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…)