Hot Weather and, Uh, Reading Material

Currently sitting in my room, drinking a Fanta, listening to Wham!, and sitting about as close to the fan as comfort allows. To say that Velingara is getting hot is a bit of an understatement. Now I am not going to say that things are unbearable because obviously people have seemed

Get To Work!

Now I know I left off with my last post about grants, writing them specifically, and I know I stated that I would not write a grant for my waste management project and as for now I am still sticking to that but I could not have guessed that it would be this soon there after that I would be researching writing grants for other projects.

Everyone always says that projects come with time and you don’t necessarily have to find them, they will find you. I always thought it was volunteers that had copious amounts of projects that said this, until now. I have always had my primary project but as a volunteer you are always looking for secondary projects to take on not only as a time filler, because I believe all projects are worth more than just filling time, but as another way for me to extend my resources and knowledge to my community. Well this is the week folks even though timing could have been a little better, though I am not going to get picky; of course my APCD, Amar, was here in Vélingara last week to check on my projects and I was left stumbling with “eh, yea I have projects, uh”. Ok it was not that bad but I did wish that I had more exciting things to talk about other than English Club and my work creating a Pen Pal system, it’s important work in terms of cultural exchange but I want to make a real difference, one that could be measured.

So what are these projects that have seemed to fall in my lap you may ask? Well for starters after Amar’s visit he forwarded me a link to an online article describing a women’s group in Senegal that USAID (United States Agency for International Development) awarded more than $80,000 to for income generating activities. Out of all of Senegal the group just so happens to be in Vélingara and since I am the only Community Economic Development volunteer for miles the project was all mine! Well of course they already had a budget and plan of action but I still wanted to get involved, I was more or less excited about the possibility of being able to work with such a high budget project, it will be fun to see how finances are being managed. So I had the name of the women’s group and the name of the president of the group and I was off to ask around, literally, Vélingara to see if anyone knew this women or group. It took a couple of stops but I ended up finding one of the key people involved in the project, of course it is a male, and I requested a meeting. Later that day I met with him and the Senegalese contact for USAID who is the accountant responsible for overseeing the entire project. I was able to find out more to this mystery project that ended up being a garden with a substantial area of 1 hectare (about 2.47 acres). A few Fantas later I managed to convince the project leads that I could help with trainings, marketing, and management of the produce that is cultivated from the garden. So excited!

While on my journey to find the above mentioned women’s group I ran into a gentleman who was telling me how he works with youth for the entire Vélingara Department (which I guess could be equivalent to a county). I told him I would be interested to hear more about what exactly his work entails and we exchanged numbers anticipating to meet in the near future. Well, the next morning he called me and said he could be at my house in a half an hour which was great because it took no effort on my part and I could then see how serious this guy was about working with me. Well 25 minutes later he is not only at my house but talking to my family like they are old friends, which they were; small world but my sister was calling him her son which just confused me because he was much older but I was relieved to know that I could, at the very least, trust this person not to be a fake or creep. There are apparently 17 ASC’s (Association Sportive et Cultural), which are zones within the mission of the organization who work with keeping youth involved and, well busy nonetheless, predominantly during school breaks but also occasionally during the school year. We would only have a couple representatives from each zone come to the trainings which they would then take the knowledge they learned to hold their own trainings to youth in their zone but we would try to get more youth involved for larger more entertaining events such as concerts or soccer games. His request for me to partner with his project is partly to secure funding, of course. Since some of the youth have to travel upwards to a couple of hours to attend trainings we try to cover transportation costs and lunch, this should be easy to secure since it’s a relatively small amount and there are always grants available that help women and youth. My first request from him was to see if we could arrange a cleanup event of sorts since Earth Day is coming up next month (April 22^nd) and I just so conveniently work in waste management. He loved the idea and I am so excited to kill two birds with one stone, cleanup Vélingara while getting youth and the community involved, genious. We also agreed to do some seminars or trainings to help youth with such skills as business, nutrition or environmental consciousness. Another very exciting project!

The last project that sort of appeared in front of me is working with a community of women in my area of town that want to become self-sustainable concerning rice. Here in Senegal a vast majority, I would estimate more than 70%, eat rice for lunch just about everyday. Considering that rice is a crop that can be grown in Senegal it is crazy to hear how much of it is imported, we are wasting so much money buying something that we are more than capable of supporting ourselves in.  I found out about this community of women through, none other than, the man that has Mogley the monkey that I have some pictures with. He told me he had a great project and, honestly, I used to think he was kind of crazy so I was skeptical. When I showed up to his house to hear about his project he had an Excel spreadsheet with information such as a listing of all the women with their identity and contact numbers, the number of mouths they have to feed, and the amount of land they currently use to cultivate rice. For an older (I would say mid 60’s) Senegalese man he is way ahead of the times concerning technology and I was so impressed to see how much of the information was actually documented and analyzed! I am going to try and help this community of women get a Food Security grant in order for them to expand the production quantity and if we can get a sure fire model maybe we can implement it in other parts of town.

So yes, life is good here in Senegal and I am already getting nervous about being successful in my projects with only about a year and a half left. I know this is entirely way too soon to be worrying about this but it is always in the back of the mind of a volunteer. Though I may not be able to help with every aspect of the above projects I hope that I can get my hands dirty with a few of them. I am here to help my community and I would love nothing more than to look back on my service and be able to honestly say, I really did all that I could and I am proud of my service. Now, GET TO WORK!

Xoxo

When Is Your Work Complete When You Work In Development?

Development Work       

1. work aimed at helping a country become more competitive across many overlapping sectors, from health, to education and many places in between with an end goal in creating sustainability

I have been thinking a lot about sustainability and development work while working in Senegal and each day I come up with a different conclusion. On good days, as you can just about imagine, I think development work is great and we really are making a difference, while on bad days I question what I am doing here and doubt that I am even making any difference at all. Of course I know I am making a difference at some point it’s just a question on if it was the difference that I intended on making.

Our project has been running as smoothly as one can ask but there are still bumps in the road that I want to sort out; they should have pretty easy and realistic solutions.

We submitted out 2013 budget and letter of intent to the Mayors office last week hoping to get funding from the 2013 Velingara budget since the budget has not yet been finalized, even though its March. Everyone at the Mayors office thinks our project is a great idea and that our city is in great need for this type of work; it’s just a matter of finding funds for it amongst all of the other expenses the city holds. We submitted a budget of all of our expenses but Amadou and I have both agreed that if we could even get them to pay for our personnel costs that would be a win in our books. And of course, I should have never looked at it after we submitted it, I found items that were rather important that we forgot to include such as food for the donkey. I guess he isn’t going to be eating this year.

As of late we have found a handful of customers to add to our ever growing list of clientele in hopes to start breaking even and one day begin to earn a profit. We are still working on getting all of the households to pay each month; right now we are at about 18% of households who are not paying on a regular basis and once we get that number down to zero we will have the numbers to be in the green and out of the red. At the moment Amadou, and a tiny bit of help from a couple of other people, goes around to each house each month to collect payments. This is a task in and of it self and takes almost a week to complete. He is constantly being told to come back later, and that is if the person who pays the bills is actually there which is usually never the case. We are hoping, fingers crossed, to open up an office space in the center of the market within the next month so that customers are able to come to us to pay. This would hopefully give Amadou more time to focus on the customers who don’t pay rather than those who do.

Sunday we had an appointment at the garage (transportation hub) in town to install trashcans. We were supposed to do a cleanup beforehand to help them start off on the right foot with keeping the garage clean but of course things did not go as planned. We arrived at 8:30am with trashcans and supplies in hand only to be met with questions regarding the security of the trashcans. I have never really thought about this before, I am not sure if it is a large issue in the states or not, but apparently trashcans are a high commodity here. They are used to store about anything imaginable with food and water for animals at the top of the list. We purposely puncture holes in the bottom of them for this very reason but its nothing a little cement can’t fix. On top of the questions about security we were also met with a debate on price. We have had a couple of prior meetings with the officials from the garage and I tried to bring up the issue on how much the service would cost them but the topic was always set aside and I was told it would be discussed later (I knew I was right and should have settled on a price before we showed up ready to work).

This setback makes me question how serious the garage really is about our project and left with the question, when exactly is your work complete when you work in development? If the garage officials actually want to change the appearance of the garage, and they say they think it’s a great project, then why won’t they take the appropriate actions to ensure that it’s successful? Are they waiting on me to get fed up with waiting on them so that I both fund the project and do all the work on my own? Peace Corps has been in Senegal for 50 years and at what point do we consider our work done and leave Senegal? I could easily write a grant for funding from some European or American NGO and be financially set for another year but that is not what I want my Peace Corps service to be, the American that came and gave us lots of money, which is what a lot of NGO’s become seen as. I want to convince the local government and population to believe in what I am doing and see the positive change that will come once their city is clean. With this I am officially declaring that I will not write a grant for this project during my service. If we want assistance it will be something that Amadou can do on his own and manage even after I am gone. Don’t worry I am sure there will be more posts in the future about my run in with the theory and practice of development.

As of right now I have put on my designer hat and came up with a few sketches on how to secure the trashcans so that Amadou and myself can bring them to a metal workers for quotes. A few initial thoughts were to have the trashcans become the responsibility of a few store owners at the garage to bring in and lock up each night until we come up with a more permanent solution, which would work but being that the officials are apparently more sayers rather than doers they want to not rush into anything and take more time to think about all the options. Poppycock that’s what I say.

So far a few of the ideas that I have are:

·      Incase the trash cans in a single or double wide storage shed (metal or wood) with front doors that lock and a hole on top directly over either one or two trashcans

·      Create a metal cage for either a single or multiple trashcans that can be then chained to a permanent object. The cage would have a front door that locks to empty the trashcan(s) and again a hole/holes on top

·      Fashion a metal ring that would go around the trashcan and another to go from one side up and over to the other side (to prevent lifting the trashcan up). A lock would secure the top bar and would be able to be released to empty the trashcan

·      Dig a hole, throw cement in it, and cement the trashcan in the hole to the ground (not my favorite idea but cities actually do this because its practically free)

I am thinking that these are all basically decent ideas it’s just a matter of determining which would be the cheapest to create yet last the longest, I don’t want Velingara to have to be replacing trashcans every five years.

On other news Amar, my APCD (Assistant Program Country Director) who is in charge of the whole CED (Community Economic Development) program in Peace Corps Senegal is coming to do a site visit tomorrow to see how my projects and living situation are going. I am sure this could be done in an hour but he has the whole day reserved for me to introduce and showcase work partners and projects. I am hoping to use him to influence both the garage and the Mayors office to get more serious about our requests and our services; I think he will be a little more persuasive than I have been in the past since he has the whole Senegalese male thing going on.

Until next time my fellow readers. Take care and thanks for reading. Cheers.

W.A.I.S.T.

A little known affair known as the West African International Softball Tournament, pretty random I agree. Teams from all over are invited to show off their softball skills, or lack there of, cough cough Peace Corps, during a weekend tourney in Dakar. Expats unite!

Another Flat?!

Dear Cruel Cruel World,

I am currently en route to Thies where all the volunteers of Senegal have a two day conference, referred to as All Vol (All Volunteers). The night bus is not exactly the preferred mode of transportation (also not exactly forbidden, yet) according to Peace Corps staff; they say that it is dangerous to drive at night and we are at risk of having drivers whom are over-worked and may fall asleep at the wheel. But if you ask a volunteer who lives 10 hours away from the training center or capital they will tell you otherwise; it is half the price and you don’t waste a whole day, or sometimes even two, just trying to get to your location.

Now if all goes right the night bus would conveniently pass through the town of Mbour which is just about an hour outside of Thies. Mbour is also the largest garage (transit depot) near Alexx, a girl who I talk about a lot and if you have not gotten the hint my now she is one of my closest friends in Senegal, so we were going to meet at the Mbour garage Wednesday morning. This would land us in the same garage around the same time. Perfect right? Well that is only if both of our transports go as planned which I must add about never happens in Senegal and I am sure most parts of Africa in general.

When I bought my ticket for the night bus I was told to be at the gas station, doubling as the bus depot, at 3pm. I assumed this meant around 5:30pm and when I asked to confirm I assumed right. Oh Senegal. Everything went as well as a bus departure could go and we were on the road around 6pm. This was after I thought I bought a very expensive bean sandwich that included the works (lettuce, onions, and vinegar) but come to find out she threw meat chunks on it, I have had worse I guess.

Everyone on the bus was very nice, including one boy in particular who I refer to as my “sugar daddy” to Alexx in a text because he bought me bananas, water, Red Bull, and a can of pineapple! Thanks buddy! (He must be looking for a wife, well he better keep looking). I should have known things were going too smoothly because around 10:30pm I hear a pop and the bus starts filling up with smoke smelling like rubber. Flat tire. Dumb. Since I was just talking to Alexx earlier in the night about the adventures of transportation and how I actually find them rather exciting I figured this was just another adventure so it did not get me too down. I can’t remember ever getting a flat tire, in any sort of vehicle in the states, so I also thought it would be kind of fun to see how exactly changing one of these things worked (such a girl). My dad made it sound a lot easier than what I had witnessed but then again my Corolla was a little smaller than a bus and I am pretty sure it was also about 15 years newer; I can only assume technology also advanced in that time and made changing a tire more streamline than simply banging metal parts together.   

A couple of hours later we were back on the road and considering how many kilometers we were from the next largest town (that is the one thing you can count on in Senegal, kilometer markers, they are everywhere) we were making good time and I would still be at the garage at a descent time to meet Alexx.

The next couple of hours following the flat are spent trying to fall asleep. I have what is normally considered a great seat, it’s a window seat, but apparently this bus has no insulation and it’s actually quite chilly; I also wake up frequently to the random swerve to miss a pothole or obvious increase in speed to pass another vehicle of equal size, real safe.

Right when we least expected it we hear it again, another bang, this time happening around 3:15am. This one is louder and was followed by a little more swerving than the last time. C’est pas possible! It’s not possible! Another flat and the most ironic part was that we were actually prepared and had a spare but we had already used it on the first flat. This time one of the plastic bins containing peanut butter exploded and spilt all down one of the doors to the bus and part of the side, I kind of feel sorry for whomever was expecting to sell the peanut butter. Well I can assume at minimum this means that I am not going to make it to the garage at a descent time to meet Alexx; I sent her a text to call me when he woke up because I was in a bit of a pinch. I asked if there was another spare and much not to my surprise there was not. Let the waiting game begin.

I jumped off the bus to take a look at the new spectacle that is slowly putting me more and more behind and what do you know, not only did we have a flat but the tire actually ripped off a part of the paneling. Not sure how that happens but that is what I was told. Since we were obviously not going anywhere anytime soon I decided to call my mom and dad to say hi. Since I am only mildly patron in this country it was a short conversation due to my lack of phone credit. The only thing left to do was blog, which brings us where we are now. Women and men who lay across benches and are hunkered up against windows snoring surround me. A few of my male peers on the bus have decided to build a fire just off the road, which was a great idea considering how cold it is tonight. When I say cold I want to clarify that I am sure it is 65°F but since its around 87°F everyday this is quite the temperature drop, and we are in the middle of nowhere and its always much cooler in the bush than the city. 5:05am over and out.

(MANY HOURS LATER)

I finally made it to Thies around 3:30pm. We ended up waiting for the second flat to get fixed until 9:30am, six hours on the side of the road is something that I wish to never repeat again. The worst part of that situation was that it was night and we were kind of in the middle of nowhere so there were especially no cars that were just passing by.

I was excited once we were on the road again because I was only about three hours out of my final destination and compared to what I had went through on the trip thus far it would be a piece of cake. Little did I realize that once a “night bus” is seen about during the day it becomes a taxi of sorts and will pick up and drop off just about anyone, anywhere. This can add a lot of extra time to a trip and in my specific circumstance a little more than two hours. I must say I was pretty cheerful the whole time considering the delays and misfortunes we were having but the second I could about taste how close I was I was getting very agitated at just about anything. It was clearly time for me to get off the bus.

Once I got off the bus I had one last leg in my adventure and that was to grab a taxi from the gas station near Mbour to get to Thies. There was a wait for the taxis to fill up (they are like minivans and hold a dozen people or so) and considering the lack of patience that I had I decided to find my own ride, after all it was only about a 45 minute car ride. I ended up finding two special education teachers willing to give me a ride. I got dropped off outside of their school in Thies, about two blocks from the training center where I was to report, for free. Perfect.

By the time I got to the training center there were already almost a hundred volunteers wondering around up to one thing or another and it felt good to finally put an end to my trip. I would not say that this experience jaded my perception of night transportation. I still believe that it is more affordable that the regular car transports that we normally take and if it is, especially not during rainy season, descent weather and your driver is well rested it can be a safe(ish) experience.

Take care all and talk to you soon.

Your Disgruntled Passenger

xoxo

Field trip with the International School of Dakar

I am finally back at site after spending a week with the kids from the International School of Dakar (ISD) and Trevon and Alexx. I have to admit I was more than a little nervous to be surrounded by teenagers again, knowing what I know of American teenagers, but these kids were different.

Playing Catch Up

I have spent the last month or so at site and it, thank god, did not seem that long. Lately I have been getting out of site every two or three weeks because of an event or work function taking place and I am pretty sure my family thinks one of two things: 1) I am the typical American that has a lot of money and just travels all the time – not true except for the love to travel all the time or 2) they believe me when I tell them that I am leaving for work and they think I work all the time. Either way having some time apart keeps me sane, like most families I enjoy them more when I get breaks from them, and they don’t have a foreigner on their hands so we both win.

Trevon and I told Alexx back in September that we would help her with a week long fieldtrip at her site for the kids in Dakar that attend an international school; they are made up of kids who parents could be military (very few) or working for an organization be it governmental or not.  So we are in Palmarin this week staying at a lodge entertaining a group of 14-16 year olds. My tiny contribution in helping Alexx plan small events to keep the kids busy during idle times was to come up with a star gazing activity. I figured we could search for some constellations in the sky, point out some planets, and just take in how beautiful the sky is when you are out of the city. Of course this took some major research on my part since I don’t think I have actually studied the stars since the 8^th grade. It was a good review and I found out some very interesting facts! Did you know stars that have a bluish hue are hotter in surface temperature than those that give off a reddish hue; opposite than you would think? Also a shooting star is the visible path of a meteoroid entering the earths atmosphere and burning up resulting in the light; not a star at all! The best part of volunteering to help with the trip is that our lodging is on the beach and the school is paying for that and our meals. Sounds like a mini vacation to me. I will be sure to report more at the end of the week once they leave.

So I think by now you all know about my project with Waste Management, cleaning up Senegal one village at a time. I have been trying to get Amadou more involved in the books side of things with our organization so he can keep and analyze our records from a business point of view. I finally have him recording each deposit and withdraw transaction at the bank and also purchases we make (repairing our cart, buying donkey food, ect.) for the business. Before I left we actually totaled up the amount of money we should be earning each month if all of the households pay and, no surprise there, we are making less than it costs of the salary of our only employee. Well that is obviously not the business strategy that we were going for so we are going to have to refigure some things and gain new clients. This will be my main focus when I get back to site. We also want to start buying plastics from the community and selling it back to a company in Dakar that reuses it to make all sorts of plastic items from chairs to buckets, just another way for our organization to earn some money. I have a meeting with the plastics company in about a week or so, so hopefully that goes well and we can start the buying of the plastics.

A smaller side project that I have been in works with is a letter exchange program with a school in Minnesota with some students in a nearby village; the teacher, Mr. Ba, is starting an English club and wants my help to expand the program. The teacher that I am working with in the states has more than 200 hundred students so we are working on narrowing down the pool to less than 50 because there are nowhere near that many students here with enough English skills to communicate with a pen pal. Also, randomly, there is a teacher in England that contacted me looking for French speaking students to correspond with some students in her French club. I hope it all works out because it will be a pretty cool way for the students to interact with kids their own age and learn about a new culture.

Of course my day is filled with awkward moments but one of the more recent events that comes to mind is talking money with my host brother. I recently overheard him talking to potential renters about the price it would be to rent a room in the house and I was both amazed and appalled that he was charging me twice as much (I was also very excited that I knew what he was talking about since it was a mix in French and Pular). One minute I hear that I am like a part of the family and they would have no problem if I didn’t contribute anything to live there but then the next I am being charged like some foreigner that doesn’t know any better. So after much consideration, about five seconds, I decided to confront him about the money situation. It took me a couple of days to come up with enough nerve to ask him, and careful talks with Alexx ensuring me that I could do this, but once I did finally talk to him I felt a huge sense of relief.  My work partner came over, we had a meeting with him, my brother, and my mom and we sorted things out. He basically said that he doesn’t want me to feel like the family is taking advantage of me and that I could pay nothing and it would affect nothing (still trying to figure out why I pay rent then, urgh?). My new years resolution is to speak my mind more because I feel like things either happen to me or I witness things where after I look back on it I wish I would have said something, especially since it will give me a peaceful mind if I would just speak up. So I am working on it and I feel like I am doing a pretty good job thus far; 11 months left in order to ACTUALLY keep a resolution that I made.

Take care everyone, thanks for reading again its great to know that there are a few people that are following along with my adventures.

A Wedding Tale

I attended my very first Senegalese wedding this week and I must say it was one of the more interesting events that I have attended thus far. Amadou, my work partner, was very passionate that I come to his house and spend the entire day with his family to witness all of the different events that go along with a wedding; similar to in the states we have the ceremony, reception, opening of gifts, ect. And what wedding would you say that I was attending? Not Amadous, he already has two wives, it was his brother Ouseman to his second wife.

I arrived to their house on Sunday late morning sometime. The number of people at their house was more than usual as expected; there are at least four different families that live in his compound in which I can only piece together Amadous family and his brothers family, everyone else is somehow related but I have not figured exactly how yet. Everyone was either relaxing making tea, the men, cooking, the women, or watching tv and playing, the kids. I usually do a mix of the three things depending on who I want to sit and watch considering after the first five minutes my language skills are unbelievably more elementary than the first five.

Amadou and I went over to the brides house to see her all dressed up upon returning from the salon. Apparently day one of the events the bride has a majority of the festivities at her house before the men from the grooms side go to fetch her to bring her to the grooms house. She was very beautiful, in Senegalese standards, but was a little overdone in America standards. Nonetheless I admired how dressed up she was. She shed a few tears once she saw her family because her mom passed away when she was young and she wanted her to be here for her wedding day, understandable though that was explained to me later while originally I thought she was crying because she was marring a man twice her age. Oops.

We arrived back to Amadous house where the rest of the day was filled with eating and some more sitting, which is expected at this point for any Senegalese gathering. Wilma and Jordan arrived just in time to say hi, make an appearance, and be the perfect excuse for me to leave to go grab a beer. While I thought this was the end of the festivities for the day I was informed otherwise and promised to return after “grabbing dinner”, our code for beers, with the girls.

I got back and the dance was starting to get hip happenin’ and it was a great show to say the least. I definitely did not take part in the dancing only because their dancing is much, much, much different than what I am used to or know how to do. I have been known to bust a move in my day but I already draw enough attention to myself as it is by only being visible the last thing I wanted was to be even more in the spotlight, if that is even possible. I got some great video and was stopped from going home multiple times as Amadou promised that the bride was coming soon and I had to wait.

A couple of house later at least a dozen motorcycles came screeching down the street, by this time it was nearly 11pm. I ran into the middle of the road behind the wedding photographer to get a better shot but was quickly pushed to the side because Amadou was scared for my life. I didn’t actually think they were driving that fast considering they were a half of a mile away but as they drew closer I saw why Amadou was so concerned. Half of them were gaining so much speed it looked like they were going at max speed while others were doing doughnuts or something equally dangerous yet stunning.

The bride showed up in a small red car behind the cyclists and I was in awe. I was warned that she would be covered but they said in white so I pictured more of a translucent veil than a sheet like a ghost. Her head was down almost resembling someone in regret or sorrow. The car did a few circles as people jumped on it screaming in joy for her arrival.

An “Alham”, or a transportation van that is usually near the point of breaking down that carries about double in which it was intended for, arrived shortly after with her belongings and gifts from her family to the family of the groom. To make my life even more awkward, as she was led from the car to the house Amadou insisted that I take a picture with her as she is walking in with her closest family members. Not only is this girl in the middle of the biggest day of her life but she gets to share it with some white girl that she has never seen before, talk about new best friends (I cant wait to get a copy of the video to see just how much of a part of this strangers wedding I was, and its forever documented).

After ushering her in the house, everyone followed, the dancing continued, and her gifts were offered to the grooms mom. As far as I know she spent most of the rest of the night in someones room sitting on a bed with her friends and family, still fully covered, as people ate and danced in her honor. By this time it was almost midnight and I just had to go to sleep after being there for more than 12 hours. I vowed to return in the morning for more wedding rituals.

The elders were supposedly gathering around 10am to discuss family matters with the new member of the family and true to Senegalese fashion this did not happen until after lunch; you would think I would be used to this by now between here and Portagee time in Hawaii (love you Bird).

For the meeting with the elders it was a little more similar to wedding events that I am used to but still with a twist. The bride sat on a mat in the middle of the room on the floor still covered while others took a seat wherever there was room. I still can’t get used to the sight of the bride covered and I am sure I was staring more than one should but it’s just so strange that this is her normal for the next two days. As far as what was translated to me the elders, both men and women, spoke words of confidence and well wishes to the new bride as well as explaining the gifts that were brought from her family to her new husbands; items such as brooms to enable her to clean, cookware to feed her family, and you can just about imagine all of the other presents. Typical. One thing that surprised me with the whole more than one wife thing is equality of the wives. Men are only allowed to marry another women if they love her equally as the first, not more or less. This means if the husband buys his first wife a new outfit he must do the same for the second, if he gives money for food he must do the same for them both. Strange that there is equality amongst how the wives are treated but not how men and women are treated. Hmmm.

After the meeting I went home to shower and change, and any time I use this term it is very loose in the sense of showering and is referred to taking a bath with a bucket and cup. I took part in getting an outfit made of the same material as the women in Amadous compound but once I arrived I soon learned that it was the fabric of the event, dozens of women had the same material as I.

There was a band consisting of six or so different drummers, one of which was a man with fake dreds and Jordan and I were really nervous that they were going to fall out of his head but thank god they did not I could not even imagine how incredibly awkward that situation would have been. Women danced in a large circle while throwing cloths on each other, still not sure what that represents, while dozens sat around to watch the show. Since this was going on more than 24 hours of a party it ended fairly early, which I was not upset about.

This whole time the bride sat in a room, covered by a cloth, while others celebrated in her honor. Out of all of the brides that I have known back home I could not picture a one that would be ok with sitting on the sidelines as everyone else danced and had a good time. Though our cultures are very different, and I think I would prefer to be on the side of the American bride, I was more than grateful to be able to witness the events of the wedding. I will forever remember it and be grateful for how much work goes into planning one.

To: The Newlyweds

Good luck and may you have a thousand kids and an even longer happy life.

From: That one white girl at your wedding.

Women: strong, independent, inspiring

I have been living with the Barry family going on five months now and I can honestly say I have found my routine. I have figured out everyones personalities and have come to find everyone sort of predictable. My brother will forever annoy me, as brothers should I suppose, with his misinterpretation of the word privacy. His mother with her grandmother-like charisma and attitude towards life now as she gets to sit back and enjoy it more. His oldest daughter with her jokester type ways, always hiding behind corners trying to scare me, or race me down the street in which I never let her win. I am finally finding myself missing members of my family when I am away from site for a while which is something that volunteers say comes with time. My first couple of months here I would have never thought that I would find myself content with being at my house, away from other volunteers, and just living amongst my family. But I am. Just the other night I found myself teaching my little brothers, who are around twelve years old, about the stars and planets.

Random picture: My sister was so excited that
 I finally let her braid my hair! 

Side story; my uneducated mother pointed at Jupiter and told me it was not the same as the others. I am not sure if she was steering in the direction of the moon and comparing it to the other stars or if she recognized Jupiter as being different because of its glow but either way I was impressed. When I asked her how to she knew it was different she just pointed to her brain and said, “I know” with a little smirk on her face. It is entirely possible that I totally misunderstood her because we had this conversation in Pular but I don’t believe so. I love this woman. She is by far my favorite person in the house, with Mari (my brother’s wife) in close second. You know how grandmothers have that glow about them? She has this. She plays with her grandchildren all day. She walks around town visiting her friends. She cooks maybe once a week and when she does she looks about as proud of her accomplishment as I would have looked if I had said that I had made dinner.

The other day while Mari was preparing lunch we had one of our first significant conversations; usually she speaks to me in Pular to make me practice so our conversations don’t go much past where are you going or what are you cooking? I can’t recall how we got onto the topic but I somehow squeezed in questions concerning various topics such as how women react to men having multiple wives, women doing all of the housework, why they want so many children, the possibility of an education, and work outside of the home. Her answers mostly caused me a sense of sympathy for Senegalese women, and women in general that live in a society where they are repressed because of their gender. I know I have talked about this before but everyday I am forced to watch this smart, funny, intelligent woman sit home to cook, clean, and wait on her husband and children. I am not saying she is any less of a person for doing this but it’s the fact that she didn’t really have a choice in the matter that makes me sad for her. Sure they say they were not forced to get married at 15 years old and quit school to start having children. Sure one person may have not forced them but society certainly does. I guess I just wish that she finished school, maybe even went on to graduate from college, and from there if she wanted to start a family and stay at home then so be it; I think it’s great that there are children out there who are actually raised by either one or both of their parents. I just want more for her.

On the topic of marriage and multiple wives it seems women are split on the issue, some are for while others are against the idea. I have a feeling that a major reason why women are for the idea of having sister wives is that there are more hands around to help with all the chores. I would have to agree with them on that, who wouldn’t want someone doing laundry while you cook? Less work for you!

Though she never finished middle school Mari ensures me that she is going to go back to school and finish. This is something that we even hear a lot in the states but the truth of the matter is that it’s so much harder when you have the responsibilities of a family to finish school. I am not sure if she was just telling me that she would go back some day to humor me or because she actually wants to. But again, wanting to go back and being able to go back to graduate are two different things.

On a slightly different topic but still following the theme of gender inequality, I was talking with another volunteer in my stage, Lisa, just the other day about men and how entitled they feel in this society. A woman will raise her son and someday he will have more power in the house than her, the same woman who raised him and taught him all he knows about life and living. Just because he has a penis he is considered smarter, more worthy of an education, and more capable of running a household than a woman. Times are changing here and more and more women are finishing highschool, going on to higher education and landing great jobs but just like anything else there are still those people who are behind the curve and think women belong at home. It is really hard to sit back and watch as women are treated like second-class citizens but I think that’s why I get along with the women in this country more than I do men. I know I sound like a broken record right now but just bare with me. The Peace Corps also recognizes that in order to have a successful country all members of society need to be contributing members, men and women, which is why we work so much with womens groups. We help them become entrepreneurs and give them the training they need to be successful because once they are profitable the country can begin to be profitable. Women power! (Man oh man I should have been a Women Studies major. How interesting that would have been to learn about gender development over the years, but I can just hear it now, what kind of a job can you get with that besides teaching Women Studies?)

Thank you again fellow readers for reading on as I rant about how unfair life is. I am sure you all already know that and don’t need to read my blog for it to be reassured. Who knows maybe my work here will inspire me to work in civil rights or gender development?

Cheers.

Christmas Week and a Little Update

Good thing all of the thousands that read my blog don’t pay money for a subscription, otherwise you would be mighty upset with the time between this post and my last. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.

My last week was great! I had the chance to go to Dakar and stay in a fancy hotel for three nights with some of my best friends in my stage (training class). Our time was filled with air conditioning, amazing food (great sushi in Dakar, who knew?), laying by the pool, watching Christmas movies, exchanging Christmas gifts, and in my case sleeping three to a bed in search of a cheaper vacation. I am sure you have seen the pictures that I posted on Facebook so I am not going to go into too much detail but I received a hand woven little basket that now houses my jewelry along with a necklace and bracelet made of elephant tusks. Shout out to Marsha who was my secret Santa, great gift!! I was given the wonderful opportunity to get a secret Santa present for Trevon who just so happens to be the pickiest person I know, he might argue he just has great taste. You could just about imagine how much fun it was to shop for him and being my predictable self I waited until the day before I left site to try to find him something. He “non-chalently” told me on the phone one day that if I had him I could just get him a Pular hat. Acting about as sly as I could muster up I laughed it off and told him he wish I had him. So it was official, I now had to find a Pular hat for him. I know he wants one and I live in Pular country. What is a Pular hat you may ask? Well Pular is an ethnic group originating from Guinea but are all over Africa now. I am apart of this group as I learned Pula Futa during training, which is just one of the many dialects of the Pular group. The Pular people live in the south of Senegal, as do I, and are known to work in fields. They have this infamous almost Chinaman-like hat hand woven of wood used to keep the sun off them in the fields. You can find people wearing them everywhere down south and though they look a bit ridiculous the hats are great for protecting yourself from the sun. I ended up finding a man who makes them and he told me he could come up with something in the 24 hour deadline that I had before I left for Dakar. I was expecting something with brown or black leather but the artist was feeling fancy I guess because on the hat there was red, green, and yellow died leather. Oh well, it looked great and he loved it. Success.

Being away for Christmas is always hard but it makes me even more thankful for everyone that I left behind. I truly do have a great family, and I am not just talking about my immediate. I am fortunate to have people back home that care enough about me to Skype with me or send me care packages of all the things I am missing back home. Every day that I am here I am reminded, literally reminded by people telling me, that I am getting older, I need to get married and start a family. Though I do support people who make those decisions for their own lives it is not what I want, at least not right now, and I am thankful for a family who respects that. If I belonged to just one of hundreds of other cultures around the world I would not have the opportunity to further my education, travel, and have a career. Thank you family for being who you are, the loving, noisy yet ever so entertaining group that you are; this goes for both sides. It’s late but Merry Christmas, Joyeux Noël (French), and Ala Okuma Ko Moyi (Pular).

I am planning on staying in Velingara and spending the New Year with my family. I have been traveling a lot lately with the holidays and mandatory trainings and am honestly a little interested to see just how the Senegalese welcome the New Year. Omar, a friend of my brothers, said they kill a chicken, make salad and the kids light off fireworks. Besides the chicken part it sounds like a great time to me! Updates to come.

And as a side note I feel like I need to mention the latest intruder that I have found in my room. A toad. Or maybe it was a frog. Not really sure he was too hoppy for me to take a good look at him but he was less of a hassle to chase out of my room than the usual suspects so I am thankful for that.

And finally, as sort of a time filler and to help out my fellow volunteers I have been writing articles for our CED Newsletter (Community Economic Development, the program that I am in if you have been following along in past posts). None of the pieces are works of art but they are informative. The newsletters come out quarterly so it’s not too much of a commitment, which I like. I will start to post either my more interesting articles or the whole newsletter in case any of you feel like you don’t read enough about life on the big continent. Take care my fellow readers, thanks for taking time to see life through my eyes and until next time.