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.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Sunday, January 10, 2010
half a million minutes
It is 2010. Which means that I spent all of last year - minus my 3 weeks vacation to the U.S. - in Africa. Senegal, specifically.
That’s 49 weeks. 343 days. 8232 hours. 493,920 minutes (or so). Not like I’m counting…
So in honor of my last half a million minutes (and lacking anything better to write about) here are a few highlights from my 2009.
2009 In (Approximate) Numbers, In No Particular Chronological or Otherwise Order.
Books read: 9
Books read by Amy Tan: 2
Books started but not finished: 3
Cravings had for tuna fish on white bread: 1
Dreams about iced cream-filled donuts: 1
Packets of orange Foster Clark’s instant drink mix consumed: 83
Bananas eaten: 302
Times called “Toubab”: 3,573
Requests for money or gifts: 1,897
Babies born to neighbors or friends: 11
Babies named after me: 1
Baptisms actually attended: 2
Times I had to type the words “education environnementale” : 157
Letters in “environnementale” : 16
Pounds lost (since January): 15
Pairs of jeans I own that still fit me well: 0
Pairs of cheap flip-flops bought from corner store: 4
Days fasted during Ramadan: 8
Earth Day celebrations organized: 1
Local radio interviews given in Wolof: 4
Neighborhood clean-ups participated in: 3
Community-wide environmental education committees created: 1
Peace Corps Volunteer Advisory Council meetings attended: 2
Presidential Inauguration speeches missed because of traffic jams: 1
U.S. Ambassadors to Senegal met: 1
Amateur championship soccer matches attended: 2
Bucket baths taken: 612
Anti-malarial Doxycycline pills swallowed: 365
Host family members who took pilgrimages to Mecca: 2
Francs CFA spent on phone credit: 250,000
Percent of year’s salary that equals: 10.2
Packages of underwear received in the mail: 1
All-night dance parties attended: 3
New Indian teledramas airing on national TV: 1
From 1-10 how much better this show is than current Brazilian teledrama: 10
To-Do lists written: 289
27th birthdays celebrated: 1
Apple pies baked: 2
Cavities filled: 3
Journals filled: 2
Christmas Eves spent cooking dinner in a pit fire on a beach: 1
That’s 49 weeks. 343 days. 8232 hours. 493,920 minutes (or so). Not like I’m counting…
So in honor of my last half a million minutes (and lacking anything better to write about) here are a few highlights from my 2009.
2009 In (Approximate) Numbers, In No Particular Chronological or Otherwise Order.
Books read: 9
Books read by Amy Tan: 2
Books started but not finished: 3
Cravings had for tuna fish on white bread: 1
Dreams about iced cream-filled donuts: 1
Packets of orange Foster Clark’s instant drink mix consumed: 83
Bananas eaten: 302
Times called “Toubab”: 3,573
Requests for money or gifts: 1,897
Babies born to neighbors or friends: 11
Babies named after me: 1
Baptisms actually attended: 2
Times I had to type the words “education environnementale” : 157
Letters in “environnementale” : 16
Pounds lost (since January): 15
Pairs of jeans I own that still fit me well: 0
Pairs of cheap flip-flops bought from corner store: 4
Days fasted during Ramadan: 8
Earth Day celebrations organized: 1
Local radio interviews given in Wolof: 4
Neighborhood clean-ups participated in: 3
Community-wide environmental education committees created: 1
Peace Corps Volunteer Advisory Council meetings attended: 2
Presidential Inauguration speeches missed because of traffic jams: 1
U.S. Ambassadors to Senegal met: 1
Amateur championship soccer matches attended: 2
Bucket baths taken: 612
Anti-malarial Doxycycline pills swallowed: 365
Host family members who took pilgrimages to Mecca: 2
Francs CFA spent on phone credit: 250,000
Percent of year’s salary that equals: 10.2
Packages of underwear received in the mail: 1
All-night dance parties attended: 3
New Indian teledramas airing on national TV: 1
From 1-10 how much better this show is than current Brazilian teledrama: 10
To-Do lists written: 289
27th birthdays celebrated: 1
Apple pies baked: 2
Cavities filled: 3
Journals filled: 2
Christmas Eves spent cooking dinner in a pit fire on a beach: 1
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
“…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.
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.
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