. Your replacement and your site mate will be able to keep the group accountable to some degree, but I do think it is a good idea to elect an official who’s primary job will be to attend and facilitate every meeting
Your secondary projects are also a testament to your excellent work.

Thank you for your involvement in Volunteer Day, your help was greatly appreciated by all those involved in making a successful and informative celebration. Concerning the French documentary that you helped to facilitate is there a chance we would be able to have a copy of it the finished product for our library in Dakar. This sounds like a great resource for future AV teaching materials in EE. Finally, I would be happy to work with you to create a work plan for your PCV replacement and to gain thoughts for the future of our program in Joal-Fadiouth.