No Title

Hey everyone,

Sorry for the long absence.  I just got back from staying with my language immersion host family in Sambalaobe.  There is no electricity there, so I didn’t bring my computer with me.  I did bring my smartphone so I could check emails and facebook if I happened to find wifi (which I did, a few times, at a restaurant near the beach, so thanks to those who emailed me, because it was a nice surprise to be able to read those) but typing out a whole blog on a smartphone screen seemed hard, and I figured the battery probably wouldn’t last long enough anyway, so I didn’t try it. 

This Sambalaobe homestay was a long one – 17 days – and while I did learn a lot of Fulakunda during that time, I think the main lesson I learned is that I don’t really know anything yet.  Every time I thought I learned something new about my family or about Senegalese culture in general, it just raised several other questions I don’t yet have the answers to.

I have been with the same family for about a month altogether, if you add up all the stays and subtract the time I spent at the training center and the trip I took to my permanent site.  The longer I stayed in Sambalaobe, the more I started to see things as they really were.  I just re-read my blog description of the family from my first homestay, and I’m embarrassed by how many errors there are.  Four of the children that lived here a month ago are gone now, and we’ve gained a new one. Baby Yaya, who I thought was 10 months, is actually 16 months and still not walking or talking. Jennebou, who I thought was in her mid 30s, is actually 25, and she had her first kid when she was 14 or 15.  They don’t wash their hands before every meal.  They don’t wash their hands at all.  They dropped that charade as soon as they got comfortable around me. My namesake’s husband is also her first cousin, and they grew up in the same house, so they refer to each other as brother and sister.  Their oldest kid, the one who I thought was still in Guinea Bissau, actually lives about a 10-minute walk away, with Hadja’s sister.  Are there stories behind all these revelations?  You bet.  Do I know them?  No, not a chance.

I am crippled by my lack of language.  So far, I think I have the lingual ability of a two year old.  That sounds pessimistic, but it isn’t.  If you speak slowly and clearly to a two year old, they can comprehend a lot.  However, like most two year olds, I am difficult to understand when I try to talk.  I have poor grammar and a thick accent, and I am never able to say exactly what I mean, since I am working with a limited vocabulary.  Trying to put a sentence together is like having a puzzle with only a fraction of the pieces: sometimes, people can figure out what the picture is supposed to be, but a lot of the time, they can’t.  To make it easier on myself, I lie a lot.  When talking about my family back in America, I said my mom works at a hospital.  They said, “Oh! So she’s a doctor!”  I racked my brain for the translations for “medical technologist,” “blood samples” “laboratory” or “microscope”….then just said “Yes, she is a doctor,” because I wanted to end the conversation.  I’m sure my host family is lying to me, too, for the same reasons.  Like a two-year-old, normal conversation is too advanced for me.  I can’t comprehend anything unless people make an effort to speak slowly and enunciate using only the words I know.  Frequently it’s only my family who can surmise what I’m trying to say, and even then it’s a crapshoot.

Last week, I had this conversation with my host mom:

“You are sitting.”
“Yes. Did you know tomorrow is a party in America?”
“A party.”
“Yes.  It is called ‘Easter.’  People spend time with family.  Children receive candy.  It is very good.”
“Ah.”  Pause. Very slowly and carefully, she said again: “You are sitting.”
“Yes, I am sitting.”
She smiled broadly and clapped her hands.  “You are sitting.”

Sigh.

My family is patient with me, and I know that I have plenty of time to learn the language in the next two years.  I am happy with my progress thus far.  I think I’m at the same level as the other Peace Corps trainees, and I know that I’m not expected to be fluent at this point.  Peace Corps administration has been nothing but supportive, and I’m really happy I’m in Senegal.  It’s a fantastic country.  When I was growing up, there was a 3-day town festival called Barbeque Days that I looked forward to every summer.  Everyone in my extended family took it off work, so we would just hang out at my aunt’s house on lawn chairs, gossiping, eating, joking, and playing with the kids. It’s like that literally every day here.  Every Senegalese person I’ve met so far has been so accommodating I feel like I’m a part of their family.  I have a laughing baby in my arms more often than not. I am having a lot of fun here; I’m just a little pessimistic about whether I’ll be able to work. After all, you can’t have an adult conversation with a two year old, and many other problems plaguing Senegal, such as malnutrition, malaria, and sanitation, are very adult topics.  Who would trust the health advice of a child?

I’m sure there are good reasons behind every perplexing behavior that I see, and two short years might not be enough time to see things the way they are, particularly when there are language barriers blocking my view.  There’s a Pulaar proverb that says “A log can be in the water for a long time without becoming a crocodile.”  I am that log, and Senegal is my water.

Though I am hopeful I’ll be able to do good work here, I’m trying to keep my expectations realistic.  Senegalese are very polite, and I’m sure if I do have an awful idea, they will allow me to proceed with it anyway just to spare my feelings.

For the next few months, I’m going to continue to be a language and culture sponge.  I want to understand what’s going on around me the best I can so I can see what I might be able to help with.  I’m hoping that even if my community thinks I’m an idiot because I can’t talk well, they’ll think I’m a kindhearted idiot, and they’ll decide I deserve a fair shake.  In a culture without written language, my holding a university degree and being a master’s student means nothing.  I mean, if I can’t even pound millet properly, what kind of woman am I?  All I really have to offer my community is time, open-mindedness, a fresh prospective, and a glimpse of another culture.  I hope I’ll be able to find a way to put those things to use here.  I’ll keep y’all posted if and when I do.

On deck for the next couple weeks:

• 3-day counterpart workshop (where all our future work partners come to the training center to learn what Peace Corps is and how they can utilize us volunteers in our permanent sites)
• Trip to Dakar
• One last stay with my Sambalaobe language immersion family
• Final language proficiency test
• Beach day
• Swear in as an official Peace Corps Volunteer
• Move to Teyel Faring!

Hope everyone’s doing well. Email me if you have some time.

~Barbara/Hadja/Kadjatu

Permanent site visit

I just got back from a 5-day visit to my permanent site.  I knew a few weeks ago (when I got my Fulakunda language placement) that I’d be headed to the Kolda region, but I didn't know my city/town/village placement until last Wednesday evening.  The training staff blindfolded us and led us to a spot on a giant map of Senegal.  It was really fun and dramatic.  My site placement was Teyel Faring, which meant nothing to me at the time, but now that I’ve seen it, all I can say is: for the next two years, I’m going to be living in paradise. 

Adrienne, with hut.  In a little less than a month, it will be my hut. 

 I’m planning some pretty epic interior decorating. 

The family congregates under this mango tree to nap out the part of the day when

 “the sun is much.”  I have probably eaten a dozen mangoes already.  So good.

There are six baby goats and a dog named Obama.

Adrienne (top picture) was my host for the visit.  She’s leaving me some big shoes to fill.  Her community loves her and her language skills are intimidating.  Unfortunately, I think Adrienne’s counterparts may have forgotten that although she’s fluent now, she wasn’t always, and it’s going to be hard for them to deal with the fact that her replacement can only communicate with the vocabulary and grammar of a toddler.  Adrienne has had an awesome service filled with successful projects, and I’m looking forward to continuing her work, but I’ve got a lot of language to learn before I can do that.

I was assigned a new name by my new family: I’m now Kadjatu Sabaly.  My namesake has 6 kids, including the cutest 5-month-old infant named Mariama. Kadjatu says her kids are now my kids too.  My host dad is the village chief, and my host mom is the midwife at the local health hut.  There are three schools in the village, all of which I might be able to do some programs with.  There are a half-dozen other Peace Corps volunteers within easy biking distance of me.  The nearest town with electricity is Velingara, which is only 15 kilometers away on a flat paved road, so I can probably go there at least once a week.  In Velingara there’s a hotel with good wifi I can use as long as I buy a drink or two.  There’s post office there, too, and I can get mail if you feel like sending me a letter:  B.P. 157 Velingara, Senegal, West Africa.

My favorite part (of course) is that the village is surrounded by baobab and palm trees full of chirping tropical birds.  I was told that if I choose to go running on the forest trails in the mornings, I need to keep an eye out for baboons (“Awesome!” “No.  Seriously.  Baboons.  You need to be careful.”) My 12-year old brother, Alpha, apparently goes into the woods a lot and returns with buckets of fruit, so hopefully he’ll take me on as a foraging apprentice.  I didn’t get the chance to wander during this visit, but I love that the forest is there and I’m so excited to explore over the next two years.

I don’t have too much else to say this week.  Tomorrow, I’m heading back to Sambalaube for my final language immersion homestay. I feel strangely guilty to go back to my language family when I’ve just met my permanent family, like I cheated on all the Baldes and they all know about it. I’m excited to get sworn in as a true Peace Corps Volunteer and to start my service in Teyel Faring, but I’ll definitely miss my Sambalaube family.  They’ve been so good to me and taught me so much.  Anyway, I probably won’t have access to electricity until I get back to the training center on the 27^th, and at that point it’s only a few days before I swear in.  Training is going by so fast, and I can’t believe it’s almost over!  Talk to you later!

~Kadjatu/Hadja/Barbara

CBT updates/pictures!

Well, I am definitely not fluent in Fulakunda (yet?  How optimistic can I be about that while remaining realistic?) but I am a lot better with it than I was 11 days ago.  It took minimal pantomiming to tell Babba this morning that I was heading back to Thies, that I’d be back in about two weeks, that I’d miss the family, and that he should keep my room key for safekeeping while I was away. 

As promised, here are some pictures:

I almost don’t even want to put this one up because it’s such an obnoxious 

“white girl goes to Africa” picture, but I look really happy and 

my hair is fantastic, so let’s just get over it.

Here’s my homestay neighborhood:

There are “farm” animals all over the city.  Notice the giant hog near the playing children in the street.  There are goats, chickens, cows, donkeys, sheep, pigs, and cattle roaming all over.  I don’t know how they keep track of which animals belong to whom, as nothing is collared or tagged.  None of the animals are scared of people, but I’m a little scared of the pigs.  They’re very big.

In our compound, we’ve got a sweet mango tree right in the middle of the yard.

This is the bathroom building

Notice the blue bowl outside.  That’s Kadi and Yaya’s training potty because 

they’re not big enough to use the hole yet.  If you mistakenly use the bowl 

as a shower cup, your family will laugh at you.  FYI.

All the food is great

My Bill Clinton breakfast platter

French fry salad!  Genius!

which is impressive considering that this is how they cook

and that all water has to be hauled up by hand from a very deep well.

They’re ridiculously kind as well.  I had a weird reaction to a medication I was on this week, so every time I went outside during daylight hours I got a weird red blistery rash on my arms.

I only had the language to sadly tell my sisters "The sun comes. Then I am a lizard."

My family reacted by finding some spare fabric and tying makeshift sleeves on me.

This is babba am, my father, Mamadou.

Immediately before this picture was taken, I asked all the kids to gather around him for a photo, then he yelled and swatted at them and they got out of the frame. I wasn’t sure if he did that because he didn’t want a picture or because he wanted one alone, so I just awkwardly took one, curtseyed at him, whispered “yafo” (sorry) and backed away. 

I have never understood anything my father has said to me.  His voice is quiet and raspy, and he mumbles.  He has a good, strong handshake and sometimes laughs, though, so I assume he’s a good guy. Here’s a story about him:

A few days ago, I woke up at around 5am to a loud squawking coming from just outside my door.  As I slowly opened my door and my eyes adjusted to the moonlight, I saw babba holding down a rooster with one hand while ripping out the poor bird’s tail feathers with the other.  He looked up and we made eye contact.  I shrugged and closed the door, thinking that even if I had the language skills to ask what the hell he was doing, I wouldn’t understand the answer in English, let along Fulakunda.  Later that morning, I asked my little sisters what had happened.  They understood the question, because they had been woken up by the rooster too, but they didn’t know the answer, so I asked my language coach.

“You know, your father, he is a Maribou, so maybe it was for some mystical thing. I don’t know. But in the future, please feel free to stay in your room during the night, because maybe there could be a problem for your safety and security.  Maybe someone could come into your compound with perhaps a machete and maybe they would defend themselves.” 
“Does that happen?” 
“Oh yes, that can happen.”

Thanks.

I did eventually figure out that it’s a common practice to pull out a rooster’s tail feathers so it will have bare skin on its butt, which makes sunlight uncomfortable, so it will want to stay in the shade and is therefore less likely to run away. In any case, that rooster was annoying as hell and squawked almost constantly.  I was trying to be sympathetic to him because he was so pathetic, skinny, and bare-butted, and he obviously had a tough life, but I was not in any way remorseful when he showed up in the dinner bowl two days later.

Babba has either 3 or 4 wives, depending on who I ask, but only two of them live in the compound.  One is Adama and one is Assamau but I can’t keep track of which is which.  Much like Babba, they talk quickly and mumble, and I can’t understand them, so I don’t interact with them as much as I probably should.

Hadja, my namesake, is awesome.  She’s 26 (like me!) and has three kids (not like me!).  She’s originally from Guinea Bissau and knows what it's like to be a stranger in a strange land, so she’s really patient, kind, and understanding when I’m oblivious to everything going on around me.  She also has the cutest baby in the world. 

Yaya’s birthday is Cinco de Mayo, so he’s almost a year old.  He only knows about 5 words, and one of them is "Hadja", which he says when he wants me (or his mother...) to pick him up.  He’s adorable.

Yaya is also way more self-reliant than any baby I’ve met in the states.  I’ve never heard him cry.  He’s entirely free to crawl around wherever he wants, so he spends most of his time like this.

Happy as can be, with no purchased toys around to occupy him.

Kadi is Hadja’s kid too.  She’s easily my favorite in the compound. She’s sweet, energetic, and outgoing, and usually has plastic in her mouth.

The kids seemed to warm up to me immediately, possibly because I brought UNO and crayons.

One day last week there was a birthday party at another PCT’s compound. 

 

Lexi’s breasts attended and were well-received by all.

Jennebou and baby Samba dressed their best for the party

Flashy scarf/hat combo, considering we live on the equator.

and we had a work day assembling a compost pile in a corner of my family’s compound

Other than that, my last 11 days were nothing but a lot of sitting and trying to be a language sponge, with limited success.  I’m at level "intermediate low" right now, and I'm only required to be at "novice high," so that's pretty cool.  I'm loving Senegal and I’m so happy I’m here.  Thanks for reading!  Please send me emails with what you have been up to lately.  I miss y’all.  

CBT Stay #1

Honoo heen!  This morning we returned to the training center after having spent the last 5 days in full language immersion with our Senegalese host families. Seven other Peace Corps Trainees and I were placed in the neighborhood of Samba Laube, in the town of Mbour, about a half-hour from Thies.  On Thursday (tomorrow!), I’m going back to Samba Laube, and this time I’m staying for 11 days, so I’ll have to skip my normal Wednesday blog next week, but when I write the week after that, I will have pictures.  Please feel free to call my Senegalese cell phone any time during the next 11 days - I'm sure speaking English will feel really nice.

When I stepped out of the van in front of my compound last Thursday, I was immediately surrounded by 13 jumping Senegalese excitedly shouting at me in a language I didn’t understand.  They grabbed my backpack, purse, and water bottle from me, then the father grabbed my hand and pulled me into their compound.  Everyone was talking to me at once and I had no idea what anyone was saying.  Finally, after about 5 minutes of craziness, a young woman around my age said “seu nome na américa?”  I (thankfully) had had one semester of high school Spanish, which is similar to Portuguese, so I was able to answer that!  I gave her my English name, and she clapped and pantomimed for me to write it in the sand.  After I did so, everyone clapped and hollered, and one of the older women yelled something at the smallest boy.  He gleefully stomped out my name in the sand with his bare feet, then, on cue, everyone pointed to me and yelled “HADJA BALDE!” (it sounds like hahd-jah bald-ay).  And that’s how I got my Senegalese name.

The compound consists of three cement buildings, an outhouse, and a deep well.  There’s no electricity, and I bathe with water from the well, a cup, and a bucket.  I have my own room in the compound, which is about 10 x 15 feet and has nothing but a bed with a Peace Corps supplied mosquito net in it and three giant but harmless spiders.  I am curious about who was using the room before me and how many people are crammed into other rooms now just so I can have my own space, but I don’t have the language skills to ask that yet.  The stars at night are amazing.  

The first day was pretty confusing.  I have a million stories of cross-cultural misunderstandings I could share.  You might remember from an earlier post that I said French is the national language of Senegal, so everyone who’s educated knows some French.  My family is not educated and did not know French...or English…or German…so I had to learn to speak Fulakunda pretty quickly.  I looked up how to say “what’s this?” in Fulakunda (hoko woni?, in case you’re wondering) and wrote the answers to everything they said in my notebook, so I know a ton of nouns but not so many verbs.  A woman named Fatou was teaching me parts of the body that first day, touching her eye and saying “gire” for example, and she calmly whipped out a boob to teach me the words for breast and nipple.  Every morning, I spent a few hours at Fulakunda class with my teacher and two other PCTs learning the language.  The classes were casual – we’d sit on mats and write useful phrases and vocabulary in our notebooks, and every 10 minutes or so someone from the neighborhood would stop by to say hello, or someone would come by to give us cups of delicious, potent, super-sugary tea (attaya).  The other PCTs are having an easier time with acquisition than I am because their compounds have people that speak English or French, so they can clarify when they don’t understand something.  I’m hoping that I’ll get over this initial hump of confusion and start to understand more soon.   It’s frustrating that it takes me 10 minutes of pantomiming and looking up words to say something like “I am going back to Thies tomorrow morning.”

My tokara (AKA namesake – AKA her name is also Hadja Balde) was the young woman who spoke Portuguese to me when I got there.  She grew up in Guinea Bissau, so Fulakunda is her first language, but she learned Portuguese in school.  She’s 27 and has 3 kids, but only two live in the compound, Kadi (3) and Yaya (1).  The oldest kid is still in Guinea Bissau, but I don’t have the language yet to ask why.  Her husband leaves for work very early and comes back late, so I don’t know much about him other than that he’s an Arabic scribe.  There are 4 other women and one other man that live in the compound with me.  I thought the older man’s name was “babba maa” because he kept pointing to his chest and saying that, but I learned on day 3 that “babba maa” actually means “your father” and his name is Mamadou Salif.  He is a fortune teller and has two wives, Adama and Assamau, who are my mothers.   A different woman also named Assamau has a daughter named Mari (5) but I don’t know who or where her husband is.  Fatu has a daughter named Assamau (8).  Jennebou has four kids: Zahara (8), Hulay (6), Mustafa (3) and Samba (infant.)  There’s another kid named Fatamata who’s 9 and I have no idea who she belongs to. I’m pretty sure there are indeed three Assamaus, confusing as that is.  

The legendary Senegalese hospitality has exceeded my expectations.  I feel like royalty.  Everywhere I go, people jump out of their chairs to offer them to me.  Hadja and I share our own bowl at lunch, and when we’re finished the rest of the family gets our leftovers.  I try to help cook, sweep, do laundry, or draw water from the well, and they tell me to stop and sit down, then they bring me tea or juice.  Every day, Hadja’s husband comes home from work with a bag of cheese balls for me that he bought on the way.  For breakfast each day, I am served on a US Presidents plate with a big picture of Bill Clinton on the middle.

None of the kids go to school or have ever gone to school (I asked that several times in several ways, just to be sure, because I desperately wanted to have misunderstood), but they are the happiest bunch of kids I’ve ever seen and they’re delighted with everything I do.  It was shocking to see the way the kids live at first. I want to stress again that these kids are happy, and they seem strong, well-fed, and energetic, but they literally play in the dirt in the compound all day, their clothes are tattered and dirty, they cough a lot, and their noses are always covered in snot.  Kadi and Mustafa frequently pick plastic bags off the ground and suck on them.  A few of them have open sores.  They do always wash their hands before eating, though (thanks former Peace Corps volunteers!).  I brought a deck of uno cards because I thought that playing with the kids would help me learn colors and numbers, but I had to teach THEM numbers before we could play.  They knew how to count objects, but I don’t think they knew that the symbol “8” represented eight objects.  I had a map of the world with me, and when I asked them where Senegal was, where they were, where Africa was, where America was, no one knew.  This might just be a communication problem - after all, I have only been speaking their language for a couple days - but it might be indicative of a larger problem.  In my compound, and I think in most others, the kids are left to their own devices while the men do their own thing and the women do their own thing, so there’s no supervision, formal education, or scheduled activities for the kids.  In my compound there are no books, no magazines, no TVs, and no radios, and I wonder how much the kids learn without those inputs.  They’re great language teachers because they never get bored of talking to me.  When I learn a new word, I say it in Fulakunda 3 times and in English 3 times, then we see who can remember better.   They usually win.

Unrelated, but awesome: I’m on methloquine as an anti-malarial medication, and side effects of that are vivid dreams and hallucinations.  I haven’t had any hallucinations (yet?) but the vivid dreams are sooooooo much fun! Three nights in the last week I’ve been able to recognize that I was dreaming, and then control the dream.  Usually in lucid dreams, sensations are dulled, but with the methloquine, everything looks and feels like it should, and it’s fantastic.  Like, I can fly, and I can feel the air rushing past…and I can eat anything…and I can feel anything…it’s terrific.

Until next time!

~Hadja

Training photos and a language placement!

We’re in the full swing of training now, which is simultaneously monotonous and hectic.  From our arrival last Wednesday until today, we have had daily scheduled events from 8 am until late into the evening.  We do have formal classes, but there are other more casual events on the schedule as well.  For example, on Saturday night, a group of volunteers nearing the end of their service brought us to a bar down the road for a few beers. On Sunday night, there was a trivia competition (featuring a category on Rebecca Black!).  Monday afternoon we did language testing and medical interviews, then went out for more beers. 

"Dry Country" my ass.

Training is excellent.  I had heard before I got here that training would be tough, I would be overwhelmed, and I would feel like quitting, so I had been mentally prepared for the worst, but I could not imagine a more supportive training staff. The classes are well-structured and useful and the teachers are friendly and engaging.  They see themselves as coaches to help us thrive, not as disciplinarians who punish us if we’re not good enough.  So far, we’ve had about 20 formal classes, including “Intro to Malaria,” “Current State of Health in Senegal,” “American Diversity,” “Resiliency,” and “Staying Healthy in Senegal,” and just today we started our local language classes.  Although French is the national language of Senegal (so nearly everyone who's educated speaks some French), we’re expected to learn the languages of our villages so we’ll be able to reach more people at the community level.  The majority of our Peace Corps training is going to be language acquisition based, since it doesn’t matter how much we know about community health if we can’t communicate it with anyone.  My language is Fulakunda, which is spoken mostly in the Kolda region, which is in the rain-foresty, humid, full-of-plants south, which is exactly what I wanted!  After three months at our permanent sites (around September), we’ll be coming back to the training center to do technical training, since our language skills should be somewhat developed by that point.

This is "The Disco Hut."  A lot of our training sessions take place in there.

We have also received our medical kits (basically a suitcase full of all the over-the-counter meds anyone could ever hope for), water filters, and mosquito nets, and we got rabies and meningitis vaccinations and practiced giving ourselves blood tests for Malaria (I’m negative, what up).

The food at the center is usually good.  

Bonus points if you can spot the lizard on the middle pillar.

All the ladies in my training group are as gorgeous as these three.  It's a little intimidating.

Unfortunately, I still can’t make myself like fish, but it seems like every culture has their rice and bean specialties, and I love those!  One of our Senegalese teachers said women should never say they love beans because it’s like admitting they’re farty.  Whatever.

The biologist in me immediately noticed that there are way too many raptors in Thies, and it freaks me out. There are literally thousands of giant predatory birds everywhere.  They swoop over our heads and constantly circle in the sky.  If the Senegalese fishermen are netting enough fish that the leftovers in the market are able to sustain a raptor population that large, it’s no wonder global fisheries are collapsing. I don’t understand this Thies food web and I don’t see how it’s in any way sustainable.

There are a ton of lizards at the training center, too.  They’re hard to get pictures of because they freeze when they sense people nearby, then if you do happen to notice them, they run and hide.  I’ve never lived somewhere with lizards, and I’m loving it.

The other Peace Corps trainees in my group are an amazing group of people.  Nearly everyone has traveled extensively, most have impressive work or internship accomplishments, and 11 of us are PCMI masters students.  Most of the people in my training group are looking for a career in international development or global health after their service, and everyone is smart and inquisitive without ever being boastful of their impressive accomplishments.  I’m really enjoying discussions with them because I feel like they have a lot to teach me.  I definitely don’t feel worthy of being included in their ranks, but I’m honored that some Washington higher-up thought I belonged in a group as exemplary as this one.

As we’ve been learning about the country, I’ve been thinking about possible future projects I could do here.  Apparently within the last 5 years or so there has been a plague of invasive garden pests that have been devastating crops down south, in the Kolda and Kedouga regions.  Since a lot of the people that live there are subsistence farmers, those pests have the potential to ruin a lot of peoples’ days.  I’m by no means an expert on gardening, but I’ve done it before, and I’ll have (pretty much) unlimited free time to research the pests and try out different methods of killing them.  I’ve also thought about working with schools to do after-school programming (like a health and wellness club) or to have community cooking classes to encourage women to include more vegetables into their diets.  It’d be a mistake to choose a project before I even get to my site, but I’m encouraged to find so many possible future projects interesting after only a week!

Tomorrow, we’re leaving the training center for our first homestay, which is when we’ll be tossed, albeit very gently, into a Senegalese family and expected to swim with the culture.  Peace Corps has told us that during our first homestay, we’re supposed to be friendly and humble, and to listen and try to learn a few words.  The Peace Corps staff totally understands that language doesn’t come immediately and they keep telling us to just do the best we can and to not worry about the inevitable mutual misunderstandings.  I’m bringing UNO cards and a bunch of vegetables, so I hope that’s enough of a peace offering to make them like me.  I’ll have lots of stories about my host family in next week’s blog post, I’m sure, but we're supposed to leave all electronics at our training site, so no pictures on that just yet.

Favor to ask for my stateside friends reading this:  Please call me.  The wifi here isn’t wonderful (it is West Africa, after all) so it’s not possible for me to Skype from my computer.  Calls to the US from my phone cost about 40 cents a minute, which adds up fast on a volunteer salary (consider that two kilos of carrots are about 20 cents and two yards of fabric are about 50 cents). You can call my Senegalese cell phone using Skype or a phone card for a very low cost, and calls that I receive here are free for me.  I know I’ve only been gone a couple weeks, but I still miss you.  I don’t want to write my cell phone number on a public blog, but I did put it on Facebook, so look it up or message me and ask for it.  I will have a cell phone all through my service.  When everything around me is foreign it’s really nice to hear a familiar voice talking about familiar things.  All the people in my training group are great, but I have only known them for a week, so there are certain things we can't discuss. Seriously, even if you've only got 5 minutes - call me.

Til next week!

~Barb

Day 1 done!

I am now done with my first day in Senegal, and so far, it’s exceeding my expectations!  It’s around 8pm here now, but this has been a very long day. I woke up at 8, went to Target to buy unnecessary but appreciated last-minute American junk food, went running in the hotel gym, showered, changed, ate one last Chipotle burrito, and boarded a bus from our staging hotel in Philadelphia to JFK airport.  We had to check out of our hotel by noon, but our flight didn’t leave until 9:30, so we had a lot of time to kill.  Naturally, since we are America’s Finest, we decided to get tipsy on $10 airport beers.  I had intended to sleep on the flight, but they had excellent in-flight movie selections (Gravity, The Hobbit, and the TV series Adventure Time) the flight attendants kept walking around and offering us delicious snacks, and I was sandwiched in the middle seat, so I only slept for about a half-hour of the eight-hour flight. 

When I got off the plane in Dakar the first thing I noticed was the temperature.  I’d been worried that it would be too hot, but it was perfect – 80, sunny, and breezy, and the air was scented with saltwater and blooming flowers.  We collected our luggage and went across a parking lot to two waiting busses.  There was an adorable little boy begging everyone for money in Wolof near the bus - I gave him a banana that I had taken from the plane (I’m a bit of a hoarder) even though I don’t think we’re supposed to do that.  They say that giving beggars money just perpetuates the myth that westerners are rich and encourages them to keep begging, but I had just figured that I had a banana I didn’t need and he looked like he could use it.  Whatever.

I fell asleep for most of the 2-hour bus ride from Dakar to Thies (pronounced “chess”, oddly enough) so I missed most of the landscape, but if what I missed was similar to what I saw, there were a lot of dirt hills, baobab trees, and roadside vendors selling watermelons.   I was very happy to see the abundance of green near the road.  I’d been nervous that Senegal was treeless desert.  Maybe it is farther north, but if I end up being placed in a site that’s similar to what I’ve seen today, I’m very happy with that.

The training center is incredible – it feels like I’m staying at a resort.  There are mango and banana trees, a big vegetable garden, and tons of birds and lizards.  We had an impromptu dance party this afternoon.  There were these four Senegalese men who showed up to drum some tribal beats and lead a big group dance.  The dancing was awkward at best, but that was actually perfect, since I have no rhythm but could still easily follow along with the random limb-slinging.  It was a lot of fun, even though I’m sure I looked like an idiot.  Almost all of the other PCTs were also dancing and laughing. 

I have no idea what the rest of the week will look like.  We will get sorted into our language learning groups soon, and language acquisition will be the focus for the majority of training.  I’m hoping that I’ll get a “harder” less commonly spoken language since I’m hoping to be placed in a tiny village, but I’m sure I’ll be happy in a larger town as well. 

I fly out of Minneapolis in less than a week!

As I do last-minute shopping, packing, skiing, beer drinking, and burrito eating, this whole Senegal thing is starting to feel more real.  I have known that I was going to do Peace Corps for about a year and a half, and I have been somewhat ready to leave since the day I got my placement six months ago.  Since the Peace Corps application process is so long, I have already long since mulled over Peace Corps in the abstract sense.  I know I'm going to do it, and I know I'm going to make the most out of it, though there will definitely be some bad times as well.  I know it will change me.  However, after an intense two or three years, it will be over, and in 10 years, Peace Corps will just be another thing I can use in future "never never have I ever" games, like how I once lived in Fargo, or that once I saw a duck eat a garter snake.  It will be a part of my life, but it won't be the definitive event.

Although I'm excited about it now, when I first got my placement, I felt nervous, underqualified, and unprepared to be a health volunteer in Africa.  I didn't know anything about West African culture and I had no experience in community health work.  To make myself get on board with Senegal, I started playing this game where I think of things that could be stressors or discomforts, and I try to see them positively instead.  If a situation sucks, complaining about it doesn't make it any better, but reframing it can sometimes help. It will be really hot. Yes, but the climate can't be uninhabitable because people inhabit it, and I'll get used to it eventually.  I will be constantly confused.  Yes, but being confronted with my own ignorance helps me be a better, more humble person. I don't know anything about community health. Yes, but I have 3 months of intensive training, and the Peace Corps community is incredibly supportive, so it's not like I'll be thrown into the wolves. The food has a reputation of being monotonous.  Yes, but I can get creative by playing around with spices and making it delicious, which I love doing.  I will have very little to do some days.  Yes, but I can read, think, talk to my neighbors, and slow down enough to enjoy the African life pace I've heard so much about.

So, I'm philosophically ready now, but I don't know if I still will be a week from now when I'm getting ready to board that plane and there's absolutely no turning back. I also think I have all the little preparation things ready as well.  My car is sold, I bought 25 packets of taco seasoning, and I have $300 worth of vaccinations. I've been studying French for about two hours a day, and though I'm not anywhere near fluency, I'm a lot better than where I started. I've had happy goodbye hugs with my good friends and lots of quality time in with my family.  I bought a new computer that boasts an 11 hour battery life, which might be useful if I'm at a site without electricity and can't charge it too often.  I still have that nagging feeling that I'm forgetting many important things, but I know that if I do forget something important, my wonderfully supportive responsible parents can deal with it in my absence.

I'm going to try to write regularly (at least once a week) from this point on!