ramadan - fiji water sounds amazing right about now...

ramadan has only just begun - not more than a week and a half ago - and already i am tired of it. literally. physically exhausted. it's not really a fast but more like changing your eating schedule and habits. every morning, i would wake up around 5am and have either leftovers from dinner last night (which is usually something rice based, no surprise there), or this millet porridge with yogurt (which is quite good if i may say so myself), and tons of water. let me go back to the yogurt. so you're probably wondering how i have yogurt in the middle of a desert. well, 2 factors: one, being that it's rainy season right now and it actually does rain here, the rains have seriously changed the landscape of my area.

it looks more like a golf course than anything else. i got home after training and didnt recognize it at all. it could almost be country side america, no?

going along with the first factor, there's plenty of vegetation (i cant say grass because it aint grass - it's more like spiky weeds) so the cows or eating well and producing lots of milk. so how do the pulaars turn this milk into yogurt? i honestly dont think they buy yeast cultures. what more likely happens is they just leave the milk out a few days until it goes sour and voila! yogurt! add some sugar and chill it a bit... pretty much the same... right? haha, anyway back to drinking water. all eating and drinking stops at 5:45ish and then it's back to sleep. i'll wake up around 7:30 or 8 because im used to it by now, water my garden, and then go back to bed, to get up around 930 or so. then my long day begins of no eating or drinking until 7:35pm at night. surprisingly i dont get that hungry, and im thirsty, but not that thirsty. but this, i think, is largely due to the fact that i dont do much all day. i mean, how could i? everyone else isnt doing anything, except feeling miserable, and no one has the energy to do anything. everyone just sits around, takes naps, chats with each other, plays homemade board games or cards, or if lucky and there's electricity, watches tv. tempers are shorter; i find even myself snapping a little at kids who are being too loud or obnoxious. i went to my health post a couple of times and the doctor was just sitting with his kids watching tv or taking naps. ramadan really isnt the month to start projects. what bad timing for us... on the bright side, farming has to continue so sometimes i go with my dad out into his fields to weed or repair the live fencing. we work slower and dont really exert ourselves because we know we cant drink water or eat so we shouldnt overly tire ourselves out.

the field is amazing. it's massive and things are actually growing wonderfully. no wonder people laugh at my garden and my incompetencies. theyve been doing this their whole lives. i never saw myself living on a farm, which is kind of really where i am. there's livestock everywhere and fields of crops... im in farm country. weird...

anyway, back to ramadan. since i dont do much all day, i spend it all, mostly reading or hanging out with the family or someone else in the village. just from a week and a half, ive done a ton of reading on gardening and also literature relevant to my project - but ive also done a lot of leisure reading as well. when you have like 12 hours to kill everyday, that's a lot of books after a while. currently im blasting through anna karenina. by 5pm, i start feeling the effects of thirst. i cannot tell you how much more i appreciate drinking. even warm, not so great tasting water (think of evian but much much worse). some 2 and a half hours of waiting around later, which is occupied we finally break fast, and for the first few days, i couldnt stop smiling at this time. it is such a magical experience to quench thirst and satisfy your hunger after a whole day of abstaining. we break fast with a cup of coffee, some dates, a cup of bissap juice, and bread with some spread inside (onion sauce, homemade mayo, butter, or if lucky, this onions meat french fries thing). then sometimes around 8:15, we'll have pre-dinner, which is usually some sort of pasta - but this doesnt always happen. then we get dinner around 9:30/10 which is usually rice with other things. once done, you repeat... for 30 days. i eat slightly less than pre-ramadan but theres no significant difference in intake (although my sister says i will get really skinny after this month, which i dont know how that's possible but im starting to see the effects... i am getting skinnier, if that's even possible). it's just the timing of intake as well as my sleep wake cycle that's throwing everything off and making me so tired and exhausted and energy-less all day everyday. my body is dying... i already dont sleep well with my malaria meds, and now ramadan. just great. i seriously look forward to my first peaceful, wakeless night of sleep in america 20 months from now. it will be glorious!

my garden was practically non-existent when i came home - except for my tree pepinieres, and even so, not so great. apparently there must have been numerous sand storms while i was away because my garden looked pretty flat. the moringa aka nebedaay (or cleverly coined "never dies" because apparently they dont) were massive and the roots were extending into the ground so i had to move the tree sacks. 2 days later, i realized that moving them this late, and breaking the roots, i killed them. i killed my never dies. how pathetic. well, ok maybe not killed them completely. they just got really weak and lost all their leaves but some of them are growing back now, yay! those mystery seeds that i planted were flamboyants - really beautiful trees. much needed in this area though i dont know how well they'll grow in deserts. i also brought back a mango and papaya tree to plant on my family compound. the papaya didnt survive the journey but the mango is doing pretty well. in a couple of years, maybe my family will have mangoes and think of me.

so i re-did my garden, planting tomatoes, lettuce, bitter tomatoes, eggplant, hot peppers, more moringa, watermelon, sunflowers, flamboyants, and other random tree seeds that will be a surprise in a month or so. i also transplanted some mint. i left some weeds to create a more natural habitat and to distract the insects from eating my crops. enshallah, my garden will do decently well this time. ive attracted some natural pest controls - there are frogs and spiders and wasps and birds in my garden. the other day, i even saw a praying mantis! all these great pest control agents!

my mint is doing pretty well as of now...

the eggplant are growing and hopefully will survive much longer than they did last time...

just a shot of the baby flamboyants...

watermelon... (if i ever eat the fruit of my labor, i will die happy)

never dies... hopefully ready for harvest and eating in a few weeks

and my random tree seeds...

some random thoughts that ive had in the last couple of weeks:

1. im sorry i didnt take pictures of these but this may be the most amazing thing about senegal and how our world works in general. you know those old tshirts you donate to good will or the red cross? tshirts from childhood like ps 143 class of 1997, or springfield baseball, or johnson's family reunion, or riverdale elementary school math league? you get the idea. you know where they end up? i will tell you. they end up in senegalese markets in large piles. people pick through them, bargain a small price for these second hand tshirts, and wear em. it's so beautiful. if i ever run into a shirt i know, or even a shirt that ive owned, i dont know what i will do... life works in mysteries ways, you never know...

2. thanks to ramadan, all i think about is food that im missing back in the states. perogies from that one eastern european late night afterclub diner? chicken pot pie? lobster dipped in butter, crab cakes with tartar sauce, ginger ale, spinach and artichoke dip, soupy dumplings, dim sum, budejigae... the list can go on forever. sometimes during the long hours of the day, i get cravings. they are terrible.

3. it hit me why i would crave senegalese food sometimes. weird huh? i should be sick of it by now, the lack of variety, the same greasy oily rice base. but i figured it out. theres MSG in everything. EVERYTHING! they dont know how to cook without it and by now, it's so built into their culture (with commercials advertising its use) that i cant think of a good way to get rid of it (telling my family that it's bad for their health doesnt do any good). no wonder i get cravings sometimes... mmm maafe...

4. flies are unrelenting as always. and thanks to the rainy season, theyre out in full force. my mosquito bites from july 4th never fully healed. theyre open wounds now and thanks to the flies landing on them, they became infected and are now pus-ing. quite pleasant really...

5. the senegalese idea of a good movie baffles me. it doesnt have to be in french, it can be in any language really (it dawned on me that their french isnt all that great and its senegalese french so real french dubbed in movies is quite different - think of brazilian portuguese and you get the idea). if it's a series or tv show, it doesnt even have to start from the beginning. all they care about are fight scenes and the occasional gag humor scene. my brother somehow found a copy of prison break season 3 in french or something and they didnt even start from episode 1. they just started on episode 6 and scrolled to all the fight scenes. what a bizarre taste. i thought bringing pixar movies was a good idea because i'll be with kids and all... NOPE. they only want movies with fighting in it. anything else and they lose interest. the other day when i got tired of reading, i gave in and watched a few episodes of mad men season 3 on my laptop. my siblings came in and asked if it was good. i said it was really good. they asked me if there was fighting. i said no. they looked shocked. they asked me what it did have. i said lots of dialogue and talking. they lost interest and walked away... how did senegalese culture become so obsessed with violence? theyre not a very violent people, but this obsession (they love watching senegalese wrestling) is inexplicable.

6. already i am running into problems with my project. apparently when i was away, my doctor trained a couple of relais in surrounding villages... maybe i'll just collaborate with him and see what he's training them on and extend the training program to more villages and more topic areas.

7. about two weeks ago, i was able to bike 90k (roughly 55 miles) in one day. of course my body died the next day but it's doable. i plan on doing a lot more biking from now on... during the next 4 days or so, i plan on biking about 200k so we'll see how this goes...

8. dont believe people when they say the camel spiders are harmless. i was rudely awoken one night to this sharp pain in my toe and low and behold, a baby camel spider as big as my thumb pinched me hard. theyre just so ugly and scary looking, no matter how small or big...

well i'll write again in a few weeks... i really want to go to shanghai to visit vivi for xmas and new years. i hope i can make it happen. need serious big city therapy...

my grandiose 2-year idea that will probably fail

hi all! i didnt take that many pictures this month so it's gonna be a wordy entry. since july 4th, i've visited Dakar and gone to 2nd rounds of training - both deserve separate entries but this'll have to do for now.

Dakar was... amazing. it felt like being a little kid in a candy shop. perhaps Dakar is no different and not more special than other large cities but i guess i just forgot what it's like on the other side of the atlantic. i forgot what being in civilization feels like - my small village of 300 in the middle of a desert doesnt quite resemble anything back home. i forgot that tall buildings actually exist, that electricity can be had consistently, that water actually runs and you can choose hot or cold, that people actually own air conditioners and nice cars, that people dress up and go out. i forgot what its like to have choices in what you eat, not even just cuisine but what specific meals you want. i forgot what its like to be able to grab a cold refreshing beer, or ice cream, or even fresh fruit. i forgot what supermarkets and cafes looked like. it's these small, almost insignificant experiences of life that really make me appreciate what being an american and living in america really means. there were many a times when i didnt understand just how prosperous our country is and how lucky we all are to have the freedoms and opportunities, things that weve took for granted. it takes experiences like these to really comprehend why americans really do have it all. finally after 4 months, i have had real chinese food. real... chinese... food. food made by people from china who couldnt really speak french, definitely didnt speak any of the local languages, and the only way to communicate was in chinese. how bizarre is it to find a group of americans in a chinese restaurant that only speaks chinese... in the middle of senegal? case and point. so what do a group of deprived americans do when theyve been in rural villages for 2 months? they go wild and eat everything! lol, we had chinese, american, italian, french, thai... next time we're doing indian and korean. there were even pastry shops and gourmet chocolate! you dont realize what youre missing until it's gone.

ive never had desperados beer before even though people say you can find it in the states. it's like a corona-y beer, with tequila. pretty good actually.

hanging out with our teacher and her friends during a christian holiday (celebration of st anne?)

ill skip the telling about training part because theres not much to tell. except that we learned all these cool new gardening techniques and ive decided that im going to convert my desert patch into a lush permaculture. and also what my overall project goals and plans are for the next 2 years of my life. but anyway, after training ended, we went to the beach for one last time before heading back to our desert (the complete opposite).

the ocean is just so beautiful. and the sunset. and even better! that night, the power was out so everything was super dark and there were dinoflagellates (word courtesy of jess lee!!) in the water so our bodies glistened with fluorescent plankton. we couldnt get pictures because of how dark it was and the flash not being able to catch anything but it was amazing. it was like glow in the dark body glitter!

now, back in my regional house, as i type this in our hot, HOT (like feels like 115), and humid weather, i plan on going back to my village in a couple of days after i finish a few last minute errands. what will i be doing in my next 2 years you may be wondering. thus far, ive really done nothing except for acclimate and assimilate. which i guess is an important aspect because you need to gain the trust and confidence of your community before you can actually do anything. and find motivated people to work with (lack of motivation is a killer here). now after my 2nd round of training, i have a better idea of the project i want to do...

circumstances:

1. my village counterparts want me to give causeries, in general to everyone about HIV/AIDS, and to women about the importance of pre- and post-natal consultations.

2. after visiting a few surrounding villages, as well as going through the village doctor's consultations book to see where people are coming from and with what ailments, i have noticed a lack of accessibility to medical care as well as to general knowledge on certain prevalent problems of the region.

proposed project:

because my village health post is in charge of roughly 15-20 villages (probably more... 30?), i want to do a 2 year series of training of relais. relais are the name given to community health workers. they are unpaid, and therefore volunteers, and work out of the goodness of their hearts. i will be going to each village to find the existing relais (who probably hasnt been trained in a very long time) or set up new ones, and each month, one relais from each village will come to my health post, where we will cover a variety of subjects ranging from simple first aid, to hygiene, from how to deal with dehydration, to malaria (and also malaria net distributions after these talks and proper handling and care of the nets), from pre- and post- pregnancy health of mother and child, to child nutrition and vaccinations, from STDs and HIV/AIDS, to family planning. i will leave the HIV/AIDS and family planning and other sensitive subjects toward the end of my service when the relais and myself are more comfortable with each other and the sensitive subjects can be breached. after each session, each relais will go back to their village and find a group of suitable villagers to talk to and we will schedule an in-village causerie to do, on the subject we just talked about. the relais will be doing most of the causerie and im just there to help out. if i teach the relais how to make niim lotion to protect from mosquito bites and prevent malaria, the relais will demonstrate to villages how to do the exact same. in this way, when i leave, the knowledge will be passed down and hopefully people will continue without my presence, or any aid group's presence for that matter. peace corps philosophy emphasizes sustainability and this is the only sustainable solution i can come up with. of course this is just a project idea in the making - thinking about all the details, it will be a logistical nightmare scheduling all these causeries and transporting the relais to and from my village. transportation is already such a huge problem in my area and the concept of planning ahead and making schedules doesnt exist here. how will i carry out my project? this is what i have to figure out.

but in the mean time, i have to prepare for ramadan, the month of no pleasure between sun up and sun down. no one can drink, or eat, or smoke, or doing anything fun or pleasure related during the day. the senegalese value their coffee and tea, both of which are extremely caffeinated and sweet - so imagine the caffeine and sugar withdrawal. compound that to smokers who will have nicotine withdrawal and everyone just being hungry and hot and dehydrated. tempers will flare. bon chance to me...

I survived 2 sandstorms and a worm-infested river

and we will get to those a little bit later once you scroll down to the pictures.

just some random thoughts:

1. i swear, if another fly lands on me again, i will go crazy. and hence going crazy. i dont know which is worse for me, mosquitos or flies these days. it's quite the tolerance and patience test which i will sooner or later fail. little do i know that being in the desert, i have it pretty good compared to the luscious dirty south.

2. eating on the ground has it's advantages. anything that falls in the sand, you dont really have to clean up because well, it's in the sand. and it's just more comfortable to sprawl out on the floor (even though you dont really get to sprawl when theres 15 people around a bowl) but at least you dont get butt cramps from sitting on a hard wooden chair. the disadvantage, though, is that when it's real windy, you get sand in your food. and i guess it's fine, the crunchiness and all. sand has never given me any stomach issues, yet. oh the other hand...

3. the other day, i had eggs. bad eggs. and like i said in the past, they dont keep eggs in fridges and i never really understood how that's possible. what's wrong with our american eggs that they need to be refrigerated whereas in india and senegal and everywhere else, the eggs seem to keep forever? well, maybe they dont keep forever. at some point, they start to spoil and i guess there's a fine line for when that happens. i had some bad eggs which results in peeing through my butthole. diarrhea is one thing but it's a totally new experience to urinate out of a body part that normally doesnt urinate. anyway... it then becomes such a momentous occasion when your excrements turn solid. celebration anyway?

4. my first pseudo sandstorm (which later i found out was nothing compared to the actual sandstorm a few days later) was on a bush taxi ride back to my village. sitting on top of a pickup truck when wind and sand is blowing in your face is quite unpleasant. add that to the fact that you have to keep your eyes open because you need to duck away from branches and spines and thorny trees, makes sand in your eyes a sucky position. then compound this with it being night time in the "forest" with no lights except for the car headlights shining some 10 feet in front only. it was quite the wild wild west adventure. and people live here! we passed villages that i didnt even realize we were passing until i saw the faint glow of remnants of their late dinner fire, lightly flickering in the distance. how unbelievably hard it is to live a nomad life. i appreciate so much more. at this point, i appreciate everything more.

5. wolof is a terrible language to give directions in. when you ask where something is, people usually say it's over there. over where? and then they just point and say, over there again. there is no concept of giving directions, nor is this language sufficient to give directions in. theres just never been the need to say, "well turn right at the next building, walk 2 minutes and find the white door". streets have no names here to begin with, if there even is a street. the good thing though, is that everyone knows everyone, so getting lost will be quite difficult, i hope.

6. the universality of life is beautiful. kids in my village were playing tick tack toe with different colored pebbles and drawing in the sand. there were many other variations of simple board games easily playable by drawing the board in the sand that were quite similar to games we've played when we were kids. even language is sort of universal, similar idioms and whatnot. the other day, i learned a wolof tongue twisters: fokki bokki guddi fokki bokki becceg bokki mbokk bunt bunt ben begam. the translation goes something along the lines of 10 hyenas at night, 10 hyenas during the day, the hyenas share eyes, eyes, teeth, something. lol. humans are universal.

7. the teenage girls here play a game where they take a tennis ball and peg each other in the crotch until someone drops the ball, and then the the that threw it runs and the girl that dropped the ball has to peg the girl running away. if the girl gets to a post some distance away, she is safe. otherwise, she has to continue to peg with other people. there are other members of each team that distract or whatnot. i really dont understand the game. it falls into some form of tag team dodge ball but i just dont get it.

8. my family hired a herder to help since now it is the raining season, and their attention has turned towards the fields - growing peanuts, millet, beans... i plan on tagging along one day and herding with him.

9. I HAVE HAD WARTHOG SANDWICHES. WARTHOG IS DELICIOUS!

10. brands of senegal are quite interesting / intriguing. they have saddam hussein attaya (tea), osama bin laden lighters, and obama rice and underwear. anyone interested in advertising? look at all the fun you'll have in senegal!

now some pictures...

i finally found where the village bread is being made! this is what a real oven looks like.

it's quite the process, and when i learned that there's really only flour, water, salt and sugar in the village bread, i thought "hmm... how simple"

here the balls are being rolled into the long bread.

french braid anyone? the kids take the left over scraps and add an elephant ton of sugar to the dough. older volunteers keep telling me to make friends with the baker so that i can sneak cinnamon and raisins into mine. anyone want to ship me cinnamon and raisins? haha, cant get those here...

and the final product. it's actually quite tasty. so much village love is put into it.
the world cup is terrible for senegal, at least for those that can afford electricity. people do nothing but watch futbol games all day. productivity has gone out the door. but i guess it's fun and quite alright. why did i not watch this in 2002 and 2006? totally was missing out. everyone's always curious which team foreigners support. of course i would have to say brasil... duh!
my brother killed a goat. we then ate it. technically, the meat here is all organic and the animals treated much better than in the states so i should be able to eat this more. but im just really turned off my meat here. it's... chewy and skinnier. which makes me think, "how processed is our meat?" chicken here is skinny. chicken from KFC is ridiculously meaty. it's quite sad to think about how the chickens got that way, getting fat and all. when you realize where your food comes from, watching it being killed and skinned and cut up, you just dont want it anymore...
a group of nomadic pulaars i met in the desert... their home is coming up.
just 2 small huts... with no one else around around a 2 kilometers radius. pulaar families live separately from other pulaar families so you just find these small families dotted across the desert.
even farther out. plastic is amazing. and yet it's just so terrible. i cant imagine living the solitude life. what would my world be like?
every time my garden fails, i remember that i am gardening in the middle of the desert. how bad-ass is that?! if nothing is growing, i just look around to my surrounding fields and see that nothing is growing really anywhere so it's ok that i dont succeed everytime. but when things do grow, i just feel so accomplished (haha). below is a moringa seedling/leafling.
my tree pepiniere that i have shielded away from the world. the mosquito net protects from birds and flying insects and frogs and whatnot. the wood ash and niim leaves that i sprinkled around and underneath the pepiniere protect from other burrowing insects and beedles.
i gave my brother some tomato and eggplant seeds. i wonder what those things poking out are...
so below is a watermelon seedling/leafling. i hope with all my heart that it will survive. things keep eating my watermelon and moringa. my mint all died or got eaten, and the lettuce and hot peppers just wont sprout (after 1 week). this may be a project that i will work on - large scale organic pesticides that are cheap or free and readily available. all the farmers in my village complain of insects and birds and other roaming animals destroying their crops and decreasing their yield. i want to fix this. i have some methods that i will try next month... LIVE MY WATERMELON! til then...
i think this is baobab tree. or papaya... surprise!
another shot of my moringa...
and lastly... some unknown plant that i will discover months from now... a flowering one? maybe this one is papaya? we shall find out...
my brother was playing with my camera so he took a picture of my even younger siblings. cute...
now this is the exciting part! so the other day, i got out of my afternoon shower and the sky was getting mighty dark and orange. i thought, yay rain is finally here! so i quickly changed and got out my camera to take pictures of the dark and mysterious sky. it looked like a tornado in the distance so i attempted to capture it on camera (it doesnt come out very well but you can vaguely see maybe if you look carefully or i pointed it out to you)... and then...
my dad runs out of the family compound and yells along the lines of "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?! LOCK YOUR DOOR AND GET INSIDE NOW!" i still had no idea what was coming, but the urgency in his voice made me follow his instructions. as i finished locking up the door, i realized why. the sky got intensely more orange and the wind picked up tremendously (but not enough, just yet). i realized that maybe this is going to be a sandstorm, as i would imagine since i was in the middle of a desert. i began to run to the family compound and just as i entered it, the worst came. it was terrifying hearing the wind howl and sand blowing through every crevice and hole of the room. it grew pitch black. at one point, being the unafraid american foreigner that i was, i decided to open the door and take a quick picture. it was pretty darn dark and my camera was immediately whipped by sand. (i finally knew why none of my electronics would last the 2 years). i forgot to close my window in my own room so lesson learned... later i found a massive layer of dust and sand over everything... EVERYTHING. but anyway...
as the sandstorm died down only a slight bit, i went out and snapped away like any tourist would. the eerie orange that set upon the village is quite what i would imagine mars to look like.
the wind was strong enough to tear down small fences, as you can see in this picture. usually you can see very far if you were standing there facing that angle, but this is as far as you can see in the lesser sand storm.
what followed was a massive rainstorm. there was lightning almost every second that it looked like bombs going off in the distance and surrounding. or at least how hollywood depicts bombs and war scenes. surprisingly there was no thunder. because of my curiosity throughout the ordeal, my family thinks i'm fearless... except for horse scorpions... ::shudders:: the next day, i went around and surveyed the village - the sandstorm wreaked havoc. let the rebuilding (or upgrading) begin...
my garden fence also could not withstand the horrible wind. sad.
a human's view on the bush taxi. it wobbles so you're on an amusement park ride.
usually there are 500 sheep and goats below our feet. i was lucky this day not to have to step on livestock.
decorating your public transportation vehicle in senegal with american christmas tree wrapping and chinese new year lanterns. how... odd.

and then we went to the south for july 4th. WHAT a contrast going from desert to forest. so much green everywhere! this was the river we swam in and let the current drag us from tree branch to tree branch. i most likely caught schisto (schistosomiasis) so i will keep you posted on whether or not i start peeing blood. but aside from that, there were definitely little worms in the water that i, unfortunately, noticed and started picking off my body. i wonder what they were... definitely swallowed a couple of mouth fulls of river water but as of yet, no major intestinal issues.

the "route" to get to and from the river. there was no route. we freehanded the hike. it was beautiful.
i grew slightly jealous that this might have been my sight. comparably, this is much more beautiful. but then i remember that i am more hardcore. and also, there arent as many mosquitos in the desert. i probably got 1000 mosquito bites in the course of 3 days...
what i believe kenya looks like. but still the dirty south...
freehand hiking through the forest
celebrating the fourth of july with a ton of volunteers throughout senegal.
in retrospect, it was quite the hippie meets white trash party. (LOVE IT!) welcome to america, senegal!
and to end with i heart africa... cola. haha

oh and some videos!

my brother rapping. i will translate it for yall someday...

and another of just a video of my brothers dancing... sort of.

in a few days time, i will be exploring dakar since i have to go there for a regional meeting anyway. afterwards is a short 2 week training session in Thies to give our initial observation reports and to learn more in-depth gardening and health skills and training. we will develop our 2 year project plan and begin what we came here for. hurray!