For New Year’s Eve I traveled up to Kaolack to hang out with my best friend Jessica. Over the next week we traveled out to her Wolof village called Keur Madiabel and spent some time there. We also took a boat ride through the mangroves near the Sine Saloum Delta area and camped out near the beach.

Eric and Jessica on the pirogue boat

'The Gang' on the beach trip, Jessica, Kourtney, and Eric

Afterwards we visited our friend Jennie’s Seerer village for a Sabaar, or a drum party. There’s always lots of dancing at a Senegalese drum party such as these, but the ethnic group of Jennie’s village Keur Soce, are Seerers, and they are known for being particularly risqué dancers. Jennie tells me that at wedding ceremonies the women tie a wooden penis to the inside of their skirt and flash it while dancing, unfortunately this was not a wedding party so the photos below (and on my picasa link) are mostly tame.

Jennie dancing at her Sabaar

some of the Keur Soce girls

me and Jessica in our Senegalese clothes and classic Senegalese photo taking fashion

In the middle of January, we had our annual All-Volunteers Conference in Thies, which is held for all of Senegal and other volunteers from all over West Africa where we share ideas about work; it was uneventful for me since I’m leaving so soon. Immediately afterwards we were bussed off to Dakar for WAIST (the West African Invitational Softball Tournament) was held, our team’s theme was ‘baseball’ which I thought was a little boring and didn’t lend easily to an awesome costume such as mine the previous year (refer to that earlier blog post to see the Hamburglar in action), so I went as a hotdog, that was baseball enough I suppose. Afterwards they bussed us back to Thies for my stage’s (or training group) COS (Close of Service) Conference. That was a very sad affair since it was the last time our entire group would be together at once here in Senegal, only a few months left…

Sad things aside, during all that bussing around to-and-from Dakar and Thies, we were able to photo-document the making of something we call “Rat Trap Sandwiches.” My friends Eric, Kourtney, Jessica and I (who we dubbed ourselves ‘the Gang’ because we’ve been watching too much ‘It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’, lately) made this sandwich during most of our beach camping trip which I mentioned earlier. Either way it’s called a Rat Trap Sandwich because you make it with pretty much everything you’d put in a trap to catch a rat. Oh, and they’re delicious too!

Start by cutting your bread and spreading cheap "La Vache Qui Rit" cheese, open the can of Chicken Spam (disclaimer, real Spam is like caviar compared to this stuff)

add the slices to the sandwich, with optional mustard if you're feeling fancy

and enjoy! Rat Trap Sandwiches! (also this is the bus that we were on back and forth like 90 times from Thies to Dakar)

and this photo is here just because I like it and wanted to end with something interesting, it's a field where all the grass has seemed to pull pull together like a field of buried trolls. it's actually being prepared to be cut for roofing thatch

Well I know this is a few weeks late but I guess that’s beenthe running theme of the blog the past couple of months. I finally got back to site after my short(but wonderful) vacation to the States in early December. This is a photo ofhow much stuff I packed on the back of my bike for my first trip back to site.all my baggage, thank god for Senegalese used inner tube bike straps

I had probably about 30 or so articles of baby clothes andassorted t-shirts for the children and the adults of my family that I broughtback as gifts, along with a bunch of American candy and toys for the kids aswell. The family definitely appreciatedthem. Snapped this photo along the sideof the Dindefelo road on my bike ride back, cotton season is back!they make these HUGE baskets out of stripped bamboo and then fill them with their cotton until the local cotton company comes to pick it up, it's one of the biggest industries in this area

But seriously the weather here is certainly unique this timeof year. It’s really hot during the days, chilly to the point of needing to usea sleeping bag at night, and everything is extremely dry. Thanks to the 0%humidity or as it seems, there’s a ton of dust, and that leads to the everfamous Jersey-Shore-esque/John-Bohner-Spray-on-Laterite-Road-Tan (see my friendLaRocha’s well documented on-going battle with that tan here, here or here). Butyeah, this was what my ankle tan line looked like afterwards.ignore how ugly Senegal has made my feet and direct your attention to that beautiful tan line at my ankles

In other news my counterpart, Neene Galle, gave birth to ababy girl the last week in December, her name is Salematou.Neene Galle and her new-born baby Salematu

And I’ll leave you with a few of my favorite photos from theend of 2011 here in Senegal.this is a chicken on a goat...unlikely perhaps...amazing yes! my neighbors got a kick out of this one

a version of a Senegalese scarecrow, that silo-like basket is where they keep their corn, similar construction to the cotton basket

well 2011, that's a WRAP (sorry for the pun, I just had to) (also this is me wearing my Mauritanian head wrap to keep the dust out of my face, super effective)

Heyeveryone, don’t worry I didn’t slip into an abyss at the bottom of one the waterfalls somewhere in Senegal to neverbe found again, I was just doing a billion things, including my vacation to Italy,some assorted trips around Senegal, a few weeks back at site, a quick trip hometo the US (during which I got into Medical School!), and now finally I’m backin Kedougou. But before I go on typing forever and lose your attention, I’mgoing to try a new format: Just a bunch of photos with detailed but shortcaptions to guide you through my last 3 months that I’ve been gone from theblog. ENJOY!

Teaching First Aid in French at the Dindefelo Summer Camp during September to one of the small groups.

The Almafi Coast during my and my Family's trip to Italy! Went from Rome to Pompeii, Almafi Coast, Sorrento, Capri, Agropoli, Paestrum, Matera, back up through Rome to Siena, Florence, Pisa and then ended with several days in Rome....amazing trip!

Me & Jennie on camels in the Lampoul Desert after I got back from my Italy trip in October. My camel had mange it was disgusting, Jennies looked like it was chewing poop...

Our tents at the bottom of the huge dunes, it was a fun night, definitely worth it to try once.

Kayaking trip in Palmarin through the mangroves, an area on the coast of Senegal south of Dakar in the Sine-Saloum Delta. Me, Paul, Dave, and Phillipe our guide.

During the kayak trip we stopped to climb inside of a baobab tree where we had cups of coffee that Phillipe bought along for us, he said people used to hide inside of that baobab during wars behind ethnic groups a long time ago. Here's Paul climbing inside...it was kind of tricky.

After Palmarin we stopped at Liquors de Warang, this amazing local place run by a Belgian that makes these delicious liquors from local fruits, this was their pond and garden next to the tasting area, delicious and equally beautiful!

My Halloween costume at the party in Tambacounda, or Hallocounda or Tambaween as they call it. I dressed up as the only cheese that we have access to, 'La Vache qui Rit' or Laughing Cow Cheese. I once again was pretty much the best costume there.

Tabaski 2011 in November, a typical Senegalese Tabaski consists of serious looking Senegalese men...

and lots of dead sheep... (sorry readers...at least you didn't have to watch it die like me)

but to make up for that last one...KITTENS!!!!!!! My cat Mawni had 3 little black kittens! I didn't even know she was pregnant, huge surprise when I got back from Italy.

Took a last trip back to Ingeli because it's going to dry up soon...so sad that it was my last time there but it was as beautiful as ever (except that time I went there with Meera and there was no water...look in my archives). Photo of me at the top! And the main falls from downstream, so beautiful...I'm gonna miss it so much!Oh and then there were babies! Lot's of babies, here's my sister Fatou Binta with her newborn baby boy.Babies! Here's me and Aissitou (one of my favorite people in village because we're constantly laughing together) and her newborn baby boy Boubacar Sidy.Thanksgiving in the North! We traveled all the way up from Kedougou, my friend LaRocha and I were in a car for well over 35 hours, but we made it from Kedougou to Ndioum in less than 48! (that's extremely impressive by the way) and then Jessica and I carried on our tradition and deep fried the turkey, along with 2 guinea fowl and 3 chickens. We ate and drank so much, so good, and then I celebrated my birthday the day after with a market trip (no photos of that...sorry)And then after the North I traveled down to Dakar where I flew home for just two short weeks...I got to see a bunch of my friends and family, it was amazing. I also had my medical school interview (the main reason of the trip) and I got in! Here's a photo from our holiday get-together, Kyle, Johnny, Christina, Me, Hinal, Erin, Danielle, Alex, Olivia and Kareem (Marc the photog ~ not pictured for obvious reasons) Thanks guys for making my short trip to AMERIK amazing! Now back to work...

Well it seems like the constant theme of this blog is me beginning with a slight apology for not having updated in so long. That’s going to hold true in this post as well. Sorry…but I’ve been busy working and having some fun here in Senegal the last few months. Before I get into all the updates, let me direct you to my Picasa link (check the sidebar for the link), there’s plenty of new photos up on there finally too! (or at least I hope let's see how reliable the internet is...) Neem Lotion Tourne Well after the start of the Neem Lotion Tourne (tour…I forgot what we call this in English) in Ninefescha, which you read about in the last post. Meera, Leah and I did another training in Segou (around the same time we had a going away party for Zach out there, that’s right I’m the only volunteer in the Dindefelo sub-region now). Ian, another PCV actually recorded me teaching that group and we’ve played it on the radio a couple times. Speaking of which, I did a radio show all by myself a few weeks ago, all in Pulaar, and on the subject of Health (Mosquitoes, Malaria, Bed Nets, Skin Infections, and Cervical Cancer Screenings). Now, back to the Neem stuff. We continued the next day with a training in Dindefelo and a mural painting there, and then rode to Pelel and did a late afternoon neem lotion training there at the new health hut.Well after the start of the Neem Lotion Tourne (tour…I forgot what we call this in English) in Ninefescha, which you read about in the last post. Meera, Leah and I did another training in Segou (around the same time we had a going away party for Zach out there, that’s right I’m the only volunteer in the Dindefelo sub-region now). Ian, another PCV actually recorded me teaching that group and we’ve played it on the radio a couple times. Speaking of which, I did a radio show all by myself a few weeks ago, all in Pulaar, and on the subject of Health (Mosquitoes, Malaria, Bed Nets, Skin Infections, and Cervical Cancer Screenings). Now, back to the Neem stuff. We continued the next day with a training in Dindefelo and a mural painting there, and then rode to Pelel and did a late afternoon neem lotion training there at the new health hut.

Dabi (the Pelel ASC), Meera, Me, and Leah with the Mural on the newly renovated health hut

Me facilitating...working and whatnot

Meera and Leah with the Dindefelo Mural

Meera, Me and Patrick with the Bandafassi MuralThen we headed back into Kedougou to get ready for our huge 4th of July party that our region throws every year. That pretty much took up a whole week of my life, it was fun.After the 4th and other stuff, I went out in the direction of Fongolimbi where PCV Ben lives. I took an early morning Lumo (market) car out since the bike ride was long. It was actually a huge truck and they piled us in the back on top of all the rice sacks, boxes of new sandals and other assorted typical Senegalese Lumo items. They had a huge tarp covering the whole bed of the truck since there was a lot of rain that morning. About 10 minutes into the trip I looked up and noticed that a bunch of exhaust was pouring into the area where we were sitting. It just kept getting worse, and everyone started coughing and yelling, I actually freaked out a little bit it was kind of scary. I reached behind me to a small hole in the tarp and stuck my hand through it to try to open it up and get some air to breathe. Finally the drivers up front heard the commotion in the back and stopped the truck. Turns out they strapped the tarp over the exhaust pipe…geniuses. On his way back up to the front cab the driver noticed my hand sticking out of the tarp and said “why is there a toubab (white person hand) back there?!” because there’s a toubab back there of course. He immediately demanded I get out of the back and come sit up front. Normally I hate special attention here in Senegal whether it’s positive or negative, but this was the one time I truly appreciated the attention. I guess they figured if they killed the toubab there’d be more questions to answer than they’d want to. So I slept the rest of the ride up in the front cab. Ben and I did the Neem Lotion training in Fongo and then the next day in Dimibili, both very nice towns.Over the next month or so I did three more trainings, one in Kukuji, a neighboring town where I hope my replacement volunteer will live. The health worker there is very motivated and despite me arriving in the morning with the proposal of a same-day/later that afternoon neem lotion training, he got together over 20 women by the time I returned from an afternoon swim in the Ingeli Waterfall (this time there was plenty of water!). My sister-wife (third wife) Dari and I went to her home town called Bousura and did a training there. On the walk over I taught her all about how malaria spreads from person to person through mosquitoes, and how not every mosquito has malaria, she was amazed…not many people understand these things here, which is why we emphasize the connection between the lotion, mosquitoes, and malaria during every training. She taught that training in Bousura, I was very proud. We ended with one final training in Kedougou, with a women’s group who was planning on marketing and selling it in the local market, very encouraging.Over the next month or so I did three more trainings, one in Kukuji, a neighboring town where I hope my replacement volunteer will live. The health worker there is very motivated and despite me arriving in the morning with the proposal of a same-day/later that afternoon neem lotion training, he got together over 20 women by the time I returned from an afternoon swim in the Ingeli Waterfall (this time there was plenty of water!). My sister-wife (third wife) Dari and I went to her home town called Bousura and did a training there. On the walk over I taught her all about how malaria spreads from person to person through mosquitoes, and how not every mosquito has malaria, she was amazed…not many people understand these things here, which is why we emphasize the connection between the lotion, mosquitoes, and malaria during every training. She taught that training in Bousura, I was very proud. We ended with one final training in Kedougou, with a women’s group who was planning on marketing and selling it in the local market, very encouraging.Dari on the left leading the trainingHealth Hut Update 3.0 (where are we now?)So since you last heard and saw, the walls got fully plastered with cement and we finished painting all of the inside of the rooms and about half of the outside. I wanted to get the front wall painted in time for our Neem Lotion mural (see the photo above). Since then Dabi and I worked to find some money (mostly his own, and a little left over from the renovation grant) to buy new medications for the health hut. Along with a very generous donation of items like gauze, medical tape, antibiotic ointment, etc. from Lili, we finally have enough stuff to treat most injuries/illnesses that should be treated at the health hut level. The next step is ensuring that Dabi and Nene Galle, keep good recorded of all the materials used and payments for each visit, so the hut can buy replacement medications in the future.the outside back wall before the collapse

and after...

view from the inside, before

and after...But on top of that mountain of good news, there’s some bad news… After about 27 hours of straight, non-stop, driving rain, the back corner of the health hut collapsed. The water coming off the roof and hitting the ground weakened the base of the wall enough that the two walls fell in. Ok analysis, the good part was, it was part of the old hut, and wasn’t part of the new stuff that just got built. The bad part, it was the wall that held up the solar panels and according to the mason we’ll have to wait until January for it to be hot and dry enough to rebuild the walls. Oh also another bit of good news, the solar panels weren’t damaged at all, and the two other rooms, and the roof were unaffected so it won’t really have an impact on them using the hut to treat patients…we just have to wait until January to make it pretty again. And the last thing, of bunch of us down here, the Gou Crew, decided to do a huge Ingeli trip. We got a car out to Dindefelo and then took the back road through Pelel, and Kukuji to get there. Some snafus on the way in and a ruined bike tube on the way out caused some big delays but we had fun. And this is what it looks like to have 10 bikes on top of a sept-place!

10 toubabs, 10 bikes, luckily only the bikes rode on top of our dix-place (10-place, its a joke...)

the deluge of water after the storm And thanks to Aunt Rita, Uncle Mike, Dave, Jess, and Nick for the package! The funfetti cake mix was perfect for our Dinosaur themed birthday party we threw a few nights ago for Kate. See you all in a while, the end of this month I’m off to Italy with my family! I finally get to leave West Africa and I get to see my family! Oh and I’ll be able to eat endless pizza, cheese, meat and wine… it’ll be amazing, I can’t wait, it’s been a long year and a half!See you all in a while, the end of this month I’m off to Italy with my family! I finally get to leave West Africa and I get to see my family! Oh and I’ll be able to eat endless pizza, cheese, meat and wine… it’ll be amazing, I can’t wait, it’s been a long year and a half!

and just a fun photo for everyone, this is my neighbor, I asked her to leave her hair out like this but she insisted on having it braided...

Normally I only write blog posts about myself (I know I’m so modest), but today I must share these gems of Senegalese news with you all at home.So yesterday we received endless text-message update about the intense rioting in Dakar, let me explain. Yesterday the National Assembly was set to vote on a new Constitutional Amendment put forth by Senegal’s President Abdulaye Wade. The amendment was to lower the required percentage of the vote needed to be elected president and to create a position of Vice President. Clearly the 90-something year old Wade (the articles say 84-85, but everyone knows he’s much older, but no one really knows…) was planning this to be more easily elected in Feb 2012, have his son as his Vice President and then soon after hand over power…the people in Dakar did NOT like this, so as with the trend these days towards all nepotistic rulers who never want to leave power, there were riots all over the place, except here in Kedougou…people down here care more about Guinea.

I thought all of this was interesting so read some of the articles, or watch the video, or view the pictures at the links below…the best part was seeing that he actually proposed lower the minimum vote percentage from 50% to only 25%!!!! That was just too ridiculous to not let you guys know.Spoiler Alert: The vote didn’t pass and Wade pulled back on it, let’s see how things go the next couple months… Some of the links of articles about the protests: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13887613 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13899277 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13892506 http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE75N0GQ20110624?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=0&sp=true

Last week another volunteer and I hiked out to the Segou Waterfall and probably about 15 minutes before we got to the main falls I saw a 1.5meter long black cobra right in front of me in the middle of the path…yeah that scared the hell out of me. We didn’t spot exactly where it took off, but considering the trail goes through a narrow ravine it had to have been still near the path. After about 30 minutes of debating whether to turn back or not, we continued on to the falls, of course, although we snuck around the other side of the stream. Later the next night when I was in my hut I noticed a tarantula under my bed…seriously, did I just not notice all the cobras and tarantula over the past year, or is it just now that they’ve decided to come and greet me.

my (very) short-term roommate

Last week I biked out to Ninefescha, Meera’s site, to do a Neem Lotion demo and mural painting. We have these cool stencils that another PCV in the region designed that uses spray paint to complete an easy instructions mural. Unfortunately school was randomly out of session that day so there weren’t enough children to do the demo. (Neem lotion is a cream made out of a local leaf, with soap and oil and is a natural mosquito repellant). We’ll be doing more demos in villages all throughout the region over the next 2-3 weeks, hopefully I’ll get some more photos of that.

Meera spray painting the neem lotion instructions mural

me painting the mural (sorry couldn't trust the little kids with cans of spray paint...)

the finished mural

After we did the mural Meera and I decided to go camping for the night at the Ingeli Waterfall (see my older post). The bike trip was nice despite the thorns Meera encountered and the resulting 3 punctures in her tire tubes, but when we got there we realized the trip was a bad idea… Last year this time there was tons of water at Ingeli, I guess it hasn’t rained as much this year. We thought that the 4 straight days of rain and all the rain from Guinea would be enough…but no…no water at all, just the Ingeli -fall, or rocks. It was too late to turn around, so we sucked it up, were resourceful with filtering, boiling, filtering again, and then aquatab-ing some scummy pond water to drink. Luckily Meera had brought along a bottle of Cote-du-Rhone, so that made up for the lack of swimming. It’ll be at least another month before we attempt to go back there…may the rains come soon!

the pool from which we got our drinking water...didn't get sick either!

Two weeks ago I traveled up to St. Louis, a coastal city in the north of Senegal for the Annual Jazz Fest. We spent Thursday through Sunday in St. Louis, had a great time with a ton of other Peace Corps Volunteers going through the artisan market and hanging out on the beach. We couldn’t go last year because we had just installed at our sites, and this time next year I’ll be gone…wow so fast already. So I was glad I got the chance to head up to listen to some Jazz. The festival wasn’t as “Jazz” filled as I would have hoped but we saw two really amazing live bands Friday night, and some Saturday night too. Enjoy the photos from the “French Colonial” town.

colonial French architecture

the fishing pirogue boats in between the island and peninsula

the bridge leading to the island of St. Louis

just cool

Wow, over a month…sorry I haven’t updated in awhile. But GREAT news! The health hut got completed just shortly after I made the last post. The walls, and the cement work are all finished, they finished the added on front porch and roof. It looks great. I’ve been waiting for my counterpart, Dabi, to get back from a training in Tambacounda, we should begin painting the walls within the next 2 weeks. In the next month we should be moving in some furniture and getting the medical supplies fully stocked, and then we’ll have a huge grand opening party to inform all the villagers of the services at the med hut. Thanks again to all who donated and supported this project, the community is very excited about it.

the regional health chief from Dindefelo Badji (in the Yellow), my counterpart's father (blue) and a worker inspect the work done so far

the cement wall is all done

mixing the cement for the floors

excellent work!

the mason finishing up the floor of the porch (you can see the old hut to the left)

Well I got back to Village last week from my little stay-cation in Dakar/Thies, where I was helping out with trainings and getting my mid-service checkup, and boy did they make a lot of progress on the health hut renovation. Here’s the photos; with the new room in the middle, they decided to add on a tiny front closet room and a front porch, we’ll see how that works into my budget…but I still think its great progress so far. They also dug the well deeper so now it has water in it, if the water table drops some more before the rains start, they’ll dig it deeper again to guarantee year-around access to water there.

the front of the health hut (notice the murals from the old health hut on the left)

the back of the health hut, solar panels, and the new metal roof

I had to head back into Kedougou for the weekend to help greet the new group of volunteers who just swore in on Friday. A big welcome to Marielle, LaRocha, Ben, Ian, Patrick, and Martin, they’re the new Health/Environmental Ed stage, which means I’m old now… Then Monday, Meera, Leah and I facilitated a training out in Bandifassi for an upcoming region-wide condom distribution program, this was to start out the 3-month test phase. But since I was at that training I unfortunately missed my workers back in Pelel, who, before the weekend, promised me they were going to finish covering the walls and floors with cement and finish the roof panels on the veranda. So that should have been done yesterday, I’ll get some more photos tomorrow when I get back to site.

and here's a photo of some of the stuff growing in the women's group garden, slow growing I know, the rains will come soon!

Well I wasn’t exactly sleeping for all of April but you wouldn't know that considering the fact that I didn't even make one blog post during the whole month, sorry for that. I’ve finally had some time to sit down and knock a couple of posts out and even put up new photos on my picasa, you know what they say, when it rains it pours, enjoy the 4 new posts and new photos!

As I mentioned in my last post, thanks to all of you who were able to donate to the grant to fund the renovation. Because of your amazing and generous help, we got the whole thing funded in 6 days! That’s pretty amazing, and my villagers were pretty excited to hear that we could get started so soon on the renovations. As soon as I knew the grant was full, I told my counterpart Dabi, and the next day we started removing the old thatched roofs from the two existing huts.

Dabi, up on the roof, removing the thatch

The next day our builder showed up and we started making the mud bricks to construct the walls. Every day the builder, Sadijo, can add a foot or two of the mud wall, allowing it to dry in time to support what goes above it. Afterwards the mason will add cement on either side of the walls. This is the basic way they construct huts in village. With a good roof for protection from the rain (which we’ll have with the new metal roofing sheets) my counterpart said these huts will last 15-20 years without major repair.

Sadijo, building the mud walls

Dabi making the mud bricks, I helped out with this half the day, and ate mangoes the rest

Sadijo and Dabi decided to add a small room on the front of the 3rd hut to help support the roof , apparently they’re going to try to extend the roof a few feet out over the front of the structure to make a porch, we’ll see how it turns out. Either way I was extremely surprised and happy with how fast everyone started to work on the renovations, they’re definitely dedicated. I left village a few weeks ago to help with the training of the new volunteers and to say goodbye in Dakar to a few friends who have finished their service. I've heard that they finished most of the construction, and when I get back we’ll be able to install the wiring for the lights and plugs in the new hut, and paint all the walls. As soon as I get back next week, I’ll post more photos of the progress.

The new walls, gaining some height after the second day of construction

Again thanks to everyone who donated, with the rainy season approaching in a few weeks, having that grant funded so quickly meant that we could actually get this project completed before the rains come and all building stops. I heard that the grant got funded so quickly that some people weren’t even able to donate, if you still wanted to help out with a similar cause, or want to help out some more, two of my friends, volunteers in the Tambacounda Region of Senegal, have health hut projects as well, click here and here to visit their sites. Thanks!

On March 27 my sister-in-law, the new wife of my tokora, or namesake (also my older brother) gave birth to a beautiful baby girl! Of course it was Lumo (market day) so I had just left for Dindefelo when I got the call from my dad that she gave birth 30mins after I left the house… Either way, one week later as is traditional here in Senegal, they had the Denabo (naming ceremony) and named her Adama Hawa Souare, and promptly shaved her head! Well at least they used a fresh brand new razor blade. Oh and since it’s my namesake’s baby and he is away living and working in Dakar, this is my baby! And it’s funny because everyone agrees and says, “yes, yes it is your baby, you’re Amadou, duh, Amadou is the father.”

Hali Camara and her new baby, Adama Hawa

getting a haircut just after she got her name, you got to stay fresh!

my dad with his first granddaughter, he's one of the happiest people I know and I've never seen him happier than the week this baby was born!

Last month I hosted a CIEE study abroad college student in Pelel. Peace Corps has a partnership where we host CIEE students every semester for a few days to give them a taste of village life, and Senegal outside of Dakar. We did a group trip to Segou Waterfall and then broke up to go to our individual sites for the remainder of the week. the group of us relaxing in a pool near the waterfall

I set up a Morenga (or Nebadye (from the English for Never Die), an extremely useful tree, with nutritious leaves, think spinach) tree planting session during my student’s visit. With the students, we planted nearly 100 trees in tree sacks, so when they’re ready in a few months during rainy season the students can each take one home and transplant it there. In addition we did a morenga intensive bed, where the trees are planted 10cm from each other in a 1x5m bed. After a few months of growing we’ll be able to harvest the leaves from those trees almost weekly and the women will use them to prepare leaf sauce. The people of my town know what morenga is and love the leaves, they know that they’re extremely nutritious, and they truly make the leaf sauce very tasty, the problem is, there’s really none of these trees in village (it’s not a native species). Hopefully after the students take these trees home, more families will be able to benefit from this useful tree.photos of me actually doing work!

and again

Jake, the CIEE student who came to Pelel, helping out with the demo

Aside from getting to visit all the waterfalls again, having the visiting student meant I finally got some photos of me doing some work (I can’t trust the villagers with my camera, I tried, it’s too exciting and confusing for them to operate) thanks Jake!

The women have finished digging all of the beds, and have transplanted or planted vegetables in all the spaces. At the beginning of last month our mason came by to finish the well cap. I’ll forever be immortalized in the well because my villagers wrote my name in the cement…Amadou Toubape… it’s really Amadou Souare, but “toubape” means white person, so it’s Amadou White Person, classic.

the completed well cap

recognition for Amadou 'White Person' (that's me...)

my village mother models off the new well

action shot of watering the Morenga trees with water from the new well

and a photo of me and some of the women, I love these ladies!

thanks to all who donated to the health hut renovation grant! thanks to your amazing generosity we got the whole thing funded in under a week!!! I´m in Dindefelo right now updating the blog from my friends remote internet connection because I wanted to thank everyone immediately! I´m running (well biking) back to site tomorrow to tell them we can start the construction immediately!!!! Thanks again! I´ll keep you all fully posted on the details of the renovations

Hi Everyone, so I’ve been mentioning the Health Hut in my town and the upcoming renovations that my counterpart and I have been planning. Last month we finalized the details of the plan and completed the budget. Now I need your help. The grant we have written is called a Peace Corps Partnership Grant and is funded solely by friends and family who donate directly through the Peace Corps’ website. In the next few paragraphs I’m going to describe the project in better detail for you. Some quick background info on my town: Pelel Kindessa is a rural community of around 1,100 people is located in the region of Kedougou, in south-eastern Senegal. There are no businesses or shops in the town and nearly every family farms to make a living. Since there are no means of income beyond small subsistence farming there is not enough money in the town to expand their health hut to a point where it can finally begin serving the community.Pelel Kindessa’s single room health hut has neither the space nor the resources to function as the town’s health center. As a consequence the villagers must travel 7km down an extremely rough dirt road to the nearest Health Post in the neighboring town, Dindefelo. Even with the newly trained staff the lack of space is preventing the hut from operating as it should. Recently, solar panels that were donated by another NGO a year ago were installed on a neighboring hut, since the current health hut’s walls were not sufficient. As a fortunate consequence the owner of this neighboring hut has agreed to donate it as part of the expansion project. This new hut houses the solar panel equipment and would serve perfectly as the office and pharmacy/medical supply area. There is exactly enough space in between the two huts for a third, creating one large structure for the health building.the existing health hut to the left, the space in between for the expansion, and the newly added hut to the right with the solar panels

a really bad 'blueprint' of the existing huts and the area of expansion Three rooms; one for child birth, one for other patient treatment/observation, and one for the office and medical supplies. This expansion includes a permanent metal roof which will protect the structure for years to come. It will also provide adequate space for the newly trained mid-wife to work, room for general medical visits, space for the new patient beds and sufficient room for the pharmacy stock and administrative items. In addition to the building expansion we plan to deepen the well to ensure year-around access to water. Dabi Souare, my counterpart, and the town’s ASC (Agent Sante Communitaire, or community health worker) is the driving individual behind this project. He built the current health hut and neighboring hut with the solar panels in his compound and will be directing the construction of the expansion to combine the two into one building. Villagers from each of the 5 neighborhoods of Pelel and members of the health committee will be helping with the construction as well as supply and transport such items as sand, rocks and wooden beams. Many of those workers who will be doing the actual construction have all agreed to take a percentage off of their fees to contribute towards the completion of our project, and a local Tourist Hotel in neighboring Dindefelo has donated money in addition to some money put forth by the local municipality. Now, my plea for your help and your money. My villagers and I need your help to improve their rural health care access. Hopefully everything I’ve written above (and sorry I tend to ramble and it’s not concise at all), will have painted a complete picture of what we’re trying to accomplish in Pelel. Our grant request is small only about $800 and we’re hoping that with your help and the help of anyone you wish to refer these links to, we can reach this goal quickly, allowing us to complete the expansion and renovations before this year’s rainy season starts in May-June.So please if you’re considering helping out, the link to donate is located on a personalized Peace Corps web page at this by clicking HERE. The box to donate is found on the right hand side of the page and is a quick process. And in addition, please forward the link to this blog post anyone that you think would like to contribute. The villagers of Pelel Kindessa and I thank you in advance!

again the link to donate: https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=685-165

Well 1 year ago today I landed in Dakar and began this crazy journey. Lots of stuff happened, but no need for a recap, I know you all diligently read this blog. Just some village/work related news. I’m now working with 3 active gardening groups in Pellel, the Women’s Group in my neighborhood, one in the far out neighborhood of Pellel called Tanege, and one at the school with the students. Got a well funded by appropriateprojects.com (you can view my project here ) We’ve already completed the well digging and a local NGO AfriCare will be donating a rope pump after we cap the well. Enjoy some photos below.

some of the Jam Weli Women's Group Garden with the vegetable nursery

the new well that was dug next to the Women's Group Garden

the vegetable nursery at the school garden

the students and teachers at the school garden after our transplanting work party

the very beautifully kept beds at the Tanege Pellel Women's Group Garden

I’ve recently submitted the budget and grant proposal for the Health Hut renovations, more on that when the Dakar office finishes processing it and it moves on to Washington.

WAIST or the West Africa Invitational Softball Tournament. This was how we all spent our 3-day President’s Weekend in Dakar. There was some softball involved but mostly there was lots of time spent at the pool at the American Club, food, drinks, and parties. Practically every volunteer from Senegal was there and several West African countries Peace Corps’ sent teams as well. Our team was a combination of Tambacounda region and Kedougou region, forming ‘Tambagou’ and this year our theme was cops and robbers. I didn’t bring my camera to WAIST because I was sure I’d lose it, but here’s some photos I got from my friends, sift around on their blog links for other photos of the weekend too! Oh, yeah, I was the Hamburglar! ( I made the costume from scratch, I’m pretty amazing like that, and short-shorts is part of our theme every year)

Jessica (as a Banana Ballerina), Mika, Ari, and me the Hamburglar!

So a Banana and a Hamburglar walk into a bar...

The women of my town are amazing! I had been waiting for months to start a garden with the women’s group but they couldn’t decide where to put it and wanted me to give them money to build a fence (which their husbands should do for free). So nothing really happened for a couple months and I just focused on the med hut. Last week when I got back to site I couldn’t believe it, they told me they would be working later that afternoon on the fence for the garden. I couldn’t believe my ears. I got to the garden and about 20 of the men were there digging holes for the fence posts and bringing the cuttings to make the fence. I worked to and got my fair share of blisters. The garden is in the best place ever, down this one hill and close to the stream. Unfortunately the stream dries up for most of the year, so I’m working with a local NGO AfriCare to get a well and a hand pump that can be built by local welders. A few days later I met with the women to begin the digging. I taught them how to double dig (a process where you remove the topsoil, break up the harder dirt underneath, and then place the topsoil back on top). At first they had no clue why I was digging my plot in such a particular way, but after doing some charades and some broken pulaar insistence, they got it, and they took off…in just that morning they dug plots for half the garden.the garden from on top of the hill

a panoramic I took of the garden

the beds the women dug

The Women of the Pellel Womens GroupI head back today with seeds for their vegetable plots, and Morenga tree seeds that I’m going to use to do a Morenga intensive bed, so the women can harvest the leaves for leaf sauce.Lots of work coming up soon. Seed collections, meetings with local NGOs for the garden and health hut. And the Ambassador is coming to visit Kedougou and Dindefelo at the end of this week. Thanks for reading.oh and some hippos for your enjoyment!

I hope all of you had a wonderful Holiday season, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year to everyone! Sorry I haven’t posted in awhile, was doing some work with getting the school garden going and writing a grant for the medical hut expansion. But just before Christmas I traveled down to Kolda, another regional capital here in the south of Senegal. We spent Christmas there where we watched endless Christmas movies, drank and were merry. It was a great time. Thanks to all the great Kolda Volunteers for hosting! The New Year was tons of fun too! I’d spoil it if I tried to describe it with words, so here’s a few photos, and there will most likely be more up on my Picasa within a few weeks.

amazing food!!!!!!!!!!!!!all these clams...2$ no joke

Santa! and the Eiffel Tower!I’m going back to site today, hopefully there will be lots of work to do with getting the school garden started, oh and a plane landed today in Kedougou, this is rare, so Frank and I rode our bikes over, said hello and took some photos.

I'm trying to find a new design for the blog...the old one was a terrible color and I finally decided it looked more like northern Senegal, not like Kedougou. Hopefully the redo will be done by next week.

Tabaski is the biggest holiday here in Senegal. All the families slaughter at least one of their sheep and for 3 days everyone eats well. This is great for them, and even me, I had a lot of fun, but the mystery meat in the bowl leads to some GI distress over the following days…

My brother Yousuphu and I (and his friend to the left)A couple weeks ago we made a trip to the Ingeli waterfalls (see my previous post). It’s rumored that they’ll dry up soon, but judging by what we saw when we finally got there I’d find it hard to believe they’ll completely dry up. We might make another trip in a month or so when there’s even less water there; there was a bit too much to swim in the upper pool, not to mention my friend Lili spotted a crocodile. This time we also made it up to the top of the waterfall which had some great views.Ingeli Waterfall from the top

I decided to travel up to Kaolack for Thanksgiving and my 24th birthday (the same day this year) to see my friends Jessica and Mikael. Jessica got 4 turkeys slaughtered in her town and brought them to the regional house for the feast. We set aside one of the turkeys just for us to deep fry. With all the stories of people burning down their houses in the US trying to deep fry turkeys, we definitely took our time to plan out how to do it the best way. It was a huge success and so was the rest of the meal that was prepared by the volunteers of the Kaolack house. I probably ate more than I eat in a week at site…but it was delicious and worth it. Great birthday, great thanksgiving! I hope all my friends, family, and readers had a great Thanksgiving at home.

testing the set up

turkey!!!!

Jessica and I

Deep frying the turkey

We went to Jessica’s site, Keur Madiabel, and painted a mural at the Post de Sante. Now I’m still relaxing at the Kaolack house waiting to go to Thies in two days for our West African All Volunteers Conference.

Ok, that title was lame but I was trying to come up with something funny considering what happened yesterday on my way back into Kedougou. I was actually on my way to Thobakare to visit the new volunteer there and see how he’s been settling in, but just outside of Segou (7k from Dindefelo) my bike chain derailed. I looked back and this is what I saw…

The second major bike problem in just one week, and it's seriously not my fault, I know how to ride and take care of the bike. By some amazing luck, literally 2 minutes after I stopped, snapped this photo, and started to remove my back tire, a 4x4 carrying some Spanish tourists back from Dindefelo stopped. Before I could even finish introducing myself, the Senegalese driver and his buddy were already loading my bike onto the roof. Thank god for Spanish tourists and nice helpful Senegalese drivers. Made it back to the regional house in Kedougou, but since the bike is so badly damaged and we don’t have the part, I have to use a spare bike. Oh well. This weekend I’m off to Tambacounda for Tambaween/Hallowcunda!

Things will never go as planned or as hoped during the Peace Corps. For example, after my last Dakar trip I was expecting to go back to site on Monday the 11th, then disaster struck my GI system and I got stuck in Kedougou taking anti-amoebas/giarrdia medication (apparently the stuff they give us is banned by the FDA…). Either way, by the time I was feeling better it was only 2 days away from the arrival of our new volunteers, so I decided to just stay (it was a good idea, these medications make you nauseous). I guess the whole getting sick thing worked out ok because I met a group of 3 Polish couch surfers (tourists who sleep on peoples couches, google it, it’s awesome). They met a PCV in Dakar who referred them to stay with us while down here. It was fun meeting and hanging out with them, along with the shots of very tasty polish Wodka they brought for us. The next day they wanted an adventure in Kedougou, but I still wasn’t well enough for a long bike trip, so I took them to Bandafassi, an easy trip just 12k or so down the main road. From there we climbed to the top of the mountain (only a 25 min ascent, but kind of straight up), it was beautiful. Hopefully I can steal some of their photos after they get back to Europe. We spent that afternoon in the pool at the Relais eating warthog sandwiches; I know I work really hard here. It was nice meeting them and now I have travel contacts in Madrid, Milan, and Poland, thanks giardia!

The installation of the new volunteers went well and they’re all very nice. It’s hard to believe I’m a sophomore already. Joe, the PC bike repair guy, came down with the install car to fix all our bikes. He finished fixing my bike the other afternoon, so I finally got to leave yesterday afternoon to go home! The ride was great, until a bit outside of Dindefelo my rear gears started making a lot of noise, skipping, and occasionally derailing. I got into Dindefelo and just before I left to head back to Pellel, I checked my back gears…The new rear-gear assembly that Joe had just put on had sheared off and was wobbling all over the place. I took off the back tire and the assembly fell apart this is what I found.

that's all supposed to be one piece along with what's still on the axel

I wound up spending the night in Dindefelo at Lili’s place; she and some friends who were visiting from Spain had a car leaving the next morning to go back to Kedougou. Luckily I was able to get into that car with my broken bike (along with the PC Kedougou house bike that was lost down the river, but that’s another story for another time). We stopped along the way in Ibel to take a short hike to Iwol, another town along the same ridge that I visited with my Polish friends. Here are some photos of the view.

So that brings me to here and now…stuck back at the regional house in Kedougou. It wasn’t what I expected, or intended to do. I’ve been dying to get home since I’ve been gone so long, but I had a lot of fun because of getting sick and having my bike break…here’s to the bike trip back to site again tomorrow morning.

Wow, it’s been a long time since I last posted. That’s most likely due to one of two things, I’ve either been busy with work, or just too lazy to post (in truth it’s been a little of both). I think the best way to recap everything that’s gone on in the last month or so is with a couple tiny blurbs and occasional photos. So here we go. Dindefelo Summer Camp Shortly after Ramadan ended the Dindefelo Summer Camp started up. The camp was 2 weeks long and there were just over 70 high school aged kids from the Kedougou Region. Since the camp was in its 3rd or 4th year, the Senegalese counselors have been taking over more and more of the responsibilities each year. Consequentially, the Peace Corps’ role this year was more of background support, although half the time we felt like we were doing so much more, just with no decision making power. Either way the 2 weeks went well. I got to teach basic First Aid sessions to all the campers, you’d be surprised that all of them thought a tourniquet was the first thing to do to stop bleeding…they know better now. We also went over broken bones, dehydration and heat exhaustion (which I actually had to treat one camper for later in the week), and choking. It was a lot of fun to teach those skills to the local kids, and I got to do it in French which was good practice, and fun.

(splinting...good enough)

In addition to that we had a bunch of other sessions like nutritional porridge preparation and techniques on how you could effectively sell items like that at the weekly market. During the camp I stayed at my friend Lili’s hut. Lili is a chimpanzee researcher from the Spanish Jane Goodall Institute, so she gave a few talks about local chimpanzee populations and did a nature hike.

In addition, during the 2 weeks there were some really amazing storms that rolled through in the evenings. TOMATOES and eggplants too During the summer camp, I biked back to my house in Pellel every 4 or 5 days, and the best part of that was getting to eat the tomatoes I’ve grown in my garden. On the last day I was there to pick them before I knew I’d be leaving site for the next 2 weeks, I think I ate nearly 20 of them. Dakar and Joal Summit After camp ended we took the car back to Kedougou so we could catch the overnight bus to Dakar. The overnight bus was the best! I watched 2 movies on my iPod, took 2 benadryl and fell asleep until we arrived in Dakar at 5am…sure beats waiting around in garages all day and a crowded, sweaty sept-place. We traveled to Dakar for our sector’s Health and Environmental Education Summit, which was held in Joal, a coastal town a little south of Dakar. The date of the summit got pushed back a few days after we had already bought our bus tickets, so naturally we spent way too much money running around and having fun in Dakar. The day before summit was made a trip back to Popenguine (see my previous post) and stayed in the same house. While we were there, we went swimming in the ocean at night again, although this time there was bioluminescence, or tiny planktons that glow when you touch them. So basically we swam around in the dark ocean looking like magical wizards for nearly 45 minutes, it was a lot of fun. Unfortunately there’s no pictures of that, but if you’re curious I’m sure a quick google or youtube search will show you how cool it is. After Popenguine we traveled to Joal for our 2-day summit. The one house we were in had no water, which was miserable, so the next night they moved us into a really awesome beach-side hotel (thanks American tax-payers, PCVs love the beach!). That hotel was supposed to have water, which it did, for the first 2 hours, then not again until we left…oh well the pool and bar made up for it. Summit was ok, I think it just seemed repetitive to my stage because we had just recently had our in-service-training a few months ago. I did get my grant written so it wasn’t a waste of time. After summit we went back to Dakar for one night, had a going-away bar night for some friends who have completed their service, and we traveled back to Kedougou the next morning. That pretty much brings us to now. There’s a bunch of work on my plate for now through the end of the month. Trying to get my grant passed for a 6 month training stipend for my counterpart’s matrone (mid-wife) training, school building in my town, and more stuff with the med hut…I’ll keep you posted. Thanks again for reading despite the fact that my English skills deteriorate month by month… and just a picture of my awesome cat Mawni, because look at what she caught!

So the month of Ramadan ended on Friday, the celebration here is called Korite. It was a long day of prayer at the mosque and (finally!) FOOD! and lots of it. I really love food, and I think the people of Pellel do too. We definitely ate well to celebrate the end of the month of fasting. Although I didn't actually fast the whole month (I had secret meals in my hut) I definitely ate a lot less than I normally would have. In addition to all the not eating, I got some work started on a couple of future projects, I'll have more info on those as things start to come together over the next month or so now that everyone is up and running again.

I was in at the regional house this weekend to greet the new stage volunteers who came for site visits. They're a fun group and we're all looking forward to the 9 of them moving in with us here in Kedougou after they swear in at the end of October, I can't believe I'm no longer one of the freshmen here.

Tomorrow morning I head back to Dindefelo, where I'll be spending most of the next two weeks for the Kedougou Summer Camp. Its a leadership camp for students in the area. I'll have more on that after its done. But a busy two weeks coming up, and then I get to go to the Dakar region for a week or so. There's some new photos on Picasa, so enjoy those, sorry I don't have any other interesting stories for now, until next time.

My dad (he's the town Imam) and some guy I call Grandfather Time, in their Korite best!

(they never smile...my dad is really the nicest person, he just looks a little serious here)

Hello all, I'm going to try to keep this post short, it's late and I need to get to bed soon, heading back to village tomorrow. I was back at the regional house for some organizational meetings for the Dindefelo summer camp that's coming up. Also met with the head of the local hospital with some other volunteers to discus implementing a permanent condom distribution system for the region. Not too much work, but things are starting to pick up, I'll definitely have more work and stories after Ramadan finished, right now everyone is fasting so not much work gets done.

Enough of work talk...Hannah and I made a trip out to the Pellel waterfall last week. It was beautiful, well worth the 1h15m walk out there. I won't go into too many details of the waterfall, the pictures say it all, and you can always refer back to my earlier post about the first time I visited out there, this time luckily I brought my camera. Enjoy the photo below (plenty more on my picasa account)

The Pellel Waterfall

and just because I want to share a couple more photos...

my tomatoes (i know spacing is terrible)

the amazing bridge we need to cross to get from site back to the regional house....

Like most gems the French left behind after their colony days with Senegal, such as the inability to form and wait in a lines, a write-and-study-only-what-you-see-written-on-the-board-and-the-teacher-is-never-wrong-so-don’t-ask-anything-in-class educational system, the Senegalese Post Office deserves to be shared with those of you reading along at home in the comfy US. You see, in the United States we have the luxury of being able to walk into a post office and buy stamps along with other people who are also just buying stamps (or something similar, packages, etc.). I first noticed this very odd phenomenon while studying abroad in Paris during the fall of 2007. La Poste as they call it there and here, is not only just a post office, but also, and even more so a bank… Try to stick with me here, I was confused too. I didn’t mind it too much in Paris because most French don’t spend all day hawking the counters at their banks, but here in Senegal that is exactly what they do (think the DMV but worse). To my best understanding the group of Senegalese waiting at the Post Office’s counter, which all day long numbers around 20 or so, is there waiting for money wire transfers. I’m supposing that most of these people are there trying to access some of the money sent to them by family member who has made it off to the magical and fabled land of Dakar, where money is a plenty (but not as abundant as it is in the US where Obama gives it to us by the bucket load, daily, according to many Senegalese I’ve talked to). This is a good thing. Oldest son leaves the poor, humble Pulaar farm in South Kedougou to make the big franc CFAs up in Dakar in order to help support the family. It’s great. Except for when I want to write one of you a letter or a post card, or get postage for a package, or pick up a package…That’s when I get to wait in the endless line that is the La Poste bank…Which brings me to why the Post Office should not be a bank. Combined with the aforementioned genetic incapability to queue up and wait, this line can be and always is miserable. There are other banks that exist here that also have Western Union wire transfer counters…but I still haven’t figured out why the Post Office is the place of choice. Perhaps it’s the Restaurante La Poste, which doesn’t actually exist here in Kedougou (we’re too far out in the sticks) but there’s one in Tambacounda, lunch 7 days a week. I’m guessing some savvy cook noticed that there’s a lot of Senegalese getting hungry while waiting in line (a figurative line) for hours to shout at the assorted glacialy slow-moving tellers, as if they were placing bets with a bookie at a horse race, cheers to them. All joking aside though, this is the reality here, so cherish our American way of separation of Bank and Post, I can’t wait for it when I return in two years. -------------------------------------------------------

A funny thing happened on the way back to Kedougou…After my Dakar trip I spent a couple days with my friend Mikael in Tambacounda, the last major city before you get to Kedougou. When it came time to head back to the Gou (as we call it here, we’re the Gou Crew) we went to the garage to find me a sept-place. The garage can be a scary and hectic place. Hundreds of cars, taxis, sept-places, and alhums all of which would never pass inspection in the United States, are waiting around with their drivers trying to shuffle you off into them for your trip. Despite the lack of a ticket counter or schedule as you’d expect at most large public transportation depots back in the States such as a train or bus station, it’s remarkably quite efficient. Taking a sept-place, which is French for a station wagon that can hold 7 passengers (don’t ask how we fit in, it’s miserable), can be the fastest way to travel long distances in Senegal. The only problem is these cars will not leave until all 7 seats are filled. Up until then I had always traveled with a large group of volunteers, and had the luxury of group bargaining and a speedy departure. I think I was one of the first people to buy a seat in my sept-place, which meant I spent nearly an hour and a half waiting to leave. While waiting, I noticed they were cramming all the luggage into the tiny space behind the third row of seats. This made more sense when they threw the first goat up on top. This is common here so I didn’t mind it, until there were seven goats on top of the sept-place (which apparently means 7 seats for people and 7 animals).

seven goats tied in rice sacks ready for a 3-4 hour drive...

there were seven of them I promise, some are hiding

I got stuck with the worst seat in the car, the middle furthest back seat, and considering that the two back windows wouldn’t roll down, it was pretty bad. About an hour into the ride the one guy next to one of the non-functioning windows figured out how to open it, the wind was amazing…for 5 minutes, then one of the goats peed and it started to pour in the window on the man. The window went promptly went up. This happened three more times, luckily my seat was far enough away from any of the windows for me to get peed on, crisis averted, until the car broke down…The driver fixed it after we sat in the shade on the side of the road for an hour. By then two of the people in the car had flagged down another car and left us behind, this meant I got the back bench seat all to myself, which was great, until the car broke down again…This time there was no fixing it, it just wouldn’t work. The driver flagged down this 1960s charter bus that was passing by. You don’t travel in these things, it’s just a rule, they’re miserable and crowded…but there I was. Another two hours, and the realization that my seat and subsequently my pants were wet, I was back in Kedougou, hope the goats were ok...No public transportation for me for awhile.

I just need to send a very huge thanks to the people who sent me the three lovely packages I picked up today at the Kedougou Post Office (and one that was waiting for me in Thies). These wonderful individuals deserve some spotlight on my blog since I can’t wait to eat what they sent me!so many boxes

Mom and Dad! Thanks for the hammock, unfortunately the skittles exploded all over the entire box and then melted onto everything but I cleaned it all up! It’s all going to be delicious and helpful at site.

In-service-training went well. It was great to get to see all my friends from new stage who many I saw at the 4th of July party, but some not since we had installed. We learned a lot of useful information and technical skills over the 2 weeks back at the training center. Most importantly we learned how to get access to grants and different funding options available to us PCVs. Now we’re finally allowed to do full scale projects that would require funding. We also have several presentations from NGOs (non-governmental organizations who do aid work) who work in Senegal, informing us who we could possibly work with back at our sites. All in all I learned a lot of stuff and I feel very prepared and ready to do some good work, I’ll include a list of hopeful future projects at the end of this post. We had the weekend off at the training center, and I traveled back to Sangalkam to visit my old homestay family. They were very excited to see me and it was nice to spend the night with them and visit all the other homestay families in Sangalkam. Monday morning we started the English camp. I partnered up with my friend Jessica and we had a group of a dozen or so 15-16 year-olds. The whole goal of the summer camp that was run by the US Embassy in Dakar, was just to speak as much English as possible and play games all week long…no problem there. We had a great time, our team named themselves Team Lions. They also picked their own American names, some of the best were Lincoln, Honey, and Weezy… At the end of the week we had an Olympics day and finally a talent show, our team sang along to a remix I put together of Michael Jackson’s We are the World spliced together with some Shakira, Akon, Rhianna, Chris Brown, and Jay-Sean…it was hilarious to watch their choreography and singing, but they had a lot of fun.

Limbo Competition on Olympics day, this was Honey from Team Lions

Me and some of the kids from Team Lions

After English camp ended a bunch of us grabbed a sept-place (a seven seater station wagon, one of the most common forms of long-distance travel here) to Dakar. We stayed at the newly refurbished Volunteer transit house, along with probably 50 other volunteers. There were volunteers there from the other English camps held in neighboring cities, some who were waiting for their COS (close of service) conference, and just some others there for the weekend. Friday night was trivia night at the American club, I basically just sat at the pool and ate and drank. We went to a MALL on Saturday, which only proved to be depressing because we realized that we can’t afford nice things on a volunteer’s pay… Later that night was the monthly insane party called Cool Graoul (spelling?). The bar where this event was held was near the presidential palace. One second we were in the city then next thing we knew we were in this odd random forest, which had a bar, and this great party. It was lots of fun, what we could remember of it was at least…

Hopeful Future Projects (just to name a few so you have an idea) · Reorganization of Med Hut, restocking and organized system for medications and supplies · Well and Pump for revamped and expanded Women’s Group Garden · New Classroom construction at the school · Chicken Coups and Egg business for Dari, the 3rd wife at my house · Fix the motor for the water tower · Latrine Construction · Porridge Model seminar for women with malnourished children

hello everyone, thanks again for continuing to read. I'm sitting here at the 'Big Faim' a restaurant in Thies (which means 'big hunger' in frenglish) enjoying a bottle of red wine and a cheese burger...oh how delicious food can be. I'll be here for 2 weeks of IST (in-service-training) we're learning mostly technical skills such as grant writing procedures, ideas for health demonstrations (called causeries) and other possible projects. After IST there will be an English camp here in Thies which I volunteered to help out at. It's a summer camp for local high school students who are learning English, basically we get to play games, do arts and crafts and ONLY speak English with them all day long, I'm extremely excited, this is going to be a nice month-long break from site.

In addition to updating you on my current activities I want to point out that I recently upload a bunch of new pictures on my Picasa account (a new album and many added to 'at the site until IST' album), see the link on the right side of the page. I'll also have access to internet and skype until about the 7th of august so look for me on there. Thanks again for reading I miss you all.

Shout outs of thanks to those who have sent me things!

- MoM & Dad for first package and the camelback which has been a great help, and the second package that I am hoping to pick up when I get back to Kedougou.

- Ed for sending a great card, and a great package! thanks for the new music, food, book, and drink mixes those will be the best while biking

- Danielle for probably one of the most inspirational letters that I will ever read, can't wait to get your next one

- Marc, haven't gotten it yet, but I know it's on the way, thanks again, you're a great friend

A few weeks ago we had the net distribution training for the local heath workers who would be conducting the net distributions in their respective towns. Like the other training events this one took place at the health post in the ever famous Dindefelo. A few nights of listening to the World Cup coverage by the BBC on my awesome short-wave radio later and we were ready to begin prepping for the net distribution in Pellel. I had tried to get my dad to loan us his donkey cart for the day to pick up the 397 nets that we needed for the distribution. And course since we were asking the day before even my dad figured he should try to get some money out of this…My counterpart Nene Galle tried doing the same thing the day before at the health post (her husband has a cart too), despite the fact that I reminded them that they were all getting FREE mosquito nets from the Senegalese government, and that it wasn’t my responsibility to get money from the US government through the Peace Corps to distribute their nets…alas both families insisted on getting at least 2500cfa a piece for using their carts (a typical cart fare for that trip should only be about 500cfa). In the end Badji, the healthpost director from Dindefelo who was overseeing the entire distribution for the area, decided to send a cart from Dindefelo and pay that other man instead. I made sure to tell both families in Pellel that because of their bickering, running us around, and wasting a day of prep, we paid someone else to do it. That might have been a little mean but I needed to set a precedent in town that I’m not there to just give money handouts. Nene Galle and a neighbor starting to open the nets

Me doing work...

Either way the nets got there in the afternoon the next day. I immediately started with organizing the classroom at the school house near my house. Nene Galle helped out, we swept the floor, laid out a couple mats and started removing all nets from their individual plastic bags. We had to write “Pellel 2010” on each net (this is the attempt at preventing the nets from being resold). We got the net all labeled and stacked but we didn’t have the census sheets from a few weeks earlier so we couldn’t divide them into families as I had wanted to. The next morning around 10am one of supervisors from Dindefelo showed up on his moto with the census sheets. I soon got to labeling some more, which was a great help and made the whole distribution go much faster and smoothly.

The organization system...

Distribution time!

Last Sunday Zach and Alan, two other volunteers, came down to make a trip over to the Ingeli waterfalls. Those falls are located on the boarder of Guinea and Senegal 14k down past where my town is, they were also supposed to be much more amazing than the Dindefelo waterfalls. We met up in Dindefelo and continued on down through Pellel (my village). The ride was fun and despite the fact that we had to ford a couple rivers, it was beautiful with the mountain ridge on our side along the way. We finally got to the site of the falls in the late afternoon and met up with Frank and Meera who came down from the other side of the region. Before it got dark we went swimming in the falls. These were really beautiful and fun to swim in because there were so many different levels of pools and cascades. We got back and set up our camp, built a fire and cooked a surprisingly delicious dinner. The five of us then managed to cram into two tiny little tents, which was fine while we could keep the door open for air….but then the rain came, and there was a lot of it, all through until the morning. I wound up getting a little wet on the side of the tent but it was actually slightly refreshing. In addition to making our morning fire a little more difficult to get started, the waterfall was roaring. I finally took some pictures at that point (you can see them below) but the falls were so different from the day before when it was much calmer. Either way we decided to go swimming again, which was pretty ridiculous considering the amount of water flowing through. In the end the sky cleared up and it wound up being a beautiful to go swimming, break down camp, and bike back home.

The morning after when the water was really coming down

On a side note, I’ll be back in the Thies region for IST (in-service-training) starting next week, so I’ll hopefully be able to post a bit more often and regularly then. With the better internet there (our router at the regional house got fried by a recent lightening strike) I'll get up the rest of the recent photos, along with a post about my recent mosquito net distribution in Pellel

So welcome to my life in Senegal, it's one of not being connected to the outside world and rarely knowing any US or international news. Most of this is due to the fact that "internet land" as I call it is a 47k bike ride away from my comfy hut to the Kedougou Regional house. The last time I was here, a little over 2 weeks ago I had wanted to upload a post I had written a long time ago, get some photos up on my Picasa (see the link to the right), etc....but the the circuit breaker box here melted and left me with no internet during my day off at the regional house. Now I'm back again, had to buy a new bike rack (the one that came with our bikes already snapped, damn rocky roads and crappy aluminum rack) and retrieve my bank card from the bank (the ATM ate it last time because I forgot my pin), both of those objectives were completed so this has been a successful trip back to the reg house so far. Below will be some updates, and hopefully the other backdated posts. New photos are up on Picasa now so take a look!

(I backdated the previous 2 posts, they're new as of June 16th, despite their dates)

Last week I finally did some work! We started off the 2010 Universal Net Coverage campaign for Senegal. There are a couple NGOs involved including Malaria No More, Netlife, and PNLP (the Senegalese government org against malaria). We started last Monday with the training of the local health workers at the Health Post in Dindefelo. The training was to teach them how to do an effective census of the people in the surrounding towns, find out how many beds in each household, and how many nets were needed. I spent the next 3 days going around with my counterpart Nene Galle and my other counterpart’s wife, Sadio, (he was out of town). We went compound to compound all over my Pellel’s 5 quartiers...it was a long 3 days, but good because I got to meet everyone and also introduce myself as the new volunteer, one guy was so excited to meet me he gave me 6 bananas. Then on Friday we did an early net distribution in Dindefelo, the touristy town 7k from mine. I won’t be distributing the nets in Pellel until the 2nd or 3rd of July but this happened so early on because the NGO who paid for the nets wanted to do a big press event. So, of course, they flew in some American celebrities...most notable was the actor who play Andy from the Office, who was also in the Hangover. There were some comedians I had seen randomly before on TV, and then some others who have done some smaller roles. Either way, it was nice to have them there and the net distribution went quickly and smoothly. Afterwards they filmed some stuff for some malaria awareness clips that will be out on the internet later this fall. I’ll post a link to that site once they’re done with it and have it up.

Labeling the nets so no one tries to resell them, organising them into households for pickup

Some of the crowd, waiting to get their nets

Meera, Hannah & I and the celebrities

Aside from that, we had 3 days of language training in Dindefelo, our teacher drove in. Back at the regional house for a day or two to email, blog & photo post, and buy a new bike rack because mine snapped; these roads out here are rough! Looking forward to net distributions at the end of this month and then the big Kedougou 4th of July party!

So I’ve had about my first week at site. My family is extremely nice and the village is great. I kind of mentioned both back in my volunteer visit post. I’m going to stop trying to give the play by play of everything that’s been going on here with me in Senegal and from now on the posts will be more targeted entries, specific events, etc. The Pellel Kindessa Falls Last week I got my host brother, Yousuphu, to head out with me in search of the Pellel Kindessa Waterfall (the Dindefelo one is great but it’s a bit touristy and I was positive my town had a more exclusive and better set of falls). We were supposed to leave immediately after lunch, but Hannah, my closest neighbor was supposed to be making her first visit to my family, of course I had no phone credit to find out when she’d actually show up. I convinced Yousuphu to wait until after the first cup of attaaya (the extremely sugary tea the Senegalese drink in shot form, imagine 12 sugar cubes in about 8oz of tea….), we drank, and magically Hannah showed up just as I had hoped. She and her host dad stayed awhile so we still got an even later start and by that point an obvious thunderstorm was coming over the mountains where we were headed. Despite my family suggesting that it might not be a good idea to go, I looked at 15 year old Yousuphu who said, yeah let’s go. Walking through open fields with my new machete in hand, as the lightning approached us, I decided that I should maybe not blindly follow the suggestions of a 15 year old in the future... Luckily I was not struck by lightning. The walk took a little over an hour and all along the way Yousuphu had to yell at the top of his lungs to scare off the troops of baboons that weren’t very afraid of us and were following us through the valley. We continued along making our own path at many points since one doesn’t really exist, as the mountains on either side of us closed in on each other. We reached a point where Yousuphu said he hadn’t been past before because he had been too afraid, we decided to continue despite the fact that it started to rain and the rock faces of the mountains on either side drowned out most of the light. This place was amazing. The rock faces on both sides went up as steep steps and there were trees that had managed to grow in them with their roots cascading down reminiscent of something from the legends of the hidden temple, or some Indiana Jones movie. We arrived at the main pool, and found that there are a number of different falls all in this one area, all on different levels. We decided to climb to the furthest point back; the view from there was wonderful. At this point I was thankful for the rain because since its still dry season here, there wouldn’t have been any water at these falls. The rain that had been pouring for about 20 minutes started to make its way down the rock front; I watched as it start cascading from 50 or 60 feet up. It was absolutely beautiful. We stood there for almost 20 minutes until we decided to climb down to where the first pool was, now we found the main waterfall pouring from the rocks that hadn’t yet started when we arrived. It was definitely an awesome sight. Judging by the rocks and where the water was dripping from just this one short afternoon thundershower I can only imagine how great this area looks during rainy/wet season. I’ll definitely be going back when that happens next month, and with a camera if I can (so no pictures this time around…).

Hey everyone, this will be a short post. Been in Kedougou for the last few days buying things for my hut, got all packed up today, we leave for my village tomorrow at 7:30am. Pretty exhausted from all the running around, and I want to be up early tomorrow. Probably won't have access to the internet for the next 2-3weeks, so I'll try to update you then. Oh and I'm now the proud owner of my very first machete! I'll try to be careful.

Despite my alarm not going off this morning (set it but it didn't save as 'on') and me and my roommate missing the 7am PC bus to Dakar (i woke up on my own at 7:30 and though wow it's pretty light outside for before 6am, looked at my cell phone and saw that it was 7:35 and sure enough everyone had left without us….the guards here called us a taxi and 16,000CFA (about 32$) we were in Dakar with an hour to spare before the ceremony.) It was a nice ceremony held at the US Ambassador's house, complete with lots of soda and finger foods afterwards (probably my favorite part). Either way I am now officially a Peace Corps Volunteer!!!!! After the ceremony we got our bank cards from the PC HQ and went over to the American Club, a place with a really nice pool that we get access to for free as PCVs…and it has a cheap bar. Back in Thies now, tomorrow will be a long day of shopping in the market, want to pick up a decent hammock if I can find one. And then very early Sunday morning we're leaving super early to head to Kedougou. I'll be there until I install at site on the 19th, so I'll have some time to put up some photos and post again.

So a few weeks ago the Peace Corps sent all of us stagiers out to our respective regional houses. Considering the 12 hour drive our group was lucky to get one of the large PC buses which allowed us to spread out and sleep most of the way, the rest of the trip was spent doing my other favorite activity, snacking…(considering that I'm only now 2 weeks away from the long awaited 'Africa Diet' which will be never again getting to eat meat, being lucky if I ever see rice and….well I'll explain what we ate at my future home a little further in)

We arrived at the Kedougou Regional house pretty late after dark and thanks to all the wonderful volunteers who had just finished making us some awesome BBQ chicken pizza, a couple Gazelles (the natty lite of Senegal) later and we were in bed. The next morning an SUV was hired to take Meera, one of my good friends and fellow stagiers, and I out to Pellel Kindessa for the next couple days. The last paved road is few km from the regional house and from there on out the dirt road or sandy path that people use is basically restricted to 4WD, insane Senegalese on motorcycles (think about driving a motorcycle through random patched of foot deep loose sand…), and plenty of people on regular old fashioned bicycles. It takes almost 2 hours to get to Dindefellow, which is the only major town along the route and is 40km away from that last paved road. Dindefellow is a big tourist attraction due to the awesome waterfall there, which we visited twice (see the photos), so it has a nice mountain town feel, but seriously it's still very isolated. Hiring an SUV to take you out there is quite expensive and when you mention you need to go another 7km further to my town the rates bump up to I think something like 80USD.

We finally arrived at my future family's compound and met my ancienne, Kay, at the gate. She introduced us to the family who is amazing. They were all extremely friendly, funny, and excited to talk with us the entire trip. By the way, new family means a new name…I'm now Aamadou Souare, which still kind of sounds like Hamadou so that's not that bad, and I think the new last name is pretty fun, it's pronounced 'Souar-ray' as if it were French. We also got to see and stay in my future hut for a couple days during this visit. My new hut is awesome, I have my own fenced off yard, with a rocky front yard that's completely covered by an amazing shade structure, the hut is so cool, although you do have to crouch down to get inside. Living there with no electricity and the nearest water source being a pit well nearly 500yards away is going to take some getting used to. But I'm really excited because I have tons of room to start some gardens and a tree nursery when we move in (a requirement by the PC), oh and I also have a papaya tree growing next to my latrine, which I hope will start making fruit soon (thanks Kay for helping fertilize it for the last 2 years). The typical meals at the home are ground corn and wet ground corn with a covering of leaf sauce…sound appetizing? I'm anticipating a big weight loss, I'll be making lots of supplemental meals as well. Overall I was extremely pleased with the entire family, I was very relieved to see that I'll be living in such a great place to do my work the next 2 years, which made Kay very happy about me as her replacement.Over the few days there we got to tour the town of Pellel Kindessa, which is split into 4 quartiers which themselves are quite spread out. I was told that it'll be more like working with 4 tiny and very close villages that seemed very true! I love my quartier which is called Jam Weli, which means 'Peace Good' in pulaar futa. I met my two counterparts Mariama Souare who is called Neene Galle (mama of the house) by everyone in town, and Daby. They're both extremely nice and extremely motivated to help the people of their little mountain town. Daby has already built (with his own money which is hard to come by in a town like this) a health hut and is almost finished with a second that will be used as a delivery room for the pregnant women of the town. I know they will both be extremely helpful over the next 2 years. We also town water tower and pump room which is a definite future project, the last 2 volunteers have tried to get it up and running again but couldn't. Seeing the town and talking with Kay and my counterparts gave me a bunch of ideas for things to do during my service. The town basically has nothing for doing anything for them is greatly appreciated there.

After leaving Pellel we spend a day and a half in Dindefellow where we got to visit the beautiful waterfall that's below in the photos. It was amazing and I'm very excited that I get to live so close to this during my service. Kay also told me that there are 2 waterfalls right next to my town which no one goes to so I'm excited to go exploring and find them. After making 2 trips to the amazing waterfall we biked back to the regional house the rest of the 40km, it was a lot of fun despite my bout of explosive diarrhea, yay living in Africa, at least I got medicated enough to stop it for the 12 hour trip back to Thies the next day. In the end, the visit was great and I can't wait to get back there.The front of my future hut!

the back of my hut (caution low entrance)

Me and Kay (my ancienne)

Pellel Kindessa and some mountain from on top the water forage

an awesome chameleon Ifound at the Dindefellow waterfall

us at the Dindefellow waterfall

We had a counterpart workshop at the training center, which was long and all business. Neene Galle came and it was good to get to talk to her more about the next two years and the PC Senegal Health Project plan called PROSPERE. Either way as soon as it was done, Saturday morning we arranged for 2 alhums to pick all of us up and bring us to Popenguine, a ridiculously pretty beach town. There are some pictures below. We had a great time relaxing, swimming, eating, and drinking a little bit….suffice it to say it was an extremely fun and relaxing weekend for all of us despite the fact that the towns water supply was turned off the entire time (this happens often in a lot of places in Senegal) but 40 people and no running water meant running to the ocean for a bucket of water to flush the toilet every time…it was probably good we were there only 1 night.

Counterpart workshop in Thies

Views from the house in Popenguine

I'm writing this post at my homestay in Sangalkam during my last week here with the Ba family, which is sad, but there are important things ahead, 2 weeks to install ceremony on May 14th. This post will be up online after I'm back at the center so excuse the time discrepancy.

Hey everyone, I'm really sorry that I haven't gotten the chance to update in so long. A lot has happened since the last post. This is just gonna be a quick update, I'll get a chance to write the long details (hopefully) over the next week. There's tons of new pictures up on my Picasa! so look at the link to that on the right side of this page. I took a trip to my site to do a volunteer visit with my Ancienne Kay, who is COS-ing (close of service) and I'm her replacement. As I mentioned more details on that in the next post, but until then you can read her awesome blog if you can't wait to hear what my future town of Pelel Kindessa is like click here. We also got to take a trip to a turtle reservation nearby our homestay town, went to the beach at Lac Rose again but this time for a full day (sunburn included...) and this weekend our entire Stage is going to Popenguine beach, where we've rented a house for all 40 or so of us, should prove to be fun. Next week is my last week at my homestay! it's gone so fast. Either way enjoy the pictures and I'll have the good stories up soon, thanks for reading!

Hey everyone, sorry for the long delay since the last post. Internet in this country is difficult for a PCT to get a hold of. At the training center there’s one wireless router which at any given point 35 PCTs are trying to use to upload pictures to picasa or facebook, which makes it impossibly slow for everyone. If that doesn’t impede our access to the new world there’s usually a blackout (they happen everyday in this country) which knocks out the internet, or they just turn it off for no reason because the last ‘Stage’ of trainees abused the privilege and were antisocial. Anyway I should talk about something more interesting than the internet, which by the way I kind of don’t miss every much at all except for the fact that I literally have no idea about anything that has happened in the news since I left the US, rumors speak of healthcare… Last week on Friday we convinced our LCF (language and culture facilitator) Jeeba, to take us to a place near Sangalkam called Lac Rose or Pink Lake. It’s supposed to be Pink due to the salt content and apparently it was supposed to be beautiful so we begged her to take us. Despite it only being 8km away the transportation was a bit more extensive than one would expect. We walked to the main road and got on an Alhum or an Alhumdilliah which means “thank god” and is written across the front of these huge rickety vans. These Alhums were purchased probably back in the 1960s and are everywhere. In the US they’d probably be approved to carry 20 people. They are also tricked out with stickers and photos all over the front windshield and other windows, tassels and flags attached to the mirrors and bumpers as well. Either way we had to take an Alhum down the road a few miles, get off, take a taxi down another road a few miles, get off, take another Alhum a few miles down a new road, once we were in the Town of Lac Rose we took another taxi to the actual Lake. The lake wasn’t actually Pink but I did get to see camels! And then we discovered that the ocean was right there as well. After walking 15minutes through the nicest sand ever we got to the water and it was very fun and relaxing. 3 Alhums and 2 taxis in the dark later and we were back in our Homestay Village.

a mural we painted at the local health post

Alhum ride to Lac Rose

Me and a Camel!!! at Lac Rose

The Beach at Lac Rose (lake isn't pictured b/c it was ugly)

awesome jelly fish at the beach

We’ve been at the training center since Saturday, they gave us Easter weekend and Monday off, which was the most amazing time ever. As a trainee class is constant and never-ending, I go to bed exhausted most night, so having the weekend off was great. In summary of the weekend…we just ate a lot. We discovered this restaurant here in Thies called Big Faim which is a Eng-French of Big Hunger, which is exactly what their amazing Cheeseburgers get rid of…if you’re ever in Thies it’s a must. Class started again yesterday so days have gotten long again. We’re learning a lot of interesting stuff. The best part is later this afternoon we’re going to find out our site placements. In other words that means I find out exactly where I’ll be living for the next 2 years! So I’ll finish writing this post after I find out. Until then…. PELLEL KINDESSA!!! Kedougou, I’m going SOUTH way south, in fact so far south that my squatter (toilet) as I was told by the country director and 5 other current PCVs, my squatter is actually in Guinea, that’s right another country. Apparently my compound where I’m moving in far far south and ridiculously scenic Kedougou is right on the Senegal-Guinea boarder. I’m very excited because my site is apparently also at the foot of the mountains and next to the scenic Kedougou waterfalls, it’s going to be amazing. My Ancien or the PVC who I will be replacing when I move in, in late may wrote up a very nice site description and I’m very excited to get to visit it soon. In fact next Saturday a couple other PCTs and I will be going to stay with my Ancien for a Volunteer Site Visit. So I’ll post pictures and more information about my town then. Until then here’s a few tid-bits of what I know now. My town population is 1040, they speak Pulaar Futa which comes from Guinea and makes sense since it’s so close. The town is open to doing a wide range of different projects so I’ll have some flexibility which is also exciting. I will not have electricity or running water and my 1 room thatched roof hut has no windows, but according to my ancient I will have a pretty “sweet” shade structure out back my hut. My town is 7km further down the road from our country directors old site, which he described to me as the end of the world, so I’m 7km past the end of the world, and also according to him, 4WD vehicles can’t really get down those 7km very well at all…so I’m remote, but the region is apparently gorgeous and I cannot wait to get to see it next week. Here’s a couple of photos from the site placement event we had today. They blindfolded all of us and then shuffled around a ground mural map of Senegal, when we were told to open our eyes we were all standing on our sites and next to our neighbors. It was a lot of fun. There’s some pictures of this too.

Look for the green arrow at the bottom of the country

me squatting over the Guinean boarder on the map ground mural

Site Placement FUN!

So I have a lot to catch up on since my last post. Internet access here is pretty scarce for the time being since we’ve been cycling between the training center in Thies and my homestay in Sangalkam. The internet sucks at the center and has not been invented yet in my homestay village. I’ll try to section this post off into headings since there is a lot to say, especially because the reason I have internet is because I’m at the medical sick hut (aka the resort in Dakar where sick PCVs and PCTs in my case go to get better) oh no Eric is sick? Read on if you want to know more. Sangalkam – The HomestayI live with the Ba family in Sangalkam which is halfway in between Dakar and Thies. The reason for living there is immersion in the language I’ll be using for the next 2 years of service in the southern region of the country. That language is Pulaar Futa, and it comes from Guinea, a lot of people from Guinea live in Sangalkam therefore…I live there now too. My host brother is the main patriarch of the compound and also my namesake, Hamidou Diogo Ba. So that’s my new name here in Senegal Hamidou Diogo Ba but you can just call me Hamidou… Either way, the original Hamidou is a teacher in Dakar, and his wife Aissiatou basically takes care of me, she is awesome and we’re basically best friends now. She literally does everything for me, including carrying the water for my bucket bath, which is a little strange since she’s only a few years older than I, so is Hamidou. My mom is actually Hamidou’s sister-in-law and her husband the missing elder brother (my dad…) lives in Dakar and I only met him for a minute literally. The whole family is very nice but speaking a new language is difficult after only a little over a week of training. Luckily for now and unfortunately for the future, my sister does not speak that language so we only ever use French, which has simplified things so far. Below are a couple of photos of the family. The best photo is the one where my sister took her wig off and put it on her 1.5yo son Baba’s head (that’s right his name is Baba Ba).

So the first “almost week” is over, it feels like it’s been a month but it hasn’t even been 6 days… We’ve had a lot of training classes, cultural lessons and demonstrations, and the most intense language crash courses you could imagine. Some of those training classes included hands-on instruction on creating our garden and tree nursery (that all volunteers are required to make and maintain). But by far the best demo was fetching water from a well (which for men in this culture, it’s recommended we just hire a little Senegalese girl to do it for us, it’s become my running joke), and the BEST, pooping…that’s right pooping and going to the “squatter” because as easy as you think it’d be, pooping in this country is drastically different and a skill to be mastered. Toilet paper is frowned upon here and more importantly it’s just damn expensive, I’ve brought 4 rolls with me to wean myself off, let’s see if I can do it before they run out. The alternative here to TP involves your left hand and a cup of water, the cup is not nice, and for one of my first purchases I’m considering one of these nice marble colored plastic tea kettles that we’ve taken to calling poo kettles….email me for more details I’ll spare the 3 other actual readers of this blog. Despite learning “Survival Wolof” (wolof is the main local language, French being the official language but we’ll need to be fluent in a local language for our future village), I just found out yesterday that I will be learning Pullo Futa. It’s a flavor of Pulaar (the next biggest language after Wolof) and this particular one is spoken in the south of the country aka the foresty, hilly, lusher part of the country and AKA the sticks, that’s right I’m learning the Hillbilly language of Senegal, and it comes complete with all the ridicule. I think it’s pretty awesome, all the other regions totally hate on each other and my language and region is apparently Senegalese redneck…so this will be fun. On Monday, I along with 7 others from our overall 42 will move to a nearby town. There’s 4 of us under one Language and Culture Facilitator (LCF as we call them), mine is Jeemba, she’s pretty much awesome and learning the language is rapid fire and fun. We’ll be moving into our homestays where we will be for 9 weeks. I’m very excited to meet my family, I bought them tea and sugar at the market today as a hello gift, the Senegalese are all about giving and sharing no matter how small it might be. More on the homestay next time. The first day here here while we were completely exhausted from the redeye flight that had only ended eight hours earlier and after the seemingly endless meetings and info sessions, we of course had a dance party. Let’s not forget this is AFRICA! These people love to drum and love to dance even more, and they’re wicked good at it too. At first I felt a little strange joining in the dancing. I usually dance with a group of long-time friends at clubs/bars after a few ginger ales…so with a huge group of new people, and approaching dehydration, it was a bit awkward at first. After awhile I realized the only way to do this, and by this I mean the dancing and the next two years of bizarre and new experiences, is to just go in head first and not care. An hour and a half into crazy dancing, they opened the gates and a huge crowd of local children rushed in. Watching a bunch of 5-12 year-olds out dance us was a great experience. I may have accidentally side-grinded a small Senegalese girl but the overall experience was great and in the end I was happy I really got into it. So that’s why for the next years no matter what I come across I’m gonna have to put my pride aside and ‘just dance’, certainly wouldn’t want to miss out.Photos from the first week:Dancingthe training center in Thiesworking hard learning to make a tree nursery (note: i actually did do work in addition just posing with the pick...)

so this morning around 5:30 local time, I took my first steps in Africa! Senegal is cool thus far, there's still a lot to do and get out to see, still just on the Peace Corps training compound, more info and fun news and updates to come soon, just wanted to say hi for now! here's a few photos of the bus ride from Dakar to Thies (pronounced Cha-es as one syllable) there were over 20 of us in each van (42 in total), the group at the PC training compoundand the building where my dorm is for the next few days

Since I haven’t posted or updated in awhile I’m going to do a slight recap of the last month and a summary of where I am right now in regard to being ready to leave (which, I’m so not sure that I am, could use an extra week to pack…)

I finally took the MCAT on January 30th, which was a huge relief because I was able to stop studying and start focusing on getting ready to leave. In truth I haven’t been doing too much to prepare. I’ve been picking up random items and articles of clothes over the last few months that I think will be useful in Senegal. February has most been spent continuing work and visiting/saying goodbye to friends. I made it out to scenic (mostly flat and covered in snow) Ohio last weekend to say goodbye to one of my best friends from undergrad, Puja, it turned out to be a great trip.

With tomorrow being my last day of work, I’ll have basically just next week off to pack and finalize everything. Ignoring the incessant snow storms (might as well get my fill of snow now before Africa) I’m traveling up to CT this weekend to see a friend from high school. After that I’ll have a few short days off to actually pack. I still need to decide on my second piece of luggage and there’s lot of items I’m sure I won’t realize I’m missing until I finally put the bags together. Next week is going to be crazy.

Our staging is in Washington DC March 8-9th, and it’s very close to GW (my undergrad campus). Luckily the PC agreed to buy me a train ticket for the Friday before so I can spend some time saying goodbye to all my friends on campus before I actually leave the country. So here’s to the final stretch of getting everything done and in order (crap, need to file my taxes asap) and saying goodbye to all the friends and family…I doubt I’m going to get much sleep. I’ll most likely check-in again while in DC just before the flight out on Tuesday the 9th!

been ignoring the blog and most other peace corps matters for awhile now...but for a good reason, focusing on studying for the MCAT which is Jan. 30th, then after that I'll be full-time packing and getting ready.

since I got back from Costa Rica (where I spent the first week of 2010, visiting my sister who is studying abroad there for the year, excellent trip) I sent my passport in the day after I got back with the PC passport and visa apps. And in addition to studying I'm currently ironing out some of the student loan deferrals...so that coupled with studying is not exciting at all, can't wait to have it over and get to packing and preparing to leave. Most recent email from the PC said orientation is March 8th in Arlington, VA.

So one of the things that the Peace Corps wants within the first 10 days of having received and accepted your invitation is for you to write an Aspiration Statement. It is supposed to detail some of your goals and ambitions for the Peace Corps. Luckily they outline what they want like a blueprint; 5 sections A-E with detailed explanations of what to write about (before I noticed those details, it seemed a little vague and daunting..thank god, their guide made it super easy, I don't like to write...)

So below is what I wrote and sent in with an updated resume (all of this is sent to the specific country desk at the PC and will be used to get the Senegal PC staff familiar with who is heading over in March, since apparently they haven't seen any of our applications) It's long, and repetitive by nature of the topics, but I think it works, enjoy if you're super bored or can read quicker than I.

A: Working as an Emergency Medical Technician over the past year and a half has given me the opportunity to develop skills for interacting with people in rushed and stressful situations. From responding to emergency calls for medical assistance, I have gained and begun to fine-tune the ability to initiate communication with new people, assess situations, and make rapid decisions. Another skill that volunteering as an EMT has helped me develop is the ability to calm patients down and explain their condition in simple medicinal terms, consequentially gaining their trust. This ability has successfully helped me question my patients for information required to administer proper care and ultimately transfer them safely to a hospital.

I feel that these skills and abilities give me a good basis to work with other people. I believe that my ability to interact quickly and effectively with people has given me the right tools to work with others over time. I have been trained to listen and observe intently while still performing other duties and making decisions. These skills, along with my easy demeanor will be essential when working with counterparts, Peace Corps staff, and groups in my community in Senegal.

While working with the Peace Corps, I hope to further develop my communication and decision making skills. I am excited to get the opportunity to act not only as an educator, but also as a member of the community who can work and invoke action in others. During my service, I want to further develop my people-skills by making lasting impressions and relationships within my community; I know that these will be integral to making effective progress as a Preventive Health Educator. In addition to my aspirations for my specific Peace Corps job, I also have other goals. I look forward to traveling and experiencing as much of the Senegalese and greater African cultures as possible. This will be a great opportunity to expose myself to many new and different experiences that few from developed countries will get to have. I am determined to make the most of this experience.

B: In order to accomplish my goals and expectations during my Peace Corps service, it will be necessary to create and develop strong relationships with many partners in the Senegal PROSPERE program and throughout my future community. Interacting and forming good friendships will be an important foundation to the partnerships that I will be involved on a daily basis during my service. I am eager to get out into my community and learn as much as I can about the citizens, their lifestyle and needs. Being friendly and well acquainted with the community will help assure trust, harboring a good environment for teaching and training.

I know that this new setting will be extremely different from any situation that I have ever been in; therefore I am enthusiastic to utilize the expertise of my Senegal counterparts in order to find my way in carrying out my duties. Though my job title now states that I will be a “preventive public health educator,” I do not expect to be the only one acting as the ‘teacher.’ I realize that early on, a great determining factor of my success will be assuming the role of a student and learning as much as I can from my partners. I understand and expect that these relationships will work in both directions, with each of us learning and taking from one another in order to create the greatest benefit for the community. Good communication, problem solving, and abstract thinking skills will be some of the most important tools in effectively working with my future partners in Senegal.

C: Adjusting to the new culture and living in Senegal will be more challenging than anything I have ever encountered. I hope to be open to trying as many different experiences, foods, and customs as possible. Being shy and reluctant to trying these new aspects of life would be the biggest mistake possible. My one regret from studying abroad in Paris was spending much of my time with other American students. Looking back, I know that I could have accomplished and experienced much more if I had just reached out and spent more time within the local community.

While experiencing the new culture in Senegal, I am certain there will be times when I will become homesick and miss the comforts and ways of life in the United States. I think that a good way to get through such periods would be to share my past and my United States background with my host family, partners and new friends in the Senegalese community. Telling stories of what I did growing up and attending school in the United States will help comfort me while sharing American customs and ways of life with my community.

Additionally, I know that there will be an excellent network of Peace Corps staff and volunteers (including some that have been there longer), who I can ask for advice or even just for camaraderie. Developing good friendships with other volunteers in my class will be helpful since we will all be experiencing the same cultural integration from similar backgrounds. On a similar note, I will keep an updated web blog about my activities while in the Peace Corps. That will help to keep me connected with friends and family; helping to ease me into my new everyday life in Senegal.

D: While volunteering in Senegal, I hope to learn many skills and experience many positive life-changing events. Though I have little experience teaching to groups, my service over the next two years will enable me to become a strong leader and educator no matter how difficult or unique the situation is. I hope that my pre-service training will afford me with many new techniques and methods for working with community outreach and public health awareness.

In addition to the pre-service training for preventive public health education, I expect that the difference in cultures will help me develop my sense of patience. To my understanding, life in the United States is far more fast-paced and materialistic than it is in Senegal. I am looking forward to gaining an appreciation for a different lifestyle and learning how to work with a community that operates differently than the one I am apart of in the U.S. This integration will begin during pre-service training and living there with a homestay. I expect that these initial experiences will prepare me for the following two-years working in my future community.

More so, I understand one of the biggest components of the pre-service training is learning the languages of the region. It has been over a year since my last French course and I am extremely excited to study it again. I feel that I have a very solid French foundation and I am eager to see my progress during the first three months. In addition to French training, I also expect to learn a native Senegalese language. One major aspect I took from learning French was the concept of how languages are constructed and how piecing together a new one works (this was never apparent to me when English was the only language I knew). I am thrilled to learn whichever new language this one will be and I fully anticipate and hope for a rigorous language schedule during the pre-service training.

E: Currently, my main goal for after my Peace Corps service is to attend medical school and become a doctor. I am still unsure of the field of medicine I want pursue, but I do know that I want to help others; I feel that health and medicine is the best and most interesting way to do so. I know I can gain a lot from my Peace Corps experience and it will benefit me for the rest of my life. Since the career that I want to pursue is about working with and helping other people, I cannot imagine a better preparation than the Peace Corps. I think that my time in Senegal will expose me to many unexpected challenges and tasks that will help shape me into a stronger willed person; preparing me for the unknowns that I will encounter in the field of medicine. The experiences that I will likely have and the techniques I will learn from my service will be indispensable for my future career as a doctor.

I hope that my experience in the Peace Corps will open many opportunities not available to others, such as preparing me for possibly working with groups like Medecins Sans Frontiers. I believe that the Peace Corps will inspire me to continue a life of service abroad in countries where people need help the most. I expect to make the most of my Peace Corps experience because it will only inspire me to work harder for myself and others in the future.

So here's the timeline of what my entire Peace Corps Application process was like. I suppose its pretty typical, not too long, not too short. It definitely taught me a bunch of patience...although I'll admit there were times where Peace Corps Wiki did not help the waiting process, no matter how many "theories" you can devise about the system of maybe when they might get to releasing a country that you might possibly go to, and when you might find out, forget it, it's actually impossible, don't try. So here it is.

• 1/27/09 – Peace Corps Interview

• 2/2/09 – Nominated for Secondary Education-Science Africa Region for Jan 2010

• 3/19/09 – All Medical/Dental forms Submitted

• 3/23/09 - Dental Clearance

• 5/29/09 - Medical Clearance

couple months of waiting

• 9/16/09 – request from PC for updated resume and skills addenda

• 9/28/09 – submitted final updated resume and skills addenda

• 11/17/09 – Phone call from Placement officer to discuss change of nomination

• 11/21/09 – Received Invitation Packet

And here's some pictures of the long awaited Invitation Packet (aka lots of lengthy forms...)

Hi there, not sure how many people are going to be reading this from the start...hopefully all my friends will when I finally leave the country in order to keep tabs on me. That said, this is my first blog! I figured that now that I am officially invited, accepted, and confirmed for the Peace Corps I might as well start one and begin chronicling the experience as I prepare for my departure.

Just to state it so everyone knows what/when/where I’m going/doing I’ll copy a bit of what I’ve found in my Invitation Kit.

My Assignment

Country: Senegal

Program: Preventive Health and Environmental Education

Job Title (yes the Peace Corps is a job!): Preventive Health Educator

Dates of Service: April 2010-April 2012

So I’ll try to the best of my understanding explain when I’m leaving and how the time frame works with Orientation and Pre-service training. I’ll be meeting in a US city for a 2 day orientation (should be Philadelphia) starting on March 10th 2010, then when that’s done we’ll fly to Senegal where my group (not sure how many people will be in it, as of today there are 5 other people who’ve joined our PC Senegal March 2010 facebook group) will have approx. 3 months of Pre-service Training (i.e. intensive language training in French, some local language, and some training for our assignment). After that if we do well we will be sworn in as official Peace Corps Volunteers (so that’s still pretty far away). Then, as I understand, we’ll get our village/town assignments based on our achievement level in the Pre-service training and we’ll disperse from there; SO…I don’t actually know exactly where I’ll be living for the remaining 24months yet, but it’ll be in Senegal!

That’s pretty much all I can say for an opening post. I’ll get back soon with some extra goodies on my Invitation packet which is chuck full of long forms to be filled out and sent back. Just finally happy the wait for my invitation is OVER!