Hi Everyone!
Life in Senegal continues. This past week we had village visits: trips to current PCVs designed to introduce us to our future sites (or similar ones) and actual PC life. Since I’ll be the first volunteer in ML~, my village visit took place in P~ with the current eco-T volunteer there. Aside from a few flat tire-induced delays on the travel days, my VV was amazing – a vacation really. We went swimming in the ocean twice. We went kayaking in an estuary/delta. We harvested clams for dinner. We even participated in a UN-sponsored community mangrove reforestation! That last part was really impressive – 20% of the village got involved! (There had been whispers of payment to serve as incentive; ultimately the UN gave some $300 to the community to distribute at their discretion).
It was also very helpful to see how life as volunteer works. My PCV Chris lives in a multi-family compound, but has his own building/living quarters and bathroom. He has a fairly limited connection with his family, but a great relationship with his counterpart (an eco-kayaking guide). He also was able to tell me and Elida (another stagiare) about some of challenges of PC work.
There still isn’t much information about my future site or the work opportunities, but I continue to hear only good things about how beautiful the island is; how enthusiastic my counterpart is to meet me; how wonderful the Seereer people are. That’s another exciting piece of news: although I am studying Wolof in Pre-Service Training, I will likely be learning Seereer with a tutor once I get installed at ML~. The people there will speak Wolof, but Seereer is the native language and learning it will be key to my integration in the community. Let the language nerdiness continue!
There are new pictures of my P~ adventures. Caution: you will be thoroughly jealous of me and want to come visit immediately when you see these pictures. http://picasaweb.google.com/
RE: mail, I will no longer be reachable through the Thies Training Center after October 16th. Most of the letters I’ve been getting have taken about 2-3 weeks; my first package took about a month. If you want to send me anything, send it this week to the Training Center or hold off until I can get a PO Box closer to ML~.
Keep the emails coming! I love you all and want to hear your news.
Kisses, bises, nishikot, and ay foòn (which may or may not be the correct way to say kisses in Wolof).
Tamar
No comments:
Post a Comment