hi guys! yup, still alive! and where to begin! so begins the 3rd chapter of my life (the first being my pre-college days, the 2nd being college itself) and there are so many stories and updates but i dont even know how to mention it all. guess i'll just start typing...
sidenote: mosques are beautiful.
so about 3.5 weeks ago, i was dropped off in my lovely village of yang yang and thrown into a world with a beautiful mixture of solitude and a new definition of what it means to be part of a family and a community. like i said, my nearest volunteer currently lives 55 km away from me and the regional office is about 75 km, which is around 50 something miles. normally that would take less than an hour to drive but here, traveling 75 km requires a good 4 hours or so. it's such an interesting way of traveling but i will get to it later. anyway, so my first couple of days in the village entailed setting up my living quarters for the next 2 years, decorating my room, meeting and greeting the family, the community, the school, and most importantly, getting familiarized with the health post. the village was kind of excited for a new volunteer but at the same time, it's old news for them because they had another volunteer there 5 years ago or something like that and they were reminiscing about that volunteer. i took a short clip of my room a couple of days in so it's a little more set up now but roughly the same i'd say. still no table or bookshelf... when will that happen? haha
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkKuMGZYACM
not gonna lie, it's a bit tough being thrown into a foreign situation all by yourself. my language is pretty good for only having learned it for 2 months but it's still not amazing. i can converse with people but its so hard to grasp entire paragraphs and even harder adjusting to the local accent and vocabulary. a good analogy would be a native of london who learned british english, going to the dirty south and conversing with hill billys (well that is an immense exaggeration but you get the idea). the language is coming along though and although i feel like i havent been making progress, im starting to pick up things easier and ideas are starting to get across. my family in yang yang is very nice (although the kids are slightly bratted and spoiled rotten and arent very well-behaved for that matter - tolerable to some extent) but they are really different than my family back in tassette. for one, the tassette family was just full of jokers and it was so much more lively and fun. but as a whole, yang yang is much more laidback - i am truly living in the countryside. things are just slower and quieter - which is nice, but maybe doesnt suit part of my personality very well. nonetheless, it is a posh situation in the barren dessert - there's electricity (most of the time) and cell phone reception (most of the time), there's water (although it tastes funny) and my family has variety on meals (which is a huge step up). ive also been here only 3 weeks and i knew my other family for 8 so i gotta give my new family time - make some connections whatnot.
so what have i been up to? there's been a lot of setting up and establishing myself in my room, village, and surrounding. i painted blackboards in my room and right outside my room for writing down new words that i learn or keeping a calendar/schedule reminder. i think it's so cool that you can paint a blackboard onto a wall (in actuality, it probably is just regular black paint but there's just something about it that makes it look special and different and blackboard-ish)
ive also been working on my personal garden. it's quite an accomplishment really. a small 6 by 7 meters or so block of space takes a lot of time to turn into a decent looking garden; and even then, you dont know if things will grow out of it. i did end up using the space right next to my bathroom / shower but it also involved restructuring the millet stalk fence to enclose my garden on the other side and open it up on my end for an entrance. here's a picture of the starting plot of land.
i started my tree pepinieres, filling little sacs with a mixture of soil (sand and clay) and cow manure. it doesnt look like a tedious task but it took 3ish mornings to complete. it's too hot to work during the daytime and even the mornings, the rising temperature makes any manual labor slightly uncomfortable. from digging the pit and finding niim leaves and wood ash for natural insect repellent, to finding and carrying manure in large amounts, to fetching water to make the mixture, and then individually stuffing little sacs is quite time consuming. i made 95 in the span of 3 mornings (aka like a couple of hours) - totally lost 5 bags by accident to the wind, haha. i plan on doing definitely 50 more in the future but maybe a lot more since i spoke with eaux et forets (water and forest group) and they want me to help them with reforestation of the area. the video i posted really gives you a clear idea that there arent that many trees and it really is a desert and trees are just amazing. they provide shade amongst many other things!
the next step involved double digging three 1x3ish meter plots and another 1x1 meter plot. it was definitely tiring but what a workout, look at these arm muscles, haha! i used a mixture of cow and goat and sheep manure this time - the sifting took forever and all my clothes smelled of manure for quite some time. i laughed out loud one morning to myself at the thought of me having played with poop all day for quite some days.
the final garden - voila! it's quite a cozy garden if i may say so myself. the fence in the back is patched up and one of my younger siblings decided to take the liberty upon himself to create his own little plots in my garden, without asking of course - which kind of messed up the perfect spacing and orderliness of the garden but it adds character - and it's kinda cool to see what he's going to do with them. though i foresee him asking me for seeds to plant. right now, the plots are seedless but watered daily, letting the weeds grow so that i may de-weed before planting actual seeds - like cabbage, eggplant, carrot, hot peppers, bitter tomatoes, bissap, watermelon, tomatoes, and moringa. this should be super exciting and disappointing. i dont expect anything to grow this first time around since my lack of experience in gardening and farming will probably contribute to the death or growth-less-ness of my plots. but we shall see; enshallah, i will have a garden that actually works. Oh and I will also plant mint and attempt apple tree seeds. Most likely it will fail but gotta try right? I do want to start a garden when I get back to the states, some form of urban garden on rooftops using spare tires and whatnot. I saw such a garden and it was just a fantastic idea.
i've been doing some talking with families trying to find out what my future projects could be and just from observation and dialogues, it really seems like yang yang is well off. They’re pretty well off for a rural community out in the middle of nowhere – there’s electricity and running water, some families even have tvs and fridges. Of course if you compare them to urban folk, they are considerably poorer, but much more well off compared to some villages I’ve seen. The community pretty much wants to become a road town so that theres more traffic and business and commerce through the area, but it is kind of out of my control. In my opinion, the area where the village is placed is so out of the way that I don’t really think it’s possible unless they can start some major attraction, like a beautiful lake or something. They also want more cars to pass through so that it’s easier to travel to and from the village but I have no control over that either. I’d say daily, there are 2 cars that leave and 2 cars that return – so 4 cars pass through the village each day – yeah it’s quite bad. Hmm…
I’ve also been talking and hanging out at the health post which they call a hospital because of the multiple rooms. I could do some malaria prevention causeries and such but otherwise, it’s just the regular skin infections, arthritis, and head and body aches. But definitely causeries on the importance of prenatal and postnatal visits is in order, as well as AIDS/HIV and other STI talks, and birth control and family planning – ahh, I have a tough time ahead. A problem I have encountered is that the majority of people that visit the health post don’t live in yang yang but the surrounding villages and out in the forest. With people so spread out, what kind of projects can I do? Traveling is not easy either so I have to figure that out.
What was really cool though were the vaccination days. We got to travel out into the forest to give out vaccinations. The car ride to find these villages (and I use the word village here loosely because it was more like 5 huts and that’s it – maybe families is more accurate) was super fun because beyond my village, there are no roads, just tire tracks in the sand – and they cross this way, split every so often and just didn’t seem to be very useful because sometimes the tiretracks end and then we’re just driving on sand. So I was super amazed that we found anything and we weren’t lost even though sometimes, we had to ask for directions – and by directions I mean have the villagers point the direction to the next village. But wow, do they live in the middle of nowhere. The words civilization and isolation are given a new meaning! The closest villages to my village looked like villages but as we progressed farther and farther into the bus, people’s huts looked shabbier and toward the end, there weren’t huts at all. It became just some luggage and maybe a cot and floor mat underneath a tree. When I came to Africa, I thought of living a minimalistic lifestyle so I only brought the bare minimum (or what I thought is bare minimum) of stuff; but minimalistic lifestyle now has a new definition. They really have close to nothing but the most essential of essentials. But vaccinations were amazing. We gave out polio vaccines as well as vitamin supplements and anti-helminthes. With the ‘forest’ being so vast, I hope we covered everyone!
Traveling to and from my village is quite a journey – as well as all other travels for that matter. So imagine a pickup truck of regular size. Then put a metal grill around the perimeter of the trunk to tie things on. Then put some wood planks across for seating. There you basically have my transportation. We sit on the wooden blanks, all 30 of us (remember this is only your average sized pickup truck) and beneath our dangling feet, there are 20 or so sheep and goats, baggage of all shapes and sizes, and chicken tied to the sides of the truck. It’s such a fiasco (no that’s not the right word, maybe a circus show? Haha) of a car ride but it was so much fun. I felt like I was on an amusement park ride because we had to duck from getting hit my spiky tree branches and the car slowly wobbled and swayed toward our destination.
Normally it takes 30 minutes to get from my village to the road town of Dahra, where the weekly markets are, but our transport picks up people and livestock along the way in the bush so the ride actually becomes like 2 and a half hours long. Once in Dahra, if I wanted to get to Linguere where my regional house is, I would have to go to the garage and wait for a minivan to fill up to twice or 3 times its capacity, which on a good day takes about an hour (ive waited close to 5 hours once for a car to fill up) and then it’s just another hour to Linguere. So total travel time for 75 km (like 50 something miles) = ~4 hours. A lot of the traveling also occurs very early in the morning so I have to get up at 4:30 or 5:30 at times. It’s so serene out though, almost doesn’t look any different than the states!
Just some pictures of bugs…
This one is more interesting. One night as I was going home, I heard a crunching side as I was opening my door. Shining your light in the dark at a bizarre sound is never a good idea, just word of advice. I see this massive bug eating one of the large beetles that inhabit my area. These beetles are already quite large to begin with so imagine seeing an even larger bug, that is quite ugly if I may say so myself. I find out much later that it’s called a horse scorpion, or as wiki likes it to be called, the wind scorpion or camel spider. they're... quite fast.
and i read a lot. which is good because i never had that pleasure or leisure to read books back home and i was missing out on so many great books (thank you mepham for giving me shantaram minutes before my departure from india - one of the best books i have ever read and i definitely recommend it to all of you). music wise, i have to thank ratatat and owl city and la roux and silversun pickups for carrying me through the days. without these 4 great artists, village life would just be a little less unpleasant.
But on to a more serious note. Ive realized that I can do a lot of projects outside my village and that a lot of you can get involved. There’s so much more that this place needs and we are fortunate enough to be able to contribute to the cause. If youre interested, do a google search on talibes. Theyre children that go to koranic schools and in doing so, they leave their family and live in, a form of poverty, in a way. They don’t own many clothes, if not just the clothes on their backs, and they beg for alms for food. Many of them don’t own shoes so they walk around barefoot, which is quite dangerous not only because there could be broken glass or whatnot, but also the worms and other parasites that can dig into your skin and embed themselves (look up creeping eruption for one example lol). Shoe donations, shoe drives, or just companies sponsoring a massive purchase of used shoes or whatnot would do amazing things for the lives of these children. And any of you looking for ways to help financially or know connections to other organizations, those are always welcome. I guess what my area needs is an economy, a means for making a living actually. Since a lot of them are farmers, if I could just set them up with a large corporation, say exporting peanuts to make American peanut butter, just imagine the possibilities. Of course im getting ahead of myself so gotta still study the inner workings of my community and the surrounding communities that work with mine. Once I understand the culture and tradition and people better will I be able to do a better job.
Here’s a progress of my hair, lol. Opinions? haha
I will blog more in a month when I can say for sure what my actual project is. Pretty much just observing life and looking for opportunities and making connections now. Theres another training session in about a month so that’s when everything will be more solidified. And I leave yall with this lovely image… I found Reqles! Lol… I thought it was a magical alcoholic beverage the way people were describing it but in essence, it’s just a minty Bacardi 151 if you think about it. Strong and minty… quite deadly.
and so begins the adventure. the two years starts... now. these last two days were just partying and hanging out with our host families and then swearing in, in Dakar, at the Ambassador's residence. let me say, it is a sweet ass crib. maybe i should consider becoming an ambassador somewhere. if my wolof and french get really good after two years, i would totally consider here. wolof, french, english, and chinese - the 4 pretty basic needs of senegal - since now there's a lot of business with china and all. anyway, these two months really did go by quickly and im super amazed at how we've all picked up the local languages. tomorrow i will be traveling to my residence for the next 2 years. got a lot of furniture to buy and a lot to learn about traveling locally in my region. dont know my internet situation but it'll probably be a while til my next blog. my address for sending mail has changed so check out the bar on the right side of the page. the v-card reference is pertaining to our status - going from PC trainees to PC volunteers. it's official. but i digress as usual. i'll let the pictures do the talking.
this is me and my mom and me in my senegalese booboo with a little touch of american culture. obviously. if only you can see the patterns on the outfit - BUBBLES!
another of my brother and mom and me. had to change because i didnt want to get my booboo dirty because i needed it the next day for swearing in.
a group photo of tassette group with our families and our LCF (language and cultural trainer)
i dont think ive ever posted a picture of what a bar looks like here so here it is! it's pretty much someone's courtyard, someone's home. talk about divey? yeah... love it!
team GOODWIN! the awesome group that's going to the linguere/louga region - the only 4 that can actually live in the hot desert and make it out alive. YOU KNOW!
rainbow? pride? lol senegalese clothing is just awesome.
light sky blue is beautiful.
and of course we have to do a jump photo!
team wolof - my language group. ballerrr!!!!
a michigan wolverine photo. obviously we didnt know each other during college - and we can thank our enormous school for that - what a sad fact.
and group photo!
we are awesome. well, here's to success in all our projects. i miss you guys back in the states. wish we could chill together but 730 days... not long at all.
oh and got some internet time so posted a couple of random videos:
1. the junior high prom that i was talking about in the last post - vid 1, vid 2, vid 3
2. young kids rapping - do we blame france or america?
this is our last week of training. after friday, we will officially be peace corps volunteers and next week, we will be sent to our villages for the start of our 730 days of service. talk about how time flies! these last few days have been full of activities and new adventures, lots of mixed emotions and feelings. we have left our 'practice' host families and have returned to the center for our final week of training and examinations. it's a pretty traumatic time but i am getting ahead of myself.
two months of hard work gardening and yay our garden looks... semi decent! lol, the forest of bean plants just makes up for the other patches of our garden where nothing grows. but i am proud nonetheless of what we've done. it's been tough, a school falling on our garden and all.
this is a pretty good summary of life in the village. solitude. haha not really, ok maybe just a little. photographs cant capture it but look how sad the donkey is, all alone in the middle, purposeless, wandering nowhere. on a better note, i no longer hear donkeys calling out in the middle night. instead, it's the mefloquine that's keeping me up now. i should really switch but i guess it's fine.
i will really miss my 'practice' village of tassette. we made many friends and i was just starting to get to know people. now i know why living 2 years with your village, it will be very hard to leave afterward. during our volunteer visit, we had to pick up a volunteer who was done with her village and not gonna lie, i teared a little watching her departure. the village loved her so much and she loved them. women and children were crying, the men were saying a prayer and everyone joined in. it was so beautiful and so touching. i am so blessed to have this experience. it was hard to leave tassette but i will definitely visit my family and friends there over the next 2 years.
we went to watch a junior high futbol game. the junior high consists of about 5 classrooms and just a courtyard of sand for futbol. thinking back to all the amenities that we had access to when we went to school, they really need and deserve more than what i can ever give them.
these are the women in our village cooking a feast. ever wonder how much food and preparation go into events? there was an event at the school and the women all gathered in our family compound. they slaughtered an entire cow and pretty much cooked it in a couple of pots, large enough to boil babies. preparation took all night the night before and all morning the day of. it's so impressive to cook for an entire village. unbelievable. it was quite good actually, and there were olives!
just another shot of the pots. the amount of fire wood consumed is quite frightening.
i LOVE this baby. this may be the baby that i will take back home (haha jk, well enshallah). how's this one becky? he's soo adorable. lol
as was india and nepal, it is no different here. boys holding hands with boys is no biggie. same with girls. why is western culture so drastically different?
now... this was amazing. it was quite the best last weekend in tassette ever. we got to crash this 'prom' as we call it just because the whole week prior, girls were weaving their hair and braiding and just getting all beautiful, the boys were shaving their heads and getting all spiffy. and then we get to this 'prom' which turned out to be a terrible variety show but boy, was american rap culture rubbing off here. the boys all rapped or lipsynced and try to act as gangster as possible while the girls and children sat around oogling. it was quite a sight actually. there was some dancing but it was kind of like 6th grade dance where the boys dance together and the girls dance separately. sad and cute.
just a shot of the girls all dressed up with their hairs all braided. everyone is quite pretty if i may say...
our neighbor doodoo can rapping. i love his name...
and then after, we crashed a baptism. it was so funny because we just walked in and they were like here, come eat! and that was bizarre - it was a bowl of rice with foie (liver) and a heart in the middle. the mom threw us all a piece of liver so we had to eat it. yeah, still not a big fan of dry weird tasting meat. im glad she didnt throw us a piece of heart. that wouldve topped it. anyway, it was a pula fouta baptism so slightly different but just as enjoyable. the dancing was phenom, never really saw the baby... hmm
a birds eye view of the surroundings of tassette. yesterday was our 2 month anniversary in senegal. i am really here... rad
this is the second baptism that we crashed. it was quite embarrassing because we tried to leave in the middle of a prayer because we thought we were overstaying our stay but the head of the household literally shouted "wait, come back, eat!". everyone turned their heads and stared at the tuubaabs. it was... yeah. but we got to eat lax which is just millet with soured milk aka yogurt, which is delicious. i want more yogurt in my life... let's see if the north can make that happen.
the children around the children bowl scavenging for any little bit of lax. this reminds me of the night before when we tried to crash a soiree, which never really happened because we got there too early and parties dont start til after midnight or like around 1am. that's just too late for my old body. it was in this abandoned shack which was quite shady. perfect place for kidnapping tuubaabs really. oh well... this weekend when we swear in, in dakar, we will go out to a club in style. it will be legendary!
my 'second' dad. my family is such jokers. i will miss them dearly...
we got traditional clothes made. dont they look awesome?! i didnt get to take a picture of mine but im sure i'll have some pictures by the end of the week that i will try to post sometime... whenever lol. it's kinda big on me. i look like a potato sack really but it'll do.
the last family photo we took. it's missing a couple of women but it'll have to do. i will definitely visit them in 2 months time when we return from the desert. never knew i could get attached to people i knew so little, but it happens. hospitality and humor does something to you. that's the only really cool thing about senegalese culture. no matter how small or insignificant a thing is, it is still shared amongst everyone. the other night, we had a can of coke and literally it was poured into like 10 glasses so that everyone could get a sip. a jolly rancher is cut into 3rds so that every child can get a taste. it's really awesome. but i digress.
so as i sit here typing this post after my last oral wolof examination, which enshallah i passed, i feel relief that everythings going pretty smoothly. excited that i will begin my journey as a volunteer a week from today but also nervous that i will be on my own from now on. we will hang out in dakar after swear in so some more exploring possibly? dont know when the next blog post will be...
leave comments! miss yall! and check out the entry below if you havent already. a million reasons why you should come visit me, aside from the obvious because you love me reason... =)
Quick blog because i'll let the pictures do the talking. The other day, we got to take a break from all our training so we all went to the beach as a group and may I just say, wow. I thought Mbour was pretty but Popenguine is unbelievable. It may or may not be the best kept secret of Senegal. It's tucked away and highly undeveloped so there arent hotels or clubs or obnoxious tourists everywhere. All the houses that border the beach can be privately rented. There are a couple of bars and restaurants and the rest is just bliss. It may just be the best, most quiet escape you can possibly ask for.
The view from a restaurant.
The view from our "MTV" house balcony.
And the other side...
the path to get to the beach from the house...
the stairs leading to our house...
umm, are we still in Senegal?
I never got to take a picture of our house from the outside but this should suffice. Just another house a few houses down... beautiful much?
the inside of the house. now let's talk about why it is super feasible for you to come visit. this house was HUGE and for a house that size, decently priced. It was $400 total for 2 days and 1 night and this house could fit all 40 of us. I paid $10. There are plenty of bedrooms and lounge about spaces. We rented out 2 small buses which cost $4 per person, round trip to and from Thies. Beer is about $1-2 here and booze starts at $3 for a fifth. you can eat a pretty good meal which includes lots of wine and meat and stuff for around $15-20.
so when yall feel the need to take a break from your real lives and want to plan a trip together, come to Senegal because it's cheap and beautiful and simply amazing. and im here too. lol
and i read a lot. which is good because i never had that pleasure or leisure to read books back home and i was missing out on so many great books (thank you mepham for giving me shantaram minutes before my departure from india - one of the best books i have ever read and i definitely recommend it to all of you). music wise, i have to thank ratatat and owl city and la roux and silversun pickups for carrying me through the days. without these 4 great artists, village life would just be a little less unpleasant. 
