I'm leaving Senegal in less than week. I fly out in the early morning of April 26. Then I plan to travel for about a month with Peace Corps friends before arriving home in late May.

I feel lucky that despite leaving I have a lot to look forward to in the near future: Travels. Reunions with friends, families, and pups. The comforts of home. Food, glorious food. Seasonal change. Grad school (I finally made a decision--I'll be going to Yale in the fall to get my M.A. in International Relations!). Taking the next step. I am confident that I've made the right decision to leave the Peace Corps now, instead of extending my service for a third year. I just wish that the knowledge that it's the right time to go could lessen the pain of leaving.

These past couple of weeks have been an emotionally numbing period of constant goodbyes. I've recently bid adieu to friends, mentors, co-workers, surrogate families, pets, region-mates, and stage-mates. To people who were here with me at the beginning and people who got me through to the end. But it's not just the people I'm leaving behind that make it hard to leave. It's the knowledge that I'm also saying goodbye to a place and an experience. And what an experience it's been.

The rational, emotionally well-adjusted part of me tells me that it's not productive to dwell on the finality of this departure. Its forward motion is one of life's only certainties. At every step along the way, we're saying goodbye to all that came before and embracing the thrilling unknown of the future.

But there's another part of me can't ignore this nagging feeling of emptiness that accompanies these goodbyes. And I'm not certain I should. I think it's indicative of the significance of this experience for me and for the people with whom I've shared it that it's so tough to leave it behind.

Photos of the goodbye tour:

The teachers at Ecole Bamol Sow threw me a little party and got this lovely green outfit sewn for me. I was also happy to see that they've expanded the garden we worked on together. It now takes up about 70% of the school grounds.

It was a tearful goodbye with my beloved Barkedji family. Before I left, I finally got a photo with my kind, but camera-shy Dad.

Saying goodbye to the kids was tough, because of that fear that when I come back they won't remember me. Or that they'll no longer be kids.

I didn't want to leave Abdou and Diama, my brother and his wife, or their beautiful kids, Maguette and Khoudia. They are truly some of the best people I have ever met.

The cows didn't show much emotion, but I'm sure they'll miss me, too.

Linguere brought a whole new set of hard goodbyes. I love this family, the Ndiayes. They are the kind of people whose goodness you can immediately sense when you meet them.

I was incredibly touched when Coumba, one of the members of my girls' group, gave me one of her coveted sparkly outfits as a gift. It was a beautiful act of generosity from an inspiring young girl.

The Stadtlanders' warm and inviting presence in Linguere vastly improved my time there.

It hurt to say goodbye to my kids in Linguere. Linguere might not have the best scenery, but I think we have the best people. My friends there have been everything to me during my service. I can't really express how much they mean to me, so I'm not going to try. I'll just send care packages...

The Linguere family threw me the most beautifully thought-out party for my 26th birthday last Friday. I spent my golden birthday last year in the village, so my one request this year was that I'd spend my birthday with friends out of site. Since I have a habit of planning things, Team Linguere decided that they'd organize a full day party for me in Dakar. I knew that they were planning something, but they kept the details a secret. I was so touched by the incredible day they came up with, and so relieved to not have to do any work to make it happen. I could learn to live with people leading me around from one fun activity to the next.

First, we had a picnic lunch of five kinds of cheese, vegetables, fruit, nutella, bread, and wine at Dakar's Parc de Hann. I can't believe I'd never been to the park before. It was beautiful! It has a zoo, a lake, trails for running or biking, etc. It has to be one of Dakar's best kept secrets, at least among Peace Corps volunteers.

After stuffing ourselves and walking around to digest, we went to a hotel on the water for sundown drinks. Team Linguere also arranged to have an ice cream cake served at the hotel.

After eating, drinking, and eating some more, we returned to the PC transit house to rest a bit and get ready for the night out. We made a last minute decision to skip dinner, because we couldn't have stuffed any more food in our stomachs if we wanted to. Instead, we went to Just 4 U, a restaurant with live music, for more drinks.

We ended the night in true Dakar fashion at 3 a.m. with Lebanese fast food.

I felt so lucky to be able to spend my birthday with my Linguere family this year. One of the great surprises of my Peace Corps service has been how attached I've grown to so many of my fellow volunteers, especially my region-mates. These people are my friends, my second family, my colleagues, and my support system all rolled into one. They have seen me at my best and my worst, and they know all my quirks and flaws, and yet they continue to love and support me.

When I signed up for the Peace Corps, I expected to spend two years in near isolation from other Americans, focusing on building strong relationships with Senegalese. And while I have forged many important friendships with my Senegalese neighbors over the past two years, my friendships with other PCVs have been at least as significant to me. I had no idea how much I would rely on other Americans going in. But much like my birthday party, it's been a series of pleasant surprises.

From Tales from the Hood, an aid blog I intermittently follow:

"Someone very smart once said to me that 'the reasons why you stay married are usually different from the reasons why you got married.' And very much like marriage, humanitarian work is one of those things that has good days and not so good days. Some days the cold, harsh realities of what it would take to affect meaningful change, whether towards one of the many problems we claim to want to fix or towards the supposed brokenness of the aid system loom very large and seem impossibly daunting."

This really resonates with me, and seems to apply to the Peace Corps, too. We join the Peace Corps for so many different reasons. Some of us are seeking something--adventure, work experience, a break, an opportunity to make a difference in the world and/or atone for our sins of privilege, a sense of worth, a direction. Some of us are running from something--a terrible job market, a broken relationship, bills, loans, responsibility.

The reasons we end up staying are just as varied, even less obvious, and often don't directly relate to the reasons we came. We stay because of the relationships we've built or the commitment we've made. We stay because the sense of accomplishment and fulfillment we feel on the good days outweighs the feelings of failure or alienation we feel on the bad. We refuse to leave because we're stubborn, masochistic, would-be martyrs, or too prideful to face the judgment if we quit. Often we can't adequately verbalize what we're still doing here.

But that uncertainty's just par for the course in the development and aid industries. This line of work requires us to accept a certain level of moral ambiguity. As I prepare to leave Senegal, it's not immediately clear to me what the effect of my service will be, either on the people with whom I've lived and worked, or on me. And I think I'm ok with that.

I know it's been a long time since I've posted anything on this blog. I'm leaving Senegal in a month, and the truth is I've just been busy. Actually busier than usual, which is usually pretty busy. I've been traveling back and forth between Thies and Linguere, trying to wrap things up at site and helping organize the technical training of the new group of Health and Environmental Education PCVs who just arrived in Senegal.

It kind of blows my mind that I've been here for 25 months, and only have 1 month left. Watching my service slip ever more quickly away the closer I get to the end has put me in a reflective mood. Unfortunately all that reflection hasn't yet led to any clarity. But I have decided that it would be a good idea to make a photo book as a record of my service. It's as much for me as it is for you--when I get home, it'll be much easier to hand curious friends a book than to try to come up with an adequate response to the inevitable question, "So, how was Senegal?"

So, enjoy the book. And let me know if you see any typos. I haven't printed it yet...

Click here to view this photo book larger

I'm taking a break this week from your regularly- err, randomly-scheduled programming to publish a packing list for the new group of trainees who will be arriving in Senegal on March 9th. This is a post I've wanted to write for a long time, because I found packing lists published on blogs to be incredibly useful when I was getting ready to leave for the Peace Corps. I had been putting it off, though, until the receipt of some e-mails from new trainees with questions about what to pack gave me the impetus to actually do it. So, here we go.

Incoming Peace Corps/Senegal Trainees and Future Volunteers (inshallah),

You’ve probably heard by now that you should pack lightly for the Peace Corps—that you have to carry your own luggage, that you can buy a lot of things here in Senegal, and that the Peace Corps provides you with many items, as well. While that’s all true, I’m of a slightly different mindset. As an over-planner, over-preparer, and over-packer extraordinaire, I brought a lot of stuff with me to Senegal, and I’ve actually been happy to have most of it. I had also studied abroad in Senegal before I joined the Peace Corps, so I knew the types of random things I’d end up wanting at some point, and realized that it was cheaper to bring them at the beginning than to have them shipped later on.

Here are my recommendations of things to bring, adapted from the packing list I made when I left for the Peace Corps two years ago. This isn’t a packing bible. I’m sure there are things I missed, as well as things that I included that you might not ever use. My goal in sharing this list is just to give a comprehensive view of the things that one female volunteer had found useful throughout her service. Take it for what it is. And good luck with all of your shopping and packing!

Clothing

*Most girls dress very casually in the village. A wrap skirt (made here) or lightweight pants with a t-shirt of tank top is pretty typical. You can purchase fabric and go to a tailor to get clothing sewn very easily here, so don’t stress too much about bringing enough clothes. I do like having some nicer things I can wear when I’m in Thies or Dakar, especially when I’m going out. I think that female volunteers are often surprised how much they value being able to put on a nicer outfit, some jewelry and a bit of makeup at some points in their service.*

-Jeans (1-2)

-Cotton pants (1-2)

-Lighweight workout capris/yoga pants for exercise, travel, sleeping… (2)

-Workout tops (2-3)

-Soccer shorts (2-3)

-T-shirts (a few)

-Tank tops (many)

-Lightweights skirts (knee-length or below) (2-3)

-Lightweight dresses (2-3)

-Lightweight cardigans (1-2)

-Jacket/sweatshirt (1)

-Long-sleeved shirts (1-2)

-Padded bike shorts (1-2)

I used these because I bike a lot and they help bruising and chafing—you might not need them.

-Sports bras (4)

-Bras (4-5)

-Underwear (lots)

I brought 14 and had my mom bring another 10 pairs halfway through my service. It’s good to have a lot because you’ll have to do laundry less often. Underwear’s always the limiting factor for me. You can get away with wearing that shirt for a third time, but not that pair of undies… Senegal also has a tendency to eat peoples’ clothes. Things disappear or disintegrate quickly from hand-washing, and lightweight underwear is especially susceptible to Senegal’s trickery.

-Socks (3)

-Swimsuit—bikinis are fine

-Bandanas

-Scarves

-Jewelry

-Camping towels

These are my everyday towels, and they’re great! They dry quickly and fold up easily for travel. I have 1 large and 1 small.

-Glasses (2 pairs)

-Sunglasses (2 cheap pairs—you’ll probably lose or break 1 during your service)

-Glasses repair kit

-Watch

-Sun hat

-Belt

-Laundry bag

Shoes

-Durable sandals (1)

Many people wear Chacos, and they have a Peace Corps discount. I have a pair of hard-bottomed leather sandals. If you’re up north, hard soles give valuable protection against thorns.

-Flip flops (1)

Again, many prefer Chaco brand. I have Teva flip flops, which are comfortable, but they wear through quickly and I’ve had to replace them a few times in my service. You can buy cheap flip flops for showering and daily wear for a dollar at almost any boutique in Senegal.

-Running shoes (1)

-Pair of cute shoes for going out (optional)

Gear

-Sheets

-Suitcase

-Hiking backpack and/or durable, but lightweight duffle bag for travel

-Durable zip-top shoulder bag for traveling

I bought a couple of these at Target for $3 before I left, and they’ve turned out to be very useful. I fold these up and put them in my bag when I’m traveling, because I inevitably have more to carry back than I left with.

-Day bags/purses (1-2)

It’s good to have a cute, but secure cross-body purse for carrying your things when you go out in bigger cities. It’s also useful to have a fabric bag for everyday use at site, but you can easily purchase one or get one made here.

-Laptop bag

I use a Timbuk2 messenger bag to carry my computer, wallet, phone, sunglasses, a book, etc. when I’m traveling.

-Laptop sleeve

-Travel pillow

My Thermarest pillow is one of my favorite things that I brought to country. I use it every night and often take it with me when I travel.

-Sleeping bag

Bring one that’s lightweight and compact. You’ll only use it a couple of months out of the year, but during those times you’ll be happy you have it!

-Headlamp (one of my favorite things I have here)

-Travel alarm

-Water bottle

Sigg, Nalgene, Klean Kanteen, whatever’s cool these days… Pick your poison.

-Solio solar charger (optional)

Wait and see if you’ll have electricity—many volunteers either have it at site now or live close enough to a town with electricity that they can periodically charge their items there.

-Umbrella (optional)

You’ll maybe use an umbrella a couple of times a year. I usually just get wet or hide inside when it’s raining, though.

-Bug Tent (optional)

Many volunteers have these tents and I’ve used mine a few times throughout my service. They’re far from a necessity, though. You can often borrow tents from other PCVs or regional houses if you need them.

-Thermarest (optional)

I have an inflatable sleeping pad that has come in handy a few times during my service, but it’s not a necessity.

Electronics

-Ipod/charger/case/2 pairs of cheap headphones

-Portable battery-operated speakers

These are a good “luxury item” to bring. I use mine a lot.

-Batteries (rechargeables are optional)

-Plug adapters (2-3)

We have French sockets. Look for adapters with 2 round prongs. Sometimes they’re listed as compatible in southern Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. I don’t have a converter, because none of my appliances require it. Check if you have anything that requires conversion.

-Laptop

I highly recommend bringing a laptop! Many volunteers use the cheap mini Acer/Asis laptops. I brought my MacBook. It’s held up well, but I’ve had to replace the power cord. I also came with the expectation that at best it would make it to the end of my service. Don’t bring anything you’re not willing to part with. People say that this is where electronics go to die. The heat and dust are hard on them. Backup your important files and insure items that are of great value to you.

-Digital camera/case/extra battery/battery charger/memory card/USB cord

-USB keys (2)

-External hard drive

Many volunteers like having these so they can store and exchange movies, TV shows and music. Umm, I mean work files… If you feel like loading it up with new stuff to share with deprived PCVs when you get here, we will only love you more.

-Shortwave radio

Health and Body

*PC Med will provide you with almost all of the medical supplies you could ever need, as well as a lot of stuff you’ll never need. Just bring medical supplies to get you started or if you have a special brand you like. You can buy body products like shampoo and conditioner in cities here, but they’re expensive, so I brought some big bottles from the U.S. to start out.*

-Sunscreen (1 to start out—you can get more from Med)

-Ibuprofen (1—Med provides more)

-Travel pill case

-Travel toiletry case

-Hand sanitizer (1 large bottle, 2 refillable travel bottles)

-Facewash

-Shampoo

-Conditioner

-Body Wash

-Loofah

-Lotion

-Deodorant (3+)

This is the one thing that’s really hard to find here. They have deodorant in the supermarkets in Dakar, but it’s a different type, and I don’t think it works as well. Some PCVs don’t wear deodorant at site—b.o. is much less stigmatized, or even noticed, here—but as a sweaty girl, I’m an advocate of the deodorant.

-Razor and replacement blades

-Tootbrush (1)

You can buy good brand name toothbrushes here, so just bring extras if you have a special type you like.

-Toothpaste (1)

You can buy Colgate easily here.

-Floss (1—Med provides more)

-Travel brush

-Hair bands

-Elastic headbands for working out

-Tweezers

-Nail clippers

-Q-tips

-Small mirror

-Makeup and makeup case

-Chapstick w/ SPF

-Feminine products for the ladies

Many female volunteers use and love—and talk at length and in somewhat disturbing detail about why they love—the Diva Cup. It’s not for me, but I’ll let you women make your own decisions.

Miscellany

-Copies of important documents

-Books

Bring a couple to get you started and maybe a favorite or two that you know you’ll want during your service. You can always exchange with other volunteers or pick up and drop off books in regional houses. The PC will give you more resources and manuals to read than you know what to do with.

-Senegal/Gambia or West Africa travel guide if you plan on taking some trips or hosting people

-French/English dictionary if you speak French and think you’ll use French for your work

-Maps (World, U.S., Africa) with which to decorate

-Photos for decorating your room

-Address list of friends and family members you plan to write to

-Blank cards to write home (optional—you can also just send postcards)

-Games you can play with other PCVs or teach tokids at site (cards, Uno, Bananagrams, etc.)

-Photo album

Fill it with photos from home. It’ll be fun to look at when you’re feeling homesick, and you can show it to everyone in you’re village. It’s a nice way to get to know people, and they looove photos here.

-Sewing kit

I use the kit to fix holes in my clothes and the tape measure for gardening.

-Cooking supplies (optional)

I love to cook, so I’m glad I brought cooking supplies. You might not need them, though. I brought a non-stick frying pan, wooden spoon, pancake flipper, rubber spatula, measuring cups and spoons, favorite spices from home, a can opener, a peeler and 2 good knives. Regional houses have cooking supplies, so just think about what you’ll want for yourself and if you’ll want to buy a gas burner for site. You can buy cooking supplies of decent quality here, too.

-Tupperware

I packed some of my things inside Tupperware so I could use the boxes once I got to site. I’ve found that plastic boxes that seal are useful for organizing and storing things, and for keeping the bugs out of food.

-Ziplock bags

-Swiss Army Knife and/or Leatherman

-Drink mixes (Crystal Light, Gatorade, Propel, etc.)

-Plastic accordion file for transporting documents

-Small notebooks/journal

-Daily planner

-Good pens

-Scissors

-Other office supplies (optional)

In a pencil pouch, I brought a mini stapler, calculator, paper clips, thumb tacks, white out, tape, a highlighter, a few Sharpies, and pencils,

-Duct tape

-Earplugs if you have trouble sleeping—it’s loud here!

-1-2 Survivor Island luxury items: a musical instrument, stuffed animal, photo printer, etc.

These things aren’t necessities, but they’ll probably make you really happy at some point in your service. And as I like to tell people, possibly the best skill you can bring to the Peace Corps is the ability to make yourself happy. No one else is going to do it for you, and you’ll be the most effective when you’re happiest.

-Food from home.

I can almost guarantee that your #1 care package request will be American food that you miss. If you have extra space in your luggage (ha…), you might consider bringing some food right away to get you started. You might also want to have things like granola bars to snack on during training, while you’re still adjusting to the changes in diet and feeding schedules. I also brought some tea from home. Coffee addicts often have good coffee sent (pre-ground, of course). My commonly requested items include dried fruit, Peanut Butter M&Ms and other chocolate, gummies, crackers and Goldfish, and Clif/Luna/Lara bars. Meat eaters often request beef jerky.

Potential Gifts

-Cheap costume jewelry

-Cheap perfume

-Candy

-T-shirts or other items that represent your home

-Stickers or other little trinkets for the kids

-Empty photo albums

-Blue and red pens for the kids who attend school—the pens here are not of very high quality

Fair and gentle readers,

Remember way back in January when Emma came to Senegal? Contrary to what you might have inferred from my infrequent blog posts, the trip did not end in Tambacounda. Emma did not, in fact, grow so frustrated by our long day of public transportation that she threw up her arms, rented a taxi to Dakar, and hopped on the first plane out of Senegal. No, Emma is made of stronger stuff than that. Just a day after arriving in Tamba, she gamely stepped onto a bus taking us all the way down to Kedougou. Masochistic? I'll let you decide.

I don't want to spend too long dwelling on the obvious, but Kedougou is not Linguere. For those who may have forgotten, may I point your attention to this post? Walking around Kedougou in the dry season feels a bit like walking through a forest in the fall. The trees are colorful, but somewhat bare, yet there's a whole world of life underfoot, beneath a thick layer of crunchy leaves.

In Kedougou we met up with David Campbell, of Universal Nut Sheller and Homemade Hut fame, as well as his dad, Brian, who is a clone of David, only slightly older and slightly taller.

I had to do a double-take at one point when Brian rounded a corner wearing David's iconic coral man purse.

All joking aside, it's always nice to meet other volunteers' parents when they come to visit. We know each each other in such a limited, but intimate, context--our fellow volunteers are our co-workers, family, friends, doctors, and occasional significant others all rolled into one--that it's nice to get a brief glimpse into the lives from which we all came. Emma and I enjoyed spending a few days en famille with the Campbells. We biked to the market, where Emma and Brian picked out fabric, while I gave indelicate commentary. Really though, what is there to say about blue fabric with bright orange palm trees but, "It's fun"?

We ate maffe--rice and peanuty tomato (or tomatoey peanut) sauce--for lunch. There was a shortage of big person chairs.

We purchased the ingredients to make homemade pizza, and then had a pizza party at David's hut. Yes, in addition to building his own hut, David has built two pizza ovens. I have no explanation.

Then we took a short bike trip out to Segou, a village about 25 kilometers southeast of Kedougou near the Guinean border, which attracts visitors because of the nearby waterfall. Zach, the volunteer who lives there, recently wrote a Peace Corps Partnership grant to help the community build a campement--a small, cheap guest house--so we decided to stay the night to support the project.

All five of us took a lovely afternoon hike to the watefall, and briefly stopped to take a dip in a clear, chilly swimming hole.

We returned to the campement in the early evening. After we cleaned up, some women from the village served us a dinner of onion sauce over fonio--a nutritious, small-grain millet prevalent in Kedougou, but nowhere else in Senegal--which we ate sitting in a circle in the shell of the still-unfinished restaurant, with a perfect view of the dark night sky. The bush felt calm as we passed the hours before bedtime playing cards.

We returned to Kedougou the next day. Emma and I rode ahead of David and his ironman-in-training dad (there's got to be something in their water...). On our last day in Kedougou, Emma and I at lunch at the Hôtel Relais, which sits on the bank of the Gambia River.

That night, Emma and I took a ten-hour bus ride from Kedougou to Dakar, and spent the last day of her trip shopping for souvenirs in Dakar. Hopefully Emma enjoyed traversing the country during her two weeks in Senegal, and won't begrudge me too much my whip-cracking, cattle-driving style as a hostess. There are places to go, people to see, and things to do, you know. The world won't wait.

On January 5, after spending a few days in Linguere, Emma and I made our way southeast to Tambacounda. At 8 am, we went to the Linguere garage, where we conveniently found a sept place--the 7-passenger station wagon that is generally the fastest public transportation option--heading to Touba. We waited for about half an hour for the sept place to fill up before we were on our way. A couple minutes into our ride, realizing that Emma's experiences with public transportation on her trip had thus far been way too uneventful, I thought, with a hint of regret, “What if she doesn’t get to experience the real joys of public transport in this country: the waiting and the sweating and the break-downs?”

My concern was unfounded, at least on one front. Emma got to wait. When we got dropped off on the side of the road in Touba at around 11:30, we took a shared taxi to the garage, where we found a sept place getting ready to leave for Tambacounda. Unfortunately it only one spot left. Oh, the heartbreak of arriving just minutes too late to catch a car... Because we were one passenger too many, we had to wait for both the first and second cars to fill up before we could be on our way.

Emma quickly adapted to Senegal's thumb-twiddling lifestyle, though. During the three hour wait she entertained herself by purchasing clementines and a bracelet from two of the many roaming salespeople, while wisely foregoing the assorted packets of knock-off pills of uncertain origin and purpose. She also made friends with the public restrooms, which isn’t easy to do, as it requires both vigilance to avoid the ever-present men crouching to pee outside the stalls instead of in them and a nose of steel.

The Proof Is In the Poo? Public toilets in Senegal

While visiting the bathrooms, Emma also got to witness some of my more quality interactions with Senegalese people. I stole back our kettle of washing water from an overeager man who grabbed it out of her hand while trying to cut in line between us, and later loudly and theatrically argued with the toilet supervisor over the 50 CFA (ten cents) extra he wanted to charge us to pee in a stall. Arguing in Senegal, especially among Wolof populations, is nothing more than a form of friendly socialization, and by loudly proclaiming that we weren't planning to poop (yes, the word's the same in Wolof), I endeared myself to the toilet guard enough to keep the 50 CFA.

Eventually the sept place did fill up, and at about 3 pm, we hit the road again. We arrived at the Tambacounda garage after dark, and convinced a taxi driver to stop at both the bank and the mini-market on the way to the Peace Corps house for no extra fee, save a candy bar to appease him. By the time we made it to the house, it was almost 9 pm. Dirty, tired and hungry, we tucked into an oversized can of ravioli before showering and tucking ourselves in for the night. We slept soundly in preparation for the next leg of our journey, Tamba to Kedougou, which I'll detail sometime soon.

The Route

Just for the record, Emma is a trooper. I dragged her from the northwestern-most point in Senegal to the southeastern-most city in Senegal during her two-week trip.

This is but a brief interlude, a palette cleanser, if you will, before I return to happier tales from Emma's trip.

Every time I consider posting pictures of the crazy things that happen to my body here, I have a brief moment of, "Do I really need to make my readers squirm in their seats?" second-guessing. But, hey, it's all part of the experience, at least for me, and this blog aims to be nothing more than an honest reflection on my service: the good, the bad, and the deformed.

Maybe I'm an anomaly--ever since I broke my leg at the age of one, I've seemed to have some kind of magnetism for medical problems--so don't let my horror stories scare you off of your own African adventure. It's not you, Senegal, it's me. One of the reasons I can afford to be so nonchalant about all the health issues I've dealt with here is that I've had a lot of strange and confounding things happen to my body throughout my life, and none of them have killed me yet. If that's not cause for optimism, I don't know what is.

The latest? No more of the dreaded staph infection, ALHAMDULILLAH.

But instead, two missing big toenails, the remnants of which conveniently acted as depositories for souvenirs (i.e. pebbles) during our recent hike to the Segou waterfalls outside of Kedougou:

And the removal of a large, asymmetrical, irregularly-bordered mole with varied coloration and a dark center (if I sound like a medical textbook listing warning signs of melanoma, well I guess that's why the Peace Corps wanted me to get it removed right away...):

The removal required--how did I not know this before going in?--seven stitches, but was fairly easy and painless. This doctor actually waited for the anaesthesia to kick in before he started cutting.

Emma finally made it to Senegal on December 30th after a 2-day flight delay. On her first day here, we left Dakar and headed up to the Lompoul Desert, where we rode camels and slept in Mauritanian tents.

The next day, we went up to the Saint-Louis beach for a lovely New Year's celebration. Akon played a free concert in the town center (I can now confirm that he actually does kind of speak Wolof). Then we danced to drumming at a bar until the wee hours of the morning. Emma met a kitty at the hotel who she fell in love with.

On the 2nd we headed down to Linguere, where we took it easy and enjoyed the slower pace of life for a minute or two. We biked to Barkedji for lunch on the 3rd. It took twice as long as it normally would, because of some crazy wind. Once we got there, Diama, my amazing sister, treated us like royalty, cooking a ceebuyapp (rice and meat) feast. She used meat from the goat that Ann Marie's brother, who is also visiting right now with his girlfriend, helped slaughter. Emma and I of course didn't sample the fruits of his labor, but we appreciated the effort. After lunch we played Quirkle with the kids before biking back to Linguere with a much-deserved tailwind. We got back in the dark and slept soundly.

The next day, we relaxed, ran errands and ate a beautiful, delicious sloppy joe dinner with the missionary family in Linguere. Dirk's parents are also visiting, so it was nice for Emma to be able to compare impressions with some fellow visitors. Dirk and Sarah also explained the Senegalese caste system to Emma with far greater detail and accuracy than I could have ever managed.

Now we're in Tambacounda, waiting for the bus to take us down to Kedougou, where we'll bike to waterfalls and enjoy the color green.

We're having a great time so far. It's crazy how many different experiences it's possible to have here in less than a week. Here are some of Emma's observations from her first, crazy week in Senegal: camels, dirty feet, sun, noise, Akon, bike ride into a hot wind tunnel, Diama's yummy cooking, long car rides, beach in January, sugar--lots and lots of it, sand/dust/dirt EVERYWHERE, drumming.

Stay tuned for the next installment of Emma's Adventures in Senegalland.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee by putting on a sweatshirt to warm up after I get out of the shower.

I love thee by covering myself with a sheet (and soon, a sleeping bag) while I sleep.

I love thee by purchasing the plentiful market vegetables (Right now squash, cucumbers, lettuce, non-mushy tomatoes and carrots are all available at the same time. Astonishing.).

I love thee by going for a run in middle of the day.

I love thee by wearing the same shirt all day long, without sweating through it.

I love thee by sleeping in, thanks to the absence of oppressive and slumber-interrupting 6 a.m. heat.

I love thee by turning off my fan.

I love thee by drinking hot chocolate in the evenings.

I love thee by drinking hot tea in the mornings.

I love thee by drinking room temperature water and not mistaking it for the aforementioned hot tea.

I love thee by having conversations with other volunteers that down revolve around complaining about the heat.

Cold season, you complete me.

I had hoped to share many photos from Tabaski in the village and my recent vacation in Cape Verde. Cape Verde is possibly the most visually stunning and geologically unique place I’ve ever been, and I easily took a few hundred photos in the seven days I was there. Tabaski this year was special to me, too, because it was a kind of homecoming. It hit me how much I miss my village family and village life, and how numbered my days in Barkedji, and Senegal, truly are.

Until now I’ve avoided blogging about these experiences, though, because sadly I can’t share any of my photos with you: my camera was stolen during my trip from Cape Verde to Senegal. Photos are a terrible thing to covet—we all know that the experience is much more valuable than its document—but an even worse thing to lose. In an attempt to rebuild my photo collection, I’m giving you some verbal snapshots.

Photo 1: Father

My village dad, Mamadou Diaw, is one of the most serene men I have ever met. Every year for Tabaski, he puts on a spotless white kaftan and flowing headdress held in place by a twisted gold and black band. As he stands clutching his Koran, he has a stately, holy air. He normally shies away from the camera, but on Muslim holidays, he allows himself to be photographed. His revering sons and nephews flock to his side and jostle for a prime position next to him. As the boys mug for the camera, my father looks past me, seemingly floating above the commotion of the day.

Photo 2: Lunch

The butcher travels from house to house killing the Tabaski rams for all the village families. To bleed our sheep, he holds its head over the hole he has dug in the sand and slices the neck. His fingers are nimble, his technique refined, his attitude composed. The animal dies silently as the blood sinks into the sand, merging with the earth and leaving barely a trace. The butcher then begins slicing the animal’s skin from his body and hanging the hide from the tree branches and the wall to dry in the sun. He piles the slick, red flesh into a plastic laundry basin for the women to cook, but leaves the feet and tail—the unwanted remnants—scattered around the compound in a kind of twisted game of hide and seek game for the children.

Photo 3: Sisters

Diama, our favorite sister, takes a break from cooking massive amounts of meat, potatoes and onion sauce to have her photo taken with me and Ann Marie. Diama is unironically sporting the costume jewelry that Ann Marie brought back from the U.S.—the kind of shiny, oversized stuff that American kids use to play dress-up. Ann Marie and I looking just as fancy. We are both clad in green—she in a stiff, tight, plasticky skirt and matching embroidered shirt and I in my shiny, neon, bedazzled pajama-like creation. Today we are relishing our role as Barkedji’s grandes dames.

Photo 4: Vending Machines

Brian, Jen and I have just landed in the Praia, Cape Verde airport, and we are experiencing culture shock. We take off our backpacks and plop down in the plush seats. I look around. The floors are shiny and markedly un-littered. The tv screen above our heads plays a catchy public service announcement about a recent dengue fever outbreak. Wait, why is no one trying to talk to us? When we look behind us, we make our most exciting discovery about the things that change when you travel from a “least-developed country” to a “middle income country”: the appearance vending machines. Jen and I wander over and stare into the machines’ mesmerizing, fluorescent depths. We press buttons to find out the prices of almost every item. An airport staff member eyes us suspiciously, so I hastily purchase a can of Schweppes Bitter Lemon. I wonder whether I’m trying to appease her or ease my own insecurities about being an outsider in this clean, convenient world.

Photo 5: At the Boardwalk

Brian has a confused look on his face as he stares in the window of the ocean-side commercial complex’s luxury clothing store. A slate gray mannequin in a preppy sweater and boat shoes returns his gaze. We’re in Mindelo, Cape Verde’s cultural capital, but we could just as easily be in Miami, (bitch). We are drawn inwards by the clean white lines of the complex’s minimalistic, German architecture. As we walk over fake turf, past the overpriced café that could have just as easily been found at a European modern art museum, and toward the sea, we come upon an exclusive dockside bar, whose periphery is demarcated with a row of metal trees and a velvet nightclub rope. I look through the trees' angular branches toward the ocean beyond, where sailboats pass the quiet day bobbing with the ocean’s swells.

Photo 6: A Fine Balance

We are about two hours into our first day of hiking along the seaside cliffs of Santo Antao, a mountainous northern island we have traveled to by ferry. As we turn a corner, we find the most stunning village perched high upon the rocks in a shadowy pocket. The cool morning air has a scent of unreality. I feel small, like a doll in some Paddington-toting boy’s Peruvian play world. I imagine that he has placed the multicolored pastel houses on their precarious perches with chubby fingers, and it’s only a matter of time before he slips, his hand slamming down upon this delicate world. The houses will be ripped from their foundations to fly into the air before tumbling to the dark depths below. This place is far too beautiful to last.

Photo 7: Gold Strike

Later in the day, about four hours into the hike, our muscles are exhausted by the constant climbs and descents. As we ease our way down a steep and rocky hill, I am pulled onward by a golden glint in the distance. When we reach the valley bed, I realize that the shimmer is coming from a small, still stream—nothing more than an inch of water flowing lazily over smooth rocks. More than a fragile reflection, the deep, almost ruddy gold color seems to come from within the earth. Instead of dissipating, it follows me as I hop across the water. The others continue on, but I stay behind, mesmerized.

Photo 8: Sugarcane

The van turns off at Paúl, a village on the sea, to make its way up through Santo Antao’s interior mountains that are carpeted in green. Fields of sugarcane cling to the rock faces, and the graceful white flowers dance in the breeze, reminding me of oversized dandelions gone to seed. We are traveling high up in the hills to taste homemade herbed softcheese and flavored grogue, Cape Verde’s cheap and prevalent sugarcane liquor. Our destination is a well-known farm/restaurant/all-purpose hiker hangout owned by Alfred, an aging hippie and Autrian expat. It is one of those must-see places made famous by word of mouth long before it made its way into the dog-eared pages of the ubiquitous travel guides we see in the pockets of the many international visitors. As we wait for our food, I wander outside and look toward the top of the mountains. Sugarcane leans large over me, its shape, like a gnome's hat, illuminated perfectly by the mid-afternoon sun.

I've had a request from my beloved sissypoo for more bloggage, so I'm going to play a little game of stream-of-consciousness speed blogging. Here are the rules: Write about all the things that are on my mind. No more than 4 minutes writing about any one topic. No editing aloud.

It's after 10 p.m. I leave early tomorrow for Dakar with Brian and his friend Jen, a Peace Corps volunteer in Zambia. On Friday, we'll head to Cape Verde for a week. I should be packing, but I'm not. What can you do? I haven't yet had the time or presence of mind to get excited about this trip, although I think that it will be lovely. I mean, it has to be, right? I'm leaving the desert to spend a week on some beautiful islands. What could possibly go wrong (cue menacing music)?

I just biked back from Barkedji, where I spent Tabaski with the family. It was so nice to be back in the village. The family sacrificed two rams, and I was reminded of all the reasons I don't eat meat. Ann Marie and I dressed up in our holiday finest. We looked ridiculous, of course. My outfit, a present, was made out of shiny white and neon green fabric that had the texture of pajamas. It was also full-on bedazzled. I'm talking those big, tacky fake jewels that they sell at craft stores in the U.S. I got many compliments, of course. The tackier the better, I guess. I have plenty of photos to share later.

I finished my first two grad school applications this week. I should probably feel relieved, but I don't think I'll be able to fully breathe until I send in the last ones in January.

I know it's still more than a month away, but I'm suffering the Christmas doldrums more than last year. I'm a masochist, so of course I've been "curing" myself by playing the King's Singers and the King's College Choir and all those Christmas albums that we play at home around the holidays. It's suddenly getting colder here--I put on a sweatshirt for 2 minutes when I stepped out of the shower today--which isn't raising my spirits. It just makes me want to be home for the holidays. I never thought I'd say this, but I actually miss Wisconsin's crisp cold right now. I also miss Christmas decorations. And warm cider or hot chocolate. And baking Christmas cookies. And cooking a Christmas Eve feast. And shopping for gifts. And Christmas music. My family tends to rail against the mass consumerism of Christmas (every year, we decide to have a simpler Christmas, with mixed results), but a part of me even misses that disgusting excess.

I listened to This American Life podcasts during my bike-ride to Barkedji. I had already heard the first, but by the time I realized it, I was already too engrossed. The theme was "Life After Death," and it included stories from people who felt guilty about their role in someone else's death, even if they were blameless. One particularly affecting story was about a man who when he was 18 hit a girl with his car, after she swerved in front of him on her bike. The girl, who died in the hospital before her parents got to see her, was one of his high school classmates. I won't go into too much detail; I think everyone should just listen to the show (click here). But it really made me think about the things that can happen to us that are ostensibly out of our control, which can fundamentally alter our lives. I mean, we all have plans. Dreams. Visions of where we want to be, what we want to be doing, and who we want to be doing it with in the future. I don't think that any of us includes inadvertently killing someone on our to-do list.

That's it for now. Off to shower and pack.

I had to fire Boury, our office cleaning lady. In Wolof. It was more awkward than it should have been.

She went to Thies for over a month, instead of the ten days she told us she'd be gone, and her younger sister, who was supposed to take over cleaning duties in her absence, never showed up. Apparently little sis was sick. At the risk of sounding incredibly cold-hearted, I am skeptical. Here "sick" can mean malaria or diabetes. But more often than not, it means tired, maybe a little congested, and not really feeling like showing up for work.

Of course in Boury's absence we hired a new, and much improved, cleaning lady. When Boury returned from Thies, she was stunned that we had hired someone new, and told us that the new woman could work until the end of the month, at which point Boury would resume her duties. Oh no, I had to explain, it doesn't work like that. She did not show up for work for over a month, therefore she lost her job. Seems pretty reasonable, right?

Not according to Boury. She pleaded with us, and then refused to accept that she was getting fired. How could we do this to her? she asked. She's a friend, a member of Cruger's host family and a single mother with no other source of income. I recognize that the politics of the situation are tricky, and I certainly didn't revel in having to cut her loose. But we're not about to pay someone $40 a month--a pretty substantial amount of money here--to not clean our house. Again with the cold-heartedness. It was probably a mistake to hire someone from Cruger's family in the first place, but in a place like this where everyone's your cousin somehow, I guess the chances you'll have to fire a family member at some point are almost as great as the chances you'll marry one.

I felt for Boury, but I knew I had no other choice but to fire her. I surprised myself by actually doing it, though. Once I let the smoke clear and stepped back from the situation, I was actually pretty proud of how I had conducted myself. Firing someone can't ever be fun, but firing someone in your third language as a cultural outsider has to be as tough as anything George Clooney faced in Up in the Air. This kind of tricky cultural navigation is one of those intangible challenges and benefits of Peace Corps service they tout in their brochures. I guess this is personal growth.

A girl in motion remains in motion.

I've got about six months left in my service. Though that sounds like a long time, I know it will go by quickly. I'm already in full-on planning-for-the-future mode--engrossed in (and occasionally overwhelmed by) grad school applications, vacation itineraries and dreams of good food to come.

Here's a random smattering of the things I'm getting excited about:

-Tabaski with the Barkedji family.

-A week in Cape Verde in November with Brian and his friend Jen, a volunteer in Zambia.

-Christmas Eve dinner with Katy's family. My last Christmas away from home for awhile.

-Emma's two-week visit in late December and Early January, which will include biking to some waterfalls, inshallah.

-Finishing my applications and hearing back from schools.

-A five or six week COS (Close of Service) trip with stops in Morocco, Barcelona, Provence, the French and Swiss Alps, Florence-Rome-Naples and surroundings, the Peloponnesian Peninsula in Greece, and a England/Guernsey (with the family), I hope. Friends, food and ferries, oh my!

-Hanging out in Milwaukee with my pup and parents.

-Short trips to visit long lost friends (Madison? Minneapolis? Colorado? New York? Give me suggestions!)

-A summer Tour de West Coast: A bike trip from Vancouver to San Francisco. A sister-sister reunion in San Francisco.

-Fruit! Vegetables! Cheese! Whole wheat bread!

The best part of spending two years in the Peace Corps is that when you finish, you can suddenly justify a few months of pure indulgence. You know, this life isn't half bad.

Remember Chumbawamba? Everyone needs a little throwback to the late '90s to start their day, right?

A would-be purse snatcher attacked me on Saturday night while I was walking to Cool Graoul, Dakar’s monthly dance party. I held on to my bag for dear life while the thief dragged me to the ground. My friend Austin fended off an accomplice, before ripping off the attacker’s shirt. We created such a scene that the two men soon ran off, defeated.

I guess we won that battle of wills, but there was certainly some collateral damage. Today Austin’s nursing a bump on his head, a chipped tooth, and an injured finger and toe. My knees and elbows are scraped up, too, but more significantly I feel a bit emotionally bruised. I can’t shake that sense of uneasiness that comes after being so directly confronted with the worst in humanity. But I feel lucky, too. I keep replaying the scene in my head, running down a list of alternate scenarios. What if Austin hadn’t acted so quickly? What if the attacker had used a weapon?

I also feel partially responsible for the attack. Dakar is a dangerous city, like any other. And we take big chances when we flash our conspicuously white skin on its dark streets at night. Every time I hear about a Peace Corps volunteer falling victim to a crime (which is disturbingly often—Saturday night alone, two other volunteers had their phones stolen and one other one had $60 taken), I am reminded of the risks I’m taking.

Yet take them I do, partially because I’m still young, and recklessness is what we tough young people do best, and partially because I’m not yet willing to let go of that innocent part of me that believes in people’s good intentions and expects that things will always turn out ok. But the longer I’m here, the harder it becomes to maintain this positive outlook on humanity--Senegalese humanity, in particular. The more my body and soul takes a beating in this country, the more difficult it becomes to disassociate this small, but visible, minority of bad apples from my concept of Senegal as a whole.

This country has taught me nothing if not flexibility.

Due to a 12-hour power outage and even longer water cut, I have only managed to accomplish 1.75 of the 7 tasks on today’s to do list. I got my blog post in before the 9 a.m. power outage, and finished most of an update of our regional strategy before my computer ran out of battery charge. But no grad school applications, e-mails, report, case study, or run.

I did, however, manage to make it through entire issues of Utne Reader, Mental Floss and the Atlantic, as well as 200 pages of David Sedaris, take a 2-hour nap, clean my room, play with the dogs, and make and consume a giant pot of stove-top popcorn (a misnomer if you're living without a stove?). Sometime in the not too distant future, I’m going to look back on days like this with longing, right?

We held the annual Linguere-area girls’ leadership seminar this past weekend. This year I worked with three other volunteers to organize a day-long seminar in Linguere for 27 scholarship candidates and one of their parents. Many of the volunteers in the area came out to show their support and lead short sessions.

Things went much more smoothly than last year, probably due in part to my improved ability to plan for the unexpected here and in part to my increased ability to accept the inevitable hiccups in even the best-laid plan. This year, I wasn’t taking any chances with the technology. I rented a generator and purchased gas to run it, tested the sound system at the venue ahead of time, tested our projector’s compatibility with Justin’s computer, and tested all of our DVDs.

Yet despite all of that planning and testing, we somehow managed to melt the DVD of the career film between the time we arrived at the venue in the morning and 3 p.m., when we were slated to show it. (Hmm, I’m going to go ahead and blame that one on the crazy Linguere heat, or maybe the same malevolent Senegalese gods that have left Mary with her 3rd computer in under a year, and definitely not on our careless placement of the DVD on top of the projector’s vent.) Luckily, I had 2 extra copies of the DVD at home, so with the help of the ever-patient Peace Corps chauffeur and a quick retrieval by Rachael, coupled with an improvised career listing activity, the crisis was averted.

The technology! It works!

I’ve talked before about how passionate I am about this work with girls. To me, encouraging these intelligent, motivated girls to pursue educations and plan for their futures, while overcoming an immense list of challenges—early marriage, unwanted pregnancy, sexual violence, HIV/AIDS and other STDs, restrictive gender roles, lack of resources (money, materials, family support)—is not only important on an individual basis, but essential to the development of Senegal. I was glad that we were able to include parents in the dialogue this year, since even the strongest, most ambitious girl won’t get far if she’s fighting her family the entire way.

Playing the "Myths and Facts About HIV/AIDS" game

We invited Peace Corps trainer Awa Traoré to come out again. Awa is incredible. She has a gift for public speaking. She is comfortable talking to any group of people, with little to no planning beforehand. She’s able to push normally shy Senegalese girls to open and expand on short, stock answers without alienating them. Awa is a perfect illustration of why I believe that Peace Corps volunteers are best used as facilitators, and not trainers. Awa’s life experience, cultural knowledge and language skills, along with personal attributes, enable her to communicate with audiences on an intimate level. The things she says just have so much more gravity coming out of her mouth than they would mine. Not to mention the fact that I’d never have the courage or ability to talk about the things she brings up in her workshop (how do you say incest in Wolof?). I’m perfectly fine with doing all the nitty gritty legwork to set up an event like this, and then setting Awa free to do her thing.

Awa in action

Because it was a pretty cool thing to be a part of, for both us American volunteers and the Senegalese girls and parents who attended. Once again, the participants left the seminar giddily chatting about all the things they had discussed that day. One father who attended called me in the evening to thank the Peace Corps for supporting his daughter and to say how important he thought the seminar was. Now, someone who’s really, really cynical (and been in this country way too long) could say that the positive reaction is just lip service. And sure, it’s hard, if not impossible, to measure the actual impact of an event like this. But knowing what I do about the girls’ realities and the taboo that surrounds discussion about issues like sexual health and gender equality, I can’t help but feel confident that this kind of discussion is a step in the right direction.

Awa and Ann Marie hand out certificates and scholarships

Gagnessiry Ba, scholarship winner from Linguere

The Barkedji group

The Linguere group

The Ouarkhokh group

Either I have a habit of adopting pets in this country, or they have a habit of finding their way to me.

Meet Helen Keller. (I had nothing to do with the name.) My replacement, Ann Marie, found Helen among a group of kids in the bush outside Barkedji. She was crying and hungry, and her tail was broken. Ann Marie was afraid the pup would be further injured or killed by the kids, so she took her home.

Of course, we've played this game before with the family in Barkedji, and they still didn't want a dog at the house. Thus, Helen came to Linguere and I, pushover that I am, became de facto mother. I've been trying fruitlessly to housebreak and train her for the last week. The puppy verdict: She's lucky she's so darn cute. And if there was ever any question, I'm definitely not ready for motherhood. I'm exhausted.

Sparky, who got neutered yesterday to quell his urges to run away, is groggily and grudgingly tolerating her antics. When she climbs on him or chews on his tail, he just growls under his breath. But I have to say, Helen is not the sharpest pencil in the box. On those rare occasions that Sparky snaps, like when she tries eating from his bowl during feeding time, she squeals and runs away, but is back at it ten seconds later. What's that textbook definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results? I'm starting to wonder about Helen.

Poor Sparky.

Senegal at this time of year and I have a complicated relationship. School's out, so everything seems quieter, especially for us education volunteers. A lot of students have either left for even more remote villages or headed to Dakar or Thies to take in the big city lights. And most of the men and boys spend the days in the field, farming.

It's also rainy season, which means, on the one hand, occasional cloud cover and the color green in our lives, and on the other, rampant skin infections. Ramadan has arrived, so people are hungry, dehydrated, tired and growing progressively more cranky with every day. And yet, to put a completely egocentric spin on the holy month, this is the one time of year when we volunteers can find cheese in Linguere, since people like to break the fast with special foods like dates, apples, juice and cheese. Just trying to be even handed, you know.

*****

Ramadan last year was definitely the emotional low point in my service. I struggled to find work and to keep myself busy for the first couple of weeks, until I had to go to Dakar to treat the first in a long line of staph infections with which you are probably way too familiar at this point. I swore to myself last year during rainy season/Ramadan that I'd leave the country this time around.

And yet, here I am, back for more of the same. In a general sense, I'm once again struggling with the same nagging feelings of purposelessness, and in an uncomfortably specific sense, I'm trying to convince myself that the suspicious fever I had yesterday and the hard, painful lump I discovered in my armpit today aren't a conspicuous neon sign flashing, "Staph v2.0: back with a vengeance."

I'm watching like a helpless mother as all the new volunteers in Linguere go through that familiar hyper-speed cycle of interested observation, followed by I-can-hack-it triumph after a couple days of successful fasting, which is then quickly shattered by an oh-my-God-we've-still-got-28-more-days-of-this-and-I'm-already-considering-eating-the-pages-of-my-books reality check. Whether or not we choose to embrace it, Ramadan's here to stay for awhile.

*****

Sometimes I grow saddened when I ponder the huge impediments to the development of Senegal, and Linguere in particular. These are things that are far greater than any group of people's best intentions, motivation or ingenuity.

For example, it's hot, as in really, really hot, here 90% of the time, and it's hard for any of us to be fully productive when it takes all we've got just to not tip over and fry to a crisp in the sun. Another challenge? We live in a desert--a desert with a 90 meter water table--yet subsistence farming is the main economic activity in this zone. Plants don't want to grow in the desert, and there's not all that much that composting and mulching can do about it.

And so, I sometimes wonder during Ramadan--and I'm simply posing a question here, not trying to denigrate anyone's religion--if this month of fasting might be another one of those impediments to development. From a purely economic standpoint, there's got to be a great loss of productivity, right?

Yet, it's much more complicated than that. Development is so much more than a purely economic question. And unfortunately, as with everything else here, the more I ponder this question, the fewer answers I have.

Last week, coaches and players from the NBA and the WNBA came to Senegal through the NBA Cares/Basketball without Borders Program. They ran a camp for Africa's most promising basketball players and participated in development projects. On Friday and Saturday, about 15 other volunteers and I helped out with their mosquito net distribution in Rufisque and their basketball court/computer room/reading room dedication at the YMCA in Dakar.

It was a fun event. I enjoyed seeing such gigantic players dance and play with such tiny children. I also appreciated seeing some African players who have grown into such successful players return to their home continent to encourage children here to strive and succeed.

Read more about the events here:

New York Times

NBA Cares

I got such a nice phone call the other day, while I was in Thies to help out with the new volunteers' in-service training. All five of the girls from my girls' group who took the rigorous standardized test to exit middle school and enter high school passed! That is an amazing accomplishment for all of them, since the pass rate in Barkedji is generally only between 30 and 50%. At some middle schools in Senegal, only one or two students pass each year.

The girls are such sweet, funny, motivated and inspirational people, and I am so proud of them.

Congratulations, Deyssi Diagne, Coumba Diagne, Coumba Gueye, Boury Gadji and Sadio Ba!

As I biked the 70 k Linguere-Barkedji-Linguere route today and listened to Jim Noir on my iPod, I remembered this excellent commercial from the 2006 World Cup, which used Noir’s “Eanie Meanie” as background music and featured French star Zinedine Zidane before he both won the Golden Ball and, in that infamous head-butting incident, very publicly self-destructed, forever tarnishing his legacy. Ahh, the ups and downs of a World Cup…

I don’t like commercials, but I love World Cup commercials almost as much as I love the World Cup. No matter how cheesy the commercials--or in the case of the catchy Coca Cola ad from the most recent Cup, questionably racist (last time I checked, African children are not secretly lions, and do not bound over trees and cliffs in the bush, Simba style), I always end up associating them with the anticipation and excitement of that special month every four years when the entire world almost forgets to keep breathing.

Viewing the games this time around, many on the Linguere bar’s cable television over a cold beer, I felt comforted by the familiarity of my experience. Since my childhood I’ve been watching the World Cup in public places surrounded by rabid soccer fans. I still vividly remember the day in 1994 when my dad and I watched Italy’s overtime victory over Nigeria at the Italian Community Center in Milwaukee. We had to root for the underdogs in secret, for fear of retribution by the animated Italians.

There is something so nice about the way World Cups punctuate a lifetime. The four years spent waiting for the next one can seem interminable, the changes that occur in those four years insignificant. And yet time passes and life does change. I can’t believe it’s already been four years since I watched England lose to Portugal on penalties at Hawk’s Bar in Madison, and sixteen years now since the World Cup came to the U.S. and I religiously filled out the results of every match on a giant chart in my room.

Knowing that every four years, no matter where I might be in the world, I’ll be able to sit down with other fans and devote 90—or 120—minutes to watching beautiful passes, stunning goals, career-defining wins and heartbreaking losses is important to me. And the universality of the World Cup viewing experience has gotten me to thinking about all the things I do here in Senegal to give my life a sense of normalcy.

I may live in the desert in Africa, but I can still cook myself an elaborate dinner for no special reason. I can still walk the dog at sunset or take a long bike ride on an unfamiliar road just to explore. I can still start, and occasionally finish, a Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle. These are the things that I do to feel alive.

I often tell newer volunteers that the single best piece of advice I can give them is to make themselves happy, no matter what it takes, because no one else here is going to do it for them--spend an entire morning reading trashy magazines or buy yourself that cold soda (I’m talking to you, Brian Math). At no other point in our lives will we have to advocate so strongly for our own happiness.

So, thanks, South Africa, for hosting a beautiful World Cup that made me so happy and reminded me that no matter how far I may be from home, I am never too far from something familiar.

I should be clear. Life here isn't actually just one big pity party. The redemption of a new day, coupled with a 3 hour period with no power outages in which I have been able to do 2 loads of laundry in the missionaries' most magical appliance, The Laundry Machine, has markedly improved my mood. Before I got sidetracked by the world falling down around (on top?) of me, I actually had some rather pleasant things to share with you.

The last couple of weeks have been filled with enjoyable travel, which is not actually an oxymoron in Senegal when you forego public transport in favor of bicycles. My bike tours around Linguere and Kedougou have been filled with the kind of going somewhere, discovering something type adventure I once naively thought every day in the Peace Corps might bring; not that I'm disparaging the comfort of routine I've finally found. Living somewhere and traveling somewhere are inherently different. It's just nice to have a bit of that slightly misguided, almost-risky, story-worthy adventure to spice up my life once in awhile.

I'll let the pictures do most of the talking.

Ann Marie makes a friend or two on the road between Barkedji and Linguere.

Two generations of proud Barkedji volunteers.

Three years later, Joey still gets excited by the sight of camels.

Joey, Emily and I can still muster some enthusiasm after a grueling 60k ride out to Justin's site, Yang Yang, on--I swear--the worst road in the country.

But excitement soon gave way to this--a much more apt visual description of our emotional state.

I am unimpressed by Tempo cookies' false advertising of "more cream." See exhibit A.

Exhibit A.

Did the bumpy road jostle Joey's brain so much that even dry, decidedly uncreamy Tempo cookies cannot save her?

Linguere's landscape in a word: sad.

Linguere: where things go to die, even bikes. We live here.

Not here, Kedougou.

We're off! Caution: wild animals.

Superstars.

The charming staff at the Wassadou Campement were incredibly hospitable and welcoming, and extremely concerned about our poor hygeine. They dropped not so subtle hints on four separate occasions that we might like to shower--free of charge, of course--and had us sit outside instead of inside the restaurant. Really, are we that dirty?

Reluctantly leaving lovely Wassadou after a restful lunch break.

Posing in front of the map of Niokolokoba national park at the entrance.

We got room service during a wild rain storm at the Dar Salam campement. Unfortunately, the staff's services did not extend to helping us get rid of the freakishly huge camel spider in our room. Never have I ever seen a Senegalese man so unresponsive to an opportunity to prove his masculinity.

Our campsite at the guard station halfway through the park. The guards, all male, welcomed us by cooking us lunch and dinner. I cannot fully express how amazing it was. Men in Senegal don't cook for women. Ever. Gender and development work, anyone?

Stephanie a.k.a. Sofi Diop charms the Senegalese.

We were out walking for too long, so park ranger Boubacar came to save us from the lions. He brought his gun.

These monkeys kept us company (read: repeatedly tried to steal our food) at our campsite in the park

Maya looks radiant. The river? Not so much.

Steph and I took a bike ride/hike to a village in the hills 13 k from Kedougou and marveled that we were still in the same country.

Happy to be above sea level.

Kedougou. Happy Fourth of July!

Me and my bicycle, no ordinary romance.

Volunteers love exchanging FML stories, partially because it makes us seem hardcore, and partially because hearing about the time you accidentally ate cow poo makes me feel a little bit less awkward about the time I had an alien growing out of my eye.

These past 48 hours in Linguere have given the whole staph debacle an run for its FML money.

Wednesday evening: Cat sitting and watching the World Cup at the missionaries' house. The power goes out 15 minutes from the end of the game. As I stumble around in the dark trying to make sure everything is unplugged and turned off before I go, Barney and Billy decided to use my computer's power cord as a chew toy.

Thursday morning. Electricity comes back. I test my power cord. It's definitely broken. I'm sick. My body aches and my stomach is making alarming noises. The power goes out again, so I lie in a puddle of my own sweat on the floor. I try to eat some rice and fish. Big mistake. My stomach starts running (a Senegalese euphemism for G.I. distress).

Thursday afternoon. Stomach is now sprinting. I've got a 101 degree fever and an achy body. Sparky, our sweet new dog from the missionaries, throws up his lunch. I barely have the energy to turn my head.

Thursday evening: Still sick. Fever is spiking. A rainstorm floods the house. Electricity goes out again, and the water gets cut.

Friday morning: Feeling marginally better, but the water's still out, so I can't shower or flush the toilet. I'm still sick, still haven't done my laundry, and still can't accomplish any of the long list of computer-related tasks on my to-do list this week. Suffering is a full-time job here, you know.

Friday afternoon: Still lying inside trying to recuperate. Children have climbed on top of our fence to harass Sparky. Sparky bolts towards them and crashes into the gate, opening it. He runs away. I chase after him, scandalously dressed in my sick clothes (drawstring-less shorts that are falling off and a tank top) and looking just as disgusting as I feel. Every time I get within five feet of Sparky, he runs further away. At one point he gets into a fight with another dog and I ineffectually and embarrassingly stand there crying and yelling his name. I don't know what else to do. I am so frustrated by Senegal and life right now. So angry at the children, and the world by association.

I am helpless as I seem to stand outside of my body, watching myself warp into one of those bitter old hermits who allows herself to be tormented by children. The last 48 hours of my life have been human hardening at warp speed.

Sometimes I feel like life here is just one big test--how much can Senegal pelt at out protective shells in two years before we crack? I want to think I'm stronger than the assaults on my body and mind, but in all honesty, I'm cracking. They're not deep fissures, but small chips stolen from my best self. The great paradox is that in trying to be good, I am less generous, patient, compassionate and positive than I ever have been.

On Sunday, we held a basketball tournament in Linguere. It was the culmination of a series monthly clinics beginning in December, 2009. Teams of middle school girls and boys from Barkedji, Linguere and Ouarkhokh participated.

Everything went really well. Finally, after 6 months, all of the transportation headaches were worked out. Though at first Peace Corps volunteers led the clinics, by the end the Linguere gym teachers successfully facilitated the clinics and tournament, which is kind of the development ideal. And I was amazed at how much the kids' skills have improved in the last 6 months.

Pictures below.

We still haven't gotten internet transferred to the new house in Linguere, so hopefully I'll get back to posting regularly once that gets worked out.

I'm on vacation!

Don't we look happy to be well fed and not covered in sweat?

I'm traveling with two of my Peace Corps friends, Katy and Melissa, and we met up with one of my best friends from high school, Carly, in Munich. We've now been to Munich, Vienna and Prague, and now we're spending 4 days in Berlin before heading back to Senegal. It has been so much fun. I need to do this more often.

a.k.a team Louga/Linguere a.k.a team Tech-Savvy brings you two videos, one serious, one not so much.

First, here's a video I made about our recent department-wide collaborative mosquito net distribution. It's kind of cheesy, but kind of heart-warming.

Second, we have a funny video that the new Linguere volunteers made about our region, Louga, after the volunteer visit.

We have way too much time on our hands, obviously, so we devote an unhealthy amount of brain space to the invention of names and slogans for our region. The latest, Team Goodwin, is a reference to a very odd letter that Ann Marie, my replacement, received just before the volunteer visit.

On the envelope, Ann Marie's address was written in the sloppy, barely legible handwriting of a child. We were shocked the letter even made it to its intended destination. Ann Marie didn't recognize the return address or the name of the sender. Inside, we found a Flat Stanley (a popular elementary school project based on a book, Flat Stanley is a laminated paper man that elementary school students send to friends around the world to be photographed in exotic locales), and a note, "Dear Goodwin, I haven't seen you in a long time..."

The letter is hilariously mysterious on so many levels. Who's Goodwin? Who sent the letter? Where did she get Ann Marie's name and address? Why does she think Ann Marie is also Goodwin? Realizing that Allah had no answers for us, we decided to just go with it. We photographed Flat Stanley all around Barkedji.

Can you find Flat Stanley at the market?

Flat Stanley in the bathroom!

Flat Stanley visited the garden, too.

I left the village yesterday. All my bags are in a big pile in the Linguere office. Until we move to a bigger space later this month, I'm kind of homeless.

Moving was sadder than I expected, since in a lot of ways I haven't really left. I'll still be going back to Barkedji to celebrate holidays with the family and to work with my replacement on projects. But the hard part of goodbyes for me is always the realization that things will never quite be the same again. Of course, that's just the forward motion of life. Progress precludes stagnation.

The attachment definitely snuck up on me. I think that we volunteers spend so much time, especially at first, longing for the life we left, that we don't notice getting used to, and even genuinely loving, this new life, until its almost too late. Watching a bunch of my friends leave Senegal recently has made me realize that it'll be hard to leave in a year. After I witnessed my friend Dana tearfully say goodbye to her neighbors in the village after two years, we both wondered why we do this to ourselves. Why is our generation always moving? Leaving something behind for something bigger? Better? We decided that the hard goodbyes are important. They show that what we're leaving meant something.

So, one year down. One to go. I'm trying to make the most of the time I have left in Senegal. It'll go by quickly. I have some year two resolutions, including visiting more friends' sites, going on more bike trips and taking more video footage, but I'll spare you the majority of my self-reflection. I'm trying to see this move not as an end as much as a beginning, an opportunity for new adventures. New hilarity. New fodder for the blog.

I just finished hosting two trainees, Ann Marie and Kim, during their volunteer visit, formerly known as "demystification" (menacing, huh?), during which the Peace Corps sends the trainees to stay with current volunteers for just under a week. It provides them with their first impressions of the villages and regions where they'll be spending the next two years and with their first tastes of daily life as a volunteer, so it's a pretty significant experience.

Luckily Ann Marie and Kim, along with Justin and Emily, the other two volunteers who will be coming out our way, fit right in. As we encountered dust, heat and a bunch of dead animals on our 25 kilometer bike ride from Barkedji, where Ann Marie will be living, to Diagaly, Kim's site, the girls and I joked about the challenges to living in one of the smallest, hottest, most isolated regions in PC/Senegal. We also pitched new regional mottos that expemlify just how hard core we really are. In addition to "Linguere: Where things come to die," we came up with, "Linguere: The forgotten region," and, "Linguere: Where there is no water."

We kid, of course. There's actually something kind of comforting about feeling like we're living at the end of the earth. And there's definitely something nice about feeling so safe among our neighbors. From a work perspective, things are looking up in Linguere, too. The influx (ok, I'm being generous with my terminology) of new volunteers will bring us up to a total of 8, and the newbies are very excited to get started on projects, both village-based and regional.

There's always a bit of a friendly rivalry between Peace Corps regions. After a successful volunteer visit, I can say this: "Hey Kedougou, you lush, green region of southeastern Senegal, you may have shown your trainees hippos and waterfalls, but here in Linguere, we made fresh limeade in my hut. Bam."

This is good for you.

Ok, so this post really has nothing to do with my Peace Corps service, but just like I'm all about reducing the number of starving children in Africa, I also wholeheartedly support the current trend in the media of discussing normally intimidating and abstruse subjects in a way that makes them more accessible to the public. This world's got enough pretension already (I say as I tell you what's good for you...).

I never listened to podcasts in America, but here in Senegal they save my life on a daily basis. As I take my evening bucket bath in the village, I always hook my iPod up to my speakers and listen to a podcast. I especially enjoy NPR's Planet Money podcast: only slightly socially awkward econ geeks getting together and spending 10 to 20 minutes talking about a current issue in economics in language I can understand. They often discuss the economics of development, attempting to answer questions like, "Why are poor countries poor and rich countries rich?" by conducting interviews with economists like Amartya Sen and, most recently, traveling to Haiti. They've also done a better job explaining the recent global economic turmoil than anyone else I've found.

In a similar vein, I recently came across Steven Strogatz's New York Times math series linked above. His most recent piece explains limits, the conceptual foundation of calculus, in an extremely clear way. Run along and enjoy it and feel both smarter and more beautiful.

Remember way back in June, shortly after I arrived in the village, when I wrote all those annoying e-mails and blog posts asking you to donate to our regional mosquito net distribution? And then you donated $10 and forgot about it, or maybe you donated $100 and totally didn't forget about it but were way too polite to be like, "Hey, what happened to my $100? Where are my complimentary heart-warming pictures of smiling Senegalese children clutching the mosquito nets that will keep them from getting malaria? That sneaky Peace Corps volunteer ripped me off!" Well, I am happy to report that we didn't swindle you, things just move slowly here. We are finally distributing all those nets.

Yesterday was the first day of our four day distribution, which we're doing in conjunction with the Linguere Department vaccination tours, run by health workers from each of nine health posts. We're tagging along, mooching free rides out to the farthest reaches of the bush, to provide nets to all of the kids who didn't receive them in the two previous national distributions. I'm glad that we're targeting villages that are often forgotten or ignored by the health authorities, but our decision to distribute to the farthest villages, yet to work on a Senegalese watch, is making for some looooooong days.

A rundown on grueling Day 1: We were supposedly starting early, so I rushed to leave Barkedji at 7 am and went straight to the hospital in Linguere after grabbing a bean sandwich on the side of the road. I waited for three hours for the vaccination car to arrive. We finally left in the late morning, stopped at the office to pick up nets, and transported them to the Warkhokh Health Post. We left the Health Post around 12 pm, drove 2 hours out into the bush, and made the vaccination/net distribution rounds until 6:30 pm. Then we started driving home until the head nurse realized after half an hour that she had left her phone in one of the villages. We drove around for an hour looking for the phone to no avail before finally giving up and making towards home again. We arrived back at the Warkhokh Health Post at 9 pm and tabulated vaccination counts for over an hour. I didn't make it back to the Linguere office until after 10:30 pm, by which point I was exhausted, hungry and dehydrated. Notice the conspicuous lack of mention of lunch and dinner in the previous paragraph... Also, it's hot season again, which means I might as well be continuously peeing out of all of my pores all day long. There's simply no way to drink enough water in this heat.

I generally don't mind these long work days. We have so much down time here that it's always nice to be physically working for more than an hour or two at a time. And--how to say this diplomatically?--it's also really uplifting to see Senegalese working so hard for their own country's development. The health workers I accompanied were genuinely concerned about targeting the highest number of kids who otherwise wouldn't get vaccinated or receive nets. They never mentioned going home early because they were hot and tired.

It's easy to grow disenchanted with the concept of sustainable development when people so often seem to want to take the easiest way out. In this line of work, we encounter a fair bit of entitlement, resignation and even laziness. But it's good to remind myself that it's a frustratingly visible minority that feel entitled to "presents" from toubabs, but refuse to (or don't know how to) be proactive about solving their own problems.

So, I was happy that we worked hard yesterday, happy that we achieved something concrete. But as my dad would say, just one minor complaint, dear: If we hadn't waited all morning for the vaccination car to arrive, we wouldn't have had to work until 10:30 pm. They do these vaccination tours a lot. Someone in that car must have realized when we left the Health Post at noon for a two hour drive out into the bush that we wouldn't be arriving home until very late. I know this is a question I shouldn't even bother asking at this point, but seriously, why didn't we just leave earlier...? I have learned to be patient here, but there is such a thing as too much patience, and this country is sure toeing that line. There comes a point when patience degrades from virtue to fatal flaw.

Sometimes when I talk about Barkedji, I feel like one of those proud parents who won't shut up about how amazing little Susie is. But, really, it's an awesome village. Look at these pictures of the new school garden and tell me they don't make you smile:

Apart from working with the teachers and director of the elementary school to write the grant that financed the garden, I really haven't done much to make this project happen. The teachers and students are there, planting and watering, every single day after school. They've already sold almost 20,000 CFA ($40) worth of lettuce! Yes, that's a lot here.

I was also really happy to hear that some villagers recently worked with USAID to start a health insurance program in the village. Two hundred families have already signed up at a cost of 2,000 CFA ($4). The program pays half of all medical bills at the Health Post in Barkedji or the hospital in Linguere. The man running the program said that now they want to encourage preventive health, and are looking for small financing to do a series of health talks.

The environmental club is also going well. It's pretty much to the point where it can function without me. Even though I'm in Linguere for our regional mosquito net distribution, the club organized a clean up of the site of the weekly market this morning. Look at these cute, eager environmental club kids and the lovely mudstove they recently built!:

There are enough smart, educated, motivated people in Barkedji that sometimes I allow myself to believe that if I come back in 5 or 10 years, things actually will be better. That despite the encroaching desert and the 90 meter water table and the lack of resources and the remoteness, life might still get a little easier. Maybe that's naive, but still, in my year in Barkedji I've seen enough small successes to give me hope. I look at people like my counterpart, Baba Sine, the quiet leader of the garden project who every day does everything he possibly can to make the school cleaner and more functional, or my host sister, Diama, who in the last 6 months has started a very successful juice business despite an unbelievable amount of housework, and I can't help but hope.

...and I'm definitely not ready for babies yet.

So my parents left Senegal to return to the land of milk and honey (and, as I sometimes conveniently forget, full time jobs and bills and taxes). I'm so happy they came, and I'm thankful that their reaction to Senegal was excessively positive, though I sometimes begrudged them their lack of nuanced interpretation of events.

Of course that's unfair of me, but sometimes I just wanted to remind them that my life in Senegal isn't all vacation time at the beach and my host sister doesn't usually, or ever, cook me salads for dinner. I'm glad I was able to help them see Senegal at its finest, but sometimes felt like I had to justify my occasional moanings and groanings about life as a PCV.

I have to give them credit, though. My parents were champs. It's not like we spent our vacation riding in air conditioned vehicles and sleeping in $300 a night hotel rooms. They roughed it in tents and on public transport, and when a huge, overstuffed van we were riding in swerved off the road, over a bunch of bushes and and into a tree, my parents took it like true Senegalese. They shrugged their shoulders, grabbed their bags and got off the car to wait for another on the side of the road. In the end, I can't really complain that they weren't complaining.

As nice as it was to spend some time with my parents, I have to admit that I breathed a bit of a sigh of relief when I dropped them off at the airport. I think they were ready to give me a break, too. I've got a lot going on right now, and they had seen me struggle to keep up with working while guiding them around Senegal. It was tough. It's no secret among Peace Corps volunteers that hosting family members can be one of the hardest things we do during our service. And then there's the distinct possibility that I've lost both my mind and my ability to play well with others in this year of independence and loneliness, and I will one day return to America a confused, antisocial being.

Of the things I'm juggling right now, perhaps the biggest is my impending move to Linguere. I'm going to be taking on a new role as a Peace Corps Volunteer Leader (PCVL), coordinating regional work and supporting volunteer projects. The 7-soon-to-be-9 of us in Linguere are very isolated, and we desperately need someone to act as a leader/communications liaison/community outreacher/professional whip-cracker. I think it will be a good new challenge for me, too.

I can't say I'm ready to leave the village, but just as the finite nature of our Peace Corps service has taught many a villager to accept the constant comings and goings of their dear pet toubabs, it is also forcing me to get over my habit of attachment. Not only am I packing up and moving out, I'm also watching Cruger and Dana, the two older volunteers from Linguere who have been constant companions over the past year, get ready to return home and move on (Dana's going to grad school and Cruger's getting married, yay!).

And just as Cruger and Dana are leaving, the new group of Environmental Education and Health trainees have arrived. Included in that group is my mystery replacement--the very lucky volunteer who will be living in Barkedji come May. I met the group at the airport when they arrived, shell-shocked, at 5 am, and then traveled with them to Thies where they're doing their training. I spent a week at the training center with them, teaching them how to eat, demonstrating gardens and tree nurseries, and guiding them around Thies. They are super!

And so as sad as it is constantly say goodbye to older volunteers, it's equally as exciting to welcome new friends to the country. I like the way Peace Corps service is punctuated by the 6-month shuffle, though seeing new volunteers arrive always instills a bit of terror in me: Does this mean I'm supposed to be feel experienced and knowledgeable now? I sure hope not.

Here are a few photos from the first half of my parents' trip to Senegal, before my camera broke. These are from Dakar, Barkedji and a bit of Saint Louis. My mom still has to send me photos taken on her camera in Saint Louis, Lompoul, Palmarin and Dakar part II.

The All-Volunteer Conference and ridiculousness of WAIST are over, and I'm now attempting to entertain my parents for a couple of weeks. It's been nearly four years now since I first stepped off a plane in Africa, first breathed in Dakar's salty, fetid odor, and it's interesting to rediscover Senegal through the eyes of the uninitiated (and unhardened).

I feel like I'm four years into a relationship of sorts, and at this point I'm comfortable but passive. Patient but jaded. Unphased but uninspired. I'm floating. My parents, on the other hand, are overstimulated with the newness, the insanity of it all. And they're reacting in very different ways. While my mom stares wide eyed, trying to take it all in, my father incessantly narrates our journey through the day. "Goats! Waves! Crazy driving! Hustlers! Cheap prices! A cat!" (Really, Dad? A cat? We've got those in America, too.)

I love discovering that what they notice about Senegal is so different from the things that make me stop and think these days. While I pass the days pondering the value of Development Work (capitals not optional), am I really forgetting to notice the beauty of that grapefruit seller clutching her child beneath brightly colored fabric, the sky behind them brilliant with pink sunset? My dad's giddy chattering at the strangeness and beauty of it all has reminded me not to take this place, this experience, for granted.

In the last week, we spent a few days in Dakar so my parents could recover from the long flight before we made the long trek to the village. They adapted far better than expected to the village's stick beds and hole for a toilet (and I'm convinced I have the smallest toilet hole of any volunteer in country--my site-mates can back me up on this). The villagers were incredibly gracious and welcoming, and my sister pulled out all the stops with her cooking. She even made salad for the first time since I've lived there.

Here are the things that struck my dad about the village: My hardworking, uncomplaining sister, who was up before the family to start making breakfast and was still filling plastic bags with juice to sell long after the rest of us had turned in for the night; the huge extended families living within each compound, TV satellite dishes and ubiquitous cell phones in an African village in the middle of nowhere; visitors' inability to walk past any home without being invited in for tea or soda; the lovely calmness and slower pace of life.

Now we're staying in Saint-Louis for a few days. Touristy, breezy Saint-Louis was supposed to be a nice break after three days in the village. I was looking forward to wandering the island and reliving my glory days of study abroad (ha...). Unfortunately, shortly after we arrived I was bowled over by a wayward, uncontrolled bicyclist. Crazy girl plowed full-speed into me, and as I fell the $250 lens of the brand new camera my parents brought separated from the camera body and broke. The experience and it's accompanying bruises and scrapes, along with the disappointment of managing to break a camera in under a week has put a damper on the Saint-Louis experience.

But it's a new day, so we're trying to keep things in perspective. I have neither a broken leg nor a staph infection (alhumdulilah), and we're looking forward to the next week's the fun, crazy adventures in the Lompoul Desert, Palmarin and Dakar. Photos to come later, they're slow to upload.

I'm in Dakar, preparing a camps presentation that I'll be giving with some other PCVs at the all-volunteer conference on Thursday and Friday. Hundreds of volunteers from Senegal and surrounding countries will descend upon Dakar in the next few days for the conference, followed by a 3-day softball tournament/drunk fest called WAIST (West African Invitational Softball Tournament). WAIST is (apparently) pretty much the most exciting thing that happens in West Africa. Ever. We've been hearing volunteers talk about it and its accompanying team themes, costumes, and parties since we arrived in country.

The day after WAIST, my parents arrive! They'll be spending almost 2 weeks in Senegal. We'll be traveling to the village, Saint-Louis, the Lompoul desert where we'll ride camels and sleep in Mauritanian tents, beautiful Palmarin in the Petite Côte, and then back to Dakar. I'm so excited for them to see the village and Senegal and to visit Africa for the first time.

The past week and a half in the village were busy and productive, and reminded me of all the reasons I've grown to love Barkedji over the last ten months. It's kind of a pity that health problems and work have been drawing me away from the site so much recently. I feel like the days in my service when I can hang out at site for two and a half weeks, content to just be, are well behind me...

...not in small part due to the fact that I'll be moving to Linguere in May to become a PCVL (Peace Corps Volunteer Leader). But that's a long story best saved for another day. So much is happening right now. I'm almost overwhelmed.

I've been granted permission to go home, so I'll finally leave Dakar tomorrow morning. Despite the crazy eye and the hospital stay and the antibiotic-induced nausea and the frustration of being out of my village at a time when I really want to be working, I've had some fun in Dakar. Since Senegal sure isn't loving my body right now, I've taken that task upon myself. Exercise, homemade mozzarella salad arranged just so and chocolate mousse are magical things.

The craziness of the past few weeks has caused me to reflect on my decision to come here. In accepting that this infection might return, I have to wonder if there's a price I'm not willing to pay, physically or emotionally, for this experience. Volunteers often deal with incredible personal hardship, pain and loss during their service--things far graver than an infected eye--and yet somehow find the strength to carry on. Would I do the same? I have to wonder if there's something that could happen to me or a friend or a member of my family that would suddenly make me regret my decision to come.

It only took a Peace Corps medical officer's mention of the possibility of "medical separation" for me to arrive at my unequivocal conclusion, however unwise: though there might be a price I'm not willing to pay, my health is not it. When confronted with the threat of being forced by Peace Corps to leave for medical reasons, I realized just how unwilling I am to go home now. I still have so much that I want to see, do, accomplish during my service. If my body must be this opportunity's collateral damage, so be it. Besides, staying put out of fear doesn't preclude suffering or loss. And people in America get staph infections, too, right?

You know how occasionally a public works project will disrupt the water supply in America, and the sky might as well be falling? Families are forced to rough it, flushing the toilet with their emergency stashes of Evian…

Before I left the village to come to Dakar, the water had been out for almost two weeks. Normally our water comes out of a tap in the family compound, which draws from a pipeline attached to the village’s deep-bore well, or forage. The forage also pumps water into a storage chateau where Pulaar herders pull it through hoses into plastic containers and rubber inner tubes before transporting it via horse or donkey cart out to the bush.

When the forage breaks down, which it does disconcertingly often, Barkedji’s 6,000 residents use water from the chateau for drinking, bathing, doing laundry, washing dishes, performing pre-prayer ablutions, watering the animals, and watering the gardens. When that dries up, they rely on one small well for all of their water needs. Obviously this ratio of people and animals to well creates mass chaos.

Strong men offer their services to the village, hitching up pulleys and madly pulling water for any woman who is assertive enough to push her plastic bucket to the front of the pack. Pulaars wait for hours with their horse and donkey carts to fill their containers and return home. They have no choice; their animals are their livelihood.

Gardens die, because no one, myself included, is willing to spend entire days fighting for water for plants. We prioritize our needs. Laundry gets put off. Bathing gets put off. Trees and vegetables get sacrificed. And I begin to understand why this place often feels so slow to develop:

We pour our heart and soul into a project, only to watch things start to fall apart almost instantaneously. We build with second-rate materials and then something breaks, or the water goes out, or someone falls ill, bringing the whole precariously functional system to a screeching halt. We have not the money nor the resources nor the energy to continually fix things that will just keep on breaking anyway. So our grand plans fail. We surrender to the status quo.

There is exactly 1 truck in all of Senegal that is able to fix the problem that has befallen Barkedji’s poor forage. So who knows when the water’ll be back. And there’s nothing to do but endure, so we begin to accept the unacceptable. Normal redefines itself. Villagers drink visibly dirty water, which might as well be river water, and then treat the symptoms of the resulting diarrhea. This may be the way of the poor, but it’s a fine line between stoicism and resignation.

I'm still here.

When I went to Linguere on Friday morning for a basketball clinic at the high school, I e-mailed Peace Corps Med some photos of my eye. I guess my description of a “quarter sized abscess above my eye” hadn’t done justice to the extent of my suffering, because when they saw the photos they became concerned and told me to come to Dakar right away. I’ve realized that I tend to downplay my health problems both to myself and to others, and that, especially here, I need to be more assertive and proactive in seeking treatment.

Early Saturday morning I made my way to Dakar carrying nearly nothing, since I had left the village Friday morning with the intention of going home that afternoon. My friend Dana kindly gave me some extra underwear and a toothbrush that she had, and Cruger donated a spare cell phone charger and some antibiotics to my cause. I traveled all day in a sept place (7-seat station wagon) and finally arrived in Dakar around 4.

I met up with Vonnie, the new medical officer, who was with her family at a children’s birthday party in the U.S. embassy-owned park on the ocean. This was a real birthday party, complete with an inflatable bouncy castle shipped from the U.S. (seriously) and a piñata filled with American candy. I can only imagine how I, dirty and sweaty from the long ride and ineffectively covering my Frankenstein-esque boil with a band-aid, must have scared the poor children.

Though it was Saturday, Vonnie had managed to make me an appointment at a clinic for 7 p.m. A Peace Corps car picked us up from the park and took us to the appointment. When the doctor saw my infection, he instantly told me that we’d have to open it up and drain it, and that the incision would leave a scar. The anesthesiologist wasn’t around—it was a Saturday night, after all—so the surgeon said he’d use local anesthesia.

After saying goodbye to Vonnie, undressing and wrapping myself in a sheet, and sporting some green fabric booties to enter the sterile environment of the surgical room, I lay down to endure the operation with strength and grace...at least that was the intention. The doctor injected the anesthesia into my eyelid, a painful process in and of itself, and then waited no longer than 30 seconds before he began cutting into the abscess.

Oh my god, the pain was incredible. Seriously, unbelievable. I tried to stifle my voice as I bawled and shook, but the operation dragged on and on. The doctor made a second incision and then pushed and prodded around my eye, trying to force out the massive amounts of pus. Then came the cleaning and the dressing of the wound. The assistant knotted up gauze and forced it into the hole left by the incision. They kept telling me they were done, only to fiddle some more. It was interminable. I tried to be strong, but at one point I found myself pleading with the men through sobs, “Arretez, s’il vous plait!”

Eventually the operation did end, and I went back to the waiting room to sit alone, naked beneath my sheet and feeling so exposed under the fluorescent lights. My eye was still throbbing. I looked around and took stock of the heavy medical machinery surrounding me, the only witnesses to my pain, and for the first time in a long time, I thought to myself, "What on earth am I doing here?"

I really can’t complain about the treatment and service I got in the hospital, though. The doctor treated me on a Saturday night, and came to visit me on a Sunday. The Peace Corps medical officers visited me on their day off, too. I got a clean, air-conditioned, private room in the clinic, and the food was good. Having stayed in Senegalese hospitals in the past, I can say that this place exceeded all of my expectations.

But there is still that cultural disconnect that makes receiving treatment in Senegal so unnerving. American patients have grown to expect a certain bedside manner that doctors and nurses here simply aren't used to providing. Here the patient’s comfort is secondary to the task at hand, and information about our conditions or treatment is privileged.

I made the mistake of joking with one of the nurses about my vein always being difficult to find as he inserted the needle for an IV. His response? "No, it's not difficult." Well, okay then. That same nurse came into my room at 3am to change my IV. I couldn't sleep, because the antibiotics were giving me terrible stomach pains and nausea. I asked him if the pains were normal, to which he replied, "No, not normal," and walked out.

I stayed in the hospital for 2 days, receiving massive amounts of glucose solution, pain killer, and antibiotic through and IV and having my eye monitored. Now I’m in the Peace Corps med hut for an indeterminate amount of time as my wound heals (inshallah). I'm going to go on a long-term, 3-week dose of antibiotics to hopefully kick the infection.

Trying to watch the African Cup of Nations on TV with one eye.

What is going on with my face?

The staph infection is back. Or, more accurately, it probably never left. This is not ok!

One night last week, some friends and I were walking along the Ponty, one of the main streets in downtown Dakar. I was carrying the group's bottle of José Cuervo in my left hand, and was fully engrossed in the ice cream cone in my right (caramel and salted butter ice cream with chocolate chips = yum). I wasn't carrying a purse; I had put my money, ID and cell phone in my front pocket, since we were going out dancing later that night.

Two men approached me. Snapping me out of my ice cream-induced euphoria, the first tried to distract me by tugging on my left pant leg, which, as any seasoned traveler knows, meant his friend was reaching into the opposite pocket, trying to unearth my cell phone and money.

When I realized what was happening, adrenaline must have kicked in. I yelled a profanity at the top of my lungs. The tugger ran off, and the man who had been reaching into my pocket started backwards and stared at me for a second, not knowing what to make of the crazy toubab lady making such a scene. I took advantage of the moment to show him I meant business, delivering a spin kick to his shins (without dropping the bottle or the ice cream cone, I should note--don't mess with a girl who's studied karate). He stared for another second, yelled said profanity back at me, and ran off.

Though it has to have been one of the weakest, most choreographed pickpocket attempts ever, I still felt pretty cool afterwards.

One of the more unfortunate side-effects of being a female serving in rural Senegal is the dreaded ceeb belly (ceeb, pronounced cheb, is the Wolof word for rice). Unless they get parasites or amoebas, American women in Senegal tend to put on weight, since the diet here is loaded with simple carbohydrates, oil and fats. For example, the powdered milk we consume in sugary coffee, with rice, or on millet cous-cous is enriched with fat. Forget 2%, this stuff has an ungodly 25-29% fat content, which makes it a miracle food for malnourished children and the devil for generally well-nourished, if not over-nourished, Americans. We might as well pour some whipping cream on our carb of choice and call it a day. (Men, deprived of their beloved calorie-laden steaks and burgers, are of course exempt from this phenomenon. They turn scrawny, while women turn soft. No one ever said life was fair.)

Know what's even less fair? The food that makes us fat doesn't even taste good! Oy.

Along with the regular village meals of rice and oily sauce, we get other creative carb on fat on carb combinations. My personal favorite? Macaroni: noodles and fried potatoes with an oily onion sauce, scooped and eaten with the ubiquitous white bag baguette. Ridiculous. "Salad" comes with french fries and oily onion sauce. Breakfast is a loaf of dense white bread and sugar-laden coffee. Villagers consume soda and other sugary juices, teas and coffees like it's their job (and for some men, tea drinking is truly the closest thing they've got to a job), while fresh fruits and vegetables are scarce. See what we're up against?

As a New Year's resolution, I'm waging war on the ceeb belly. I'm in the Peace Corps, I figure I deserve a more superficial resolution than the typical "be kinder" this year. I'm not getting fat, but I've put on a good 10 pounds since I've been here. One of the middle school teachers clearly noticed the weight gain, since he told my counterpart I'd grown "obèse" during the rainy season. And though I'd like nothing better than to balloon up like a blimp and crush him under my weight (What is with Senegalese men?! As my friend Carla said, "After they get done insulting you, they ask you to marry them."), the truth is he bruised my pride a little.

Still, this war is less about vanity than it is about being tired of feeling bloated and lethargic. I got over my vanity the first time staph bacteria attacked my face, when I was forced to walk around for weeks with band-aids ineffectively covering golf ball sized, pus-oozing abcesses. I'm not going to look cute here, I'm over it. But I want to feel like my old, athletic self! To think a massage therapist once complimented me, in perhaps a slightly unprofessional manner, for my "hard" body... Oh, the glory days.

So watch out, I'm on a mission, and there is no stopping me. What I like to call my determination my mom has called obsession. Just ask her about my independent quest to smooth the coat of our 13-year old, ridiculously fluffy dog... But I digress. In the five days since I resolved to be healthier, against all odds, in Senegal, I started a food journal to monitor my eating. I've sworn off soda, attaya (tea), and Senegalese coffee. I buy hard boiled eggs or peanuts as a village snack, to provide my vegetarian body with a much needed source of protein, and I'm trying to start eating fish. I bought bananas, watermelon and Senegalese oranges at the weekly market in Barkedji. And I'm no longer allowing myself peanut butter m&m binges in Linguere.

I've also increased my exercise regimen. In the past few days I've gone on a couple of runs (6.5 and 3.5 miles), and then took a long walk in the bush when my foot started hurting. I biked the 35k to Linguere yesterday, and I'll bike back tomorrow. I've heard rumor of a half marathon in Dakar coming up in the next few months, so I think I'll start training for that. And soon I'll be watching my jaay fondé melt away, inshallah.

*In Wolof, literally to sell fondé, a rich, milky, sugary millet porridge. Figuratively, a Senegalese woman's highly prized badonkadonk.

There’s a Peace Corps saying, “You’ll spend two years putting yourself out of a job.” That’s the PC modus operandi, and should really be the sustainable development MO, as well. The idea is that we outsiders share new ideas and practices with the populations with which we live and work. If all goes as planned, people adopt some of these ideas and continue to pass them on to future generations, eliminating the need for outsiders to be here in 10 or 100 years saying the same things, teaching the same skills, donating the same materials. The process is behavior change. The end result is ideally some sort of concrete, measurable improvement (things should stop falling apart at a certain point). A lovely premise, eh?

When I returned to my village after vacation, I actually saw evidence of this philosophy in action. My brother had constructed a fence around the family garden to keep out the hungry chickens and goats who had been feasting on the fruits of our labor for the last eight months. At the elementary school, the teachers had constructed a concrete water basin for the new, grant-funded school garden, planted a row of trees around its perimeter, laid out the beds and ordered the fencing; and my counterpart there had painted a mural of students planting and watering a tree. When I arrived at the preschool, the students proudly serenaded me with vastly improved versions of “Twinkle Twinkle” and “Alouette,” the two songs I had taught them before I left. And village health workers had distributed over 2,000 NGO-donated mosquito nets.

The result of me not being there to foster dependence? Miraculously, independence. Somehow everything moved more efficiently in my absence; or maybe I just saw progress more clearly when it wasn’t staring me in the face. I’ll admit that it’s a bit of an assault on my vanity to realize that the world goes on, quite well in fact, without me. My natural inclination is to take charge of every project and to work harder than anyone to see it succeed. But at a certain point, like a good parent, I need to step back and let my work succeed of fail without me. I’m just thanking Allah that it happens to be succeeding right now.

After leaving Saly, the girls and I headed back to Dakar for New Year's. It was sparkly, debaucherous insanity.

And now I'm back in Linguere, wanting to feel more ready than I am to return to the village. Call me shallow, but I still like supermarkets. And restaurants. And toilet paper. And I've so, so enjoyed laughing and dancing and cooking and eating with friends for the past few weeks.

But I realize that I can't delay the inevitable, and that putting the return off any longer won't make the transition any easier. Besides, I've done this trip enough times now to know that after a day at home in the village, everything will feel right again. As with every other voyage, the departure's the hard part. I can handle the arrival just fine.

I've spent a good bit of time these past few weeks talking with friends about the phenomenon of the rural PCV's double life, each one, for example, that of village Maty and city April, completely separate from the other. We've wondered aloud why we consciously choose to leave the things that make us happiest, the things we all had, every day before coming here--friends, family, food--for something so unfamiliar and, yes, difficult. Why do we keep going back, if it continues to fill us with anxiety ten months in?

An older volunteer informed me that these transitions don't in fact get easier the longer you stay here, and in a way I feel better knowing that. It's comforting to accept that it won't just all magically make sense or become easy at some point in my service. "Village guilt" won't suddenly go away during breaks and I'll probably never quite feel ready to leave friends behind in Dakar when I groggily make my way to the public transportation garage at 5am. At the end of my two years, I probably still won't be able to articulate exactly why I came here or why I stayed. But at least I've committed myself to this lack of clarity.

p.s. Would someone please save me from my awkwardness?

Beach time

Christmas brunch

Christmas dinner, and the tree

Horsies

Tabaski

Girls' Group

Environmental Club Tree Planting

World AIDS Day

I’ll take a break from contemplating the merit of the Peace Corps and development in Africa for a minute to share some more pleasant thoughts.

I’ve been in the village now for seven and a half months, and I’m finally feeling fully settled. I’m sure a big part of it is feeling productive and appreciated for the work I’ve been doing, and of course we can’t discount the positive effect that needing a sleeping bag and sweatshirt for the first time in months has had on my emotional state, but I also think that adjusting to life in an African village is just a long process.

I’ve been remembering my first month in the village, when I would look at pictures from home and cry, hold my breath for phone calls from my mom and sister and long for a hug from my puppy. It’s not that I no longer miss home, but that need to be there is much less oppressive and immediate now. And in turn, I’m no longer just tolerating life in the village, but actually enjoying it.

I realized how much has changed last week as I was sitting outside with the family after dark, anxiously awaiting the arrival of my father, who had taken the hajj, the Muslim’s pilgrimage to Mecca. I remembered feeling such happiness and pride when he first told me he’d be going, because my kind, gentle father so deserved to have that dream fulfilled. Now visitors had come from all over Senegal to await his glorious return, receive his prayers and drink water from the Well of Zamzam. I felt so thankful to be able to share in my family’s excitement and pride.

And so, though many of my stage-mates are going home for the holidays, I think I’ve made peace with the fact that I’ll be here in Senegal. Who would want to spend December in Wisconsin, anyway? I spent Christmas in Africa the year I studied abroad in Senegal, and I remember thinking the following year that Christmas at home is great and all, but not the idyllic, stress-free day I had made it out to be.

Instead of going home, I’m heading up to Ndioum, on the Mauritanian border, for the northern volunteers’ belated Thanksgiving celebration on the 16th. We volunteers will take good food where we can get it and feel no shame in milking American holidays for weeks. After the party in Ndioum, I’m heading down to Dakar for a few days to get some work done at the office before renting an apartment in tourist town on the beach, Saly, with some girls from my stage from the 24th through 29th.

I’ve been reading Dark Star Safari, travel writer and novelist Paul Theroux’s acerbic account of his rambling overland journey from Cairo to Cape Town. The book was first recommended to me by Cruger, the urban agriculture volunteer in Linguere who, with only a few months of service left, could mentally afford to drink Theroux’s jaded, cynical kool-aid. And it came to me by way of Brian, my stage-mate, training village neighbor and trusted confidant, who like me is a rural environmental education volunteer at an early enough stage in service that a healthy dose of blind idealism and unwarranted optimism is necessary to get through each day for the remaining year and a half. Brian passed the book to me with the following telling warning written inside: “April, Read this book at your own risk…”

Theroux enrolled in the Peace Corps to dodge the draft in the early sixties, before Nyasaland, today’s Malawi, had achieved independence. He served as a teacher before getting kicked out of the Peace Corps and Malawi under questionable circumstances for participating in political activities (“The Killing of Hastings Banda” from his essay collection, Sunrise with Seamonsters, tells the story). He then moved to Uganda, where he taught for a few blissful, formative years at Makerere University. He left Uganda and Africa in a rush ahead of the violence of the Idi Amin years, and before this ambitious trip hadn’t been back in nearly forty years.

I think that the fact that Theroux put off this perceived homecoming for so long doomed him to some level of disappointment; however, his disillusionment with the Africa of today, and the outside world’s role in shaping the continent, is more acute, coming in bouts of anger, personal offense, disgust and resentment tempered by occasional periods of contentment. Though his observations are relevant and his bitterness probably justified, I will say that cynicism is not very becoming on Theroux. I like the book for its honesty and value it for forcing me to confront the possible futility of the choices I’ve made; but I’m over its author’s inflated sense of self-importance.

Theroux comes across like an absent father who left to achieve bigger and better things and then returns to scold his wayward daughter for falling in with the wrong crowd. He is a famous writer now, and don’t you forget it. Throughout the book he casually name drops eminent authors and heads of state, conveniently runs into a traveler in the act of enjoying one of his books, and of course finds his slightly steamy novel, Jungle Lovers, on Malawi’s banned book list. Papa Theroux has returned home to chide everyone else for an inability to nurture his child in his absence before rejecting her for her easy victimization. This egotism is veiled in knowing self-effacement. Referring to intellectual turned political prisoner turned tyrannical president of Zimbabwe Robert Mugabe, he says, “There was no deadlier combination than bookworm and megalomaniac. It was, for example, the crazed condition of many novelists and travelers.” Wink, wink.

Among those with blood on their hands in the desecration of Theroux’s Africa: rich game-seeking safari-goers, wasteful aid workers traversing countries in the safety of their air conditioned, white Land Rovers and Cruisers, dependence-inspiring foreign governments and charities, sensationalizing foreign journalists, opportunistic evangelists and ignorant foreigners in general, along with corrupt African officials, ambitious, intelligent African youngsters who seek better lives abroad instead of contributing to the development of their own countries, and lazy, self-entitled Africans who, all too willing to become victims, ask for handouts instead of work…you get the idea. I’m sure idealistic Peace Corps volunteers deserve a spot on the list, too.

And yet I might mock this fatalism, but I have to admit that he has a point. The condition of Africa, by many people’s admission, has not only not improved in nearly fifty years of self-rule, profuse foreign aid and elaborate development schemes since countries first started achieving independence; it has gotten worse. Much worse, if Theroux’s memory serves him correctly. In three sentences, Theroux sums up his depressing evaluation of the state of affairs:

“Africans, less esteemed than ever seemed to me to be the most lied-to people on earth—manipulated by their governments, burned by foreign experts, befooled by charities, and cheated at every turn. To be an African leader was to be a thief, but evangelists stole people’s innocence, and self-serving aid agencies gave them false hope, which seemed worse. In reply, Africans dragged their feet or tried to emigrate, they begged, they pleaded, they demanded money and gifts with a rude, weird sense of entitlement.”

As Theroux travels southward to Malawi, this book's heart of darkness, and gets burned one too many times by aid workers refusing him a ride in their shiny, new, nearly empty Land Cruisers, his prime source of objection becomes foreign involvement in Africa. He quotes from a variety of scathing sources alleging that foreign involvement in Africa is not only ineffective, self-serving and wasteful, but even harmful. Included are Graham Hancock’s The Lords of Poverty, Michael Maren’s The Road to Hell and George B.N. Ayittey’s Africa Betrayed and Africa in Chaos. He talks to all manner of “agent of virtue,” both noble and self-serving—the vast majority falling into the latter category—and comes out convinced that the gracious few who spend decades in rural Africa doing thankless, exhausting jobs that Africans themselves refuse simply can’t counteract the large-scale plundering of a continent by nearly everyone else involved.

So where does this leave us? I’ve asked myself a thousand times. Where does this leave Senegal? The Peace Corps? What do we do now, when everything we’ve been doing has been so wrong? Is the best solution just to leave, to rely on the adaptability and ingenuity of Africans to solve Africa’s problems, even if the roots of most of those problems can be traced to decades of oppressive, exploitative colonialism followed by half a century of botched outsider-led development?

Before I came here, facing criticism from a radical, activist friend over the paternalism of the U.S. government-run Peace Corps, I argued that his assertions may have held clout on a theoretical level, but not on a practical level. In other words, once a volunteer moves to a village to live and work alongside its people for two years, the politics of the affair cease to matter. Seven months into my service, I still believe that. It’s hard to put my experience in Barkedji into the larger context of development in Africa, or even of Peace Corps service, because I’m just one person passing the days in one village in one small country in one giant continent.

A lot of times I feel like I’m operating independently of the Peace Corps, anyway. They brought me here, briefly trained me, and dropped me in a village to make my own way, which isn’t necessarily a criticism of the PC; I value my working independence. But whether a project succeeds or fails, I often feel that it does so independently of the Peace Corps, or the American government, or the state of aid in Africa. More often success or failure is the result of the level of motivation that the villagers as individuals and as a community show, my persistence and creativity—skills acquired far before joining the Peace Corps, or my personal weaknesses—lack of assertiveness, fear of failure, stubbornness—also relics of my life pre-Peace Corps.

From what I’ve seen here, the Senegalese tend to speak very highly of past volunteers, even if those volunteers’ projects have long since failed or broken and there is no longer any physical evidence of their two year service. In part, these compliments can be attributed to the Senegalese knack for pomposity, but I also think that there is a level of genuine affection there. I often hear Senegalese fondly recall the names of volunteers they learned from or worked with 30, 40 years ago. It seems that most volunteers have made a positive impact on the people they lived among, even if their contributions to the development of a village, a country, a continent are negligible. This observation doesn’t necessarily counter my skepticism about the value of development work in Africa, but at least it gives my time spent here some meaning.

Maybe hyper-local development is an area in which the Peace Corps succeeds, while other government-run aid organizations can’t. Theroux doesn’t directly target the Peace Corps in his book. In fact, he speaks quite highly of the years he spent teaching school in a Malawian town. What his book does show, however, is that the forces at work in Africa, both homegrown and foreign, have managed to deplete the resources of a continent, destroy its infrastructure, rob its already scant coffers and crush its optimism in less than half a century. That’s a pretty sad “after” image, considering that the “before” is the violence and abuse of colonialism. And unfortunately the reality is that there’s probably not much I can do as one idealistic Peace Corps volunteer in a village in rural Senegal to fix things.

I have unwittingly become the protector of baby animals for the second time in a month. As anyone who has loved and been loved by a pet knows, animals are incredibly tuned into human emotion. My dog Chutney is always poised and ready before my tears even arrive to lick them away as they start to fall. Word must be spreading among Barkedji's homeless animals that a sentimental, vegetarian toubab is in town. They've found me out.

The other morning I heard a faint whining coming from behind my bed. I peeked my head over the edge to discover that a female cat had snuck into my room through the window while I was away in Linguere for Thanksgiving in order to birth three tiny spotted kittens! All of the oddness of the past day—the rustling behind my bed the night before (which I assumed was just a hyperactive frog), the displaced curtain that surprised me upon my return home and the toppled cutting board that normally rests on a chest just below the window—instantly made sense.

I never thought I was much of a cat person, and I still flinch, against my will, when Senegalese women conspicuously nurse on public transport, yet the sight of 3 palm-sized kittens curled up next to the warm belly of their mother to nurse melts my heart. Aren't they adorable?

You all know by now what I’m up against here: the heat, the food (or lack thereof), the miscommunications…. You’ve heard it all before. But have I told you yet about this week’s thorn in my side: Muslim holidays?

I’ve been so shockingly productive lately that I should have expected it all to come to a screeching halt in the face of preparations for this coming Saturday’s paramount Muslim holiday, Tabaski. Yet, in my naiveté I thought that I had made it over the mountain of canceled meetings and mysterious illness that had been hindering progress for so many months.

I find almost nothing as satisfying as getting a mass of work done on a day I could have justifiably spent reading or watching movies, and so I had a deliciously busy Sunday planned. In the morning I had scheduled my first girls’ group meeting with eight of the older middle school girls, and had spent the entire week in a frenzy of planning and preparations. The program included an art project—“Me Collages,” an HIV/AIDS quiz game, and a discussion of films from the HIV/AIDS-themed “Scenarios in Africa,” a series of shorts written by African youth and directed by prominent African filmmakers.

Everything was ready, and I was excited. I had purchased notebooks for each of the girls, made a sample collage, cleaned my room, and laid out mats to sit on. At 10:00, when the meeting was supposed to start, I plopped down on one of the mats and read a magazine. Forty-five minutes later, three of the eight members showed up and informed me that the rest of the girls wouldn’t be able to make it. They were too busy getting their hair braided for Tabaski.

I should have known. Girls’ frenetic hair braiding in the week and a half leading up to Tabaski is a cultural obligation here. Even I got roped into allowing my hair to be braided by a few of the girls’ group members, and I had promised my big, round face I’d never let that happen. (Unsurprisingly, I’ve had better looks.) At the news that the girls wouldn’t be coming, I hid my disappointment and put on a game face as the girls who had shown up yanked more of my slippery toubab hair into tiny braids.

Later in the morning, realizing that this was going to be one of those days, I walked over to the house of Oulèye, the middle school girl who had won a Peace Corps scholarship, to remind her that we had scheduled a radio interview for 4:00pm at my house. I think she’d forgotten; she seemed surprised by the news of the interview. I offered to take my laptop and microphone over to her house instead. I wasn’t taking any chances.

The interview happened, and Oulèye was great. This girl amazes me. She’s near the top of the class and is the president of the student association. She’s poised and polite and clearly respected by her classmates. She has a wonderful, down to earth group of friends, all members of my girls’ group, and all of whom were kind and welcoming to me in my first months in Barkedji, when I felt so alone. And she lost her mother 4 years ago.

Despite being nervous, Oulèye had wonderful things to say during the interview. When asked why it’s important to encourage Senegalese girls to stay in school, she replied, “We want to encourage the development of these girls. We see women who are Prime Ministers or even Presidents, which is why we want to encourage girls to work hard and earn a diploma that will help them fully contribute to their country and their home.” I sometimes wonder what motivates Oulèye, what drives her to succeed despite incredible barriers, but in that way, I kind of see myself in her. Especially here, I don’t know what motivates me half the time.

After the interview, I walked over to the elementary school, where we had scheduled an environmental club meeting for 5:00 pm. It was our fourth attempt at an action plan meeting; the first time, I was stuck in Dakar with The Infection, the second, not enough students showed up so we re-scheduled, the third, the club coordinator canceled the meeting because he heard from my little sister that I was in Linguere, even though I had biked back to the village just for the occasion, and the fourth…well, you’ll see. Clearly we have some communication issues to work out.

The environmental club includes 7 adults and 30 students. Exactly three adults (including me) and three students showed up. I don’t think the coordinator ever told the elementary school kids about the meeting, since none of them showed up, not even the extremely enthusiastic president of the club. A middle school teacher posted the meeting on the wall at the school, but it’s not as easy to get middle school kids interested in attending a meeting at school on a Sunday. The six of us went ahead and wrote an action plan, yet I couldn’t help but feel frustrated by the showing. It certainly wasn’t fair to the three unlucky students who showed up, only to be trapped in a room with testy adults on a Sunday afternoon.

After the meeting, the middle school teacher said that we should have waited until after Tabaski to schedule the meeting. Of course. I forgot that the reign of the all-powerful hair braid overpowers all else around Tabaski. I told my sister Heidi about my frustration, and in her infinite wisdom she reminded me that our American traditions, such as compulsively shopping for two months before Christmas, in order to stuff our houses with more junk that we don’t need, might seem a little bizarre to a Senegalese in America, too. What’s a little shameless vanity anyway?

And then Monday came, as if placed on the calendar solely as a source of redemption. Life’s like that here—the highs come crashing down but the lows never endure. A USAID grant for a school garden came through, so I had an implementation meeting with some of the elementary school teachers on Monday afternoon. At the end of the meeting, a couple of the teachers gave short, flowery speeches thanking me for the work I did to secure the grant. They eat those speeches, or “attestations,” up here. Though I try not to take the overblown praise of the villagers too seriously, something one of the teachers said truly touched and humbled me: “We want to thank you for all of the work that you do. Despite the many challenges that you face here, you persevere. For a long time having a garden and computers was just dream of the school’s, and now these things are happening, thanks to you.”

Of course, it’s not thanks to me. It’s thanks to the donations of friends and family, the financing of USAID, the support of the Peace Corps and the work of the villagers. But you’d have to be pretty hard-hearted not to be touched by the realization that you are playing a role in making a community’s dreams come true, as cheesy as it sounds. I wonder what motivates me here, when everything seems to conspire to make my work as challenging as possible? It’s probably still this incredible opportunity to make people happy. I haven’t grown that cynical yet.