Doggy Denabo

A few weeks ago, before I got Ñankatan, I was hanging out in another volunteer’s village talking with a Pulaar friend about my plans of getting a puppy.  I told her that in America, dogs are loved like children.  I said that people buy special food just for their dogs.  I said that dogs sleep in houses, sometimes on the same bed as their owners.  I said that if people hit dogs, they can go to jail.  The person I was talking to was flabbergasted and asked if my dog would be treated like a human.  I said yes – it would be my baby, and I would throw it a Denabo (naming ceremony) and everything.  I meant it as a joke, but the second the words were out of my mouth, I knew that I was actually going to do it.  

Originally, I wanted the denabo to be a small, reserved affair, for my family and a few close friends only, since I wasn’t sure how culturally appropriate it’d be to flaunt my disposable income on a party for a dog.  I tentatively brought up the idea to my family and my closest friends in village, and everyone loved the idea.  Word spread, and soon it seemed like everyone knew about the party.  My last shred of apprehension was erased when the village ceerno (religious leader) asked if I wanted him to ceremonially shave the dog’s head. 

I decided to make it a party to remember.  I figured worst case scenario, no one would come and my family would just eat better food than we usually do, and enjoy the leftovers for several days.  Best case scenario, lots of people would come and we would all have a great time.  

For about a week preceding the Denabo, I had the same conversation with hundreds of people in the village.  “Kadiatou!  I heard you are doing a denabo for your dog!” “Yes!  It is Thursday!  You are coming?” “Yes!  I will eat until I’m very full.”  “Yes!  You will dance also!”  “Yes!  I am happy!”  “I am happy!” 

When all was said and done, I blew about 40,000 CFA on food, tea, and batteries to keep my radio blasting Akon all day.  I have no regrets.  There were dozens of people in and out of my compound all day, and everyone was happy to see Ñankatan.  I didn’t take as many pictures as I should have (I never do!) but here are some.  I also took a ton of video of people dancing, but my computer doesn't have any video editing software, so you'll have to wait for that.

Asu and Kadiatou with a cauldron of rice

Kim peelin' onions

Rice, oil, beans, and veggies!  This was probably the most delicious thing I've eaten in Senegal.

My delightful sitemate Kim gifted the baby a lovely sachet of powdered milk.

After Nankatan wiggled out of his collar and had it reattached several times, he ran off to hide it in some tall grass.  Smart dog.

Alpha has a heart of gold.

    

Mariama wore a new dress to the party

 Screen shots of the dancers, until I find a way to get video up:

Tabaski and a new puppy!

This is going to be a pretty short post because I have this waiting for me at home.

World, meet Nankatan.  Nankatan, meet world.

He's very small and doesn't have much of a personality yet, but makes up for it by being breathtakingly adorable.  He likes sleeping, eating, and urinating.  Sometimes he does two of the three at the same time, but hasn't achieved the trifecta yet.  He dislikes being alone, which isn't a problem during the day, but nights are a stuggle.  This momma is ready for her baby to start sleeping through the night.

Falling asleep while eating

In other news, last Sunday was Tabaski, the biggest holiday of the Muslim year.  It celebrates the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son to god.  God liked that blind devotion, so he substituted a ram for the kid at the last minute.  Now, it's celebrated throughout the muslim world by ceremonially killing a ram, then eating it.  

Remember learning about  American Indians using every part of the buffalo?  They've got nothing on the Pulaars.  This is literally all that was left over.  Everything else was eaten.  So many intestines in my dinner bowl!

A villager set up a meat cart so villagers that couldn't afford a whole ram could still buy a few kilos.  You know you've been an unintentional vegan for too long when this sight makes your mouth water...

Part of the holiday's tradition is that a portion of each family's sheep is supposed to be given away.  Since almost everyone had a sheep, there was a really comical hour where villagers were sending bowls of meat to neighbors, while meanwhile recieving bowls of meat from other neighbors.  I think everyone ended up with roughly the same quantity of meat they started with...regifting at its finest.

Grilling and eating corn

Fierce Gaga-ish heels, sported by the mother of my bastard Tokara

Cute kids

You're never too young for your first weave.

I gave my three favorite tweens makeovers, which made all other tweens in the village shoot me death glares.

Bright fabrics, bold prints, sparkles, beads, and ruffles ahoy.

That's it for now!  I'm gonna go home and play with my dog.  

Weighin' and feedin' babies in Teyel

Every month, Abdoulaye, my ASC (community health worker) and a few relais (volunteers from the community) weigh babies at the health hut in my village.  During my first four months in Teyel, I missed these weighings.  Either Abdoulaye didn’t tell me, or he tried to, but the language barrier was still too high, or I was out of town.  As I was eating a bean sandwich the morning of the 20^th, Abdoulaye sat next to me and asked if I was coming to the health hut because today they were going to weigh babies.  “Tuma fuddi?!” I asked excitedly.  When does it start?  “Boyanni,” he answered.  Not long.  This was not specific enough for my still-not-integrated internal clock.  “Neuf heure? Onze heure?  Apres bottari?” (9:00?  11:00?  After lunch?).  Abdoulaye laughed.  “Boyanni,” he answered.  Not long.  It rarely gets more specific than that here.

I excitedly went home and changed into my best Senegalese dress (the one with the oscillating fan and lion print) while reviewing useful vocabulary and verb conjugations in my head.  I proudly explained to my family where I was going – they seemed as happy about my newfound productivity as I felt - and went to the health hut. 

No one was there.

I sat and waited for about twenty minutes, thankful that I never go anywhere without a book.

No one came.

I heard someone call my name.  “Kadiatou!  Ar!” (Kadiatou!  Come!)  It was Aliou, one of the relais.  I walked up to him. 
“A weetori hande!” You are late waking up today!
“Alaa.  Mi fini bimbi law. Mino fadi peesugol boobooji.” No.  I woke up early.  I am waiting for the baby weighing.

 “Arga.” Come here.

We walked together to Abdoulaye’s house, where the scale had been set up.  Abdoulaye explained that at the health hut, there was no shade, so they would weigh at his house instead.  I asked if the women in the community knew the weighing would be there instead of the health hut.  He looked confused, then said yes, they knew.  I asked if all the women knew the event would be happening today – after all, I had just found out about 10 minutes before.  He looked confused again, and repeated that yes, the women knew.  Sure enough, the babies started to come, most carried by their older siblings, since the mothers were still busy cooking breakfast, doing laundry, pounding millet, sweeping the compound, and the dozens of other chores they do every day.  I suppose village word of mouth is as good a way to organize an event as any.

We put the babies in the hanging scale

They loved it, clearly

We consulted a dog-eared growth chart to see if the babies were “green” “yellow” or “red,” depending on degree of malnutrition.  When I first got to Teyel four months ago, I had looked through data at the health post and noticed that Teyel had very low rates of malnutrition, and decided that it wasn’t something worth focusing my time on here.  However, I had failed to take seasonal fluctuations into account.  There was indeed very little hunger in Teyel during the period I was looking at, dry season, but right now is hungry season.  Last years’ crops are finished and this years’ aren’t ready yet.  No one has enough to eat.  This is unfortunate for everybody, but no one’s hurt worse than the babies.  Of the dozens of babies we weighed that day and throughout the weekend, eleven were found to be “yellow” – moderately malnourished – though thankfully none were “red.”

I asked Abdoulaye what he would do next with the malnourished kids.  He said that if the kids were “red,” they were referred to the district health post immediately, but if they’re yellow, they’re just monitored over the coming months.  He said that sometimes, WorldVision or USAID sponsors a mass feeding program, but that none were going on currently.  I considered this carefully.  I am extremely opposed to handouts, since I think they foster dependence and feelings of inadequacy in those they are supposed to be “helping.”  On the other hand…these were babies we were talking about.  And they were hungry.  Their little brains were not getting the nutrition they needed to develop properly.  They cannot wait and develop cognitive skills later, when food supplies are better – they are victims of their own biology.  How could I stand by and do nothing? 

I thought about it overnight, and the next day I approached Abdoulaye and Aliou with my plan.  Over the course of the next week or so, I would go to the houses of each “yellow” baby. I would do a small lesson on child nutrition with anyone in the compound at the time – parents, older siblings, grandparents, aunts and uncles.  I would give a small sample of ceremine (a nutritious porridge) to the mother, then show her how to prepare it and watch her as she fed it to her child (to ensure it didn’t end up in the mouth of a bullying older sibling instead.)  I would give the mother the option of purchasing more ceremine from me at a slightly subsidized rate (150 CFA/bag instead of 200 CFA), but she would only get the one free sample.  Best case scenario:  The mother uses her newfound nutrition knowledge to feed her child more balanced meals and the child reaches a healthy weight.  Worst case scenario: the mother’s delighted that she scammed a free meal out of that weird toubab girl, but does not change feeding habits in any way and the child stays malnourished.  Even in the worst case scenario, the baby got one nutritious meal that they otherwise would not have had access to.

Aliou and Abdoulaye were on board with the idea, and Aliou offered to come with me for language help as I conducted the nutrition lessons.  Luckily, Peace Corps promotes an absurdly easy nutrition lesson called “the complet model,” so I was pretty sure I’d be able to get my point across with my still-terrible Pulaar.  

Complet model: Draw a woman in a 3-piece outfit in the sand.  The headscarf is foods that help her skin and hair stay beautiful - fruits and vegetables.  The shirt is foods that give her muscles to pound grain- meat, beans, fish.  The skirt is foods that give her energy to walk - corn, rice, millet.  Just as you need a skirt, shirt, AND headscarf before leaving the house, you also need all three components in a healthy meal.

We’ve gone to four houses so far, and the response has been positive.  All the babies ate their porridge, and one woman bought a bag.  

Baby Adama Hawa (the only kid I've met here with two first names) lovin' some ceremine.

Even if the women don’t buy the ceremine, they are still (hopefully) learning something from the nutrition talk.  After the discussion, I had one woman tell me, alarmed, that her baby had eaten only rice and okra sauce for dinner – “Wutee alaa!” No shirt!  I told her if the baby ate other “shirt” foods from the complet model during the day, it could still have good balanced nutrition.

That's all for this week!  Talk to you all later.

Life as a Manchild

Before I joined Peace Corps, I was told that being a white woman in Africa was like being a mix of a man and a woman.  So far, that hasn’t been the case.  Instead, I’ve been treated as a mix of a man and a small child.  A Manchild, if you will. 

In Senegal, one is not considered an adult until they get married.  Kids rarely attend school in my village, and even fewer pursue higher education, so the American cultural fixture of leaving the nest at 18 to go to college does not happen here.  Kids stay in their parents’ compounds, doing the same daily routines they’ve had for years, until they get married, usually around age 16-18.  After that, the new bride usually moves in with her husband’s family and becomes a teen mom soon after. 

Since I am not married yet, I am still a child in the eyes of my community, and as such, I am babied.  I have to inform the family of where I’m going and when I’ll be back whenever I leave the compound.  I have very little autonomy over what and when I eat.  I fought for weeks trying to convince my mom that I was capable of doing my own laundry before I gave up and started letting her do it. Men have approached my father to ask him to give me to them as a wife – even if I’m sitting there, I am not asked because it is not my decision.   I was looking forward to having a family here, because I thought it would help me integrate into Senegalese culture, and I suppose it is nice having people around that care about my safety.  That said, I had forgotten how much it sucked being a teenager with no real decision-making power, and it’s difficult being thrust back into that now that I’m a crotchety old lady.

The other half of the Manchild mix is the perception of me as a man.  This is admittedly really nice sometimes.  When I enter a compound, I’m equally comfortable gossiping with the women or talking farming with the men.  I don’t think I’d be able to switch gender roles as easily if I weren’t white.  I’m a foreigner, and that overrides gender.

The downside of the “man” part of Manchild is that this is a paternalistic society, and as a rich man I am seen as a patron.  Most interactions contain at least a few demands to buy something.  Yesterday, I bought tea and sugar for people to drink as my host sister was braiding my hair.  No one said thank you, and in fact I was told that I was stingy for not buying mint for the tea as well.  Last night, my host aunt told me there was no money for sauce for the dinner millet, so I had to go to the store and buy powdered milk and sugar to put in it.  Powdered milk and sugar are expensive (500 CFA or so), and usually the millet sauce is nothing more than hot water and an MSG cube or two (25 CFA).  They either thought I had so much money I wouldn’t care, or that I was too stupid to know what the sauce was made of, so this would be a nice way to exploit a special treat out of me.  After all, I’m a toddler, so I can’t cook. How would I know the difference?

My host brother borrowed my bike a few days ago, and he casually mentioned that it had sprung a flat during his trip.  I didn’t think too much of it at the time, but today when I tried to pump it, I noticed that no matter how hard I pumped the tire wasn’t inflating.  Turns out that my brother had ridden so far on a completely flat tire that the metal rim had destroyed both the tube and the tire. He didn’t apologize or offer to pay for it, but he did say that my bike was very bad and I should buy a new one.  Presumably my host brother rationalized, like so many others here do, that I had more money than anyone else in town, so I should be the one that pays for everything, regardless of fault.  When I was still fuming about that, I brought the bike to the mechanic in my town (AKA the guy who owns a few wrenches and can usually figure bike stuff out if he’s not too busy sitting). He had guests over, so I had to deal with several men slowly and exasperatedly explaining to me how to use my bike pump, since clearly I had been too stupid to notice that the tire was flat.  After they realized that the tire wouldn’t inflate and I really did need the mechanic’s help to fix it, they immediately started giving me exorbitant price estimations for parts and labor.  I’m as dumb as an infant, and I’m rich, so it’s OK to squeeze all the money they can out of me.

The dichotomy between being a baby, so stupid and helpless that I can’t even go out at twilight (lest evil spirits get me), and being a wealthy benefactor at the same time is frustrating beyond measure. Everyone wants my stuff and my money, but no one cares who I am or what I have to say.  This is annoying on a personal level, but it has troubling implications for my future projects here as well.  I’ve already noticed that when I try to do any behavior change communication (such as explaining why hand washing is a good idea and letting kids play with pesticide sprayers is a bad idea) my messages usually fall on deaf ears.  Why should anyone listen to the advice of a little kid?  I think many people would prefer it if I just dumped money on the town and left, as countless other development workers have done.

Of course, the reason I’m treated like a child is because I still talk like one.  It has been less than six months since the first time I heard the word “Fulakunda.”  I can explain and understand many things, but I’m not fluent.  This is a small village with limited experience with non-native speakers, and most people have trouble understanding my thick foreign accent.  Since so few people are educated, there is little patience for the difficulty of learning another language. Since four year olds can talk better than me, clearly four year olds must be smarter than me - they “get it” and I don’t.  As an additional barrier, some people associate the educational level of an individual with the amount of French they know.  I have had to explain to dozens of people that although I do not speak French, I really did attend school.  One man’s jaw dropped when I told him that I had gone to enough school to have gotten my BAC (roughly equivalent to a high school diploma, but rarely achieved in Senegal) but that my schooling was all conducted in English.  I tried to tell him I went to college and grad school, too, but I don’t think he understood.  His mind was too blown.

I’m going to leave it here.  I hope this didn’t sound whiney.  I really do like most people in my village, and I’m very happy I’m here.  I love the Peace Corps, and if I knew everything I know now during the application process, I would still do it.  There are more pros than cons, and I’m optimistic that I’m making a positive difference by being here.  Every day, I understand more about my community than I did the day before, and I think the rough patch I’m going through right now will work itself out in time.  That said, parts of the culture are giving me a lot of trouble, and I haven’t found any ways to deal with my frustrations yet other than angry journaling.  Do you have any suggestions? 

~Kadiatou

Money in Village

Although I am a volunteer, I am given a monthly living allowance by the Peace Corps.  The amount of my mandat is supposed to be enough money to live comfortably at the same level of the villagers around me.  Each month, I receive 150,000 CFA.  This is the equivalent of about 300 US dollars.  In village, however, the CFA to USD conversion is not the same at all.

In village, I found it’s more useful to imagine prices in Village Currency (which I’ll call VC, because acronyms are useful, and my first choice, Village Dollars, has an acronym already in use for something far less fun).  In my VC system, every CFA is worth a penny.  My daily bean sandwich is 300 CFA, which I imagine to be about three dollars (it would only be 200 CFA, but I spring for extra mayonnaise.  YOLO!).  A new pair of flip flops is 500 CFA – one dollar using the traditional CFA to USD conversion, but actually five dollars in VC.

After converting prices into VC, I pretend that I’m once again the poorest I’ve been in my life, which was my last semester of grad school, which I refer to as my “broke-ass bitch” days.  I was poor enough that I walked over a mile through blizzards to and from school each day because I couldn’t afford gas.  Poor enough that my debit card was declined on a $2.80 purchase.  Poor enough that my grocery shopping for the week was a bag of store brand white rice – and before buying it, I’d check out the price per ounce of every rice on the shelf to make sure that it was really the cheapest option.  I would go to thesis defenses of topics I wasn’t even interested in, just for the concessions, and sneak crackers into my jacket pockets for later.  (Note: Even at my poorest, I was nowhere near the poverty that the villagers here in Senegal are at.  I’m not claiming that I was.  Stick with me here.)

The VC system helps me keep money in perspective.  Yes, a pair of flip flops at a Teyel boutique is only 500 CFA, but when you’re as poor as I was, as poor as almost everyone here is, that $5 could go a lot of other places, and spending it is painful.

While I was in Thies for training, I paid my 12-year-old sister, Medo, to take care of my garden.  I told her I’d give her 100 CFA a day, and I’d be gone 23 days.  Her eyes grew wide.  She had probably never been in possession of that much money.  I gave her half before I left, as an advance, and gave her the other half after I got home.  Five minutes after I gave her the second installment, she returned to my hut, tears streaming down her face.  “I must give you back your money,” she said, holding out the coins.  “No,” I insisted. “That’s yours.  You worked very much.”  (In actuality, she had been overzealous in weeding and pulled up all the cabbages and peas, but it’s the thought that counts).   “It is too much,” she said. “You forget, you gave me money before you left.”  I insisted twice more, and she finally accepted my words, smiled, and left, thanking me profusely.  I had given Medo $4.60, less than minimum wage in America, for a month of labor, for dozens of buckets of water hauled up from the well, for hours of work keeping the tenacious jungle weeds at bay using only a hand hoe.  And it was still too much.  In VC, I had given her $23 – too much money for a mere child.  That could have bought enough rice to feed the whole family for at least a few days. (Sidenote: Medo used the money to buy flour, sugar, oil, and yeast to make beignets [donuts] to sell at a football game the next day to further her income.)

This girl is going places, and I love her dearly.

My teen nephew, Bubacar, works in the family's fields with all the other men, but he also has a cotton field that's his and his alone.  He spent hours planting it, and will spend hours more weeding and harvesting it.  He confided in me, whispering, that he can earn up to 40,000 CFA when he sells the cotton.  No teen boy in America would work all summer for eighty US dollars, but that's four hundred village dollars, and that is worth all the work.

It’s when prices increase that the VC system is the most useful.  For example, at the western goods store in Thies, I seriously considered buying a baggie of dog treats for the miserably scrawny family dog who needs all the love he can get.  The dog treats were 2000 CFA – four dollars.  A pittance.  Then I applied VC.  The dog treats were twenty dollars.  No broke-ass bitch would spend twenty dollars on dog treats. If I would have bought them, my family would have been disgusted by me.  It would have been like the way normal people react when celebrities buy diamond collars for their cats.  There were many products at the western goods store that used to be familiar to me.  A tube of pringles was 1500 CFA ($3).  A snickers bar was 1000 CFA ($2).  A chocolate and caramel swirl waffle cone was 2500 CFA ($5).  All of these costs sound reasonable, considering they’re imported, until you convert them into VC.  It’s madness to spend $25 on an ice cream cone. (At least it is now.  Maybe after a few more months in the Sehel it’ll seem sensible.)

The VC system helped me humanize the annoying demands for money, clothes, etc. I’ve been bothered by since I got here.  When I was a broke-ass bitch, I had truly amazing friends and roommates that helped me out when I needed it most.  When I needed a dress for a wedding, my roommate let me borrow one of hers.  When I couldn’t pay for my share of gas on a carpool home for thanksgiving, my companion paid it all and told me not to worry.  Not to mention the dozens of beers that I owe everyone who wouldn’t accept “I don’t have any money” as an excuse to skip the bar.  When I needed money, and my friends had money, they helped me out, and I was grateful.  That was that.  Why should it be any different with my new Senegalese friends?  Their requests for stuff are more forceful than what I’m used to, but that might be because of my terrible Pulaar comprehension skills, or it might just be the culture.  I do have money here, and they don’t, and they know it.  Why shouldn’t I help them out with little favors from time to time? Nothing big, just a token of appreciation and friendship.  It’s still really irritating to be assaulted with the gimme gimmes every time I leave the door, but this frame of mind helps me deal with it, at least from people that are otherwise nice to me.

As I think of possible projects I might start here, money must always be considered.  Broke-ass bitches are not going to adopt a new behavior if it’s expensive or risky, and a large part of development work is contingent on getting people to change their behaviors.  Having so little money is like walking on a tightrope, always aware of your actions, always trepidatious, avoiding the fall, cautious to the extreme.  Any project I start needs to be very cheap and easy to maintain, or no one will maintain it.

Sokone Mangrove Reforestation

I finished in-service training last week, but decided to postpone my return to Teyel for a few days to help with a mangrove reforestation event in a town called Sokone.  There aren’t too many mangroves in Minnesota, so I wasn’t sure what to expect, other than that the area had a reputation for being one of the most beautiful in Senegal.

Did not disappoint.

Mangroves are important for many reasons – they stop soil erosion and are therefore important to combat the desertification that threatens most of Senegal, they protect shorelines, they're a carbon sink to help fight global warming, and they're prime animal habitat.

In many areas of Senegal, mangrove forests have been cut down to a fraction of their historical sizes.  Reforestation efforts are important because mangroves have the reproductive strategy of many trees – they produce thousands of seeds (or propagules, in this case), and very few propagules find an appropriate place to grow.  By collecting, preparing, and planting the mangrove propagules, we increase the probability that trees will grow.  Unfortunately, even after preparing the propagules, spacing them properly, and planting them with our best care, their growth isn’t a sure thing.  I’ve heard that mangrove reforestations have a 10-50% success rate, though sometimes it's as high as 70%.  We planted thousands of propagules, expecting that most of them would fail, but some would succeed.   Insert metaphor for Peace Corps.  Heh...

Reforestation was really easy, especially because there were so many people helping.  At low tide, the team went out into the warm, salty, waist-deep water of the mud flats to pull propagules off mature mangrove trees.

Each propagule looked like a thick green bean and was about 4-12 inches long.

We prepared the propagules by pulling off the little bulbs on the tops of them, throwing away any that were off-colored or broken.

Then we stuck the propagules in the mud, trying to keep roughly 1-meter spacing.  No pictures of that because it started to rain and I feared for my camera, but I think you can imagine it.  Here is the aftermath:

Field of Dreams.

Then we went swimming, drank beer, and danced to pop music from 2013 because none of us had anything newer than that on our iPods. 

Success!

Work Project Ideas

I’m now officially done with In-Service Training, which means I am a 100% competent, educated, professional Peace Corps representative, completely prepared to swoop in on Teyel and singlehandedly solve poverty.

Heh.

In actuality, I feel anxious, excited, and unprepared.  I’m totally satisfied with the training Peace Corps has given me so far.  I’ve learned a lot and I truly believe that I can implement some of my new knowledge and skills to positively impact lives in my community.  I have a million ideas for projects I want to try and am looking forward to returning to my community and getting started.

Peace Corps advises against doing too many projects too soon.  We’re supposed to take things slow to avoid burning ourselves out or spreading ourselves too thin.  With that in mind, the ridiculous length of the list below might look crazy.  Keep in mind that my list of ideas is just that: ideas.  I thought it’d be good for my own sake to make a list now to organize my thoughts, so months from now when my creativity is gasi and I don't remember training anymore I can look back on it. 

If anyone reading this has opinions on these ideas, either positive or negative, please let me know.  My next two years are a clean slate and I’d love any inputs.

At the health hut:

1.  Get a well for the health hut (if there is enough motivation for the community buy-in, which there wasn't when my ancien tried this), and plant some medicinal/ornamental plants and trees there for beautification and improved functionality

2.  Improve medicine supply at hut and/or post.  This would probably be the hardest thing I would ever do, and its chances of happening are close to zero.  The medicine supply chain's lack of functionality is a nation-wide issue, and I'm just an awkwardly tall white girl with bad Pulaar.  But hey, big dreams lead to big accomplishments.

3.  Implement a hearth program for babies that my health hut's growth monitoring programs have shown are "in the yellow", meaning they need supplemental food interventions. If the next scheduled growth monitoring session shows there's a need for this it can also be done in Dinguera, Koulinnto, Biaro, or other neighboring villages.

At the schools:

4.   Ask women who live near the elementary school to take care of the school garden my ancien built in exchange for part of the harvest.  When the principal of the elementary school comes back from vacation, I can ask him to get the kids to donate money to purchase seeds.

5.    Continue working with MSS scholars in biweekly meetings.  Have discussions or trainings on self-esteem and self-image.  Support the MSS girls in their studies and encourage them to mentor other young women. 

6.    Continue English club for CEM students and do introductory English classes for adults (the odds that any adults will show up to a class are near zero, but I would like to at least offer the option, since that's something many people ask me to help them with)

7.    Work with my ASC to do after-school program on basic first aid.  One of the elementary school teachers recommended this.  He has seen kids fall down at recess, get a bloody wound, then rub dirt in it to staunch the bleeding.  Simply teaching people to wash wounds with soap and clean water could prevent many infections.

8.    Implement the grassroots soccer malaria curriculum in Teyel and possibly in surrounding villages once school starts in October

9.   Do a pen pal program between kids at my local elementary school and French-speaking elementary students at the Pierre Bottineau French Immersion School in Minneapolis. I emailed Pierre Bottineau but haven't heard back yet.

Around the community:

10.  If my language skills are good enough, I'd like to conduct a baseline sanitation/handwashing survey.  My ancien said she did a survey when she first got to site so I will use the findings of her survey plus follow-up questions from my own to determine areas of focus.

11.  Collaborate on the Velingara work zone’s radio shows (if I feel my language is good enough).

12.   Work in community garden when they start planting (in January or February) to encourage sustainable cultivation and pest management techniques.

13.   Invite an agroforestry volunteer to add trees to the community garden (for alley cropping and live fencing)

14.   Work with the village baker (Tidiane Balde) to process and add moringa powder to bread loaves.  This was his idea - he wants to call it Mburu Dolee (power bread).  If there is a good response to it, I can ask a nearby CED volunteer to help him design a business plan.

In nearby villages:

15.  Implement PECADOM+ in Teyel and surrounding villages (next fall, if it spreads to Kolda by then).  PECADOM+ is a new program the everyone at PC Senegal is really excited about.  They have PCVs and volunteers from the Senegalese health care system with backpacks full of malaria test kids and medicine go to every compound in the village, testing and supplying treatment for everyone that has a fever.  It eliminates the transportation barrier that sometimes prevents sick people from seeking care.

16. If there is a need in Teyel or in surrounding villages, I could do a vaccination program with an NGO. Many understand that vaccinations are important, but there are transportation and cost barriers preventing some from getting them.  Vaccinations are easy programs to do because you literally just swoop in, give shots, and leave.  There is no behavior change component required.

Collaborations:

17.  Sex ed tourney with Tasha and Coco (December).  Two senior health volunteers are planning a tourney around several volunteer sites in Kolda.  The idea is to educate middle school boys and girls about what puberty is and how they can avoid pregnancy, since this is something that is usually not taught at school or at home.

18.  Malaria tourney with Kim (late October).  A senior health volunteer in Kolda wants to go on a tourney of volunteer sites and pair a mosquito net repair and care event with an educational component on malaria and on-site malaria testing and treatment at the local health structure

19.   Latrine project with Steph M (unknown – during cold season).  In a neighboring village, most people poop in the woods.  We want to encourage them to poop in latrines instead.  Steph's handling the budget and grantwriting portion of the project and I'm handling the educational component (ie, helping people make handwashing stations, doing handwashing activities, encouraging latrine use).

Personal projects:

20.   Expand personal garden, experiment with hydroponically growing mint using found materials

21.   Study/experiment with the efficacy of neem cream/oils/candles as mosquito repellent.  Peace Corps used to promote the use of neem cream but doesn't anymore because no studies have shown it to be effective, and sometimes people would use it instead of sleeping under their nets (which HAS been shown to be effective) but it is a natural repellent, and if it works, I'd like to use it personally.

22.   Train for and run the Tambacounda Half Marathon for Girls Education (race day is December 7th)

That's it!  What do you think?