April's Adventures in Senegalland

Time to Move On, Time to Get Going

2011-04-20T11:08:00.019Z

I'm leaving Senegal in less than week. I fly out in the early morning of April 26. Then I plan to travel for about a month with Peace Corps friends before arriving home in late May.

I feel lucky that despite leaving I have a lot to look forward to in the near future: Travels. Reunions with friends, families, and pups. The comforts of home. Food, glorious food. Seasonal change. Grad school (I finally made a decision--I'll be going to Yale in the fall to get my M.A. in International Relations!). Taking the next step. I am confident that I've made the right decision to leave the Peace Corps now, instead of extending my service for a third year. I just wish that the knowledge that it's the right time to go could lessen the pain of leaving.

These past couple of weeks have been an emotionally numbing period of constant goodbyes. I've recently bid adieu to friends, mentors, co-workers, surrogate families, pets, region-mates, and stage-mates. To people who were here with me at the beginning and people who got me through to the end. But it's not just the people I'm leaving behind that make it hard to leave. It's the knowledge that I'm also saying goodbye to a place and an experience. And what an experience it's been.

The rational, emotionally well-adjusted part of me tells me that it's not productive to dwell on the finality of this departure. Its forward motion is one of life's only certainties. At every step along the way, we're saying goodbye to all that came before and embracing the thrilling unknown of the future.

But another part of me can't ignore the nagging feeling of emptiness that accompanies these goodbyes. And I'm not certain I should. I think it's indicative of the significance of this experience for me and for the people with whom I've shared it that it's so tough to leave it behind.

Photos of the goodbye tour:

The teachers at Ecole Bamol Sow threw me a little party and got this lovely green outfit sewn for me. I was also happy to see that they've expanded the garden we worked on together. It now takes up about 70% of the school grounds.

It was a tearful goodbye with my beloved Barkedji family. Before I left, I finally got a photo with my kind, but camera-shy Dad.

Saying goodbye to the kids was tough, because of that fear that when I come back they won't remember me. Or that they'll no longer be kids.

I didn't want to leave Abdou and Diama, my brother and his wife, or their beautiful kids, Maguette and Khoudia. They are truly some of the best people I have ever met.

The cows didn't show much emotion, but I'm sure they'll miss me, too.

Linguere brought a whole new set of hard goodbyes. I love this family, the Ndiayes. They are the kind of people whose goodness you can immediately sense when you meet them.

I was incredibly touched when Coumba, one of the members of my girls' group, gave me one of her coveted sparkly outfits as a gift. It was a beautiful act of generosity from an inspiring young girl.

We had a joint welcome/goodbye party for the new Linguere PCVs and the three of us that are leaving at the missionaries' last Saturday. The Stadtlanders' warm and inviting presence in Linguere vastly improved my time there, and I'll certainly miss them.

It hurt to say goodbye to my kids in Linguere. Linguere might not have the best scenery, but I think we have the best people. My friends there have been everything to me during my service. I can't really express how much they mean to me, so I'm not going to try. I'll just send care packages...

A Birthday Surprise

2011-03-28T16:23:00.008Z

The Linguere family threw me the most beautifully thought-out party for my 26th birthday last Friday. I spent my golden birthday last year in the village, so my one request this year was that I'd spend my birthday with friends out of site. Since I have a habit of planning things, Team Linguere decided that they'd organize a full day party for me in Dakar. I knew that they were planning something, but they kept the details a secret. I was so touched by the incredible day they came up with, and so relieved to not have to do any work to make it happen. I could learn to live with people leading me around from one fun activity to the next.

First, we had a picnic lunch of five kinds of cheese, vegetables, fruit, nutella, bread, and wine at Dakar's Parc de Hann. I can't believe I'd never been to the park before. It was beautiful! It has a zoo, a lake, trails for running or biking, etc. It has to be one of Dakar's best kept secrets, at least among Peace Corps volunteers.

After stuffing ourselves and walking around to digest, we went to a hotel on the water for sundown drinks. Team Linguere also arranged to have an ice cream cake served at the hotel.

After eating, drinking, and eating some more, we returned to the PC transit house to rest a bit and get ready for the night out. We made a last minute decision to skip dinner, because we couldn't have stuffed any more food in our stomachs if we wanted to. Instead, we went to Just 4 U, a restaurant with live music, for more drinks.

We ended the night in true Dakar fashion at 3 a.m. with Lebanese fast food.

I felt so lucky to be able to spend my birthday with my Linguere family this year. One of the great surprises of my Peace Corps service has been how attached I've grown to so many of my fellow volunteers, especially my region-mates. These people are my friends, my second family, my colleagues, and my support system all rolled into one. They have seen me at my best and my worst, and they know all my quirks and flaws, and yet they continue to love and support me.

When I signed up for the Peace Corps, I expected to spend two years in near isolation from other Americans, focusing on building strong relationships with Senegalese. And while I have forged many important friendships with my Senegalese neighbors over the past two years, my friendships with other PCVs have been at least as significant to me. I had no idea how much I would rely on other Americans going in. But much like my birthday party, it's been a series of pleasant surprises.

This I (Think I) Believe

2011-03-28T13:02:00.006Z

From Tales from the Hood, an aid blog I intermittently follow:

"Someone very smart once said to me that 'the reasons why you stay married are usually different from the reasons why you got married.' And very much like marriage, humanitarian work is one of those things that has good days and not so good days. Some days the cold, harsh realities of what it would take to affect meaningful change, whether towards one of the many problems we claim to want to fix or towards the supposed brokenness of the aid system loom very large and seem impossibly daunting."

This really resonates with me, and seems to apply to the Peace Corps, too. We join the Peace Corps for so many different reasons. Some of us are seeking something--adventure, work experience, a break, an opportunity to make a difference in the world and/or atone for our sins of privilege, a sense of worth, a direction. Some of us are running from something--a terrible job market, a broken relationship, bills, loans, responsibility.

The reasons we end up staying are just as varied, even less obvious, and often don't directly relate to the reasons we came. We stay because of the relationships we've built or the commitment we've made. We stay because the sense of accomplishment and fulfillment we feel on the good days outweighs the feelings of failure or alienation we feel on the bad. We refuse to leave because we're stubborn, masochistic, would-be martyrs, or too prideful to face the judgment if we quit. Often we can't adequately verbalize what we're still doing here.

But that uncertainty's just par for the course in the development and aid industries. This line of work requires us to accept a certain level of moral ambiguity. As I prepare to leave Senegal, it's not immediately clear to me what the effect of my service will be, either on the people with whom I've lived and worked, or on me. And I think I'm coming to terms with that lack of clarity.

Photo Book

2011-03-24T17:57:00.004Z

I know it's been a long time since I've posted anything on this blog. I'm leaving Senegal in a month, and the truth is I've just been busy. Actually busier than usual, which is usually pretty busy. I've been traveling back and forth between Thies and Linguere, trying to wrap things up at site and helping organize the technical training of the new group of Health and Environmental Education PCVs who just arrived in Senegal.

It kind of blows my mind that I've been here for 25 months, and only have 1 month left. Watching my service slip ever more quickly away the closer I get to the end has put me in a reflective mood. Unfortunately all that reflection hasn't yet led to any clarity. But I have decided that it would be a good idea to make a photo book as a record of my service. It's as much for me as it is for you--when I get home, it'll be much easier to hand curious friends a book than to try to come up with an adequate response to the inevitable question, "So, how was Senegal?"

So, enjoy the book. And let me know if you see any typos. I haven't printed it yet...

Click here to view this photo book larger

Blog Interlude: One Girl's Peace Corps/Senegal Packing List

2011-02-10T11:54:00.006Z

I'm taking a break this week from your regularly- err, randomly-scheduled programming to publish a packing list for the new group of trainees who will be arriving in Senegal on March 9th. This is a post I've wanted to write for a long time, because I found packing lists published on blogs to be incredibly useful when I was getting ready to leave for the Peace Corps. I had been putting it off, though, until the receipt of some e-mails from new trainees with questions about what to pack gave me the impetus to actually do it. So, here we go.

Incoming Peace Corps/Senegal Trainees and Future Volunteers (inshallah),

You’ve probably heard by now that you should pack lightly for the Peace Corps—that you have to carry your own luggage, that you can buy a lot of things here in Senegal, and that the Peace Corps provides you with many items, as well. While that’s all true, I’m of a slightly different mindset. As an over-planner, over-preparer, and over-packer extraordinaire, I brought a lot of stuff with me to Senegal, and I’ve actually been happy to have most of it. I had also studied abroad in Senegal before I joined the Peace Corps, so I knew the types of random things I’d end up wanting at some point, and realized that it was cheaper to bring them at the beginning than to have them shipped later on.

That said, if you didn't have half the items on this list, you'd still be fine. You can buy things here, you can (and probably will) have things sent, and you can get clothes made. There's no need to get stressed out! Spend these last few weeks spending time with the people who are important to you and eating all the delicious food you'll miss over the next two years. Oh yeah, and doing all the homework assignments Chris gave you...

Below is a list of my recommendations of things that you should bring and things that you might consider bringing, adapted from the packing list I made when I left for the Peace Corps two years ago. This isn’t a packing bible. I’m sure there are things I missed, as well as things that I included that you might not ever use. My goal in sharing this list is just to give a comprehensive view of the things that one female volunteer had found useful throughout her service. Take it for what it is. And good luck with all of your shopping and packing! I'm looking forward to meeting all of you.

Clothing
*Most girls dress very casually in the village. A wrap skirt (made here) or lightweight pants with a t-shirt of tank top is pretty typical. You can purchase fabric and go to a tailor to get clothing sewn very easily here, so don’t stress too much about bringing enough clothes. I do like having some nicer things I can wear when I’m in Thies or Dakar, especially when I’m going out. I think that female volunteers are often surprised how much they value being able to put on a nicer outfit, some jewelry and a bit of makeup at some points in their service.*

-Jeans (1-2)
-Cotton pants (1-2)
-Lighweight workout capris/yoga pants for exercise, travel, sleeping… (2)
-Workout tops (2-3)
-Soccer shorts (2-3)
-T-shirts (a few)
-Tank tops (many)
-Lightweights skirts (knee-length or below) (2-3)
-Lightweight dresses (2-3)
-Lightweight cardigans (1-2)
-Jacket/sweatshirt (1)
-Long-sleeved shirts (1-2)
-Padded bike shorts (1-2)
I used these because I bike a lot and they help bruising and chafing—you might not need them.
-Sports bras (4)
-Bras (4-5)
-Underwear (lots)
I brought 14 and had my mom bring another 10 pairs halfway through my service. It’s good to have a lot because you’ll have to do laundry less often. Underwear’s always the limiting factor for me. You can get away with wearing that shirt for a third time, but not that pair of undies… Senegal also has a tendency to eat peoples’ clothes. Things disappear or disintegrate quickly from hand-washing, and lightweight underwear is especially susceptible to Senegal’s trickery.
-Socks (3)
-Swimsuit—bikinis are fine
-Bandanas
-Scarves
-Jewelry
-Camping towels
These are my everyday towels, and they’re great! They dry quickly and fold up easily for travel. I have 1 large and 1 small.
-Glasses (2 pairs)
-Sunglasses (2 cheap pairs—you’ll probably lose or break 1 during your service)
-Glasses repair kit
-Watch
-Sun hat
-Belt
-Laundry bag

Shoes
-Durable sandals (1)
Many people wear Chacos, and they have a Peace Corps discount. I have a pair of hard-bottomed leather sandals. If you’re up north, hard soles give valuable protection against thorns.
-Flip flops (1)
Again, many prefer Chaco brand. I have Teva flip flops, which are comfortable, but they wear through quickly and I’ve had to replace them a few times in my service. You can buy cheap flip flops for showering and daily wear for a dollar at almost any boutique in Senegal.
-Running shoes (1)
-Pair of cute shoes for going out (optional)

Gear
-Sheets (1 set optional--you can also just get fabric sewn into sheets here)
-Suitcase
-Hiking backpack and/or durable, but lightweight duffle bag for travel
-Durable zip-top shoulder bag for traveling
I bought a couple of these at Target for $3 before I left, and they’ve turned out to be very useful. I fold these up and put them in my bag when I’m traveling, because I inevitably have more to carry back than I left with.
-Day bags/purses (1-2)
It’s good to have a cute, but secure cross-body purse for carrying your things when you go out in bigger cities. It’s also useful to have a fabric bag for everyday use at site, but you can easily purchase one or get one made here.
-Laptop bag
I use a Timbuk2 messenger bag to carry my computer, wallet, phone, sunglasses, a book, etc. when I’m traveling.
-Laptop sleeve
-Travel pillow
My Thermarest pillow is one of my favorite things that I brought to country. I use it every night and often take it with me when I travel.
-Sleeping bag
Bring one that’s lightweight and compact. You’ll only use it a couple of months out of the year, but during those times you’ll be happy you have it!
-Headlamp (one of my favorite things I have here)
-Travel alarm
-Water bottle
Sigg, Nalgene, Klean Kanteen, whatever’s cool these days… Pick your poison.
-Umbrella (optional)
You’ll maybe use an umbrella a couple of times a year. I usually just get wet or hide inside when it’s raining, though.
-Bug Tent (optional)
Many volunteers have these tents and I’ve used mine a few times throughout my service. They’re far from a necessity, though. You can often borrow tents from other PCVs or regional houses if you need them.
-Thermarest (optional)
I have an inflatable sleeping pad that has come in handy a few times during my service, but it’s not a necessity.

Electronics
-Ipod/charger/case/2 pairs of cheap headphones
-Portable battery-operated speakers
These are a good “luxury item” to bring. I use mine a lot.
-Batteries (rechargeables are optional)
-Plug adapters (2-3)
We have French sockets. Look for adapters with 2 round prongs. Sometimes they’re listed as compatible in southern Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. I don’t have a converter, because none of my appliances require it. Check if you have anything that requires conversion.
-Laptop
I highly recommend bringing a laptop! Many volunteers use the cheap mini Acer/Asis laptops. I brought my MacBook. It’s held up well, but I’ve had to replace the power cord. I also came with the expectation that at best it would make it to the end of my service. Don’t bring anything you’re not willing to part with. People say that this is where electronics go to die. The heat and dust are hard on them. Backup your important files and insure items that are of great value to you.
-Digital camera/case/extra battery/battery charger/memory card/USB cord
-USB keys (2)
-External hard drive
Many volunteers like having these so they can store and exchange movies, TV shows and music. Umm, I mean work files… If you feel like loading it up with new stuff to share with deprived PCVs when you get here, we will only love you more.
-Shortwave radio
-Solio solar charger (optional)
Wait and see if you’ll have electricity—many volunteers either have it at site now or live close enough to a town with electricity that they can periodically charge their items there.

Health and Body
*PC Med will provide you with almost all of the medical supplies you could ever need, as well as a lot of stuff you’ll never need. Just bring medical supplies to get you started or if you have a special brand you like. You can buy body products like shampoo and conditioner in cities here, but they’re expensive, so I brought some big bottles from the U.S. to start out.*

-Sunscreen (1 to start out—you can get more from Med)
-Ibuprofen (1—Med provides more)
-Travel pill case
-Travel toiletry case
-Hand sanitizer (1 large bottle, 2 refillable travel bottles)
-Facewash
-Shampoo
-Conditioner
-Body Wash
-Loofah
-Lotion
-Deodorant (3+)
This is the one thing that’s really hard to find here. They have deodorant in the supermarkets in Dakar, but it’s a different type, and I don’t think it works as well. Some PCVs don’t wear deodorant at site—b.o. is much less stigmatized, or even noticed, here—but as a sweaty girl, I’m an advocate of the deodorant.
-Razor and replacement blades
-Tootbrush
You can buy good brand name toothbrushes here, so just bring extras if you have a special type you like.
-Toothpaste
You can buy Colgate easily here.
-Floss (1—Med provides more)
-Travel brush
-Hair bands
-Elastic headbands for working out
-Tweezers
-Nail clippers
-Q-tips
-Small mirror
-Makeup and makeup case
-Chapstick w/ SPF
-Feminine products for the ladies
Many female volunteers use and love—and talk at length and in somewhat disturbing detail about why they love—the Diva Cup. It’s not for me, but I’ll let you women make your own decisions.

Miscellany
-Copies of important documents
-Books
Bring a couple to get you started and maybe a favorite or two that you know you’ll want during your service. You can always exchange with other volunteers or pick up and drop off books in regional houses. The PC will give you more resources and manuals to read than you know what to do with.
-Senegal/Gambia or West Africa travel guide (optional)
These might be useful if you plan on taking some trips or hosting people and want your own copy. You can also borrow from others of find older versions in almost every regional house.
-French/English dictionary if you speak French and think you’ll use French for your work
-Maps (World, U.S., Africa) with which to decorate
-Photos for decorating your room
-Address list of friends and family members you plan to write to
-Blank cards to write home (optional—you can also just send postcards)
-Games you can play with other PCVs or teach tokids at site (cards, Uno, Bananagrams, etc.)
-Photo album
Fill it with photos from home. It’ll be fun to look at when you’re feeling homesick, and you can show it to everyone in you’re village. It’s a nice way to get to know people, and they looove photos here.
-Sewing kit
I use the kit to fix holes in my clothes and the tape measure for gardening.
-Cooking supplies (optional)
I love to cook, so I’m glad I brought cooking supplies. You might not need them, though. I brought a non-stick frying pan, wooden spoon, pancake flipper, rubber spatula, measuring cups and spoons, favorite spices from home, a can opener, a peeler and 2 good knives. Regional houses have cooking supplies, so just think about what you’ll want for yourself and if you’ll want to buy a gas burner for site. You can buy cooking supplies of decent quality here, too.
-Tupperware
I packed some of my things inside Tupperware so I could use the boxes once I got to site. I’ve found that plastic boxes that seal are useful for organizing and storing things, and for keeping the bugs out of food.
-Ziplock bags
-Swiss Army Knife and/or Leatherman
-Drink mixes (Crystal Light, Gatorade, Propel, etc.)
-Plastic accordion file for transporting documents
-Small notebooks/journal
-Daily planner
-Good pens
-Scissors
-Other office supplies (optional)
In a pencil pouch, I brought a mini stapler, calculator, paper clips, thumb tacks, white out, tape, a highlighter, a few Sharpies, and pencils.
-Duct tape
-Earplugs if you have trouble sleeping—it’s loud here!
-1-2 Survivor Island luxury items: a musical instrument, stuffed animal, photo printer, etc.
These things aren’t necessities, but they’ll probably make you really happy at some point in your service. And as I like to tell people, possibly the best skill you can bring to the Peace Corps is the ability to make yourself happy. No one else is going to do it for you, and you’ll be the most effective when you’re happiest.
-Food from home.
I can almost guarantee that your #1 care package request will be American food that you miss. If you have extra space in your luggage (ha…), you might consider bringing some food right away to get you started. You might also want to have things like granola bars to snack on during training, while you’re still adjusting to the changes in diet and feeding schedules. I also brought some tea from home. Coffee addicts often have good coffee sent (pre-ground, of course). My commonly requested items include dried fruit, Peanut Butter M&Ms and other chocolate, gummies, crackers and Goldfish, and Clif/Luna/Lara bars. Meat eaters often request beef jerky.

Potential Gifts
-Cheap costume jewelry
-Cheap perfume
-Candy
-T-shirts or other items that represent your home
-Stickers or other little trinkets for the kids
-Empty photo albums
-Blue and red pens for the kids who attend school—the pens here are not of very high quality

Emma's Visit: Part the Third

2011-02-05T11:01:00.008Z

Fair and gentle readers,

Remember way back in January when Emma came to Senegal? Contrary to what you might have inferred from my infrequent blog posts, the trip did not end in Tambacounda. Emma did not, in fact, grow so frustrated by our long day of public transportation that she threw up her arms, rented a taxi to Dakar, and hopped on the first plane out of Senegal. No, Emma is made of stronger stuff than that. Just a day after arriving in Tamba, she gamely stepped onto a bus taking us all the way down to Kedougou. Masochistic? I'll let you decide.

I don't want to spend too long dwelling on the obvious, but Kedougou is not Linguere. For those who may have forgotten, may I point your attention to this post? Walking around Kedougou in the dry season feels a bit like walking through a forest in the fall. The trees are colorful, but somewhat bare, yet there's a whole world of life underfoot, beneath a thick layer of crunchy leaves.

In Kedougou we met up with David Campbell, of Universal Nut Sheller and Homemade Hut fame, as well as his dad, Brian, who is a clone of David, only slightly older and slightly taller.

I had to do a double-take at one point when Brian rounded a corner wearing David's iconic coral man purse.

All joking aside, it's always nice to meet other volunteers' parents when they come to visit. We know each each other in such a limited, but intimate, context that it's nice to get a brief glimpse into the lives from which we all came. Emma and I enjoyed spending a few days en famille with the Campbells. We biked to the market, where Emma and Brian picked out fabric, while I gave indelicate commentary. Really though, what is there to say about blue fabric with bright orange palm trees but, "It's fun"?

We ate maffe--rice and peanuty tomato (or tomatoey peanut) sauce--for lunch. There was a shortage of big person chairs.

We purchased the ingredients to make homemade pizza, and then had a pizza party at David's hut. Yes, in addition to building his own hut, David has built two pizza ovens. I have no explanation.

Then we took a short bike trip out to Segou, a village about 25 kilometers southeast of Kedougou near the Guinean border, which attracts visitors because of the nearby waterfall. Zach, the volunteer who lives there, recently wrote a Peace Corps Partnership grant to help the community build a campement--a small, cheap guest house--so we decided to stay the night to support the project.

All five of us took a lovely afternoon hike to the watefall, and briefly stopped to take a dip in a clear, chilly swimming hole.

We returned to the campement in the early evening. After we cleaned up, some women from the village served us a dinner of onion sauce over fonio--a nutritious, small-grain millet prevalent in Kedougou, but nowhere else in Senegal--which we ate sitting in a circle in the shell of the still-unfinished restaurant, with a perfect view of the dark night sky. The bush felt calm as we passed the hours before bedtime playing cards.

We returned to Kedougou the next day. Emma and I rode ahead of David and his ironman-in-training dad (there's got to be something in their water...). On our last day in Kedougou, Emma and I at lunch at the Hôtel Relais, which sits on the bank of the Gambia River.

That night, Emma and I took a ten-hour bus ride from Kedougou to Dakar, and spent the last day of her trip shopping for souvenirs in Dakar. Hopefully Emma enjoyed traversing the country during her two weeks in Senegal, and won't begrudge me too much my whip-cracking, cattle-driving style as a hostess. There are places to go, people to see, and things to do, you know. The world won't wait.

Emma’s Visit, Part II: The Epic Journey

2011-01-22T00:27:00.004Z

On January 5, after spending a few days in Linguere, Emma and I made our way southeast to Tambacounda. At 8 am, we went to the Linguere garage, where we conveniently found a sept place--the 7-passenger station wagon that is generally the fastest public transportation option--heading to Touba. We waited for about half an hour for the sept place to fill up before we were on our way. A couple minutes into our ride, realizing that Emma's experiences with public transportation on her trip had thus far been way too uneventful, I thought, with a hint of regret, “What if she doesn’t get to experience the real joys of public transport in this country: the waiting and the sweating and the break-downs?”

My concern was unfounded, at least on one front. Emma got to wait. When we got dropped off on the side of the road in Touba at around 11:30, we took a shared taxi to the garage, where we found a sept place getting ready to leave for Tambacounda. Unfortunately it only one spot left. Oh, the heartbreak of arriving just minutes too late to catch a car... Because we were one passenger too many, we had to wait for both the first and second cars to fill up before we could be on our way.

Emma quickly adapted to Senegal's thumb-twiddling lifestyle, though. During the three hour wait she entertained herself by purchasing clementines and a bracelet from two of the many roaming salespeople, while wisely foregoing the assorted packets of knock-off pills of uncertain origin and purpose. She also made friends with the public restrooms, which isn’t easy to do, as it requires both vigilance to avoid the ever-present men crouching to pee outside the stalls instead of in them and a nose of steel.

The Proof Is In the Poo? Public toilets in Senegal

While visiting the bathrooms, Emma also got to witness some of my more quality interactions with Senegalese people. I stole back our kettle of washing water from an overeager man who grabbed it out of her hand while trying to cut in line between us, and later loudly and theatrically argued with the toilet supervisor over the 50 CFA (ten cents) extra he wanted to charge us to pee in a stall. Arguing in Senegal, especially among Wolof populations, is nothing more than a form of friendly socialization, and by loudly proclaiming that we weren't planning to poop (yes, the word's the same in Wolof), I endeared myself to the toilet guard enough to keep the 50 CFA.

Eventually the sept place did fill up, and at about 3 pm, we hit the road again. We arrived at the Tambacounda garage after dark, and convinced a taxi driver to stop at both the bank and the mini-market on the way to the Peace Corps house for no extra fee, save a candy bar to appease him. By the time we made it to the house, it was almost 9 pm. Dirty, tired and hungry, we tucked into an oversized can of ravioli before showering and tucking ourselves in for the night. We slept soundly in preparation for the next leg of our journey, Tamba to Kedougou, which I'll detail sometime soon.

The Route

Just for the record, Emma is a trooper. I dragged her from the northwestern-most point in Senegal to the southeastern-most city in Senegal during her two-week trip.

More Body Grossness

2011-01-14T09:24:00.005Z

This is but a brief interlude, a palette cleanser, if you will, before I return to happier tales from Emma's trip.

Every time I consider posting pictures of the crazy things that happen to my body here, I have a brief moment of, "Do I really need to make my readers squirm in their seats?" second-guessing. But, hey, it's all part of the experience, at least for me, and this blog aims to be nothing more than an honest reflection on my service: the good, the bad, and the deformed.

Maybe I'm an anomaly--ever since I broke my leg at the age of one, I've seemed to have some kind of magnetism for medical problems--so don't let my horror stories scare you off of your own African adventure. It's not you, Senegal, it's me. One of the reasons I can afford to be so nonchalant about all the health issues I've dealt with here is that I've had a lot of strange and confounding things happen to my body throughout my life, and none of them have killed me yet. If that's not cause for optimism, I don't know what is.

The latest? No more of the dreaded staph infection, ALHAMDULILLAH.

But instead, two missing big toenails, the remnants of which conveniently acted as depositories for souvenirs (i.e. pebbles) during our recent hike to the Segou waterfalls outside of Kedougou:

And the removal of a large, asymmetrical, irregularly-bordered mole with varied coloration and a dark center (if I sound like a medical textbook listing warning signs of melanoma, well I guess that's why the Peace Corps wanted me to get it removed right away...):

The removal required--how did I not know this before going in?--seven stitches, but was fairly easy and painless. This doctor actually waited for the anaesthesia to kick in before he started cutting.

Emma Comes to Senegal

2011-01-06T11:35:00.011Z

Emma finally made it to Senegal on December 30th after a 2-day flight delay. On her first day here, we left Dakar and headed up to the Lompoul Desert, where we rode camels and slept in Mauritanian tents.

The next day, we went up to the Saint-Louis beach for a lovely New Year's celebration. Akon played a free concert in the town center (I can now confirm that he actually does kind of speak Wolof). Then we danced to drumming at a bar until the wee hours of the morning. Emma met a kitty at the hotel whom she fell in love with.

On the 2nd we headed down to Linguere, where we took it easy and enjoyed the slower pace of life for a minute or two. We biked to Barkedji for lunch on the 3rd. It took twice as long as it normally would, because of some crazy wind. Once we got there, Diama, my amazing sister, treated us like royalty, cooking a ceebuyapp (rice and meat) feast. She used meat from the goat that Ann Marie's brother, who is also visiting right now with his girlfriend, helped slaughter. Emma and I of course didn't sample the fruits of his labor, but we appreciated the effort. After lunch we played Quirkle with the kids before biking back to Linguere with a much-deserved tailwind. We got back in the dark and slept soundly.

The next day, we relaxed, ran errands and ate a beautiful, delicious sloppy joe dinner with the missionary family in Linguere. Dirk's parents are also visiting, so it was nice for Emma to be able to compare impressions with some fellow visitors. Dirk and Sarah also explained the Senegalese caste system to Emma with far greater detail and accuracy than I could have ever managed.

Now we're in Tambacounda, waiting for the bus to take us down to Kedougou, where we'll bike to waterfalls and enjoy the color green.

We're having a great time so far. It's crazy how many different experiences it's possible to have here in less than a week. Here are some of Emma's observations from her first, crazy week in Senegal: camels, dirty feet, sun, noise, Akon, bike ride into a hot wind tunnel, Diama's yummy cooking, long car rides, beach in January, sugar--lots and lots of it, sand/dust/dirt EVERYWHERE, drumming.

Stay tuned for the next installment of Emma's Adventures in Senegalland.

Dear Cold Season,

2010-12-13T18:37:00.005Z

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee by putting on a sweatshirt to warm up after I get out of the shower.

I love thee by covering myself with a sheet (and soon, a sleeping bag) while I sleep.

I love thee by purchasing the plentiful market vegetables (Right now squash, cucumbers, lettuce, non-mushy tomatoes and carrots are all available at the same time. Astonishing.).

I love thee by going for a run in middle of the day.

I love thee by wearing the same shirt all day long, without sweating through it.

I love thee by sleeping in, thanks to the absence of oppressive and slumber-interrupting 6 a.m. heat.

I love thee by turning off my fan.

I love thee by drinking hot chocolate in the evenings.

I love thee by drinking hot tea in the mornings.

I love thee by drinking room temperature water and not mistaking it for the aforementioned hot tea.

I love thee by having conversations with other volunteers that don't revolve around complaining about the heat.

Cold season, you complete me.

The Travel Album

2010-12-10T14:16:00.002Z

I had hoped to share many photos from Tabaski in the village and my recent vacation in Cape Verde. Cape Verde is possibly the most visually stunning and geologically unique place I’ve ever been, and I easily took a few hundred photos in the seven days I was there. Tabaski this year was special to me, too, because it was a kind of homecoming. It hit me how much I miss my village family and village life, and how numbered my days in Barkedji, and Senegal, truly are.

Until now I’ve avoided blogging about these experiences, though, because sadly I can’t share any of my photos with you: my camera was stolen during my trip from Cape Verde to Senegal. Photos are a terrible thing to covet—we all know that the experience is much more valuable than its document—but an even worse thing to lose. In an attempt to rebuild my photo collection, I’m giving you some verbal snapshots.

Photo 1: Father
My village dad, Mamadou Diaw, is one of the most serene men I have ever met. Every year for Tabaski, he puts on a spotless white kaftan and flowing headdress held in place by a twisted gold and black band. As he stands clutching his Koran, he has a stately, holy air. He normally shies away from the camera, but on Muslim holidays, he allows himself to be photographed. His revering sons and nephews flock to his side and jostle for a prime position next to him. As the boys mug for the camera, my father looks past me, seemingly floating above the commotion of the day.

Photo 2: Lunch
The butcher travels from house to house killing the Tabaski rams for all the village families. To bleed our sheep, he holds its head over the hole he has dug in the sand and slices the neck. His fingers are nimble, his technique refined, his attitude composed. The animal dies silently as the blood sinks into the sand, merging with the earth and leaving barely a trace. The butcher then begins slicing the animal’s skin from his body and hanging the hide from the tree branches and the wall to dry in the sun. He piles the slick, red flesh into a plastic laundry basin for the women to cook, but leaves the feet and tail—the unwanted remnants—scattered around the compound in a kind of twisted game of hide and seek game for the children.

Photo 3: Sisters
Diama, our favorite sister, takes a break from cooking massive amounts of meat, potatoes and onion sauce to have her photo taken with me and Ann Marie. Diama is unironically sporting the costume jewelry that Ann Marie brought back from the U.S.—the kind of shiny, oversized stuff that American kids use to play dress-up. Ann Marie and I looking just as fancy. We are both clad in green—she in a stiff, tight, plasticky skirt and matching embroidered shirt and I in my shiny, neon, bedazzled pajama-like creation. Today we are relishing our role as Barkedji’s grandes dames.

Photo 4: Vending Machines
Brian, Jen and I have just landed in the Praia, Cape Verde airport, and we are experiencing culture shock. We take off our backpacks and plop down in the plush seats. I look around. The floors are shiny and markedly un-littered. The tv screen above our heads plays a catchy public service announcement about a recent dengue fever outbreak. Wait, why is no one trying to talk to us? When we look behind us, we make our most exciting discovery about the things that change when you travel from a “least-developed country” to a “middle income country”: the appearance vending machines. Jen and I wander over and stare into the machines’ mesmerizing, fluorescent depths. We press buttons to find out the prices of almost every item. An airport staff member eyes us suspiciously, so I hastily purchase a can of Schweppes Bitter Lemon. I wonder whether I’m trying to appease her or ease my own insecurities about being an outsider in this clean, convenient world.

Photo 5: At the Boardwalk
Brian has a confused look on his face as he stares in the window of the ocean-side commercial complex’s luxury clothing store. A slate gray mannequin in a preppy sweater and boat shoes returns his gaze. We’re in Mindelo, Cape Verde’s cultural capital, but we could just as easily be in Miami, (bitch). We are drawn inwards by the clean white lines of the complex’s minimalistic, German architecture. As we walk over fake turf, past the overpriced café that could have just as easily been found at a European modern art museum, and toward the sea, we come upon an exclusive dockside bar, whose periphery is demarcated with a row of metal trees and a velvet nightclub rope. I look through the trees' angular branches toward the ocean beyond, where sailboats pass the quiet day bobbing with the ocean’s swells.

Photo 6: A Fine Balance
We are about two hours into our first day of hiking along the seaside cliffs of Santo Antao, a mountainous northern island we have traveled to by ferry. As we turn a corner, we find the most stunning village perched high upon the rocks in a shadowy pocket. The cool morning air has a scent of unreality. I feel small, like a doll in some Paddington-toting boy’s Peruvian play world. I imagine that he has placed the multicolored pastel houses on their precarious perches with chubby fingers, and it’s only a matter of time before he slips, his hand slamming down upon this delicate world. The houses will be ripped from their foundations to fly into the air before tumbling to the dark depths below. This place is far too beautiful to last.

Photo 7: Gold Strike
Later in the day, about four hours into the hike, our muscles are exhausted by the constant climbs and descents. As we ease our way down a steep and rocky hill, I am pulled onward by a golden glint in the distance. When we reach the valley bed, I realize that the shimmer is coming from a small, still stream—nothing more than an inch of water flowing lazily over smooth rocks. More than a fragile reflection, the deep, almost ruddy gold color seems to come from within the earth. Instead of dissipating, it follows me as I hop across the water. The others continue on, but I stay behind, mesmerized.

Photo 8: Sugarcane
The van turns off at Paúl, a village on the sea, to make its way up through Santo Antao’s interior mountains that are carpeted in green. Fields of sugarcane cling to the rock faces, and the graceful white flowers dance in the breeze, reminding me of oversized dandelions gone to seed. We are traveling high up in the hills to taste homemade herbed softcheese and flavored grogue, Cape Verde’s cheap and prevalent sugarcane liquor. Our destination is a well-known farm/restaurant/all-purpose hiker hangout owned by Alfred, an aging hippie and Autrian expat. It is one of those must-see places made famous by word of mouth long before it made its way into the dog-eared pages of the ubiquitous travel guides we see in the pockets of the many international visitors. As we wait for our food, I wander outside and look toward the top of the mountains. Sugarcane leans large over me, its shape, like a gnome's hat, illuminated perfectly by the mid-afternoon sun.

Just Because You Asked, Sis

2010-11-17T22:00:00.003Z

I've had a request from my beloved sissypoo for more bloggage, so I'm going to play a little game of stream-of-consciousness speed blogging. Here are the rules: Write about all the things that are on my mind. No more than 4 minutes writing about any one topic. No editing allowed.

It's after 10 p.m. I leave early tomorrow for Dakar with Brian and his friend Jen, a Peace Corps volunteer in Zambia. On Friday, we'll head to Cape Verde for a week. I should be packing, but I'm not. What can you do? I haven't yet had the time or presence of mind to get excited about this trip, although I think that it will be lovely. I mean, it has to be, right? I'm leaving the desert to spend a week on some beautiful islands. What could possibly go wrong (cue menacing music)?

I just biked back from Barkedji, where I spent Tabaski with the family. It was so nice to be back in the village. The family sacrificed two rams, and I was reminded of all the reasons I don't eat meat. Ann Marie and I dressed up in our holiday finest. We looked ridiculous, of course. My outfit, a present, was made out of shiny white and neon green fabric that had the texture of pajamas. It was also full-on bedazzled. I'm talking those big, tacky fake jewels that they sell at craft stores in the U.S. I got many compliments, of course. The tackier the better, I guess. I have plenty of photos to share later.

I finished my first two grad school applications this week. I should probably feel relieved, but I don't think I'll be able to fully breathe until I send in the last ones in January.

I know it's still more than a month away, but I'm suffering the Christmas doldrums more than last year. I'm a masochist, so of course I've been "curing" myself by playing the King's Singers and the King's College Choir and all those Christmas albums that we play at home around the holidays. It's suddenly getting colder here--I put on a sweatshirt for 2 minutes when I stepped out of the shower today--which isn't raising my spirits. It just makes me want to be home for the holidays. I never thought I'd say this, but I actually miss Wisconsin's crisp cold right now. I also miss Christmas decorations. And warm cider or hot chocolate. And baking Christmas cookies. And cooking a Christmas Eve feast. And shopping for gifts. And Christmas music. My family tends to rail against the mass consumerism of Christmas (every year, we decide to have a simpler Christmas, with mixed results), but a part of me even misses that disgusting excess.

I listened to This American Life podcasts during my bike-ride to Barkedji. I had already heard the first, but by the time I realized it, I was already too engrossed. The theme was "Life After Death," and it included stories from people who felt guilty about their role in someone else's death, even if they were blameless. One particularly affecting story was about a man who when he was 18 hit a girl with his car, after she swerved in front of him on her bike. The girl, who died in the hospital before her parents got to see her, was one of his high school classmates. I won't go into too much detail; I think everyone should just listen to the show (click here). But it really made me think about the things that can happen to us that are ostensibly out of our control, which can fundamentally alter our lives. I mean, we all have plans. Dreams. Visions of where we want to be, what we want to be doing, and who we want to be doing it with in the future. I don't think that any of us includes inadvertently killing someone on our to-do list.

That's it for now. Off to shower and pack.

This Is Growth

2010-10-24T19:10:00.007Z

I had to fire Boury, our office cleaning lady. In Wolof. It was more awkward than it should have been.

Boury went to Thies for over a month, instead of the ten days she told us she'd be gone, and her younger sister, who was supposed to take over cleaning duties in her absence, never showed up. Apparently little sis was sick. At the risk of sounding incredibly cold-hearted, I am skeptical. Here "sick" can mean malaria or diabetes. But more often than not, it means tired, maybe a little congested, and not really feeling like showing up for work.

Of course in Boury's absence we hired a new, and much improved, cleaning lady. When Boury returned from Thies, she was stunned that we had hired someone new, and told us that the new woman could work until the end of the month, at which point Boury would resume her duties. Oh no, I had to explain, it doesn't work like that. She did not show up for work for over a month, therefore she lost her job. Seems pretty reasonable, right?

Not according to Boury. She pleaded with us, and then refused to accept that she was getting fired. How could we do this to her? she asked. She's a friend, a member of Cruger's host family and a single mother with no other source of income. I recognize that the politics of the situation are tricky, and I certainly didn't revel in having to cut her loose. But we're not about to pay someone $40 a month--a pretty substantial amount of money here--to not clean our house. Again with the cold-heartedness. It was probably a mistake to hire someone from Cruger's family in the first place, but in a place like this where everyone's your cousin somehow, I guess the chances you'll have to fire a family member at some point are almost as great as the chances you'll marry one.

I felt for Boury, but I knew I had no other choice but to fire her. I surprised myself by actually doing it, though. Once I let the smoke clear and stepped back from the situation, I was actually pretty proud of how I had conducted myself. Firing someone can't ever be fun, but firing someone in your third language as a cultural outsider has to be as tough as anything George Clooney faced in Up in the Air. This kind of tricky cultural navigation is one of the of Peace Corps' brochure-touted personal challenges, which are supposed to make us better, stronger people. So, I guess that means that this is growth.

My First Law

2010-10-23T13:16:00.005Z

A girl in motion remains in motion.

I've got about six months left in my service. Though that sounds like a long time, I know it will go by quickly. I'm already in full-on planning-for-the-future mode--engrossed in (and occasionally overwhelmed by) grad school applications, vacation itineraries and dreams of good food to come.

Here's a random smattering of the things I'm getting excited about:

-Tabaski with the Barkedji family.

-A week in Cape Verde in November with Brian and his friend Jen, a volunteer in Zambia.

-Christmas Eve dinner with Katy's family. My last Christmas away from home for awhile.

-Emma's two-week visit in late December and early January, which will include biking to some waterfalls, inshallah.

-Finishing my applications and hearing back from schools.

-A five or six week COS (Close of Service) trip with stops in Morocco, Barcelona, Provence, the French and Swiss Alps, Florence-Rome-Naples and surroundings, the Peloponnesian Peninsula in Greece, and England/Guernsey (with the family, I hope). Friends, ferries and food (with special emphasis on the fromage), oh my!

-Hanging out in Milwaukee with my pup and parents. Sunday crosswords over brunch with one duck.

-Short trips to visit long lost friends (Madison? Minneapolis? Colorado? New York? Give me suggestions!)

-Tour de West Coast: A summer bike trip from Vancouver to San Francisco. A sister-sister reunion in San Fran.

-Fruit! Vegetables! Cheese! Whole wheat bread!

The best part of spending two years in the Peace Corps is that when you finish, you can suddenly justify a few months of pure indulgence. You know, sometimes this life isn't half bad.

I get knocked down, but I get up again.

2010-10-04T09:04:00.006Z

Remember Chumbawamba? Everyone needs a little throwback to the late '90s to start their day, right?

A would-be purse snatcher attacked me on Saturday night while I was walking to Cool Graoul, Dakar’s monthly dance party. I held on to my bag for dear life while the thief dragged me to the ground. My friend Austin fended off an accomplice, before ripping off the attacker’s shirt. We created such a scene that the two men soon ran off, defeated.

I guess we won that battle of wills, but there was certainly some collateral damage. Today Austin’s nursing a bump on his head, a chipped tooth, and an injured finger and toe. My knees and elbows are scraped up, too, but more significantly I feel a bit emotionally bruised. I can’t shake that sense of uneasiness that comes after being so directly confronted with the worst in humanity. But I feel lucky, too. I keep replaying the scene in my head, running down a list of alternate scenarios. What if Austin hadn’t acted so quickly? What if the attacker had used a weapon?

I also feel partially responsible for the attack. Dakar is a dangerous city, like any other. And we take big chances when we flash our conspicuously white skin on its dark streets at night. Every time I hear about a Peace Corps volunteer falling victim to a crime (which is disturbingly often—Saturday night alone, two other volunteers had their phones stolen and one other one had $60 taken), I am reminded of the risks I’m taking.

Yet take them I do, partially because I’m still young, and recklessness is what we tough young people do best, and partially because I’m not yet willing to let go of that innocent part of me that believes in people’s good intentions and expects that things will always turn out ok. But the longer I’m here, the harder it becomes to maintain this positive outlook on humanity--Senegalese humanity, in particular. The more my body and soul takes a beating in this country, the more difficult it becomes to disassociate this small, but visible, minority of bad apples from my concept of Senegal as a whole.

The Waiting Game

2010-09-28T22:04:00.002Z

This country has taught me nothing if not flexibility.

Due to a 12-hour power outage and even longer water cut, I have only managed to accomplish 1.75 of the 7 tasks on today’s to do list. I got my blog post in before the 9 a.m. power outage, and finished most of an update of our regional strategy before my computer ran out of battery charge. But no grad school applications, e-mails, report, case study, or run.

I did, however, manage to make it through entire issues of Utne Reader, Mental Floss and the Atlantic, as well as 200 pages of David Sedaris, take a 2-hour nap, clean my room, play with the dogs, and make and consume a giant pot of stove-top popcorn (a misnomer if you're living without a stove?). Sometime in the not too distant future, I’m going to look back on days like this with longing, right?

Girls' Leadership Seminar

2010-09-28T07:52:00.005Z

We held the annual Linguere-area girls’ leadership seminar this past weekend. This year I worked with three other volunteers to organize a day-long seminar in Linguere for 27 scholarship candidates and one of their parents. Many of the volunteers in the area came out to show their support and lead short sessions.

Things went much more smoothly than last year, probably due in part to my improved ability to plan for the unexpected here and in part to my increased ability to accept the inevitable hiccups in even the best-laid plan. This year, I wasn’t taking any chances with the technology. I rented a generator and purchased gas to run it, tested the sound system at the venue ahead of time, tested our projector’s compatibility with Justin’s computer, and tested all of our DVDs.

Yet despite all of that planning and testing, we somehow managed to melt the DVD of the career film between the time we arrived at the venue in the morning and 3 p.m., when we were slated to show it. (Hmm, I’m going to go ahead and blame that one on the crazy Linguere heat, or maybe the same malevolent Senegalese gods that have left Mary with her 3rd computer in under a year, and definitely not on our careless placement of the DVD on top of the projector’s vent.) Luckily, I had 2 extra copies of the DVD at home, so with the help of the ever-patient Peace Corps chauffeur and a quick retrieval by Rachael, coupled with an improvised career listing activity, the crisis was averted.

The technology! It works!

I’ve talked before about how passionate I am about this work with girls. To me, encouraging these intelligent, motivated girls to pursue educations and plan for their futures, while overcoming an immense list of challenges—early marriage, unwanted pregnancy, sexual violence, HIV/AIDS and other STDs, restrictive gender roles, lack of resources (money, materials, family support)—is not only important on an individual basis, but essential to the development of Senegal. I was glad that we were able to include parents in the dialogue this year, since even the strongest, most ambitious girl won’t get far if she’s fighting her family the entire way.

Playing the "Myths and Facts About HIV/AIDS" game

We invited Peace Corps trainer Awa Traoré to come out again. Awa is incredible. She has a gift for public speaking. She is comfortable talking to any group of people, with little to no planning beforehand. She’s able to push normally shy Senegalese girls to open and expand on short, stock answers without alienating them. Awa is a perfect illustration of why I believe that Peace Corps volunteers are best used as facilitators, and not trainers. Awa’s life experience, cultural knowledge and language skills, along with personal attributes, enable her to communicate with audiences on an intimate level. The things she says just have so much more gravity coming out of her mouth than they would mine. Not to mention the fact that I’d never have the courage or ability to talk about the things she brings up in her workshop (how do you say incest in Wolof?). I’m perfectly fine with doing all the nitty gritty legwork to set up an event like this, and then setting Awa free to do her thing.

Awa in action

Because it was a pretty cool thing to be a part of, for both us American volunteers and the Senegalese girls and parents who attended. Once again, the participants left the seminar giddily chatting about all the things they had discussed that day. One father who attended called me in the evening to thank the Peace Corps for supporting his daughter and to say how important he thought the seminar was. Now, someone who’s really, really cynical (and been in this country way too long) could say that the positive reaction is just lip service. And sure, it’s hard, if not impossible, to measure the actual impact of an event like this. But knowing what I do about the girls’ realities and the taboo that surrounds discussion about issues like sexual health and gender equality, I can’t help but feel confident that this kind of discussion is a step in the right direction.

Awa and Ann Marie hand out certificates and scholarships

Gagnessiry Ba, scholarship winner from Linguere

The Barkedji group

The Linguere group

The Ouarkhokh group

A New Addition to Team Linguere

2010-09-05T09:49:00.004Z

Either I have a habit of adopting pets in this country, or they have a habit of finding their way to me.

Meet Helen Keller. (I had nothing to do with the name.) My replacement, Ann Marie, found Helen among a group of kids in the bush outside Barkedji. She was crying and hungry, and her tail was broken. Ann Marie was afraid the pup would be further injured or killed by the kids, so she took her home.

Of course, we've played this game before with the family in Barkedji, and they still didn't want a dog at the house. Thus, Helen came to Linguere and I, pushover that I am, became de facto mother. I've been trying fruitlessly to housebreak and train her for the last week. The puppy verdict: She's lucky she's so darn cute. And if there was ever any question, I'm definitely not ready for motherhood. I'm exhausted.

Sparky, who got neutered yesterday to quell his urges to run away, is groggily and grudgingly tolerating her antics. When she climbs on him or chews on his tail, he just growls under his breath. But I have to say, Helen is not the sharpest pencil in the box. On those rare occasions that Sparky snaps, like when she tries eating from his bowl during feeding time, she squeals and runs away, but is back at it ten seconds later. What's that textbook definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results? I'm starting to wonder about Helen.

Poor Sparky.

Rainy, Rainy Ramadan

2010-08-17T23:17:00.006Z

Senegal at this time of year and I have a complicated relationship. School's out, so everything seems quieter, especially for us education volunteers. A lot of students have either left for even more remote villages or headed to Dakar or Thies to take in the big city lights. And most of the men and boys spend the days in the field, farming.

It's also rainy season, which means, on the one hand, occasional cloud cover and the color green in our lives, and on the other, rampant skin infections. Ramadan has arrived, so people are hungry, dehydrated, tired and growing progressively more cranky with every day. And yet, to put a completely egocentric spin on the holy month, this is the one time of year when we volunteers can find cheese in Linguere, since people like to break the fast with special foods like dates, apples, juice and cheese. Just trying to be even handed, you know.

*****

Ramadan last year was definitely the emotional low point in my service. I struggled to find work and to keep myself busy for the first couple of weeks, until I had to go to Dakar to treat the first in a long line of staph infections with which you are probably way too familiar at this point. I swore to myself last year during rainy season/Ramadan that I'd leave the country on vacation this time around.

And yet, here I am, back for more of the same. In a general sense, I'm once again struggling with the same nagging feelings of purposelessness, and in an uncomfortably specific sense, I'm trying to convince myself that the suspicious fever I had yesterday and the hard, painful lump I discovered in my armpit today aren't a conspicuous neon sign flashing, "Staph v2.0: back with a vengeance."

I'm watching like a helpless mother as all the new volunteers in Linguere go through that familiar hyper-speed cycle of interested observation, followed by I-can-hack-it triumph after a couple days of successful fasting, which is then quickly shattered by an oh-my-God-we've-still-got-28-more-days-of-this-and-I'm-already-considering-eating-the-pages-of-my-books reality check. Whether or not we choose to embrace it, Ramadan's here to stay for awhile.

*****

Sometimes I grow saddened when I ponder the huge impediments to the development of Senegal, and Linguere in particular. These are things that are far greater than any group of people's best intentions, motivation or ingenuity.

For example, it's hot, as in really, really hot, here 90% of the time, and it's hard for any of us to be fully productive when it takes all we've got just to not tip over and fry to a crisp in the sun. Another challenge? We live in a desert--a desert with a 90 meter water table--yet subsistence farming is the main economic activity in this zone. Plants don't want to grow in the desert, and there's not all that much that composting and mulching can do about it.

And so, I sometimes wonder during Ramadan--and I'm simply posing a question here, not trying to denigrate anyone's religion--if this month of fasting might be another one of those impediments to development. From a purely economic standpoint, there's got to be a great loss of productivity, right?

Yet, it's much more complicated than that. Development is so much more than a purely economic question. And unfortunately, as with everything else here, the more I ponder this question, the fewer answers I have.

NBA Cares/Basketball Without Borders in Senegal

2010-08-11T15:23:00.005Z

Last week, coaches and players from the NBA and the WNBA came to Senegal through the NBA Cares/Basketball without Borders Program. They ran a camp for Africa's most promising basketball players and participated in development projects. On Friday and Saturday, about 15 other volunteers and I helped out with their mosquito net distribution in Rufisque and their basketball court/computer room/reading room dedication at the YMCA in Dakar.

It was a fun event. I enjoyed seeing such gigantic players dance and play with such tiny children. I also appreciated seeing some African players who have grown into such successful players return to their home continent to encourage children here to strive and succeed.

Read more about the events here:

New York Times

NBA Cares

A Proud Moment

2010-08-02T16:42:00.003Z

I got such a nice phone call the other day, while I was in Thies to help out with the new volunteers' in-service training. All five of the girls from my girls' group who took the rigorous standardized test to exit middle school and enter high school passed! That is an amazing accomplishment for all of them, since the pass rate in Barkedji is generally only between 30 and 50%. At some middle schools in Senegal, only one or two students pass each year.

The girls are such sweet, funny, motivated and inspirational people, and I am so proud of them.

Congratulations, Deyssi Diagne, Coumba Diagne, Coumba Gueye, Boury Gadji and Sadio Ba!

Reflections on a World Cup

2010-07-20T23:27:00.005Z

As I biked the 70 k Linguere-Barkedji-Linguere route today and listened to Jim Noir on my iPod, I remembered this excellent commercial from the 2006 World Cup, which used Noir’s “Eanie Meanie” as background music and featured French star Zinedine Zidane before he both won the Golden Ball and, in that infamous head-butting incident, very publicly self-destructed, forever tarnishing his legacy. Ahh, the ups and downs of a World Cup…

I don’t like commercials, but I love World Cup commercials almost as much as I love the World Cup. No matter how cheesy the commercials--or in the case of the catchy Coca Cola ad from the most recent Cup, questionably racist (last time I checked, African children are not secretly lions, and do not bound over trees and cliffs in the bush, Simba style), I always end up associating them with the anticipation and excitement of that special month every four years when the entire world almost forgets to keep breathing.

Viewing the games this time around, many on the Linguere bar’s cable television over a cold beer, I felt comforted by the familiarity of my experience. Since my childhood I’ve been watching the World Cup in public places surrounded by rabid soccer fans. I still vividly remember the day in 1994 when my dad and I watched Italy’s overtime victory over Nigeria at the Italian Community Center in Milwaukee. We had to root for the underdogs in secret, for fear of retribution by the animated Italians.

There is something so nice about the way World Cups punctuate a lifetime. The four years spent waiting for the next one can seem interminable, the changes that occur in those four years insignificant. And yet time passes and life does change. I can’t believe it’s already been four years since I watched England lose to Portugal on penalties at Hawk’s Bar in Madison, and sixteen years now since the World Cup came to the U.S. and I religiously filled out the results of every match on a giant chart in my room.

Knowing that every four years, no matter where I might be in the world, I’ll be able to sit down with other fans and devote 90—or 120—minutes to watching beautiful passes, stunning goals, career-defining wins and heartbreaking losses is important to me. And the universality of the World Cup viewing experience has gotten me to thinking about all the things I do here in Senegal to give my life a sense of normalcy.

I may live in the desert in Africa, but I can still cook myself an elaborate dinner for no special reason. I can still walk the dog at sunset or take a long bike ride on an unfamiliar road just to explore. I can still start, and occasionally finish, a Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle. These are the things that I do to feel alive.

I often tell newer volunteers that the single best piece of advice I can give them is to make themselves happy, no matter what it takes, because no one else here is going to do it for them--spend an entire morning reading trashy magazines or buy yourself that cold soda (I’m talking to you, Brian Math). At no other point in our lives will we have to advocate so strongly for our own happiness.

So, thanks, South Africa, for hosting a beautiful World Cup that made me so happy and reminded me that no matter how far I may be from home, I am never too far from something familiar.

No Ordinary Romance

2010-07-10T14:18:00.011Z

I should be clear. Life here isn't actually just one big pity party. The redemption of a new day, coupled with a 3 hour period with no power outages in which I have been able to do 2 loads of laundry in the missionaries' most magical appliance, The Laundry Machine, has markedly improved my mood. Before I got sidetracked by the world falling down around (on top?) of me, I actually had some rather pleasant things to share with you.

The last couple of weeks have been filled with enjoyable travel, which is not actually an oxymoron in Senegal when you forego public transport in favor of bicycles. My bike tours around Linguere and Kedougou have been filled with the kind of going somewhere, discovering something type adventure I once naively thought every day in the Peace Corps might bring; not that I'm disparaging the comfort of routine I've finally found. Living somewhere and traveling somewhere are inherently different. It's just nice to have a bit of that slightly misguided, almost-risky, story-worthy adventure to spice up my life once in awhile.

I'll let the pictures do most of the talking.

Ann Marie makes a friend or two on the road between Barkedji and Linguere.

Two generations of proud Barkedji volunteers.

Three years later, Joey still gets excited by the sight of camels.

Joey, Emily and I can still muster some enthusiasm after a grueling 60k ride out to Justin's site, Yang Yang, on--I swear--the worst road in the country.

But excitement soon gave way to this--a much more apt visual description of our emotional state.

I am unimpressed by Tempo cookies' false advertising of "more cream." See exhibit A.

Exhibit A.

Did the bumpy road jostle Joey's brain so much that even dry, decidedly uncreamy Tempo cookies cannot save her?

Linguere's landscape in a word: sad.

Linguere: where things go to die, even bikes. We live here.

Not here: Kedougou.

We're off! Caution: wild animals.

Superstars.

The charming staff at the Wassadou Campement were incredibly hospitable and welcoming, and extremely concerned about our poor hygeine. They dropped not so subtle hints on four separate occasions that we might like to shower--free of charge, of course--and had us sit outside instead of inside the restaurant. Really, are we that dirty?

Reluctantly leaving lovely Wassadou after a restful lunch break.

Posing in front of the map of Niokolokoba national park at the entrance.

We got room service during a wild rain storm at the Dar Salam campement. Unfortunately, the staff's services did not extend to helping us get rid of the freakishly huge camel spider in our room. Never have I ever seen a Senegalese man so unresponsive to an opportunity to prove his masculinity.

Our campsite at the guard station halfway through the park. The guards, all male, welcomed us by cooking us lunch and dinner. I cannot fully express how amazing it was. Men in Senegal don't cook for women. Ever. Gender and development work, anyone?

Stephanie a.k.a. Sofi Diop charms the Senegalese.

We were out walking for too long, so park ranger Boubacar came to save us from the lions. He brought his gun.

These monkeys kept us company (read: repeatedly tried to steal our food) at our campsite in the park

Maya looks radiant. The river? Not so much.

Steph and I took a bike ride/hike to a village in the hills 13 k from Kedougou and marveled that we were still in the same country.

Happy to be above sea level.

Kedougou. Happy Fourth of July!

Me and my bicycle, no ordinary romance.

FML

2010-07-09T14:03:00.003Z

Volunteers love exchanging FML stories, partially because it makes us seem hardcore, and partially because hearing about the time you accidentally ate cow poo makes me feel a little bit less awkward about the time I had an alien growing out of my eye.

These past 48 hours in Linguere have given the whole staph debacle an run for its FML money.

Wednesday evening: Cat sitting and watching the World Cup at the missionaries' house. The power goes out 15 minutes from the end of the game. As I stumble around in the dark trying to make sure everything is unplugged and turned off before I go, Barney and Billy decided to use my computer's power cord as a chew toy.

Thursday morning. Electricity comes back. I test my power cord. It's definitely broken. I'm sick. My body aches and my stomach is making alarming noises. The power goes out again, so I lie in a puddle of my own sweat on the floor. I try to eat some rice and fish. Big mistake. My stomach starts running (a Senegalese euphemism for G.I. distress).

Thursday afternoon. Stomach is now sprinting. I've got a 101 degree fever and an achy body. Sparky, our sweet new dog from the missionaries, throws up his lunch. I barely have the energy to turn my head.

Thursday evening: Still sick. Fever is spiking. A rainstorm floods the house. Electricity goes out again, and the water gets cut.

Friday morning: Feeling marginally better, but the water's still out, so I can't shower or flush the toilet. I'm still sick, still haven't done my laundry, and still can't accomplish any of the long list of computer-related tasks on my to-do list this week. Suffering is a full-time job here, you know.

Friday afternoon: Still lying inside trying to recuperate. Children have climbed on top of our fence to harass Sparky. Sparky bolts towards them and crashes into the gate, opening it. He runs away. I chase after him, scandalously dressed in my sick clothes (drawstring-less shorts that are falling off and a tank top) and looking just as disgusting as I feel. Every time I get within five feet of Sparky, he runs further away. At one point he gets into a fight with another dog and I ineffectually and embarrassingly stand there crying and yelling his name. I don't know what else to do. I am so frustrated by Senegal and life right now. So angry at the children, and the world by association.

I am helpless as I seem to stand outside of my body, watching myself warp into one of those bitter old hermits who allows herself to be tormented by children. The last 48 hours of my life have been human hardening at warp speed.

Sometimes I feel like life here is just one big test--how much can Senegal pelt at out protective shells in two years before we crack? I want to think I'm stronger than the assaults on my body and mind, but in all honesty, I'm cracking. They're not deep fissures, but small chips stolen from my best self. The great paradox is that in trying to be good, I am less generous, patient, compassionate and positive than I ever have been.

Basketball Tournament

2010-06-15T17:05:00.007Z

On Sunday, we held a basketball tournament in Linguere. It was the culmination of a series monthly clinics beginning in December, 2009. Teams of middle school girls and boys from Barkedji, Linguere and Ouarkhokh participated.

Everything went really well. Finally, after 6 months, all of the transportation headaches were worked out. Though at first Peace Corps volunteers led the clinics, by the end the Linguere gym teachers successfully facilitated the clinics and tournament, which is kind of the development ideal. And I was amazed at how much the kids' skills have improved in the last 6 months.

Pictures below.

We still haven't gotten internet transferred to the new house in Linguere, so hopefully I'll get back to posting regularly once that gets worked out.

Sorry I've been MIA

2010-06-04T17:13:00.005Z

I'm on vacation!

Don't we look happy to be well fed and not covered in sweat?

I'm traveling with two of my Peace Corps friends, Katy and Melissa, and we met up with one of my best friends from high school, Carly, in Munich. We've now been to Munich, Vienna and Prague, and now we're spending 4 days in Berlin before heading back to Senegal. It has been so much fun. I need to do this more often.

Team Goodwin

2010-05-04T22:02:00.008Z

a.k.a team Louga/Linguere a.k.a team Tech-Savvy brings you two videos, one serious, one not so much.

First, here's a video I made about our recent department-wide collaborative mosquito net distribution. It's kind of cheesy, but kind of heart-warming.

Second, we have a funny video that the new Linguere volunteers made about our region, Louga, after the volunteer visit.

We have way too much time on our hands, obviously, so we devote an unhealthy amount of brain space to the invention of names and slogans for our region. The latest, Team Goodwin, is a reference to a very odd letter that Ann Marie, my replacement, received just before the volunteer visit.

On the envelope, Ann Marie's address was written in the sloppy, barely legible handwriting of a child. We were shocked the letter even made it to its intended destination. Ann Marie didn't recognize the return address or the name of the sender. Inside, we found a Flat Stanley (a popular elementary school project based on a book, Flat Stanley is a laminated paper man that students send to friends around the world to be photographed in exotic locales), and a note, "Dear Goodwin, I haven't seen you in a long time..."

The letter is hilariously mysterious on so many levels. Who's Goodwin? Who sent the letter? Where did she get Ann Marie's name and address? Why does she think Ann Marie is also Goodwin? Realizing that Allah had no answers for us, we decided to just go with it. We photographed Flat Stanley all around Barkedji.

Can you find Flat Stanley at the market?

Flat Stanley in the bathroom!

Flat Stanley visited the garden, too.

Moving On (Up?)

2010-05-04T20:06:00.004Z

I left the village yesterday. All my bags are in a big pile in the Linguere office. Until we move to a bigger space later this month, I'm kind of homeless.

Moving was sadder than I expected, considering that in a lot of ways I haven't really left. I'll still be going back to Barkedji to celebrate holidays with the family and to work with my replacement on projects. But the hard part of goodbyes for me is always the realization that things will never quite be the same again. Of course, that's just the forward motion of life. Progress precludes stagnation.

The attachment definitely snuck up on me. I think that we volunteers spend so much time, especially at first, longing for the life we left, that we don't notice getting used to, and even genuinely loving, this new life, until its almost too late. Watching a bunch of my friends leave Senegal recently has made me realize that it'll be hard to leave in a year. After I witnessed my friend Dana tearfully say goodbye to her neighbors in the village after two years, we both wondered why we do this to ourselves. Why is our generation always moving? Leaving something behind for something bigger? Better? We decided that the hard goodbyes are important. They show that what we're leaving meant something.

So, one year down. One to go. I'm trying to make the most of the time I have left in Senegal. It'll go by quickly. I have some year two resolutions, including visiting more friends' sites, going on more bike trips and taking more video footage, but I'll spare you the majority of my self-reflection. I'm trying to see this move not as an end as much as a beginning, an opportunity for new adventures. New hilarity. New fodder for the blog.

Welcome to Linguere: Where things come to die.

2010-04-20T15:58:00.014Z

I just finished hosting two trainees, Ann Marie and Kim, during their volunteer visit, formerly known as "demystification" (menacing, huh?), during which the Peace Corps sends the trainees to stay with current volunteers for just under a week. It provides them with their first impressions of the villages and regions where they'll be spending the next two years and with their first tastes of daily life as a volunteer, so it's a pretty significant experience.

Luckily Ann Marie and Kim, along with Justin and Emily, the other two volunteers who will be coming out our way, fit right in. As we encountered dust, heat and a bunch of dead animals on our 25 kilometer bike ride from Barkedji, where Ann Marie will be living, to Diagaly, Kim's site, the girls and I joked about the challenges to living in one of the smallest, hottest, most isolated regions in PC/Senegal. We also pitched new regional mottos that expemlify just how hard core we really are. In addition to "Linguere: Where things come to die," we came up with, "Linguere: The forgotten region," and, "Linguere: Where there is no water."

We kid, of course. There's actually something kind of comforting about feeling like we're living at the end of the earth. And there's definitely something nice about feeling so safe among our neighbors. From a work perspective, things are looking up in Linguere, too. The influx (ok, I'm being generous with my terminology) of new volunteers will bring us up to a total of 8, and the newbies are very excited to get started on projects, both village-based and regional.

There's always a bit of a friendly rivalry between Peace Corps regions. After a successful volunteer visit, I can say this: "Hey Kedougou, you lush, green region of southeastern Senegal, you may have shown your trainees hippos and waterfalls, but here in Linguere, we made fresh limeade in my hut. Bam."

I am here to tell you what is good for you.

2010-04-05T16:17:00.004Z

This is good for you.

Ok, so this post really has nothing to do with my Peace Corps service, but just like I'm all about reducing the number of starving children in Africa, I also wholeheartedly support the current trend in the media of discussing normally intimidating and abstruse subjects in a way that makes them more accessible to the public. This world's got enough pretension already (I say as I tell you what's good for you...).

I never listened to podcasts in America, but here in Senegal they save my life on a daily basis. As I take my evening bucket bath in the village, I always hook my iPod up to my speakers and listen to a podcast. I especially enjoy NPR's Planet Money podcast: only slightly socially awkward econ geeks getting together and spending 10 to 20 minutes talking about a current issue in economics in language I can understand. They often discuss the economics of development, attempting to answer questions like, "Why are poor countries poor and rich countries rich?" by conducting interviews with economists like Amartya Sen and, most recently, traveling to Haiti. They've also done a better job explaining the recent global economic turmoil than anyone else I've found.

In a similar vein, I recently came across Steven Strogatz's New York Times math series linked above. His most recent piece explains limits, the conceptual foundation of calculus, in an extremely clear way. Run along and enjoy it and feel both smarter and more beautiful.

Getting It Done in Barkedji

2010-03-28T17:02:00.004Z

Sometimes when I talk about Barkedji, I feel like one of those proud parents who won't shut up about how amazing little Susie is. But, really, it's an awesome village. Look at these pictures of the new school garden and tell me they don't make you smile:

Apart from working with the teachers and director of the elementary school to write the grant that financed the garden, I really haven't done much to make this project happen. The teachers and students are there, planting and watering, every single day after school. They've already sold almost 20,000 CFA ($40) worth of lettuce! Yes, that's a lot here.

I was also really happy to hear that some villagers recently worked with USAID to start a health insurance program in the village. Two hundred families have already signed up at a cost of 2,000 CFA ($4). The program pays half of all medical bills at the Health Post in Barkedji or the hospital in Linguere. The man running the program said that now they want to encourage preventive health, and are looking for small financing to do a series of health talks.

The environmental club is also going well. It's pretty much to the point where it can function without me. Even though I'm in Linguere for our regional mosquito net distribution, the club organized a clean up of the site of the weekly market this morning. Look at these cute, eager environmental club kids and the lovely mudstove they recently built!:

There are enough smart, educated, motivated people in Barkedji that sometimes I allow myself to believe that if I come back in 5 or 10 years, things actually will be better. That despite the encroaching desert and the 90 meter water table and the lack of resources and the remoteness, life might still get a little easier. Maybe that's naive, but still, in my year in Barkedji I've seen enough small successes to give me hope. I look at people like my counterpart, Baba Sine, the quiet leader of the garden project who every day does everything he possibly can to make the school cleaner and more functional, or my host sister, Diama, who in the last 6 months has started a very successful juice business despite an unbelievable amount of housework, and I can't help but hope.

Finally, they're here: photos of adorable children clutching mosquito nets like stuffed animals!

2010-03-28T15:34:00.012Z

Remember way back in June, shortly after I arrived in the village, when I wrote all those annoying e-mails and blog posts asking you to donate to our regional mosquito net distribution? And then you donated $10 and forgot about it, or maybe you donated $100 and totally didn't forget about it but were way too polite to be like, "Hey, what happened to my $100? Where are my complimentary heart-warming pictures of smiling Senegalese children clutching the mosquito nets that will keep them from getting malaria? That sneaky Peace Corps volunteer ripped me off!" Well, I am happy to report that we didn't swindle you, things just move slowly here. We are finally distributing all those nets.

Yesterday was the first day of our four day distribution, which we're doing in conjunction with the Linguere Department vaccination tours, run by health workers from each of nine health posts. We're tagging along, mooching free rides out to the farthest reaches of the bush, to provide nets to all of the kids who didn't receive them in the two previous national distributions. I'm glad that we're targeting villages that are often forgotten or ignored by the health authorities, but our decision to distribute to the farthest villages, yet to work on a Senegalese watch, is making for some looooooong days.

A rundown on grueling Day 1: We were supposedly starting early, so I rushed to leave Barkedji at 7 am and went straight to the hospital in Linguere after grabbing a bean sandwich on the side of the road. I waited for three hours for the vaccination car to arrive. We finally left in the late morning, stopped at the office to pick up nets, and transported them to the Warkhokh Health Post. We left the Health Post around 12 pm, drove 2 hours out into the bush, and made the vaccination/net distribution rounds until 6:30 pm. Then we started driving home until the head nurse realized after half an hour that she had left her phone in one of the villages. We drove around for an hour looking for the phone to no avail before finally giving up and making towards home again. We arrived back at the Warkhokh Health Post at 9 pm and tabulated vaccination counts for over an hour. I didn't make it back to the Linguere office until after 10:30 pm, by which point I was exhausted, hungry and dehydrated. Notice the conspicuous lack of mention of lunch and dinner in the previous paragraph... Also, it's hot season again, which means I might as well be continuously peeing out of all of my pores all day long. There's simply no way to drink enough water in this heat.

I generally don't mind these long work days. We have so much down time here that it's always nice to be physically working for more than an hour or two at a time. And--how to say this diplomatically?--it's also really uplifting to see Senegalese working so hard for their own country's development. The health workers I accompanied were genuinely concerned about targeting the highest number of kids who otherwise wouldn't get vaccinated or receive nets. They never mentioned going home early because they were hot and tired.

It's easy to grow disenchanted with the concept of sustainable development when people so often seem to want to take the easiest way out. In this line of work, we encounter a fair bit of entitlement, resignation and even laziness. But it's good to remind myself that it's a frustratingly visible minority that feel entitled to "presents" from toubabs, but refuse to (or don't know how to) be proactive about solving their own problems.

So, I was happy that we worked hard yesterday, happy that we achieved something concrete. But as my dad would say, just one minor complaint, dear: If we hadn't waited all morning for the vaccination car to arrive, we wouldn't have had to work until 10:30 pm. They do these vaccination tours a lot. Someone in that car must have realized when we left the Health Post at noon for a two hour drive out into the bush that we wouldn't be arriving home until very late. I know this is a question I shouldn't even bother asking at this point, but seriously, why didn't we just leave earlier...? I have learned to be patient here, but there is such a thing as too much patience, and this country is sure toeing that line. There comes a point when patience degrades from virtue to fatal flaw.

I have now been a parent to my parents...

2010-03-21T17:57:00.010Z

...and I'm definitely not ready for babies yet.

So my parents left Senegal to return to the land of milk and honey (and, as I sometimes conveniently forget, full time jobs and bills and taxes). I'm so happy they came, and I'm thankful that their reaction to Senegal was excessively positive, though I sometimes begrudged them their lack of nuanced interpretation of events.

Of course that's unfair of me, but sometimes I just wanted to remind them that my life in Senegal isn't all vacation time at the beach and my host sister doesn't usually, or ever, cook me salads for dinner. I'm glad I was able to help them see Senegal at its finest, but sometimes felt like I had to justify my occasional moanings and groanings about life as a PCV.

I have to give them credit, though. My parents were champs. It's not like we spent our vacation riding in air conditioned vehicles and sleeping in $300 a night hotel rooms. They roughed it in tents and on public transport, and when a huge, overstuffed van we were riding in swerved off the road, over a bunch of bushes and and into a tree, my parents took it like true Senegalese. They shrugged their shoulders, grabbed their bags and got off the car to wait for another on the side of the road. In the end, I can't really complain that they weren't complaining.

As nice as it was to spend some time with my parents, I have to admit that I breathed a bit of a sigh of relief when I dropped them off at the airport. I think they were ready to give me a break, too. I've got a lot going on right now, and they had seen me struggle to keep up with working while guiding them around Senegal. It was tough. It's no secret among Peace Corps volunteers that hosting family members can be one of the hardest things we do during our service. And then there's the distinct possibility that I've lost both my mind and my ability to play well with others in this year of independence and loneliness, and I will one day return to America a confused, antisocial being.

Of the things I'm juggling right now, perhaps the biggest is my impending move to Linguere. I'm going to be taking on a new role as a Peace Corps Volunteer Leader (PCVL), coordinating regional work and supporting volunteer projects. The 7-soon-to-be-9 of us in Linguere are very isolated, and we desperately need someone to act as a leader/communications liaison/community outreacher/professional whip-cracker. I think it will be a good new challenge for me, too.

I can't say I'm ready to leave the village, but just as the finite nature of our Peace Corps service has taught many a villager to accept the constant comings and goings of their dear pet toubabs, it is also forcing me to get over my habit of attachment. Not only am I packing up and moving out, I'm also watching Cruger and Dana, the two older volunteers from Linguere who have been constant companions over the past year, get ready to return home and move on (Dana's going to grad school and Cruger's getting married, yay!).

And just as Cruger and Dana are leaving, the new group of Environmental Education and Health trainees have arrived. Included in that group is my mystery replacement--the very lucky volunteer who will be living in Barkedji come May. I met the group at the airport when they arrived, shell-shocked, at 5 am, and then traveled with them to Thies where they're doing their training. I spent a week at the training center with them, teaching them how to eat, demonstrating gardens and tree nurseries, and guiding them around Thies. They are super!

And so as sad as it is constantly say goodbye to older volunteers, it's equally as exciting to welcome new friends to the country. I like the way Peace Corps service is punctuated by the 6-month shuffle, though seeing new volunteers arrive always instills a bit of terror in me: Does this mean I'm supposed to be feel experienced and knowledgeable now? I sure hope not.

Vacation Photos

2010-03-02T16:25:00.015Z

Here are a few photos from the first half of my parents' trip to Senegal, before my camera broke. These are from Dakar, Barkedji and a bit of Saint Louis. My mom still has to send me photos taken on her camera in Saint Louis, Lompoul, Palmarin and Dakar part II.

Visit From the Parental Unit

2010-02-17T18:45:00.010Z

The All-Volunteer Conference and ridiculousness of WAIST are over, and I'm now attempting to entertain my parents for a couple of weeks. It's been nearly four years now since I first stepped off a plane in Africa, first breathed in Dakar's salty, fetid odor, and it's interesting to rediscover Senegal through the eyes of the uninitiated (and unhardened).

I feel like I'm four years into a relationship of sorts, and at this point I'm comfortable but passive. Patient but jaded. Unphased but uninspired. I'm floating. My parents, on the other hand, are overstimulated with the newness, the insanity of it all. And they're reacting in very different ways. While my mom stares wide eyed, trying to take it all in, my father incessantly narrates our journey through the day. "Goats! Waves! Crazy driving! Hustlers! Cheap prices! A cat!" (Really, Dad? A cat? We've got those in America, too.)

I love discovering that what they notice about Senegal is so different from the things that make me stop and think these days. While I pass the days pondering the value of Development Work (capitals not optional), am I really forgetting to notice the beauty of that grapefruit seller clutching her child beneath brightly colored fabric, the sky behind them brilliant with pink sunset? My dad's giddy chattering at the strangeness and beauty of it all has reminded me not to take this place, this experience, for granted.

In the last week, we spent a few days in Dakar so my parents could recover from the long flight before we made the long trek to the village. They adapted far better than expected to the village's stick beds and hole for a toilet (and I'm convinced I have the smallest toilet hole of any volunteer in country--my site-mates can back me up on this). The villagers were incredibly gracious and welcoming, and my sister pulled out all the stops with her cooking. She even made salad for the first time since I've lived there.

Here are the things that struck my dad about the village: My hardworking, uncomplaining sister, who was up before the family to start making breakfast and was still filling plastic bags with juice to sell long after the rest of us had turned in for the night; the huge extended families living within each compound, TV satellite dishes and ubiquitous cell phones in an African village in the middle of nowhere; visitors' inability to walk past any home without being invited in for tea or soda; the lovely calmness and slower pace of life.

Now we're staying in Saint-Louis for a few days. Touristy, breezy Saint-Louis was supposed to be a nice break after three days in the village. I was looking forward to wandering the island and reliving my glory days of study abroad (ha...). Unfortunately, shortly after we arrived I was bowled over by a wayward, uncontrolled bicyclist. Crazy girl plowed full-speed into me, and as I fell the $250 lens of the brand new camera my parents brought separated from the camera body and broke. The experience and it's accompanying bruises and scrapes, along with the disappointment of managing to break a camera in under a week has put a damper on the Saint-Louis experience.

But it's a new day, so we're trying to keep things in perspective. I have neither a broken leg nor a staph infection (alhumdulilah), and we're looking forward to the next week's the fun, crazy adventures in the Lompoul Desert, Palmarin and Dakar. Photos to come later, they're slow to upload.

Haven't Written in Awhile

2010-02-09T11:16:00.002Z

I'm in Dakar, preparing a camps presentation that I'll be giving with some other PCVs at the all-volunteer conference on Thursday and Friday. Hundreds of volunteers from Senegal and surrounding countries will descend upon Dakar in the next few days for the conference, followed by a 3-day softball tournament/drunk fest called WAIST (West African Invitational Softball Tournament). WAIST is (apparently) pretty much the most exciting thing that happens in West Africa. Ever. We've been hearing volunteers talk about it and its accompanying team themes, costumes, and parties since we arrived in country.

The day after WAIST, my parents arrive! They'll be spending almost 2 weeks in Senegal. We'll be traveling to the village, Saint-Louis, the Lompoul desert where we'll ride camels and sleep in Mauritanian tents, beautiful Palmarin in the Petite Côte, and then back to Dakar. I'm so excited for them to see the village and Senegal and to visit Africa for the first time.

The past week and a half in the village were busy and productive, and reminded me of all the reasons I've grown to love Barkedji over the last ten months. It's kind of a pity that health problems and work have been drawing me away from the site so much recently. I feel like the days in my service when I can hang out at site for two and a half weeks, content to just be, are well behind me...

...not in small part due to the fact that I'll be moving to Linguere in May to become a PCVL (Peace Corps Volunteer Leader). But that's a long story best saved for another day. So much is happening right now. I'm almost overwhelmed.

Getting Better

2010-01-28T21:42:00.006Z

I've been granted permission to go home (Am I actually at the point in my service when the village is home? That's got to signify some kind of progress), so I'll finally leave Dakar tomorrow morning. Despite the crazy eye and the hospital stay and the antibiotic-induced nausea and the frustration of being out of my village at a time when I really want to be working, I've had some fun in Dakar. Since Senegal sure isn't loving my body right now, I've taken that task upon myself. Exercise, homemade mozzarella salad arranged just so and chocolate mousse are magical things.

The craziness of the past few weeks has caused me to reflect on my decision to come here. In accepting that this infection might return, I have to wonder if there's a price I'm not willing to pay, physically or emotionally, for this experience. Volunteers often deal with incredible personal hardship, pain and loss during their service--things far graver than an infected eye--and yet somehow find the strength to carry on. Would I do the same? I have to wonder if there's something that could happen to me or a friend or a member of my family that would suddenly make me regret my decision to come.

It only took a Peace Corps medical officer's mention of the possibility of "medical separation" for me to arrive at my unequivocal conclusion, however unwise: though there might be a price I'm not willing to pay, my health is not it. When confronted with the threat of being forced by Peace Corps to leave for medical reasons, I realized just how unwilling I am to go home now. I still have so much that I want to see, do, accomplish during my service. If my body must be this opportunity's collateral damage, so be it. Besides, staying put out of fear doesn't preclude suffering or loss. And people in America get staph infections, too, right?

Troubled Water

2010-01-19T22:13:00.007Z

You know how occasionally a public works project will disrupt the water supply in America, and the sky might as well be falling? Families are forced to rough it, flushing the toilet with their emergency stashes of Evian…

Before I left the village to come to Dakar, the water had been out for almost two weeks. Normally our water comes out of a tap in the family compound, which draws from a pipeline attached to the village’s deep-bore well, or forage. The forage also pumps water into a storage chateau where Pulaar herders pull it through hoses into plastic containers and rubber inner tubes before transporting it via horse or donkey cart out to the bush.

When the forage breaks down, which it does disconcertingly often, Barkedji’s 6,000 residents use water from the chateau for drinking, bathing, doing laundry, washing dishes, performing pre-prayer ablutions, watering the animals, and watering the gardens. When that dries up, they rely on one small well for all of their water needs. Obviously this ratio of people and animals to well creates mass chaos.

Strong men offer their services to the village, hitching up pulleys and madly pulling water for any woman who is assertive enough to push her plastic bucket to the front of the pack. Pulaars wait for hours with their horse and donkey carts to fill their containers and return home. They have no choice; their animals are their livelihood.

Gardens die, because no one, myself included, is willing to spend entire days fighting for water for plants. We prioritize our needs. Laundry gets put off. Bathing gets put off. Trees and vegetables get sacrificed. And I begin to understand why this place often feels so slow to develop:

We pour our heart and soul into a project, only to watch things start to fall apart almost instantaneously. We build with second-rate materials and then something breaks, or the water goes out, or someone falls ill, bringing the whole precariously functional system to a screeching halt. We have not the money nor the resources nor the energy to continually fix things that will just keep on breaking anyway. So our grand plans fail. We surrender to the status quo.

There is exactly 1 truck in all of Senegal that is able to fix the problem that has befallen Barkedji’s poor forage. So who knows when the water’ll be back. And there’s nothing to do but endure, so we begin to accept the unacceptable. Normal redefines itself. Villagers drink visibly dirty water, which might as well be river water, and then treat the symptoms of the resulting diarrhea. This may be the way of the poor, but it’s a fine line between stoicism and resignation.

Notes From a Hospital Bed

2010-01-19T21:40:00.005Z

I'm still here.

When I went to Linguere on Friday morning for a basketball clinic at the high school, I e-mailed Peace Corps Med some photos of my eye. I guess my description of a “quarter sized abscess above my eye” hadn’t done justice to the extent of my suffering, because when they saw the photos they became concerned and told me to come to Dakar right away. I’ve realized that I tend to downplay my health problems both to myself and to others, and that, especially here, I need to be more assertive and proactive in seeking treatment.

Early Saturday morning I made my way to Dakar carrying nearly nothing, since I had left the village Friday morning with the intention of going home that afternoon. My friend Dana kindly gave me some extra underwear and a toothbrush that she had, and Cruger donated a spare cell phone charger and some antibiotics to my cause. I traveled all day in a sept place (7-seat station wagon) and finally arrived in Dakar around 4.

I met up with Vonnie, the new medical officer, who was with her family at a children’s birthday party in the U.S. embassy-owned park on the ocean. This was a real birthday party, complete with an inflatable bouncy castle shipped from the U.S. (seriously) and a piñata filled with American candy. I can only imagine how I, dirty and sweaty from the long ride and ineffectively covering my Frankenstein-esque boil with a band-aid, must have scared the poor children.

Though it was Saturday, Vonnie had managed to make me an appointment at a clinic for 7 p.m. A Peace Corps car picked us up from the park and took us to the appointment. When the doctor saw my infection, he instantly told me that we’d have to open it up and drain it, and that the incision would leave a scar. The anesthesiologist wasn’t around—it was a Saturday night, after all—so the surgeon said he’d use local anesthesia.

After saying goodbye to Vonnie, undressing and wrapping myself in a sheet, and sporting some green fabric booties to enter the sterile environment of the surgical room, I lay down to endure the operation with strength and grace...at least that was the intention. The doctor injected the anesthesia into my eyelid, a painful process in and of itself, and then waited no longer than 30 seconds before he began cutting into the abscess.

Oh my god, the pain was incredible. Seriously, unbelievable. I tried to stifle my voice as I bawled and shook, but the operation dragged on and on. The doctor made a second incision and then pushed and prodded around my eye, trying to force out the massive amounts of pus. Then came the cleaning and the dressing of the wound. The assistant knotted up gauze and forced it into the hole left by the incision. They kept telling me they were done, only to fiddle some more. It was interminable. I tried to be strong, but at one point I found myself pleading with the men through sobs, “Arretez, s’il vous plait!”

Eventually the operation did end, and I went back to the waiting room to sit alone, naked beneath my sheet and feeling so exposed under the fluorescent lights. My eye was still throbbing. I looked around and took stock of the heavy medical machinery surrounding me, the only witnesses to my pain, and for the first time in a long time, I thought to myself, "What on earth am I doing here?"

I really can’t complain about the treatment and service I got in the hospital, though. The doctor treated me on a Saturday night, and came to visit me on a Sunday. The Peace Corps medical officers visited me on their day off, too. I got a clean, air-conditioned, private room in the clinic, and the food was good. Having stayed in Senegalese hospitals in the past, I can say that this place exceeded all of my expectations.

But there is still that cultural disconnect that makes receiving treatment in Senegal so unnerving. American patients have grown to expect a certain bedside manner that doctors and nurses here simply aren't used to providing. Here the patient’s comfort is secondary to the task at hand, and information about our conditions or treatment is privileged.

I made the mistake of joking with one of the nurses about my vein always being difficult to find as he inserted the needle for an IV. His response? "No, it's not difficult." Well, okay then. That same nurse came into my room at 3am to change my IV. I couldn't sleep, because the antibiotics were giving me terrible stomach pains and nausea. I asked him if the pains were normal, to which he replied, "No, not normal," and walked out.

I stayed in the hospital for 2 days, receiving massive amounts of glucose solution, pain killer, and antibiotic through and IV and having my eye monitored. Now I’m in the Peace Corps med hut for an indeterminate amount of time as my wound heals (inshallah). I'm going to go on a long-term, 3-week dose of antibiotics to hopefully kick the infection.

Trying to watch the African Cup of Nations on TV with one eye.

Ok, This Is Getting A Little Bit Ridiculous...

2010-01-15T19:18:00.002Z

What is going on with my face?

The staph infection is back. Or, more accurately, it probably never left. This is not ok!

It's Official, I'm Pretty Badass

2010-01-10T18:44:00.005Z

One night last week, some friends and I were walking along the Ponty, one of the main streets in downtown Dakar. I had offered to carry the group's bottle of José Cuervo in my left hand, and was fully engrossed in the ice cream cone in my right (caramel and salted butter ice cream with chocolate chips = yum). I wasn't carrying a purse; I had put my money, ID and cell phone in my front pocket, since we were going out dancing later that night.

Two men approached me. Snapping me out of my ice cream-induced euphoria, the first tried to distract me by tugging on my left pant leg, which, as any seasoned traveler knows, meant his friend was reaching into the opposite pocket, trying to unearth my cell phone and money.

When I realized what was happening, adrenaline must have kicked in. I yelled a profanity at the top of my lungs. The tugger ran off, and the man who had been reaching into my pocket started backwards and stared at me for a second, not knowing what to make of the crazy toubab lady making such a scene. I took advantage of the moment to show him I meant business, delivering a spin kick to his shins (without dropping the bottle or the ice cream cone, I should note--don't mess with a girl who's studied karate). Who knew I had it in me? He stared for another second, yelled said profanity back at me, and ran off.

Though it has to have been one of the weakest, most choreographed pickpocket attempts ever, I still felt pretty cool afterwards.

Losing the Jaay Fondé*

2010-01-10T14:55:00.013Z

One of the more unfortunate side-effects of being a female serving in rural Senegal is the dreaded ceeb belly (ceeb, pronounced cheb, is the Wolof word for rice). Unless they get parasites or amoebas, American women in Senegal tend to put on weight, since the diet here is loaded with simple carbohydrates, oil and fats. For example, the powdered milk we consume in sugary coffee, with rice, or on millet cous-cous is enriched with fat. Forget 2%, this stuff has an ungodly 25-29% fat content, which makes it a miracle food for malnourished children and the devil for generally well-nourished, if not over-nourished, Americans. We might as well pour some whipping cream on our carb of choice and call it a day. (Men, deprived of their beloved calorie-laden steaks and burgers, are of course exempt from this phenomenon. They turn scrawny, while women turn soft. No one ever said life was fair.)

Know what's even less fair? The food that makes us fat doesn't even taste good! Oy.
Along with the regular village meals of rice and oily sauce, we get other creative carb on fat on carb combinations. My personal favorite? "Macaroni": noodles and fried potatoes with an oily onion sauce, scooped and eaten with the ubiquitous white bread baguette. Ridiculous. "Salad" comes with french fries and oily onion sauce. Breakfast is a loaf of dense white bread and sugar-laden coffee. Villagers consume soda and other sugary juices, teas and coffees like it's their job (and for some men, tea drinking is truly the closest thing they've got to a job), while fresh fruits and vegetables are scarce. See what we're up against?

As a New Year's resolution, I'm waging war on the ceeb belly. I'm in the Peace Corps, I figure I deserve a more superficial resolution than the typical "be kinder" this year. I'm not getting fat, but I've put on a good 10 pounds since I've been here. One of the middle school teachers clearly noticed the weight gain, since he told my counterpart I'd grown "obèse" during the rainy season. And though I'd like nothing better than to balloon up like a blimp and crush him under my weight (What is with Senegalese men?! As my friend Carla said, "After they get done insulting you, they ask you to marry them."), the truth is he bruised my pride a little.

Still, this war is less about vanity than it is about being tired of feeling bloated and lethargic. I got over my vanity the first time staph bacteria attacked my face, when I was forced to walk around for weeks with band-aids ineffectively covering golf ball sized, pus-oozing abcesses. I'm not going to look cute here, I'm over it. But I want to feel like my old, athletic self! To think a massage therapist once complimented me, in perhaps a slightly unprofessional manner, for my "hard" body... Oh, the glory days.

So watch out, I'm on a mission, and there is no stopping me. In the five days since I resolved to be healthier, against all odds, in Senegal, I started a food journal to monitor my eating. I've sworn off soda, attaya (tea), and Senegalese coffee. I buy hard boiled eggs or peanuts as a village snack, to provide my vegetarian body with a much needed source of protein, and I'm trying to start eating fish. I bought bananas, watermelon and Senegalese oranges at the weekly market in Barkedji. And I'm no longer allowing myself peanut butter m&m binges in Linguere.

I've also increased my exercise regimen. In the past few days I've gone on a couple of runs (6.5 and 3.5 miles), and then took a long walk in the bush when my foot started hurting. I biked the 35k to Linguere yesterday, and I'll bike back tomorrow. I've heard rumor of a half marathon in Dakar coming up in the next few months, so I think I'll start training for that. And soon I'll be watching my jaay fondé melt away, inshallah.

*In Wolof, literally to sell fondé, a rich, milky, sugary millet porridge. Figuratively, a Senegalese woman's highly prized badonkadonk.

Maybe I should go on vacation more often...

2010-01-10T08:23:00.004Z

There’s a Peace Corps saying, “You’ll spend two years putting yourself out of a job.” That’s the PC modus operandi, and should really be the sustainable development MO, as well. The idea is that we outsiders share new ideas and practices with the populations with which we live and work. If all goes as planned, people adopt some of these ideas and continue to pass them on to future generations, eliminating the need for outsiders to be here in 10 or 100 years saying the same things, teaching the same skills, donating the same materials. The process is behavior change. The end result is ideally some sort of concrete, measurable improvement (things should stop falling apart at a certain point). A lovely premise, eh?

When I returned to my village after vacation, I actually saw evidence of this philosophy in action. My brother had constructed a fence around the family garden to keep out the hungry chickens and goats who had been feasting on the fruits of our labor for the last eight months. At the elementary school, the teachers had constructed a concrete water basin for the new, grant-funded school garden, planted a row of trees around its perimeter, laid out the beds and ordered the fencing; and my counterpart there had painted a mural of students planting and watering a tree. When I arrived at the preschool, the students proudly serenaded me with vastly improved versions of “Twinkle Twinkle” and “Alouette,” the two songs I had taught them before I left. And village health workers had distributed over 2,000 NGO-donated mosquito nets.

The result of me not being there to foster dependence? Miraculously, independence. Somehow everything moved more efficiently in my absence; or maybe I just saw progress more clearly when it wasn’t staring me in the face. I’ll admit that it’s a bit of an assault on my vanity to realize that the world goes on, quite well in fact, without me. My natural inclination is to take charge of every project and to work harder than anyone to see it succeed. But at a certain point, like a good parent, I need to step back and let my work succeed of fail without me. I’m just thanking Allah that it happens to be succeeding right now.

Back to the Here and Now, Yeah

2010-01-04T17:03:00.011Z

Happy New Year, everyone! After leaving Saly, the girls and I headed back to Dakar for New Year's. It was sparkly, debaucherous insanity.

And now I'm back in Linguere, wanting to feel more ready than I am to return to the village. Call me shallow, but I still like supermarkets. And restaurants. And toilet paper. And I've so, so enjoyed laughing and dancing and cooking and eating with friends for the past few weeks.

But I realize that I can't delay the inevitable, and that putting the return off any longer won't make the transition any easier. Besides, I've done this trip enough times now to know that after a day at home in the village, everything will feel right again. As with every other voyage, the departure's the hard part. I can handle the arrival just fine.

I've spent a good bit of time these past few weeks talking with friends about the phenomenon of the rural PCV's double life, each one--for example, that of village Maty and city April--completely separate from the other. We've wondered aloud why we consciously choose to leave the things that make us happiest, the things we all had, every day before coming here--friends, family, food--for something so unfamiliar and, yes, difficult. Why do we keep going back, if it continues to fill us with anxiety ten months in?

An older volunteer informed me that these transitions don't in fact get easier the longer you stay here, and in a way I feel better knowing that. It's comforting to accept that it won't just all magically make sense or become easy at some point in my service. "Village guilt" won't suddenly go away during breaks and I'll probably never quite feel ready to leave friends behind in Dakar when I groggily make my way to the public transportation garage at 5am. At the end of my two years, I probably still won't be able to articulate exactly why I came here or why I stayed. But at least I've committed myself to this lack of clarity.

p.s. Would someone please save me from my awkwardness?

Chrissimas at the Beach

2009-12-29T10:22:00.016Z

Beach time

Christmas brunch

Christmas dinner, and the tree

Horsies

Photos

2009-12-14T07:11:00.009Z

Tabaski

Girls' Group

Environmental Club Tree Planting

World AIDS Day

Vacation Time

2009-12-14T06:56:00.001Z

I’ll take a break from contemplating the merit of the Peace Corps and development in Africa for a minute to share some more pleasant thoughts.

I’ve been in the village now for seven and a half months, and I’m finally feeling fully settled. I’m sure a big part of it is feeling productive and appreciated for the work I’ve been doing, and of course we can’t discount the positive effect that needing a sleeping bag and sweatshirt for the first time in months has had on my emotional state, but I also think that adjusting to life in an African village is just a long process.

I’ve been remembering my first month in the village, when I would look at pictures from home and cry, hold my breath for phone calls from my mom and sister and long for a hug from my puppy. It’s not that I no longer miss home, but that need to be there is much less oppressive and immediate now. And in turn, I’m no longer just tolerating life in the village, but actually enjoying it.

I realized how much has changed last week as I was sitting outside with the family after dark, anxiously awaiting the arrival of my father, who had taken the hajj, the Muslim’s pilgrimage to Mecca. I remembered feeling such happiness and pride when he first told me he’d be going, because my kind, gentle father so deserved to have that dream fulfilled. Now visitors had come from all over Senegal to await his glorious return, receive his prayers and drink water from the Well of Zamzam. I felt so thankful to be able to share in my family’s excitement and pride.

And so, though many of my stage-mates are going home for the holidays, I think I’ve made peace with the fact that I’ll be here in Senegal. Who would want to spend December in Wisconsin, anyway? I spent Christmas in Africa the year I studied abroad in Senegal, and I remember thinking the following year that Christmas at home is great and all, but not the idyllic, stress-free day I had made it out to be.

Instead of going home, I’m heading up to Ndioum, on the Mauritanian border, for the northern volunteers’ belated Thanksgiving celebration on the 16th. We volunteers will take good food where we can get it and feel no shame in milking American holidays for weeks. After the party in Ndioum, I’m heading down to Dakar for a few days to get some work done at the office before renting an apartment in tourist town on the beach, Saly, with some girls from my stage from the 24th through 29th.

Dark Star Safari

2009-12-14T06:37:00.004Z

I’ve been reading Dark Star Safari, travel writer and novelist Paul Theroux’s acerbic account of his rambling overland journey from Cairo to Cape Town. The book was first recommended to me by Cruger, the urban agriculture volunteer in Linguere who, with only a few months of service left, could mentally afford to drink Theroux’s jaded, cynical kool-aid. And it came to me by way of Brian, my stage-mate, training village neighbor and trusted confidant, who like me is a rural environmental education volunteer at an early enough stage in service that a healthy dose of blind idealism and unwarranted optimism is necessary to get through each day for the remaining year and a half. Brian passed the book to me with the following telling warning written inside: “April, Read this book at your own risk…”

Theroux enrolled in the Peace Corps to dodge the draft in the early sixties, before Nyasaland, today’s Malawi, had achieved independence. He served as a teacher before getting kicked out of the Peace Corps and Malawi under questionable circumstances for participating in political activities (“The Killing of Hastings Banda” from his essay collection, Sunrise with Seamonsters, tells the story). He then moved to Uganda, where he taught for a few blissful, formative years at Makerere University. He left Uganda and Africa in a rush ahead of the violence of the Idi Amin years, and before this ambitious trip hadn’t been back in nearly forty years.

I think that the fact that Theroux put off this perceived homecoming for so long doomed him to some level of disappointment; however, his disillusionment with the Africa of today, and the outside world’s role in shaping the continent, is more acute, coming in bouts of anger, personal offense, disgust and resentment tempered by occasional periods of contentment. Though his observations are relevant and his bitterness probably justified, I will say that cynicism is not very becoming on Theroux. I like the book for its honesty and value it for forcing me to confront the possible futility of the choices I’ve made; but I’m over its author’s inflated sense of self-importance.

Theroux comes across like an absent father who left to achieve bigger and better things and then returns to scold his wayward daughter for falling in with the wrong crowd. He is a famous writer now, and don’t you forget it. Throughout the book he casually name drops eminent authors and heads of state, conveniently runs into a traveler in the act of enjoying one of his books, and of course finds his slightly steamy novel, Jungle Lovers, on Malawi’s banned book list. Papa Theroux has returned home to chide everyone else for an inability to nurture his child in his absence before rejecting her for her easy victimization. This egotism is veiled in knowing self-effacement. Referring to intellectual turned political prisoner turned tyrannical president of Zimbabwe Robert Mugabe, he says, “There was no deadlier combination than bookworm and megalomaniac. It was, for example, the crazed condition of many novelists and travelers.” Wink, wink.

Among those with blood on their hands in the desecration of Theroux’s Africa: rich game-seeking safari-goers, wasteful aid workers traversing countries in the safety of their air conditioned, white Land Rovers and Cruisers, dependence-inspiring foreign governments and charities, sensationalizing foreign journalists, opportunistic evangelists and ignorant foreigners in general, along with corrupt African officials, ambitious, intelligent African youngsters who seek better lives abroad instead of contributing to the development of their own countries, and lazy, self-entitled Africans who, all too willing to become victims, ask for handouts instead of work…you get the idea. I’m sure idealistic Peace Corps volunteers deserve a spot on the list, too.

And yet I might mock this fatalism, but I have to admit that he has a point. The condition of Africa, by many people’s admission, has not only not improved in nearly fifty years of self-rule, profuse foreign aid and elaborate development schemes since countries first started achieving independence; it has gotten worse. Much worse, if Theroux’s memory serves him correctly. In three sentences, Theroux sums up his depressing evaluation of the state of affairs:

“Africans, less esteemed than ever seemed to me to be the most lied-to people on earth—manipulated by their governments, burned by foreign experts, befooled by charities, and cheated at every turn. To be an African leader was to be a thief, but evangelists stole people’s innocence, and self-serving aid agencies gave them false hope, which seemed worse. In reply, Africans dragged their feet or tried to emigrate, they begged, they pleaded, they demanded money and gifts with a rude, weird sense of entitlement.”

As Theroux travels southward to Malawi, this book's heart of darkness, and gets burned one too many times by aid workers refusing him a ride in their shiny, new, nearly empty Land Cruisers, his prime source of objection becomes foreign involvement in Africa. He quotes from a variety of scathing sources alleging that foreign involvement in Africa is not only ineffective, self-serving and wasteful, but even harmful. Included are Graham Hancock’s The Lords of Poverty, Michael Maren’s The Road to Hell and George B.N. Ayittey’s Africa Betrayed and Africa in Chaos. He talks to all manner of “agent of virtue,” both noble and self-serving—the vast majority falling into the latter category—and comes out convinced that the gracious few who spend decades in rural Africa doing thankless, exhausting jobs that Africans themselves refuse simply can’t counteract the large-scale plundering of a continent by nearly everyone else involved.

So where does this leave us? I’ve asked myself a thousand times. Where does this leave Senegal? The Peace Corps? What do we do now, when everything we’ve been doing has been so wrong? Is the best solution just to leave, to rely on the adaptability and ingenuity of Africans to solve Africa’s problems, even if the roots of most of those problems can be traced to decades of oppressive, exploitative colonialism followed by half a century of botched outsider-led development?

Before I came here, facing criticism from a radical, activist friend over the paternalism of the U.S. government-run Peace Corps, I argued that his assertions may have held clout on a theoretical level, but not on a practical level. In other words, once a volunteer moves to a village to live and work alongside its people for two years, the politics of the affair cease to matter. Seven months into my service, I still believe that. It’s hard to put my experience in Barkedji into the larger context of development in Africa, or even of Peace Corps service, because I’m just one person passing the days in one village in one small country in one giant continent.

A lot of times I feel like I’m operating independently of the Peace Corps, anyway. They brought me here, briefly trained me, and dropped me in a village to make my own way, which isn’t necessarily a criticism of the PC; I value my working independence. But whether a project succeeds or fails, I often feel that it does so independently of the Peace Corps, or the American government, or the state of aid in Africa. More often success or failure is the result of the level of motivation that the villagers as individuals and as a community show, my persistence and creativity—skills acquired far before joining the Peace Corps, or my personal weaknesses—lack of assertiveness, fear of failure, stubbornness—also relics of my life pre-Peace Corps.

From what I’ve seen here, the Senegalese tend to speak very highly of past volunteers, even if those volunteers’ projects have long since failed or broken and there is no longer any physical evidence of their two year service. In part, these compliments can be attributed to the Senegalese knack for pomposity, but I also think that there is a level of genuine affection there. I often hear Senegalese fondly recall the names of volunteers they learned from or worked with 30, 40 years ago. It seems that most volunteers have made a positive impact on the people they lived among, even if their contributions to the development of a village, a country, a continent are negligible. This observation doesn’t necessarily counter my skepticism about the value of development work in Africa, but at least it gives my time spent here some meaning.

Maybe hyper-local development is an area in which the Peace Corps succeeds, while other government-run aid organizations can’t. Theroux doesn’t directly target the Peace Corps in his book. In fact, he speaks quite highly of the years he spent teaching school in a Malawian town. What his book does show, however, is that the forces at work in Africa, both homegrown and foreign, have managed to deplete the resources of a continent, destroy its infrastructure, rob its already scant coffers and crush its optimism in less than half a century. That’s a pretty sad “after” image, considering that the “before” is the violence and abuse of colonialism. And unfortunately the reality is that there’s probably not much I can do as one idealistic Peace Corps volunteer in a village in rural Senegal to fix things.

The Visitors

2009-12-04T22:21:00.006Z

I have unwittingly become the protector of baby animals for the second time in a month. As anyone who has loved and been loved by a pet knows, animals are incredibly tuned into human emotion. For example, my dog Chutney is always poised and ready before my tears even arrive to lick them away as they start to fall. Barkedji's homeless animals must have detected that a sentimental, vegetarian toubab is in town. They've found me out, and they're arriving en masse.

The other morning I heard a faint whining coming from behind my bed. I peeked my head over the edge to discover that a female cat had snuck into my room through the window while I was away in Linguere for Thanksgiving in order to birth three tiny spotted kittens! All of the oddness of the past day—the rustling behind my bed the night before (which I assumed was just a hyperactive frog), the displaced curtain that surprised me upon my return home and the toppled cutting board that normally rests on a chest just below the window—instantly made sense.

I never thought I was much of a cat person, and I still flinch, against my will, when Senegalese women conspicuously nurse on public transport, yet the sight of 3 palm-sized kittens curled up next to the warm belly of their mother to nurse melts my heart. Aren't they adorable?

Tabaski preparations

2009-11-26T08:54:00.007Z

You all know by now what I’m up against here: the heat, the food (or lack thereof), the miscommunications…. You’ve heard it all before. But have I told you yet about this week’s thorn in my side: Muslim holidays?

I’ve been so shockingly productive lately that I should have expected it all to come to a screeching halt in the face of preparations for this coming Saturday’s paramount Muslim holiday, Tabaski. Yet, in my naiveté I thought that I had made it over the mountain of canceled meetings and mysterious illness that had been hindering progress for so many months.

I find almost nothing as satisfying as getting a mass of work done on a day I could have justifiably spent reading or watching movies, and so I had a deliciously busy Sunday planned. In the morning I had scheduled my first girls’ group meeting with eight of the older middle school girls, and had spent the entire week in a frenzy of planning and preparations. The program included an art project—“Me Collages,” an HIV/AIDS quiz game, and a discussion of films from the HIV/AIDS-themed “Scenarios in Africa,” a series of shorts written by African youth and directed by prominent African filmmakers.

Everything was ready, and I was excited. I had purchased notebooks for each of the girls, made a sample collage, cleaned my room, and laid out mats to sit on. At 10:00, when the meeting was supposed to start, I plopped down on one of the mats and read a magazine. Forty-five minutes later, three of the eight members showed up and informed me that the rest of the girls wouldn’t be able to make it. They were too busy getting their hair braided for Tabaski.

I should have known. Girls’ frenetic hair braiding in the week and a half leading up to Tabaski is a cultural obligation here. Even I got roped into allowing my hair to be braided by a few of the girls’ group members, and I had promised my big, round face I’d never let that happen. (Unsurprisingly, I’ve had better looks.) At the news that the girls wouldn’t be coming, I hid my disappointment and put on a game face as the girls who had shown up yanked more of my slippery toubab hair into tiny braids.

Later in the morning, realizing that this was going to be one of those days, I walked over to the house of Oulèye, the middle school girl who had won a Peace Corps scholarship, to remind her that we had scheduled a radio interview for 4:00pm at my house. I think she’d forgotten; she seemed surprised by the news of the interview. I offered to take my laptop and microphone over to her house instead. I wasn’t taking any chances.

The interview happened, and Oulèye was great. This girl amazes me. She’s near the top of the class and is the president of the student association. She’s poised and polite and clearly respected by her classmates. She has a wonderful, down to earth group of friends, all members of my girls’ group, and all of whom were kind and welcoming to me in my first months in Barkedji, when I felt so alone. And she lost her mother 4 years ago.

Despite being nervous, Oulèye had wonderful things to say during the interview. When asked why it’s important to encourage Senegalese girls to stay in school, she replied, “We want to encourage the development of these girls. We see women who are Prime Ministers or even Presidents, which is why we want to encourage girls to work hard and earn a diploma that will help them fully contribute to their country and their home.” I sometimes wonder what motivates Oulèye, what drives her to succeed despite incredible barriers, but in that way, I kind of see myself in her. Especially here, I don’t know what motivates me half the time.

After the interview, I walked over to the elementary school, where we had scheduled an environmental club meeting for 5:00 pm. It was our fourth attempt at an action plan meeting; the first time, I was stuck in Dakar with The Infection, the second, not enough students showed up so we re-scheduled, the third, the club coordinator canceled the meeting because he heard from my little sister that I was in Linguere, even though I had biked back to the village just for the occasion, and the fourth…well, you’ll see. Clearly we have some communication issues to work out.

The environmental club includes 7 adults and 30 students. Exactly three adults (including me) and three students showed up. I don’t think the coordinator ever told the elementary school kids about the meeting, since none of them showed up, not even the extremely enthusiastic president of the club. A middle school teacher posted the meeting on the wall at the school, but it’s not as easy to get middle school kids interested in attending a meeting at school on a Sunday. The six of us went ahead and wrote an action plan, yet I couldn’t help but feel frustrated by the showing. It certainly wasn’t fair to the three unlucky students who showed up, only to be trapped in a room with testy adults on a Sunday afternoon.

After the meeting, the middle school teacher said that we should have waited until after Tabaski to schedule the meeting. Of course. I forgot that the reign of the all-powerful hair braid overpowers all else around Tabaski. I told my sister Heidi about my frustration, and in her infinite wisdom she reminded me that our American traditions, such as compulsively shopping for two months before Christmas, in order to stuff our houses with more junk that we don’t need, might seem a little bizarre to a Senegalese in America, too. What’s a little shameless vanity anyway?

And then Monday came, as if placed on the calendar solely as a source of redemption. Life’s like that here—the highs come crashing down but the lows never endure. A USAID grant for a school garden came through, so I had an implementation meeting with some of the elementary school teachers on Monday afternoon. At the end of the meeting, a couple of the teachers gave short, flowery speeches thanking me for the work I did to secure the grant. They eat those speeches, or “attestations,” up here. Though I try not to take the overblown praise of the villagers too seriously, something one of the teachers said truly touched and humbled me: “We want to thank you for all of the work that you do. Despite the many challenges that you face here, you persevere. For a long time having a garden and computers was just dream of the school’s, and now these things are happening, thanks to you.”

Of course, it’s not thanks to me. It’s thanks to the donations of friends and family, the financing of USAID, the support of the Peace Corps and the work of the villagers. But you’d have to be pretty hard-hearted not to be touched by the realization that you are playing a role in making a community’s dreams come true, as cheesy as it sounds. I wonder what motivates me here, when everything seems to conspire to make my work as challenging as possible? It’s probably still this incredible opportunity to make people happy. I haven’t grown that cynical yet.

PC in the US

2009-11-18T07:40:00.006Z

The Milwaukee Peace Corps Association (MPCA) and it's members have been very supportive of my work here. One member, who was a Peace Corps volunteer in the Casamance, Senegal in the early 1980s, got her non-profit to donate almost $400 for computers for Barkedji. And this morning I just found out that the MPCA is donating $300 to help cover transport costs for the co-ed basketball clinics in Linguere that I am planning with the other volunteers from this region.

I really like the MPCA's small grants program. Unfortunately the reality of the work that we do here is that despite our best efforts to encourage financial sustainability through community contribution, much of it requires funding. But $300 also goes a very long way in Senegal. These small grants are a great way for PCVs to get creative projects funded without the investment of time and energy it takes to get a USAID-funded Small Project Assistance grant approved and financed.

A sister organization in Madison, the Returned Peace Corps Volunteers of Wisconsin-Madison, support similar projects every year. To raise money to fund projects, the group sells beautiful calendars with images from countries where the Peace Corps works. They make a great holiday gift. Click here if you're interested in learning more and perhaps purchasing one (or ten).

Spent and Content

2009-11-17T23:41:00.010Z

I've been incredibly busy this past week, and now, as all of the craziness is finally drawing to a close, I'm sitting in the Linguere office at midnight feeling obligated to compose a blog entry when really I want nothing more than to be sleeping. Yet I spent so long missing this feeling of contentedness I get at the end of a succession of busy, productive days that in some ways I'm not ready for the exhaustion to end.

The girls' leadership seminars in Barkedji and Ouarkhokh turned out well, despite a lot of hand wringing over late starts and technical difficulties. Awa, a Peace Corps trainer who leads gender development workshops, got the girls to reflect and talk and laugh like nothing I've seen here before. For me the most inspiring aspect of the seminars was hearing the girls openly converse with prominent members of the community about early marriage, unwanted pregnancy, rape, harassment and violence, poverty and social constraints. Somehow Awa managed to temporarily disable a societal power structure that allows adults to orate endlessly while children listen (or don't...) silently.

I have so much to tell you about projects that are progressing--site setups for new volunteers and radio shows and basketball camps and pen pal programs and environmental clubs and girls' groups and book acquisitions and gardens--and stories to share about less than prudent adventures with partners in crime Brian and Cruger, but all that will have to wait for another day. It's time for bed.

This is a boring post, sorry!

2009-11-12T13:56:00.005Z

I almost never have nothing to say here, but I'm struggling to find a story to tell right now.

I spent almost 2 weeks in Dakar recovering from my latest bout with staph. My face has healed pretty well, but the doctor told me I can expect these infections to return because I'm probably a "carrier" and clearly Senegal hates my body.

Even though I'm ready to be done with Dakar and the Peace Corps med hut for awhile, I had a great time while I was there. I took a day trip to Poponguine, a village on the beach, where I went fishing in a boat with some other volunteers. I didn't single-handedly catch anything, but I co-caught a fish when my line got tangled with someone else's. My friend Ankith is an eco-tourism volunteer in Poponguine. It always kind of blows my mind that there are Peace Corps Volunteers (with a capital V) who live in a coastal paradise as opposed to the bush 35 kilometers beyond the middle of nowhere.

In Dakar, I was fairly successful in my quest to eat ice cream at least once a day. I also saw a great Baaba Maal concert at the French Cultural Center, played softball with other Dakar-region volunteers, almost won $35 in a poker game (but choked at the end), and watched many hours of Top Chef with my friend Joey, who kindly let me stay at her apartment for a few days. I also got a lot of work done preparing for the two girls' leadership seminars we're hosting for middle school girls in Ouarkhokh and Barkedji this coming weekend. All things considered, it wasn't a total wash.

Back in the village, my puppy was gone. On the day that I returned home, some of the kids had taken him to the bush while the sheep and goats grazed. Apparently he ran off with some older dogs and didn't come back. I think it's probably for the best, but I was still crushed that I didn't get to see him again.

This last week, I've been absorbed in girls' leadership seminar preparations. A lot of work fell onto my shoulders because Dana, who wrote the grant for the event with me and was organizing everything in Ouarkhokh, is stuck in Dakar with mono and Rachael, the volunteer who actually lives in Ouarkhokh, is stuck in Dakar with an injured knee. What is with us Linguere-area volunteers?! We're falling apart! I think that everything from the food to the electronics to the certificates is set in Barkedji now, so I'm just crossing my fingers that things will come together in Ouarkhokh, too.

Puppy Love

2009-10-30T11:21:00.006Z

Apparently in my illness my mental state has been more delicate than I'd like to believe, since last week in the village, in a moment of emotional weakness, I did the very thing that I told myself I'd never do in Senegal: adopted a puppy.

I love puppies enough to know that a year and a half from now I will not want to have to leave a dog to whom I've grown attached. I love them enough to know that I'm not in the village often enough to give a pup the kind of time and attention it deserves. I love them enough to not want to domesticate a puppy in a culture that doesn't much care for dogs. I also love myself enough to know better than to pick up a stray dog when I've been getting recurring bacterial infections.

But none of these things mattered last week when I was leaving the community center and saw a tiny, trembling, whining puppy near the fence. I searched the area for his mother, but couldn't find her. I couldn't well walk away from a hungry (and adorable) pup, so I decided I'd take him to a boutique to feed him some milk. Once the pup was full and happy, I realized that I hadn't planned ahead. At that point I either had to take him home or re-abandon him in the village, where he'd most certainly die.

To ignore a starving animal is one thing. It's not necessarily the most noble of actions, but can be justified through that whole Lion King/circle of life/nature is unforgiving theory. Animals live, and die--sometimes even a bit gruesomely--in their habitats, and there's nothing that my vegetarianism or motherly instincts can do to change that reality.

But to consciously send an animal to his death is a different matter. Once I had decided to insert myself into the circle of life--once I had chosen to take even a small amount of responsibility for the animal's well being--the ethics became more blurred. I could no longer just walk away.

So, I took the puppy home to my room to eat and sleep. He slept long and deeply, finally safe enough to allow himself to drift off. Once scared, he now started treating me like his mother, nudging his head against my body. But my family didn't want me to keep him at our house, and I didn't want to be disrespectful to them, so I pawned him off on a neighbor family. One of their teenage boys promised he'd feed the dog every day, but now that I'm in Dakar recovering from my infection, I can't shake the nagging worry that my pup isn't being fed back in the village, and that I'll return home to find him emaciated or dead.

In some ways I feel like this puppy is a development project that I've forced upon the villagers. He was my idea, my pet project (groan...), from which I'm now consciously distancing myself. I'm imposing my views and desires, trying to make the village take responsibility for something in which they, frankly, aren't very interested. Funny how all my insecurities about the value of the work I'm doing here manage to manifest themselves through an innocent little puppy...

It's back

2009-10-26T23:00:00.006Z

The staph infection has returned. This time my other eye, the right one, is throbbing and swollen shut. View the progression:

This is not normal, right? How on earth has staph all over my face morphed into staph on my butt morphed into fungus on my butt morphed back into staph on my face? Senegal, oh Senegal, why me?

I'm actually feeling pretty good-humored about the whole thing right now. It's almost kind of funny. Granted, I'll definitely have to skip a planned trip up to Saint Louis for my friend's birthday, and I probably won't be able to make it down to Tambacounda for the big Peace Corps Halloween party, which I promised friends I'd go to back in July. But c'est la vie, eh?

At times like this, one must take comfort in trite sayings. I'm not dead, therefore I must be stronger. At least I think it goes something like that. I might have chosen health over strength, but I guess I'll take what I can get.

The Cause of Our Time?

2009-10-20T07:41:00.006Z

I’m planning to focus a lot of my work in the coming school year on gender development. Teaching people how to plant trees, grow vegetables and wash their hands is all well and good, don’t get me wrong, but it doesn’t feel as significant as working with girls, especially middle school girls, does.

The girls here face so many obstacles to continuing their educations. In their quest for an education, many aren’t supported, emotionally or financially, by their families. Girls are often pushed to drop out of school in order to work around the house or to get married and have children. Especially among the Pulaar ethnic group of this region, “le mariage précoce,” marriage as young as 11 or 12, is common.

This trend is visible when looking at the school statistics from Barkedji. Last year, girls made up 55% of the student body at the two elementary schools. But by middle school, that rate had dropped to 46%. Only 39% of the students in this year’s troisième class, the equivalent of eighth grade in the United States, are girls.

Those who are able to continue their studies have to balance school work with an intense load of household chores, including sweeping the house and compound, washing and ironing all the family’s clothes by hand (I have a hard enough time with just my puny loads, I can’t imagine doing the laundry of eight or ten others, too), looking after and cleaning the young children, and cooking lunch and dinner for 15 to 20 people.

Girls also face intense pressure to be sexually active, but lack education about sexual health. My village in particular faces problems with STDs, since it is a big village with a large flow of visitors for the weekly market. The constant coming and going make it easier for STDs to spread and for a girl to become pregnant by an outsider with no plans to marry or support her.

Last year I interviewed six of Barkedji Middle School’s top girls for the Michele Sylvester scholarship funded by SeneGAD, PC/Senegal’s gender and development committee. These girls are smart and inspiring. They work hard, studying late into the night by flashlight or candlelight, because they recognize the value of their education. One of the candidates shares a rented bedroom with nine other girls during the school year, because they come from a village located 15k from Barkedji. The ten girls spend every night huddled together on the mess of mattresses covering the floor, studying.

But almost invariably, despite their intelligence and drive, the girls lack the confidence and pluck that you see in girls in America. During the interviews the scholarship candidates were extremely shy and self-conscious. It was as if they had never been asked directly what they thought about, dreamed of or hoped for. They didn’t know what to make of the question about what they’d like to do or be later on in life, and they stared blankly when I asked why they succeed at school. It’s not just that they don’t realize how noble their quest for an education is, it’s that they are embarrassed by their desire to become something. They don’t know how proud they deserve to be.

To encourage and empower the girls, my friend Dana and I are organizing a girls’ leadership workshop in November for 125 students at the middle schools in Barkedji and Ouarkhokh. The girls will watch a film about working women in Senegal, participate in discussions, listen to guest speakers, receive participation certificates, recognize the Michele Sylvester candidates and winner and socialize over refreshments. I’m really excited about organizing an event that will encourage the girls to be proud of their achievements and to start planning for their futures.

Another collaborative gender development activity we’re planning in Linguere is a monthly coed basketball camp taking place from December to May and drawing students from 3 local middle schools—Barkedji, Ouarkhokh and Linguere. The students will learn the rules of basketball, acquire basketball skills, improve their health and fitness, and gain leadership skills and self-confidence. The boys and girls will learn to play together and support each other, and the girls will feel encouraged to participate in an activity traditionally dominated by boys.

In addition, I’ve started tutoring some of the older middle school girls in math and English. Although I’m not technically supposed to focus my time on teaching English, I couldn’t well say “no” to girls who, of their own volition, approached me and asked for help. I think that it would be irresponsible not to reward that kind of motivation.

I’ve asked one of the tutored students, Coumba, to gather a group of ten friends for a girls’ group that I’m hoping to start in November. Initially I was going to ask the middle school teachers to choose girls for the group, but I realized that shyness could be a huge impediment within a group of girls who don’t know each other well. I already have a strong relationship with Coumba and her friends, which will allow us to have open, honest, informal discussions. I’m envisioning the meetings as a combination of “life skills” discussions focusing on career planning, early marriage and sexual health and HIV/AIDS prevention, and fun activities like arts and crafts, games and dancing.

And isn’t it nice when a choice manages to justify itself? A recent issue of the New York Times Magazine (thanks, Sarah!) focused on the value of globally supporting women’s rights and gender development. Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn wrote the feature, “The Women’s Crusade,” about why “the oppression of women worldwide is the human rights cause of our time.”

One passage in particular, in which the authors point out the differences in household spending when women, not men, are in control, resonated with me:

“The poorest families in the world spend approximately 10 times as much (20 percent of their incomes on average) on a combination of alcohol, prostitution, candy, sugary drinks and lavish feasts as they do on educating their children (2 percent). If poor families spent only as much on educating their children as they do on beer and prostitutes, there would be a breakthrough in the prospects of poor countries. Girls, since they are the ones kept home from school now, would be the biggest beneficiaries. Moreover, one way to reallocate family expenditures in this way is to put more money in the hands of women. A series of studies has found that when women hold assets or gain incomes, family money is more likely to be spent on nutrition, medicine and housing, and consequently children are healthier.”

This discrepancy between spending on wants like Coca Cola vs. needs like education/preventative health/medicine/housing has to be one the most bang-my-head-against-a-wall frustrating aspects of the work I do here. One of the school directors, with whom I’ve worked on various grant proposals and fundraisers, loves lecturing me about how we live in a poor village without the funds to support supplementary educational activities every time I as much as mention the phrase “community contribution.”

I don’t think I’m being insensitive when I suggest that Barkedji residents could contribute more were education a greater priority. I live here, too! I weather the power cuts, pull the water, and eat the less than stellar food. I’m not blind to poverty, but I see how the little money there is gets spent, too. Barkedji is a poor, rural village, but surprising amounts money always manage to materialize for fancy clothes, sugary drinks and DJs at weddings, baptisms and religious celebrations.

I don’t think anyone’s arguing that people don’t deserve to have fun, especially people who suffer and endure so much of the time. But I can’t, or won’t, approve of a father who has the money to purchase and run a television, but can’t send his kid to school with a pen and a notebook, or a mother that finds the funds to purchase new, elaborately cut and embroidered outfits for a holiday, but then doesn’t have the money to pay her children’s school fees. When I see kids struggling to continue in school despite limited resources and support, I can’t help but judge these choices.

Still, I try to understand. My family is not rich, but I come from a world with enough money that prioritization of spending is necessary, even second nature. Where I come from, it’s less a matter of having or not having as it is a matter of how much we choose to have, and when. Ever since I received my first allowance or present from the tooth fairy as a kid, and my parents opened me a bank account, I have had to make decisions about money allocation. Fifty cents for candy left fifty cents for the bank account. The amount seems so inconsequential today, but the skills and knowledge instilled in me as a child do not.

I didn’t grow up in poverty, so I don’t know what it would feel like to go from having nothing to having slightly more than nothing. I bet the concepts of saving and prioritization wouldn’t be forefront in my mind, though. So I might judge, but I can’t judge too harshly, the people for whom a one-dollar bottle of soda brings so much joy; even if that dollar might have been much, much better spent elsewhere.

And who am I kidding anyway? Judging from the current financial situation in the United States, it seems that even Americans with our inflated paychecks and years of practice aren’t any better at prioritizing…Unfortunately, the consequences are just more dire for Africa’s children.

Congratulations, you’ve made it to the end of that long, rambling mess of thoughts! As your reward, enjoy some fun quotes about gender development:

Hillary Clinton drives me nuts sometimes, but I have to hand it to her—she might just be on to something here: “Democracy means nothing if half the people can’t vote, or if their vote doesn’t count, or if their literacy rate is so low that the exercise of their vote is in question…I happen to believe that the transformation of women’s roles is the last great impediment to universal progress.”

And from Kofi Annan: “Study after study has taught us that there is no tool for development more effective than the education of girls. No other policy is as likely to raise economic productivity, lower infant and maternal mortality, or improve nutrition and promote health including the prevention of HIV/AIDS.”

14.5 Hours, 300 Kilometers, an Accident and a Bag of Gummi Bears

2009-10-13T15:04:00.011Z

Yesterday I woke up in Dakar at 6:00 am on a mat on a floor in a beautiful, airy apartment overlooking the Presidential Palace from seven stories up. I had been staying at my friend Joey's apartment for the last five days, trying to recover from the various skin infections that had been plaguing me for the last month and a half. Bacterial pustules had somehow morphed into nagging, itchy fungal rash. But I was finally feeling better. Or better enough, which is sometimes all I can ask for here.

At 7:00 am I left the apartment with my bags packed, the cat fed, the dishes cleaned and chocolates waiting in the fridge for Joey. After a quick stop at another volunteer's place to drop off the keys to Joey's apartment, I grabbed a cab to the transit house, where a Peace Corps car would be picking up four volunteers hitching rides home. Etienne, our beloved safety and security coordinator, was planning on making a quick stop in Linguere on his way up north, so my friend Cruger and I jumped at the chance for a free ride in a car with suspension.

The Peace Corps car was supposed to show up at 8:00 am, but it didn't arrive til 9:00. This is Senegal, after all. We hopped in and the car began crawling through the slow-moving mess of vehicles that plagues Dakar. In Dakar, when you're stuck in traffic, you begin to feel like stagnant water trying to force your way down a clogged drain. The rusty, rattling cars spewing nauseating black smoke encrust the streets like years of abandonment on an old metal pipe. You start to fester.

At 11:30, after a ridiculously long side of the road breakfast stop, pauses to purchase cell phone credit and water, and an interminable detour to get gas from a U.S. government-approved corporation, we had almost made it 70 kilometers to Thies. That's when things started to go wrong. Oh so very wrong, indeed.

In Senegal, a diversity of modes of transportation share the same crumbling, neglected roads. Paraplegics impressively hand-crank their carts between massive trucks piled high with rice sacks and precariously perched passengers. In general, all manner of vehicles manage to coexist surprisingly successfully thanks to a complex system of communication including flashing lights, shaking fists and pointed honks.

Yesterday, our Peace Corps land rover was pushing rather unassumingly towards Thies when a giant van traveling the other direction decided to veer onto our side of the road in order to pass a donkey cart. The huge, white Ndiaga Ndiaye just clipped our driver's side mirror, but both vehicles were traveling quickly enough that the force of the impact pushed the mirror into the side window and shattered it. I had been napping, so I awoke, confused, to the sound of window breaking and shards of glass flying into the car. Thankfully we were all fine.

Ndiaga Ndiaye

Fender benders are a dime a dozen here in Senegal. Often when cars get bumped, drivers just shrug their shoulders, yell a bit and keep moving. Unfortunately for the unlucky, uninsured driver of the Ndiaga Ndiaye, he hit a Peace Corps car and Allah failed to intervene on his behalf. Etienne and the two drivers spent the next four and a half hours at the police wading their way through the interminable bureaucracy of hand-written reports.

By 4:00 pm, we were back on the road. It became immediately clear that we would not be getting any work done that day in Linguere, which was still at least four hours away. Etienne and the PC driver still had to make it 200 kilometers past Linguere to Saint Louis by the end of the day, but they offered to drive out of their way to drop us off anyway.

Over the next hours, the setting sun made ever worsening road harder and harder to make out. By 7:00 pm, even the car itself felt exhausted as it banged its way over speed bumps and giant potholes, the clattering drowning out the wonky mbalax beats coming from the tape player. The wind whipped the plastic-covered, hastily patched window, and I handed out gummi bears and cookies to a famished Etienne and driver as we pushed on into the night.

My body rattling uncomfortably, I passed the time contemplating the irony of squeezing past trucks on notoriously unsafe Senegalese roads into a pitch black abyss in a car driven by a safety and security coordinator who regularly, emphatically forbids me to travel at night. But that's the Peace Corps. The longer you're here, the harder it becomes to follow all the rules. There's a whole list of things I know I shouldn't do, from traveling at night to drinking unfiltered water. But the reality is that all of us end up in situations where we have to choose between sleeping outside in the bush and driving through the night, dehydration and dirty water. We choose the lesser of two evils and own our decisions, accepting the risk inherent in coming here. And sometimes we're just reckless for reckless's sake.

At 8:30, fourteen and a half hours after I awoke in Dakar, we finally made it to Linguere. Dazed and confused, I opened the door and tumbled out. I handed Etienne and the driver a banana each for the road, and wished them well as they drove on into the night, another four hours to go until they would make it to Saint Louis. We were home.

A Second Chance to Help!

2009-10-07T09:54:00.009Z

I know that some of you were disappointed that you weren't able to donate in time when I groveled before you asking for money for mosquito nets. Well, there's good news: You have a second chance to donate to the Barkedji community!

This time I'm raising money through a non-profit called World Computer Exchange to provide used computers to one of the elementary schools, Ecole Bamol Sow, in Barkedji. The school has requested between 5 and 10 computers to benefit the 482 students, as well as students from the other elementary school and the middle school in the village.

The vast majority of kids in Barkedji have never seen or used computers. Both the school teachers and I feel very strongly about the importance of introducing kids to computers while they're young. This is a great opportunity for these students to gain technical skills and access to information, which help help them tremendously as they continue their education and eventually look for jobs. In support of the project, the school has a secure room with electricity set up to house the computers, and they have agreed to pay the cost of transportation of the computers to the village, as well as repair and maintenance costs.

On October 17th, World Computer Exchange is shipping up to 200 computers to Senegal for use in rural communities. That's really soon, but Barkedji can still benefit from this shipment if I can raise money quickly. WCE is able to provide used computers at the price of only $56 per computer. That means that I am hoping to raise $560 for 10 computers by October 16.

If you or anyone you know is able to donate (and I really, really hope you are!), you can do so in one of three ways.

1) BY CHECK: If you wish to donate to this shipment via a check on a bank in the USA or Canada, please include the note "Senegal" and "PCV April Williamson" on your check and mail it ASAP to: WCE 936 Nantasket Ave. Hull, Mass. 02045 USA.

2) BY CREDIT CARD: You can use the Network For Good link. Please enter "Senegal" and "PCV April Williamson" in one of the boxes on the form.

3) BY PAYPAL: If you have a PayPal account, you can also give via PayPal if you have set up an account with them (their fee is 2.9%) - please send us an e-mail at Senegal@WorldComputerExchange.org when you do so it is properly credited. Also, include the note "PCV April Williamson."

To help me keep track of funds, please send me an e-mail at aprilwilliamson@gmail.com when you donate.

If you'd like to read more about this computer shipment and World Computer Exchange's work in Senegal, go to this site: http://www.worldcomputerexchange.org/Senegal

Please share this information with interested friends and family. Thanks so much for your help!

Ode to the Rainy Season

2009-10-06T18:15:00.001Z

***Warning, this SMS conversation contains strong language. Reader discretion is advised.***

Me: Hey lady, how’s it going? Can you believe we’ve been here over 7 months?

Volunteer friend: I know it’s nuts =) Good thing I still feel like I know nothing HA!

Me: I know! I figure if I still feel like this a year in, there’s a problem. It’s all just trial and error… You going to Halloween in Tamba?

Volunteer friend: Ugh I know. Bleh I hope I snap out of this soon. I’m deciding if ima go to the birthdays in St. Louis or Halloween. I dunno right now. U?

Me: I’m going to both! St. Louis then on to Tamba. I will be so ready for a vacation. My chafing from biking got infected and it hurts my butt to sit. Why, Senegal, why?

Volunteer friend: AHH I GOT SADDLE SORES TOO! Ugh I hear u lady.

Me: Haha, so glad we’re in this together. Cold season will bring nothing but good health and happiness, inchallah.

Volunteer friend: INCHALLAH fo sho. For fuck’s sake.

There Is a Season

2009-09-30T14:02:00.003Z

I grew up in Wisconsin, so I'm used to being a slave to the seasons. Every year, when November would roll around and the temperatures would sharply drop, and I'd still have that job as a bike messenger, I'd realize with a sense of resignation that I once again hadn't had the foresight to remove myself from the climate that would only bring pain and suffering for the next 6 months. Every November, I'd wonder aloud to all those who would listen if my body would ever feel fully warmed through before the April thaws.

But there was a beauty in that commiseration, in that acknowledgment of the hard times we'd collectively endure over the winter, with only ourselves to blame for not applying to school in southern California or finding a job that would allow us to work from home (home being a timeshare in Florida) for 6 months of the year.

If it isn't obvious, I'm not a cold weather person. But I like to think that as a hearty Midwesterner, winters have only made me stronger over time. They've certainly allowed me to appreciate any and all less-than-abysmal weather in ways I otherwise would not. I truly love the Midwestern social phenomenon on the first 60 degree day of the year, usually occurring in April: Everyone spends the day outside, girls lounging about in not quite seasonally appropriate skirts and tanktops and boys, bare chested and barefooted, tossing frisbees in the grass. We collectively allow ourselves to believe it's about 20 degrees warmer than it actually is, because we are achingly desperate to live again.

Yet inevitably those first warm days of spring are little more than teases. As a law, the temperature will drop again, probably in a day or two, and just as the last of the hideously dirty snow seems to shrink to nothing in the places where it once towered so menacingly above us, it'll probably snow.

Well, the evil stepbrothers and sisters of the Midwest's weather gods must be hard at work here in Senegal. For today when I went for a run at 6:00 pm, about an hour before the sun fully set, my body felt fiery and feverish. I got home, looked at my thermometer, and realized that it was still 100 degrees out.

During the hot season of May through July, a 100 degree evening is pretty standard, even a little cool. But I was under the impression that I had already survived this year's hot season (or, as I have affectionately dubbed it, the hot hot season, not to be confused with the wet hot season, the slightly less hot season, or the maybe almost kind of chilly season otherwise known as grace).

Even the wet hot season, the "rainy season," seemed to have indicated it was on its way out. The rains had slowed. A full rotation of creatures and insects had come and gone in incredible waves--first the scorpions, then the annoying little red beetles, then the gentle big black beetles and cockroaches, and most recently the grasshoppers and crickets, all accompanied by steadfast friends the mosquitoes and the frogs.

Maybe I was too quick to get my hopes up when the grasshoppers finally disappeared and the clouds lingered longer in the mornings. For I haven't yet spotted a single groundhog in Senegal, and that can only mean one thing: 6 more weeks of hot.

Boy Meet Girl

2009-09-30T10:17:00.004Z

I just finished reading Roald Dahl's Boy, a chronicle of his childhood of summers in Norway and school years in terrifying British boarding school. After finishing school, he gets a job with the Shell Company and, to his great joy, gets shipped off to East Africa:

"…I got my African adventure all right. I got the roasting heat and the crocodiles and the snakes and the long safaris up-country, selling Shell oil to the men who ran the diamond mines and the sisal plantations. I learned about an extraordinary machine called a decorticator (a name I have always loved) which shredded the big leathery sisal leaves into fibre. I learned to speak Swahili and to shake the scorpions out of my mosquito boots in the mornings. I learned what it was like to get malaria and to run a temperature of 105 degrees F for three days, and when the rainy seasons came and the water poured down in solid sheets and flooded the little dirt roads, I learned how to spend nights in the back of a stifling station-wagon with all the windows closed against marauders from the jungle. Above all, I learned how to look after myself in a way that no young person can ever do by staying in civilisation."

Considering Dahl lived in colonial East Africa in 1936, and I'm living in independent West Africa over 70 years later, I can relate to a surprising amount of his adventure. Sure, there are no crocodiles or jungle marauders here (though I am warned, every time I ride my bike to Linguere, of the nomadic Pulaars wandering the bush, just waiting to prey on toubabs like me). Still, I have the pleasure of knowing scorpions and malaria and roasting heat and torrential rains, just as Dahl did. I only hope that many years from now I will be convinced as he was in the value of my African adventure in teaching me to look after myself.

A Little Dream

2009-09-25T13:15:00.004Z

I’ve never put a lot of stock in my subconscious, due in large part to the fact that I almost never remember my dreams. Other Peace Corps Volunteers taking mefloquine, a weekly malaria prophylaxis known for causing wild dreams and hallucinations, can at least rely on the pill to spice up their lives once every 7 days; but I’ve never once had a mefloquine dream. Although, medically speaking, that’s probably a good thing, I can’t help but feel a bit left out. (Off the record, I may have briefly considered taking two pills at once just to see what all the fuss is about. Of course, I didn’t and you shouldn’t.)

But recently, I’ve been dreaming. Not mad, hallucinatory dreams, and not on the days when I take mefloquine, but ordinary dreams of home on ordinary days. Most people wouldn’t think twice about these seemingly insignificant dreams; but I always assumed that my inability to remember dreams was some kind of permanent handicap. So, of course, I’m wondering what it all means.

My first time, I didn’t set my alarm and woke up late from one of those impossibly deep sleeps. I looked around my room, blinking as my mind tried desperately to reconcile the life I thought I had just been living with my presence in a dusty, hot block of concrete in Senegal.

In the dream, I had just arrived in America after completing my Peace Corps service. My parents had picked me up the airport and driven me to their new, beautiful, huge house. They gave me the grand tour, pointing out important details like the crown moldings my mom had picked out for the dining room. Then we tiptoed toward the back room, past my dad’s new, intricately wired entertainment center, where our beloved dog Chutney was fast asleep. The yelp of joy she let out when she woke up and realized I had come home was palpable.

It felt so real, despite the dream’s implausibility. Anyone who knows my family knows that we would never, ever move to a big, ostentatious, meticulously decorated house. It’s a huge point of contention between kids and adults that it’s taken us so long to repaint the dining room and kitchen where we scraped off the wallpaper…over ten years ago. So, naturally, crown moldings, sparkling new entertainment centers, and supplementary back rooms aren’t on the horizon for us. Plus, my dad is a man of many talents, but rigging up complex arrangements of electronics is not one of them.

The second time I dreamed, I was once again back in America. This time, I was in Madison, hanging out on the Memorial Union terrace with a random assortment of old friends, many of whom I haven’t talked to in years. Everything about these friends that has started to fade in my consciousness was right there in the dream—mannerisms, nervous tics, quirky fashion sense, and vocal inflections. Time had changed nothing.

When I woke up, I wondered first how my subconscious mind could paint such immediate, visceral portraits of people I no longer know, and then if my funeral will one day be like this—a gathering of people I should have spent more time with back when I had the chance.

That’s where I grasp at straws to draw meaning. Maybe my dreams are telling me that I belong at home, not here. I left enough unfinished business of fading friendships, unread books, untested recipes and closets full of toys just waiting to be donated back in America that I didn’t need to run from it all to build a new, more challenging life in Senegal. In all likelihood, though, the dreams signify nothing beyond the fact that I have far more time to sleep in the village than I ever did in America. And way, way too much time to think.

Village Snapshots

2009-09-19T08:40:00.005Z

My little sister, Mame Fatou, is holding Thumper, the stuffed bunny that my grandparents gave me for Christmas when I was a baby.

The kids in Barkedji love coming into my room and touching everything they can get their hands on. Lately, my little sisters have taken to playing with Thumper and the little stuffed lady bug that my sister Heidi sewed for me.

The other day, Mame Fatou got creative, tying Thumper onto her back like a Senegalese baby.

Ramadan's almost over, which means the villagers are furiously preparing for Korite, the celebration that marks the end of fasting. Senegalese are on a constant quest to get ever fancier outfits made for their beloved fêtes, so the sewing machine at the tailor next door has been buzzing continuously over the past few days. The women in my family have applied henna to their feet and purchased new jewelry. The girls and women have gotten their hair intricately braided with extensions. The men are working extra hours to provide a little bit more money to the meal funds. Animals have been chosen for slaughter.

Yet after a week of steady preparations, I can't help but wonder if this party will be as anticlimactic as all the other fêtes I've been to in Senegal--a morning spent chopping vegetables and slaughtering animals followed by a big, if not necessarily tastier, meal, sugary juice and sodas, maybe some dancing, and a whole lot of sitting around. We'll see.

Back to Life

2009-09-05T15:55:00.005Z

I'm in Dakar, staying in the Peace Corps office's med hut and recovering from golf-ball eye/pus-leaking face syndrome.

In addition to the crazy eye that you all saw, I developed swollen sores all over my face that started leaking massive amounts of greenish pus after a few days. Gross, right? It's no less disgusting in person. Turns out these "boils" are caused by staph bacteria.

I'm on antibiotics now, and it's getting better. The eye has returned to a normal size, and the other sores are drying up. I've been treating my body to tons of fruit and vegetables to help with the recovery. My first day here, I made a delicious lunch of carrot sticks, and orange, and a sandwich with boursin garlic and herb cheese and vegetables.

My friend Dana came to the med hut today to keep me company, do work on the internet, enjoy the air conditioning, watch Gossip Girl on the huge tv (escapism is awesome), and bake chocolate chip cookies!

I can't think of a better place in Senegal to recover.

You know what's really fun?

2009-08-31T09:10:00.005Z

When the power goes out in the village for 2 days...

...and soon the water flow slows from a trickle to nothing...

...and cell phone service dies...

...and so you can't call Peace Corps medical to tell them about the hideous, painful infection that has made your entire face and neck break out and has turned your eye into a pink golfball...

...nor can you call a friend for sympathy...

...and you're kind of feverish and you hurt all over, so you can't muster the energy to walk to the well to pull water...

...and so you decide bathing's overrated anyway...

...so instead you try reading...

...but it turns out it's harder with only one eye...

...and you so you lie in your room, utterly alone, waiting and feeling sorry for yourself.

The Fast

2009-08-25T15:05:00.003Z

On Saturday night, Ramadan, the Islamic holy month of fasting, announced its arrival to the village in breathtaking fashion. After showering and dressing in the evening, I emerged from my room. The atmosphere was electric; the sky alit with the impending thunderstorm that loomed in the neighboring bush. Standing in the sand of our courtyard, I was briefly transfixed with the menacing, tangible, conspicuous silence all around me, until the children gleefully announced that Ramadan had begun.

That night, I lay awake in bed listening to the relentless pounding of rain on my tin roof and lamenting the fact that Ramadan, and thus the fast, had come sooner than expected. I had thought that I could enjoy one more night of uninterrupted sleep, one more day of food at reasonable intervals of time. Instead, my sister Diama woke me from a fitful slumber at 5:15 a.m. to hand me a cup of thiakry. The cold, sugary porridge of millet and sour milk would be my last food until sunset.

The first day of fasting was tough, but never painful. My hunger came in waves that lingered and nagged until I found a way to distract myself. In the past few days, I’ve become surprisingly good at inventing ways to forget the grumbling in my tummy—attending meetings, planting trees, taking absurdly long naps, reading, writing a grant proposal, and even, most effectively (and perhaps most misguidedly), going for a run at the point just before nightfall when my empty, imploding stomach just can’t wait any longer.

Shockingly, I’ve kind of been enjoying the fast. I never expected to. I am of a clan of genetic mutants with abnormally fast metabolisms. Plus I’m constantly moving. Oh yeah, and I get hunger and dehydration-induced migraines. Did I mention that low blood sugar runs in the family? Thus I need, and love to need, lots and lots of delicious, generally healthy food. Every day. All the time. I’ve never been a girl who’s ashamed to eat.

But, at the risk of sounding like a condescending, new agey self-help professional, I’ve actually found beauty and value in releasing my mind from the grip of food. I no longer spend the morning thinking about what snack I’ll buy at the boutique, because there’s no reason to. I no longer harbor false hope that lunch might be something other than god-awful ceebüjen, only to be disappointed by the plate of greasy rice and overcooked vegetables sitting in front of me. Instead of passing the hours between meals contemplating my next plate of food, I spend the day between meals pondering everything else.

I even had a hunger-induced epiphany about my life here (feel free to blame this allegorical stretch on low blood sugar if you want): I kind of feel the same way about my experience in the Peace Corps as I do about fasting.

It’s almost never easy, but is simultaneously much less difficult than I expected. I don’t necessarily love it yet, at least certainly not every day. Still, I feel that it is valuable on a personal level, even if I can’t yet perfectly articulate why. And I know that when it’s over I’ll miss it, despite the instant gratification of returning to the familiar and comfortable.

During a recent cab ride in Dakar, my friend Amanda asked me if I love Senegal. The question caught me off guard. I knew when I left Senegal for the first time, after studying here for 9 months, that I wanted to come back. But was it due to love or just my habit of growing attached to places, compounded with my hatred of goodbyes? A week later, I still don’t know how to respond to the question.

I do know what I love about life here, though. I love the craziness, the adventure. I love the culture of sharing, even if I still feel like hoarding my cookies sometimes. I love (and sometimes hate) being different. I love being adored by adorable Senegalese children. I love having time to read, write, think, nap, take long walks and bike rides…but I also love creating a routine for myself and filling my days. Some things will never change.

I love running past herds of cows in the bush as the sun sets, indulging myself by believing that all this beauty has been placed here just for me. I love the magnificently large African sun and the watercolor African sunsets, if not the African sunburns. I love lying outside at night, staring up at the clear, starry night sky, and feeling comforted by the knowledge that I used to wonder at this exact same sky in America.

I love knowing I have the strength to adapt to mind blowing heat, limited food, isolation, bucket baths, and a hole for a toilet. I love realizing, at the strangest and most unexpected of times, that I am learning, growing and integrating. And I love occasionally feeling like I’m actually making a difference, living here.

Do I love Senegal? Not the way I love home, at least not yet. But I love enough about this crazy place to keep wanting to fall asleep here every night and wake up here every morning.

Guilted Giving

2009-08-18T20:29:00.007Z

I'm staying in the office in Linguere tonight, hanging out with other volunteers and carb loading on spaghetti before my morning bike ride to the village tomorrow.

I'm feeling uncharacteristically intimidated by this trip home to Barkedji, and I can't quite figure out why. I was less nervous to move there in the first place.

I think part of my unease has to do with my disappointing welcome last time I went home. In Senegal, it's standard to bring the family small gifts, called sarice (pronounced sahr-ee-chey), every time you return home after a trip. Sarice can be as simple as some tea or a couple of kilos of mangoes. It's supposed to be the thought that counts, not the quality or quantity.

I love trying to find the perfect gift for someone, even in America, so in Senegal I generally take a lot of pride in my sarice-giving. Last time I went back to the village, after nearly a month a way from site, I brought bags upon bags of gifts: 70 photos of the family that my mom had printed in America, kazoos and stickers for the kids, a photo frame for my sister, a t-shirt and bag, tattoo band-aids, vitamins, and of course kilos of mangoes.

When I gave the family all the gifts, I naively expected them to react like Americans, with overblown "thank yous" and exaggerated smiles. Instead, they inquired after the few photos I had taken that my mom had not printed. I sometimes wonder how Senegalese invariably remember that one time, 3 months ago, when I took their photo...

Then my mom and sister started handing out the band-aids like stickers to all the children, despite my continued attempts to explain that they should be saved for cuts and scrapes only. I was disappointed, because my mom had sent the tattoo band-aids from the States in an attempt to get the kids to stop asking me for Peace Corps med kit-provided band-aids. I thought giving cute band-aids to the kids' parents was a great solution. Instead, my attempt at thoughtfulness failed miserably.

When I left to go to Dakar this time, the kids asked me to bring back a soccer ball and my mom asked me to bring back another photo frame. I decided not to buy either, in part because I've nearly spent all of my 3-month stipend, and in part because I don't like feeling obligated to buy evermore extravagant gifts every time I go away. I don't like the nervous guilt I feel when I think about sarice.

So this time around, I'm changing my approach. I simply bought lots and lots of mangoes to give to the family. It's kind of liberating to realize that that will be enough.

Superfun

2009-08-17T11:07:00.017Z

It's time to go back to the village. I've been having way too much fun in Dakar for the past week and a half, and my empty wallet is definitely telling me that it's time.

Yesterday my friend Erika and I managed to have one last, cheap hurrah before we head home. For our DakarSuperFunDay, we biked to the Corniche Ouest, the newly reconstructed road that runs along the ocean, and took in all the beauty. The ocean just never seems to get old. Sometimes I wonder if it's shallow to be so taken with natural, physical beauty...

On the Corniche, we snuck into the luxury Radisson hotel and took classy photos at the bar.

Then, for 500 CFA ($1), we jumped on the trampoline that overlooks the ocean.

After jumping, we bought coconuts, drank the liquid, and then ate the meat (ewww, does that make me a carnivore?).

Finally, we biked to the American Club, where Peace Corps volunteers can use the pool/sports facilities for free. I swam and lounged by the pool with an ice cream cone. We've got it pretty rough here, eh?

Today I'm getting some work done at the conveniently air conditioned Peace Corps office to prepare for of a few projects I'll be working on over the next few months: our big mosquito net distribution in Barkedji, a school garden grant proposal, and computers for the middle school, maybe.

Honestly, between rainy season, summer vacation and Ramadan, I think the next month or two are going to be kind of a slow, lonely, hungry time in the village. The kids and men are in the fields, and mosquitoes have taken their place around the house. A lot of students are visiting family in other villages until the school year starts. And those who are around to keep me company are soon going to be fasting, which always makes things like holding a coherent conversation and being alive more difficult.

You all know how I feel about food, and the importance of enjoying it at two hour intervals. Fasting's just not my thing, you know? But I'm going to try to fast for at least a week (minus the water--dehydration plus Senegal sounds like a recipe for death to me).

Anyway, I'm sure rainy season/Ramadan in the village will be an experience in a way that happy hour in Dakar just isn't (fun as it is).

Summer Camp!

2009-08-11T17:17:00.005Z

This week I'm working in Dakar at a U.S. Embassy-sponsored camp for middle school students studying English. Four of us Peace Corps volunteers spend 4 hours a day playing games and sports, doing art projects and discussing life with 60 kids.

It's kind of surreal for me, since I spent last year as an AmeriCorps volunteer doing almost the exact same thing with American middle schoolers.

I think that any American over the age of 15 will vouch for the fact that middle school is pretty much the worst time. Ever. The kids I was working with, in addition to dealing with the typical awkwardness of puberty and raging hormones, were dealing with much bigger problems like gangs, drugs, poverty, pregnancy, illegal residency and absent parents.

I loved the kids. They were strong and funny and smart and inspirational, but they were not always polite or kind. They laughed at us and talked over us and swore at us and almost never listened to directions. They harassed each other and beat each other up. They walked out of activities that they deemed boring or uncool (which was almost every activity). They nicknamed me "golden retriever" and barked at me because I have hairy arms. Yeah... It was rough sometimes. But I loved them, and in the end I think they loved me back, or at least appreciated my stability.

It's like night and day to be working with Senegalese middle schoolers. They are polite and reticent almost to a fault. A lack of internet and Wii in their lives has given them a saintly attention span. Hand them a frisbee and they can amuse themselves for hours just throwing it back and forth.

Yesterday we did an activity called roses and thorns to wrap up the first day. The point is to say something good (a rose) and something bad or difficult (a thorn) about the day. The thorns, for the kids who had any problems at all, were things like, "It's very hot today," or, "It was difficult to find the school this morning." And the roses were effusively flattering comments like, "I am so happy to be here and to have met many new friends today. The teachers are so kind and the activities are very fun." One girl even called me and another volunteer "adorable." Awwww. Where am I?

Make Me Smile

2009-08-11T16:31:00.004Z

Sometimes when I just want to drink a fruit smoothie in an air conditioned room in America, I remind myself that life in Senegal is hilarious, and that the daily craziness is one of the things that brought me back here. Weeks can pass in America without me really noticing. At least Senegal doesn't allow for complacency.

The t-shirts men wear are a perfect example of the comedy of daily life. Senegalese love any and all t-shirts written in English, despite the fact that the vast majority of them don't speak any English. Wait, I take that back. Most Senegalese can say things like, "Are you fine?" and "Will you be my nice wife?"--things that no one really says in America. When you think about the things they say, the t-shirts that Senegalese men wear start to make a little more sense.

Some recent gems, all worn by grown men completely oblivious to the comedy inherent in their sartorial choices:

-"I want to be a bear just like as spacious," accompanied by a picture of an adorable brown teddy bear and pink sleeves, of course.

-"My heart's is flamable when I see your beautiful eyes," surrounded by multicolored sparkly hearts.

And the best:

-On a black t-shirt above a neon yellow smiley face, "Boobies make me smile."

You know, no matter how much he may harass me, I just can't be mad at a Senegalese guy who is so upfront about his love for boobies.

More on your favorite subject...malaria!

2009-08-03T12:42:00.002Z

Hi friends,

I hate to bring this up AGAIN, but malaria's still kind of an issue in Senegal, and we Linguere-area volunteers still haven't raised all the money needed for our 100% coverage mosquito net distribution in 7 villages around the area, including Barkedji.

The new, extended deadline for fundraising is August 15. At that time, nets will be shipped based on the amount raised. We have already raised $3,791, which is more than half of our goal of $7,250. But we still need around $3,460.

Thank you so much to those of you who have already donated! I know that times are tough in America and around the world right now, and I have been astounded by the generosity of so many of my friends and family.

But if we are to reach our goal of dramatically decreasing the incidence of malaria around Linguere, I must humbly ask you to give a little bit more. Remember, just $2 provides an long-lasting, insecticide-treated bed net for a family that needs it. Click here to donate.

Thanks again for your help!
April

A Sunday at the Monastery

2009-07-27T12:26:00.010Z

A perk of living in a predominantly Muslim country is the chance encounter with the drunkards of the minority religion.

Last Sunday, my friend Erin and I took a day trip to Ker Moussa, a monastery near Thies with a reputation for producing delicious goat cheese, jams, and fruit wine. Though most of the monastery was closed off to us, we had fun looking at the paintings in the church and taking pictures in the beautiful garden.

After the visit, walking back to the main road through an incredible heat, we remembered that we had seen a sign for cold drinks on the way in. When we found the little hut purportedly selling ice cold fantas, we realized we were standing in a semi-clandestine bar. There were even little sealed plastic cups of gin for sale.

The bar also sold soda, so we ordered a coke and a sprite before being whisked off to what seemed to be someone's backyard, done up in an island theme and filled with a lot of drunk Catholics. We stealthily took some photos of the fun for your enjoyment.

Culture Shock?

2009-07-27T12:04:00.001Z

One thing living abroad has taught me is that we are all incredibly adaptable creatures. I tend to find some form of contentment no matter where I'm living. But here in Senegal, an unintended consequence of this adaptability is that sometimes the village swallows me up. When I'm in Barkedji, it's always hard to remember the life that exists beyond the bush surrounding me. I find peace with my daily routine and forget to leave. And when I do make it to a city (Linguere doesn't count), it's major culture shock.

I've been at training in Thies for a couple weeks now, and I'm starting to remember that talking to friends in my own language is normal. Going to restaurants is normal. Shopping for groceries in a store and cooking on a stove is normal. Checking my e-mail is normal. Or at least it all was, at some point in the not too distant past.

These past couple of days, I've been trying to remind myself that the luxury of living among friends in a city isn't permanent. In a couple of days, after a big Health and Environmental Education summit on the beautiful coast south of Dakar, I'll be returning to the alternate universe that is the village.

I'm excited to go back. I've genuinely missed my family, my room, Barkedji. But I'm not sure if I'm fully prepared to take on the reverse-reverse culture shock of leaving the city lights for, well, sand. And cows. I’m not sure if I can prepare for the unavoidable loneliness of going home.

Before our in-service training, I only looked as far ahead as the first two and a half months at site. It sometimes felt like practice for something more real. Now I feel like my actual service—a giant mess of tick marks indicating the passing of weeks and months and years as I try to figure out just what to do with myself--has begun.

Summer in the City

2009-07-13T11:49:00.011Z

I’m back in Thies for 2 weeks of in-service training, internet, ice cream, and friends.

My last couple of weeks in the village were busy—America-style, 12-hour work days busy.

-I distributed mosquito nets, along with Vitamin A supplements and anti-parasite pills, to wee children.

-I witnessed the cutest things ever (Senegalese kids dressing up in traditional clothing, dancing and singing) at various village ceremonies.

-I painted a giant map mural at the primary school, and then repainted said map mural when the first one washed away with the first rainstorm of the season.

-I started harvesting vegetables from my garden for family meals. The cucumbers have come!

All things considered, my first two and a half months at site—the hardest two and a half months, inchallah—were great.

Independence Day, Desert-style

2009-07-05T12:07:00.012Z

We had a little gathering for the Fourth in Linguere, because none of us had the funds nor the energy to make the trek to Kedougou, the southeastern-most region of Senegal, for the big Peace Corps Fourth of July party.

We did pretty well for ourselves in our little corner of the world.

We started the day with mango and banana pancakes. Delicious.

We drank chocolate milk (thanks, Mom).

We had beers out back at the sole Linguere bar.

We barbecued, kind of, and then we ate vegetable sandwiches, potato salad, and French fries on the roof.

We roasted marshmallows and ate them with Hershey’s syrup. Nothing like high fructose corn syrup on top of some high fructose corn syrup. I’ve gotten pretty creative with the Hershey’s syrup, I must say.

And then, the pièce de résistance, fireworks! We put on a little show for our Senegalese fan club, and no one ended up in the hospital.

I'm a celebrity, get me out of here

2009-07-02T09:14:00.003Z

You know when you read interviews with the rich and famous, and they complain about their celebrity—the paparazzi, the invasions of privacy, the high-resolution photos of every skin imperfection printed in glossy color for the whole world to scorn? Your first reaction is, “Wah, wah, you’re rich and glamorous, and you have people waiting on you hand and foot, so stop complaining,” right?

As the only toubab for miles, I can now say I’ve tasted celebrity. And if I were to try to explain to one of my neighbors in the village why it is occasionally slightly vexing to live under a microscope, they’d probably have a similar reaction—“Stop complaining, you rich, free American. This is the life you chose.”

They’d be right, of course. I knew, at least to some extent, what I was getting myself into in coming here. I think in a flash of misguided masochism, I might have actually told a few people that living far, far away from everyone and everything for 2 years was what I craved…

True, the attention can be intoxicating. There is nothing more uplifting than walking down the street and having adorable Senegalese children chant your name with glee, then giggle as they shyly touch your hand.

But there are days when I’d rather not open myself up to judgment and ridicule simply by stepping out of my room in the morning. I’d rather not be so reflectively, palely conspicuous.

I guess it comes with the territory. I should probably just be thankful that my “celebrity” is limited to Barkedji, and that I don’t have to worry about pictures of my sweat stains circulating the country under the headline, “Toubabs: they’re just like us.”

Money money money

2009-07-01T18:03:00.001Z

All of us volunteers deal with daily, even hourly, requests for everything from the small and nearly insignificant—20 cents or a piece of candy—to the completely unreasonable—iPods and computers and trips to the U.S and even the shirt off our backs.

It’s a struggle to come up with an appropriate response to these requests. On the one hand, I want to give, and in many cases, I can. Generosity is one of my values, and the instinct to share absolutely everything is one of the aspects of Senegalese culture that I appreciate most.

On the other hand, I want to be seen as more than money. And I’m not rich—I’m a volunteer with $20,000 in student loan debt. Yet it’s impossible for my neighbors in the village to understand my economic reality, because it simply doesn’t translate here.

I understand that to them my claims that I’m not rich must seem so hollow and callous, when they come in my room and see all my stuff. It’s true, I have a computer and and iPod and a radio and books and jewelry and a suitcase full of clothes. When I justify my ostentation by reminding myself that I worked and saved to buy these things, implying that therefore I somehow deserve them, I only feel cold and blind.

The thing is, I think that most of us came here because we, perhaps naively, hope to give something more valuable than money through our service. The constant requests are frustrating not only because it would be so nice to walk down the street without being harassed, but because we believe that just throwing money at a problem isn’t enough.

As development workers, we have to constantly fight against a mentality of victimization, and an assumption that we came here with bags of money to magically fix all of the village’s problems. My fierce, American independence—my belief in the value of work and my sense that generosity should be merited—are in stark contrast to people’s expectations of me as a Santa Claus figure.

When faced with constant requests, I find myself growing defensive, wondering what anyone did to deserve the things they ask of me. But then I ask myself what I did to deserve to be born in America, to have access to food and education, to have the opportunity to travel and choose my path in life. And to that I have no answers.

Photos of recent excitement

2009-06-12T20:37:00.016Z

After spending a few weeks in the village without seeing another toubab, or speaking English, or eating much other than oily rice, boiled-beyond-recognition vegetables, white bread and sugary drinks, I took a much needed vacation to Saint Louis for a jazz festival to regain my sanity.

I felt like I had fallen asleep and woken up in paradise. I don't think I ever really realized just how good I had it when I lived there. It must take living 35 k beyond the middle of nowhere to appreciate the wonder of a slightly less underdeveloped place.

In Saint Louis, I...

slept at a hotel with a pool and a spa, next to the ocean

ate pizza, among other delicious things

and went on a boat tour, saw swimming cows, and felt COLD!

When I returned home, I was refreshed and ready to work again. This past week, I spent a lot of time starting a tree nursery at one of the elementary schools with the Environmental Club, and giving malaria talks at schools and in the community, to get ready for our bed net distributions.

Food Fantasies

2009-06-12T18:50:00.004Z

I was going for a run in the bush the other day, distracting myself from the sweat dripping into my eyes by fantasizing about food, my favorite form of only slightly unhealthy escapism (as opposed to the more unhealthy forms of escapism other volunteers have tried--cough drinkingaloneinthehut).

Specifically, I was fantasizing about the food that I used to eat in America. Every single day. Without thinking twice about it. Fruits, fresh veggies, cold water, cheese, it’s all a luxury, you know.

Anyway, in a flash of dehydration-induced inspiration, I came up with this menu of the things I would eat were I to spend the day in America.

Breakfast:
-Fresh-squeezed OJ
-A bowl of wheaty cereal with cold milk
-A big fruit salad (watermelon, pineapple, cantaloupe, grapes, oranges, nectarines, peaches, strawberries, cherries, raspberries, blueberries)
-One chocolate truffle

Mid-morning snack:
-Fruit smoothie

Lunch:
-Cup of vegetarian chili with cheese
-Bagel sandwich with hummus, cucumber, tomato, lettuce, sprouts, avocado
-Apple cider

Mid-afternoon snack:
-Cheese and crackers OR
-Chips with homemade salsa and guacamole, depending on my mood

Dinner:
-Giant salad (lettuce, tomato, cucumber, green pepper, broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, carrots, celery, green beans, sunflower seeds, croutons, cheese, homemade Italian dressing)
-Homemade pizza with fresh mozzarella, garlic, basil, tomatoes, and spinach
-Grapefruit Izze

Dessert: Berry-apple cobbler with vanilla frozen custard

Late night snack: My mom’s stovetop popcorn and an apple

Mmmm. Please run off and think of me as you eat at least one of these delicious foods.

I wrote this a week ago, in the village, during one of those "is this really my life?" moments

2009-06-12T18:40:00.002Z

I’m sitting in my room trying to charge my flip video camera so I can make a movie about malaria in my village. But whenever I plug the camera into the USB port on my computer, it gives me an error message: “It’s really hot. Charging stopped to cool down.”

Even my video camera is telling me that it’s really hot. Hilarious, right?

There’s a saying about Peace Corps volunteers: Latin America PCVs come home political, Asia PCVs come home spiritual, and Africa PCVs come home laughing. From here, that seems pretty accurate. Because if you can’t find a way to laugh at it all—the sweating, the diarrhea, the harassment, the exposed boobs, the men wearing sparkly teddy bear t-shirts with no sense of irony, the transportation (oh god, the transportation), the electronics suffering from heat stroke—then you might as well go home.

This place, when it’s not breaking your heart or pissing you off, provides some pretty good entertainment.

Cultural Confusion

2009-05-28T11:55:00.006Z

Cultures are strange things. They form us, shape us, infiltrate our being, sometimes against our will and without our consciousness.

Thus, like it or not, I am American. Sometimes here in Senegal I find myself clinging to my culture, internally defending my country against imagined condemnation, in a way I would never dream of doing in America. I can still criticize its politics and policies, still cringe at the thought of Big Macs and Big Gulps; but when it comes down to it, America, in all its excess and contradictions, is home.

The other day I was passing time in my hut by listening to podcasts on my iPod (soo American, right?). I came across Andrew Solomon's story, Notes on an Exorcism, which happens to take place in Senegal, and also conveniently happens to explain the giant cultural misunderstanding that is my life right now. Plus it's pretty funny. Listen.

The Unexpected

2009-05-28T11:17:00.007Z

As the rainy season approaches, the weather here is growing increasingly apocalyptic. It’s still well over 100 degrees every day (and every night), but now we have windstorms and an occasional early morning shower, too. The wind is truly bizarre. It comes and goes with no warning. But when it’s here, it’s really here.

Like my family, I sleep on a stick bed outside, since it’s too hot to sleep inside. I’ve taken to putting heavy rocks on my mattress to keep it blowing away. Still, the other day, I emerged from my room at about 10 pm to find that my mattress, pillow, book, and all 4 rocks had blown off the bed. There’s a name for this intense wind that come rolling south off the Sahara—the Harmattan. According to the all-knowing Wikipedia, “When the Harmattan blows hard, it can push dust and sand all the way to North America.”

A few days ago I had plans to bike to Diagaly, a village 25 k away, to build a tree nursery with the village forestry representative, who would lead the way on his motorcycle. Unfortunately the day we made the trek to Diagaly also happened to be the windiest day I have ever experienced. As I fought my way to Diagaly with all my strength, I found myself unfairly resenting the forestry worker as he would drive ahead and then wait for me every couple of kilometers, trying to keep his cigarette from blowing out as he rested on a rock.

Barkedji is 5k off the main road, and the path to the road is like a wind tunnel. As I shifted my bike down into the granny gear and crawled the 5k to the crossing, I slowly passed a charette—a wooden cart—being pulled by 3 donkeys. As I turned my head to greet the driver, I realized that the donkeys’ legs were moving, but the charette was not. I instantly thought of those jets you can buy for small swimming pools, where you get your workout in without moving by swimming into the current. In Barkedji, we don't need any fancy gadgets to keep us from moving.

Once I turned onto the main road and started making my way toward Diagaly, the wind was coming at me from the side. It made disconcertingly ghost-like noises as it whipped through my clothes, and actually blew me off the road a few times. I think that the only thing that kept me going was my pride. I kept thinking to myself, “Come on, I biked across the U.S., climbed the Rockies on my bike, rode through abysmal winters in Wisconsin…” I couldn’t let a little wind keep me from making it 15 miles. And after 2 and a half hours, I made it, completely exhausted, and in no mood to teach people to build a nursery in a language I barely understand.

Sometimes the line between life and work here gets so blurred. Just living every day can be so exhausting and challenging that it feels like work. But it’s not development... It’s just me trying to make it to the end of the day as a lone toubab surrounded by thousands of Senegalese. I don’t yet know what the value is, if any, in physically exhausting myself to get to a village where I give a half hour presentation in broken Wolof... I just don’t know. There’s no one here telling me what to do, no real job description, just me trying to figure it all out, every day. But hey, aren't we all?

Money can't buy you love, but luckily it can buy protection from malaria!

2009-05-11T13:59:00.006Z

So, I wasn’t planning on humbly pleading for donations this early on in my service, but I’ve got good news! I’m participating in a national mosquito net distribution.

It will take place in July and August, just before the wet season, when malaria is the most rampant. In Linguere, our regional goal for this year is to provide 3,625 nets to my village, Barkedji, as well as the villages of two other local volunteers, Dana and Laura. To do so, the 6 volunteers in this area need to raise $7250 by May 31.

And to do that, we'll need all the help we can get. You can contribute by visiting http://www.againstmalaria.com/linguere, where you can make a donation to bring one, ten, or even 100 mosquito nets to the parents, grandparents, and children who might otherwise succumb to malaria.

Malaria, an illness spread through mosquito bites, is one of the biggest disease killers in the world and a leading cause of death in Senegal, especially among the elderly, pregnant women and children under 5 - one child dies of malaria in Africa every 30 seconds; or to put it another way, 7 jumbo jets full of children disappear every day!

Yet malaria is preventable, most effectively through the use of bed nets. That's why our group of 6 local Peace Corps volunteers plans, over the next few years, to distribute nets to every person in the department of Linguere who does not already have one.

It’s a huge task, but Peace Corps/Senegal has been lucky enough to receive the support of Against Malaria (www.againstmalaria.com), worldwide leaders in bed net distribution, who have agreed to match our funds so that each net costs only $2. That’s right, only $2 for the world’s longest lasting, most effective insecticidal bed net!

We volunteers are here on the ground, ready to distribute the nets to those who need them most, and to ensure that people have the knowledge to properly use them. We’ll take care of the hard part, but I'll definitely need help from you, your friends, family, co-workers, pets with bank accounts… I truly believe that we can meet our goals, but I'm counting on my wonderful friends (and their wonderful friends, and their wonderful friends...) to make this a reality.

Please consider donating at http://www.againstmalaria.com/linguere, even if you can only give a small amount. As you can see, a small amount goes a long way!

A far-off place

2009-05-10T09:53:00.010Z

Barkedji is pretty remote. I’m 35k from the closest volunteer, who is in Linguere; and really, that means that I’m 35k from anything that’s not Barkedji. Or bush.

Getting to or from my village is always an adventure. You might think, “35k, that’s less than 25 miles, right? That couldn’t be too bad.”

But just imagine riding 25 miles while sitting on a makeshift wooden platform above the bed of a truck--not in the bed. (Why would you put people in the truck, when you could instead load it full of miscellaneous baggage...or herds of sheep?)

No car leaves the garage until it is absolutely stuffed well beyond any reasonable level; though I guess we passed the point of reason when we started suspending people on top of trucks… The whole setup is really so preposterous that it’s almost impossible to describe it in a way that would make sense to someone who’s never witnessed it. But I’ll try.

For starters, the truck isn’t very big. It’s one of the small models of flatbed trucks, usually made by Toyota, Mitsubishi or Peugeot. 3 people ride in the cabin—the driver, along with 2 passengers. 4 people sit on top of the cabin.

The owner of the truck has built a platform of 3 wooden planks on top of the bed, which, as a I said before, holds any variety of animal or mineral. 5 people sit on each plank, with the outer two hanging off the sides.

Let’s do the math. 3 people inside, plus 19 on top. So far, we’re at 22 people, right?

Well, the other day, riding back from Linguere, I counted a total of 29 people in or on (or hanging off of) our truck. The remaining 7 people were miraculously stuffed in between rows. Or they just found their footing on the side or the back of the truck, grabbed on to something semi-solid, and hoped for the best.

The result of this math problem: 1 truck. 29 people. I herd of sheep. Yikes.

The whole thing has the effect of a giant, multicolored muffin tut-tutting down the road.

And then there is the driving. Oh, the driving. Wouldn’t you know, just before I came, they paved the road from Linguere to Barkedji. Alxamdulilah, right?

Well, while they were in the process of building the road, they put rows of boulders on it to keep people from driving there. In typical fashion, the road construction project was never quite completed. And since it was never finished, the boulders were never removed. For at least half of the trip, we can't drive on the beautiful, new, paved road. Instead we off road it through the sand.

I'm in a mathematical mood today...

25 miles on road: 30-40 minutes
25 miles on sand: an hour and a half

Add that hour and a half to the time we spend waiting for the truck to fill up to that ridiculously overloaded level, and you could make a day of driving 50 miles.

You have to hand it to the Senegalese. They may not always be efficient, but when it comes to space, they’re certainly economical.

Some pictures of my awesome home in Barkedji:

Hot Hot Heat

2009-05-08T10:28:00.002Z

There are so many things I could say about my first week in Barkedji, but one word really sums up life here: hot. I’m thanking Allah that it’s officially the hot season, because I don’t know that I’d stick around to see a hotter season. I’ve spent more time than is probably healthy contemplating such profound topics as whether or not blood can really boil, and if it’s possible take in water at a rate equal to that at which it is exiting my body (through every last pore), without being hooked up to an IV.

It’s a sad state of affairs when it’s considered a cool morning if the temperature hasn’t quite reached 90 degrees by 7:00. Every night, it’s still pushing 100 degrees when I fall asleep. In the early afternoon, it routinely hits 115 degrees in the shade. Unfortunately I can’t tell you how hot it is in the sun, because I took my thermometer outside and it actually overheated. I looked once, and it read 130.5 degrees. When I looked again, the screen was black. That’s right, the heat broke my thermometer.

Still, I think—dare I say it?—that my body might actually be kind of sort of adapting. Don’t get me wrong, I still spend the hours of 12 to 4 just trying not to die. But it doesn’t feel quite as horrendously stifling as it did that first day here.

Despite the obligatory water breaks every 5 minutes, I’ve managed to get a few things done. Thus far my work strategy has been remarkably similar to Hugh Grant’s life strategy in About a Boy (which might strike you as sad, when you consider that the whole premise is that he doesn’t actually do anything). Yet I find the idea of breaking up a day’s activities into 30-minute units of time remarkably applicable to life in a very, very hot place.

Listening to the BBC as I eat a breakfast of bread and coffee: 1 unit
Going for a bike ride: 3 units
Washing my clothes: 5 units
Taking a walk around the village, with requisite Wolof greetings: 2 units
Building a tree nursery at my house: 3 units
Watering my garden: 2 units
Visiting one of the schools: 4 units
Visiting one of the village’s very important people: 4 units
Visiting the Health Post to discuss mosquito net distribution: 4 units
Listening to a This American Life podcast on my iPod: 2 units
Reading a book: 2 units
Lying on my bed, praising the inventor of the fan: anywhere from 1unit to infinite units

You get the idea. When you consider that the hours of 12 to 4 are essentially taken off the table, it’s surprisingly easy to fill the mornings and late afternoons with activity. I’m certainly not bored.

A real, live volunteer

2009-04-26T18:44:00.024Z

I'm sitting in the Linguère apartment, because I'm getting installed (moving to my site) on Tuesday. It's all happening so fast.

Linguère is the closest city to my site. It's about 35 to 40 kilometers away, but I think the lure of cold milk, the post office, and the internet will be enough to draw me here a lot. The 6 volunteers in the area--2 older volunteers, Dana and Cruger, and 4 new volunteers, Brian, Laura, Rachael, and I--all pool our money to rent out an apartment where we can sleep over, shower, cook, and e-mail home whenever we want. Ahh, luxury. Hence, I love Linguère, despite the fact that it in no way merits the title of "city." In fact, I love it for its sleepiness.

The end of training was a crazy whirlwind of ceremonies and goodbyes. First, we had a party at the training center for one member of each of our host families. My mom from Kër Sadaro came. It was fun to play Senegalese host for a day, making sure she had more cold water than she could ever drink and yelling at her to "lekkal bu baax" (eat well). After a big lunch of yassa and plenty of attaya, there was a ceremony for the families, complete with certificates. Senegalese love certificates, along with anything remotely official-looking, so I think we succeeded in making our families happy. It was actually pretty touching to see how attached most of the trainees and families had become. A certain male trainee who will remain unnamed even shed some tears. Aww.

After the ceremony, we had a tam tam. Drummers came, and all the families, trainers, and trainees got our sweaty dance on together. I love living in a place where banging on anything that makes noise and recklessly shaking my jaay fonde with friends is a completely normal social activity.

Then, on Friday, we got dressed up in Senegalese clothes and headed to Dakar to become official Peace Corps volunteers. Our swearing in ceremony was held at the ambassador's house, and lots of very official people came. I know this because everyone who spoke at the ceremony announced the names and titles of all of the very official people in attendance at least 5 times.

Three of us new volunteers gave speeches in local languages. I was in charge of the Wolof speech. When I found out I would be speaking to a room full of Wolof speakers, and that parts of my speech would be broadcast on national TV and radio, I sat down and wrote the best speech I possibly could. Then I asked Bamba, my language trainer, to edit it. He promptly rewrote the speech, inserting official-sounding bits and Wolof proverbs. Essentially, he turned my speech Senegalese. Thank you, Bamba. It worked like a charm. The audience loved it. The proverb even got a laugh. I do feel like Senegal is probably sick of seeing me on tv at this point, though.

After the ceremony, we ate hors d'oeuvres and mingled at a cocktail. (Don't be misled, though: Senegalese cocktails are receptions with treats and sugary beverages, but no actual cocktails.) Then we all indulged ourselves with an afternoon at the American Club, Dakar's own mini-America. The American Club is essentially a country club owned by an ex-Peace Corps volunteer, which means that as Peace Corps volunteers (and it's official now), we get in for free. Alxamdulilah!

At the American Club, we swam. We ate tic tacs, ice cream, and chocolate. We watched young American mothers sip wine and chat by the side of the pool. We witnessed overindulged American kids getting picked up from sports practice by nannies. We might as well have been in America. It was weird. And oddly fulfilling. Somehow I feel so much more attached to the overindulgent aspects of my culture while living here in Senegal...

After our afternoon in Dakar, we returned to Thies to take care of last minute errands and to say goodbye to each other until July. I'm really going to miss everyone!