First week at site

Tactless as it sounds, the US government is giving me a 2-year vacation. Not for free, of course: in exchange, I am giving up two years of my family and friends, my mom’s cooking, warm showers and snowy days, my favorite TV shows (Oh, Jon Stewart, how I miss you!), and more – all so that this particular Senegalese community can associate a smiling, friendly face with Americans and America in general. If we’re lucky, I’ll accomplish something that we can slap the “development” tag on. If we’re not, well, there’s that whole 2-year vacation thing.

My task here is to facilitate eco-tourism. No wonder; this is a beautiful place. From my front door, some arm of the salty Salou, River laps lazily by. A line of mangroves grounds the far side as far as I can see, maybe even all the way to the ocean. Motored pirogues occasionally pass by, but otherwise, it’s very calm. The most noise here comes from the birds – of which there is infinite variety and color. (This part of the country is known for amazing bird-watching.)

And my house, well, let’s just say that it doesn’t exactly fit the bill for that 1960s Peace Corps experience/fantasy – I’m definitely not living in a thatched hut. It’s not exactly a Western home either, but I have an indoor flush toilet and an actual shower (just don’t drink the water – it’s highly saline). Part of the reason for this relative luxury is that I’m living in a tourist community, flush with Western – mostly French – tourists/second-homers for at least half of the year. My family here is E. and her toubab husband G. (who divides the year between ML~ and France) and their young son N. There’s also a woman and her two kids who rent a room, but I rarely see them.

So in addition to being spoiled in my physical living conditions, I’m also lucky in that I get to speak French 95% of the time. And as long as G. is here, I get occasional “gourmand” additions to my diet: the other day I had my first taste of Pastis! Vegetables are still unhealthily scarce, but I’m eating fresh shrimp, crab and fish twice a day. (I’m mostly over my fear of shellfish…out of necessity.)

The first three months at my site are supposed to be for community integration, language learning and observation. I’m not 100% sure how much I can integrate into a community that’s so used to having temporary toubabs parade through their midst as if on safari. My Seereere has gotten off to a rotten start (here I blame the French and my own laziness), but I’m due to start working with a tutor soon. My counterpart took me on a rather exhaustive tour of the village and the island, and every day I’m meeting new people and learning more names than I can possibly remember. In my downtime - and there is a lot of downtime - I’m getting my fill of what this lovely place has to offer (swimming, tours of the delta, sunsets to die for…).

Internet is inconvenient here. The electricity is solar. I’m not sure how often I’ll get to access email, but please don’t think that lets you off the hook for keeping in touch. Finally being at site is excruciatingly lonely; email (when I can get it), phone calls (when the network deigns to connect) and snail mail (assuming it arrives) keep me from going absolutely insane. I promise to respond to each and every one of you as soon as I can.

Well, that’s a neat enough summary for my first week at site. Miss you all dearly and I hope things are well at home (and that you’re all taking good advantage of the snow).

Here's the PO Box address I'm sharing with my counterpart.
BP 133
Fimela, Senegal
West Africa

Got questions? Ask them in the comments section. I'd rather answer questions than fill this blog with boring details no one wants to hear, or leave this unupdated for lack of things to say. Plus, I usually have severe writers' block when it comes to writing anything longer than a text message. Give me prompts. :)

…And then there were three.

We’re down to three volunteers at the training center. Thankfully we’ll leave together tomorrow with Nicole (SED head). The boys will be dropped off first; I’ll overnight in Joal and get to ML~ on Thursday. In everyone’s absence, the training center feels creepy and abandoned, and I actually locked the door to my room last night because I was feeling all alone. Yesterday, Alyssa, Katherine and Jackie left for their sites. [As an aside, I got a text from Alyssa that she’s really pleased with her first twelve hours, so that’s a great start! Katherine wrote that she was sad to only find the small packs of Biscreme (Algeria’s gift to mankind) in her village. A travesty.]

At this point, I’m almost all packed up again. I got more laundry out of the way and yesterday stocked up on some more household stuff at the toubab grocery store Bon Marche. I even rode my bike into town for that shopping trip, which was a little unnerving with all the cars and the lack of discernible traffic rules. But the trip also made me think of riding my bike around Boulder, or even riding the bus in France, all the while schlepping back heavy groceries in my old red backpack. Ha! I love the thought of certain possessions always traveling the world with me (my Swiss backpack, my Nalgene). If only they still had those cool stamps that used to get put on luggage…



For those of you who know me well, I think you would be surprised to see how calmly I’m handling the unknown of my site install and the next two years. I am scared and anxious to see my place, but since so much of the next two years is blind to me, I can’t get upset over what I don’t know and can’t possibly imagine. Peace Corps is instilling in me patience that rivals that of … well, whoever is the epitome of patience.

Well, it seems like this might be my last posting for some time. While there is much talk about how wired Senegal is becoming and how ahead of the game it is compared to most of Africa, this is Peace Corps after all. There is no guarantee I’ll have internet. (It’s a blessing enough that I can expect electricity as a SED/Eco-T volunteer.) As soon as I figure out a mailing address, I will do whatever it takes to find internet to let you all know what it is. Even if I’m lucky enough to be wired up, snail mail love still makes my day.

Lots of love to all of you.

Another day as a volunteer in transition…

Yet more carloads of volunteers left this morning, leaving the Training Center ever quieter. We’re down to a meager 10-15 of us. Thankfully, a few of my good friends (and ¾ roommates) are still here, so I don’t feel entirely abandoned…until tomorrow.

Part of the excitement (or stress, depending on your outlook) of installation is the (re)decorating. We get to furnish our new rooms/huts/compounds with furniture and household items. Before anyone gets too excited at the thought, you should be aware of what I mean by furnishings – buckets.

Yes, buckets. Buckets are furniture here. I can’t think of a single more useful item in a Senegalese household. You use a medium bucket to bring water from the well or robinet. You use a big bucket to stand in while you bathe and a smaller one to pour water over you. If you have a Turkish toilet, you will need a bucket to flush water down it. You can use a bucket with a lid on it to keep food or store water. You will need a small bucket/cup to take water from your storage buckets and use it for cooking or cleaning. You will need multiple large buckets for laundry. And, it doesn’t hurt to keep a bucket outside to collect rainwater in the wet season; it might not be good for drinking, but rainwater is good for anything else.

So today when I went shopping in the market for my new place, what I was really looking for - and successfully found - was buckets. I also got spoons. Very important. If I can’t make my coffee in the morning, no amount of buckets is going to help. Tomorrow, I might tackle a few other items like a pot or two, a bowl and maybe a couple of forks. Hey, big spender!

One of the more fun parts of the market experience was trying to find a trunk which I can put a lock on. It’s not a bad thing to have in the village because there aren’t many ways to keep passports, money, or other valuables safe. Five of us trailed two “helpful” kids around the market, through the crowded stalls, for about thirty minutes today, trying to find trunks. No one knew the word for trunk in French or Wolof, but we were able to explain the general idea with a mix of both languages and miming. Turns out the word is walees – borrowed from the French word valise. We eventually found some, but the shopkeeper was trying to charge us more than double the price we’d been told was usual. Plus, they were cheeeeaaaap aluminum. A dull pencil could have pierced through it. After all the effort expended, we decided not to buy any.

And, finally, to top off a day of market-going and napping, we went to Chicken Dibi for dinner. Chicken Dibi should have warranted its own blog post long ago, but I didn’t even have a blog when we first went there. Suffice it to say that no one in their right mind would ever go here and willingly put food into their mouths from a place which looks so forbidding, so dark, so unsanitary. Yet once you get over the initial fear of tetanus or food poisoning and dig into the chicken, fries and salad with your bare hands (no utensils or napkins in sight), you will never willingly walk by this place again without going in for dinner. And for 2500CFA (~$5), you will never eat so well for so little. Not a bad way to finish the day.

Pictures from Chicken Dibi and swearing in are online at my Picasa page.

Woot!

It's official: I am a Peace Corps volunteer!

Yesterday was the swearing-in ceremony marking the end of our time as trainees and the beginning of our two-year commitment as volunteers. We went to the American ambassador's home in Dakar and listened to a few speeches, received mandates from the Senegalese government, and got our Peace Corps i.d. (Pictures of me and my friends in our fancy, matching jewel-toned African complets are up on Picasa.) After a lunch reception we headed back to Thies and then had our own little celebration at a nearby speakeasy. Dance party!

People began heading out to their sites this morning. Our installs have been staggered throughout the week according to what PC cars are available and what staff member is dropping you off. I won't leave til Wednesday with two other PCVs and the head of the small enterprise development program. We'll overnight in one of the other towns before doing my install on Thursday.

So that's it. I don't think terrified remotely expresses how I'm feeling right now. The simple thought that I have to re-pack all of my stuff and still buy new items to take to my site is intimidating beyond belief. Once I get through that, I still have no clue what I'm walking into. It feels like the first day of homestays all over again, and the first day of homestays was paralyzingly scary. (To be honest though, all the rumors I've heard about my site have been positive.) No matter how awesome my new home and town and family are, I am going to be very far away from other Americans, from the other volunteers that I’ve become good friends with. I sincerely hope PC gets its act together and negotiates this deal with Orange telecom for free texting between volunteers; otherwise I’m sure I’ll waste a good deal of my stipend texting Alyssa to bitch about, well, everything.

And really it’s also scary to know that this is it; this is the beginning – the real beginning – of what I set out to do when I left in August. Eeeps! Anyway, I’ll try to take advantage of the internet until Wednesday (since after that who knows when I’ll next be online) and keep this updated on how packing goes. Oooh, fascinating.

A thank you card wrapped in a party

Today we had a party to celebrate the end of PST and thank our homestay families for their generosity and patience over the last two months. Each family chose one person to make the trip to Thies - in my family, my mom Nene. She showed up early in the rented sept-places with the other T~ family reps. She brought two things with her:

a) a brand new complet - fancy Senegalese-style outfit, as a gift, not unlike the one I had made to wear to swearing-in tomorrow. The coloring is mirror-imaged, but the cut and the embroidery are different. It is beautiful. Perhaps the most impressive thing about this is that it was made by my other tailor-uncle who never actually took my measurements. He just kind of guessed my sizing when he saw me last. Awesome. I immediately changed into the outfit and wore it for the rest of the day.

b) my wax complet. There's a story here, but let me start off by explaining that gift-giving is a very important part of Senegalese culture. If you ever go out of town (to Thies, or Dakar, for instance), it's customary to come back with a gift, however small (some tea or sugar maybe), for your family. Friendships are based on gift exchanges. If you say you like my skirt, I will give it to you because, well, we're friends and of course I would share with my friend. The awkward thing is that I'm still used to the American idea of complimenting someone's clothes just because I like them, not because I want them or because I'm trying to cement our friendship.

I've made this mistake twice now. The first time, I was looking at pictures with a neighbor when I said I like an outfit she was wearing in one of the pics. Two minutes later, she was generously, whole-heartedly pulling it out of her armoire and telling me she'd love to see me wear it. The only problem here is that the woman is Amazonian huge and the complet dwarfed me. So, I gave it to my uncle-tailor who was able to turn it into something I can wear (although not in time for me to show it off to Fatou, the neighbor). That's the other outfit my mom brought to the party today. Hooray - my Senegalese closet already includes two bassin complets (high quality fabric), a wax complet (everyday quality fabric), a wax dress, a pagne and a ridiculous pair of capri pants.

Also, the second time I made the mistake of complimenting someone's clothes, she went back in her room, took off the shirt, and then promptly offered it to me and a different shirt to Alyssa (which it would be impolite to refuse). This time, the girl was about 1/10th my size; putting on the shirt is like trying to fit Barbie doll clothes on a Cabbage Patch doll... Le sigh. Have I learned my lesson on saying anything nice about other people's stuff?

So, anyway, the party today was a riot. There was delicious yassa chicken lunch, lots of music, lots of Senegalese dancing, and lots of toubabs looking silly in our Senegalese clothes. Pictures are up on Picasa; I'll try to edit together a video of the dancing. We also gave our family certificates saying that they'd put up with us for two months.

I'm exhausted now. Tomorrow, we are leaving for Dakar at the crack of dawn for the swearing-in ceremony at the American ambassador's home. (More on that, well, sometime after tomorrow.) Then, site installations start next week. Eek...

PS - Shout-out to Alyssa's mom Sharyl!! I probably wouldn't have made it through PST without Alyssa, either. We just got super lucky getting placed together. I don't know how we'll get through service so far apart (they'd better work on getting that cellphone plan), but it might be a good thing since we've already started dressing alike. :D

End of CBT. Almost a PCV.

I got back from T~, my homestay village a few hours ago. Community-based training is over, and we swear in as volunteers on Friday. I am too thrilled to even say anything about this (CBT being over is omgamazing!).

There are LOTS of new pictures up on my picasa site. Check them out.

Mungiy ci jamm. Everything is in Peace.

PST is almost over and everyone in my language group seems to be itching for it to end, be done with and behind us. Our language teacher, who since the beginning hasn't exactly been enthusiastic, is as guilty of this PC-senioritis (ick, cliche) as any of us. The veil of serious academic study has been disintegrating over the course of the class. Today, as a way of "studying the future tense," she took us to visit a seetkat - a fortune teller.

Down a dusty alley and past a compound of toubab-awed families, we walked into a dark, hot room. One at a time, the seetkat gave us a handful of shells to wish/pray over and then told our futures while tossing the shells over her woven plate. Each of us got a similar, fairly mundane, curiously upbeat prescription with some obvious reference to our work here in Senegal and our families thinking about us back home. Everything was baax (good) and everyone ci jamm (in peace).

Most of the details did not live up to our expectations of juicy detailed gossip (who would ET, who would find a Senegalese wife), but some amusing fortunes were told. There's a marriage in at least one person's distant future and 3 girlfriends in another's (!!!). Someone was told to prepare sweet milk and give it to 3 little girls. As for me, the seetkat pegged me as intelligent, quick in my studies, but sometimes forgetful and lost in thought. ("Airhead" is a concept which translates across the Atlantic. Too true in my case.)

Forty minutes later, we walked out of that sauna of a room, each 200CFA lighter. It was an interesting, ridiculous experience - too familiar to take seriously, too foreign to deride completely.

Beyond that, mungiy ci jamm.


As an aside, Alyssa insists I mention this experience: I sat through an uncomfortably graphic, dubbed film with my family (kids included) last night. Soft core porn apparently can get more awkward... Thanks, Anna Nicole Smith, for your contributions to African entertainment.