They always say that the second year is when Peace Corps gets good – That the more frustrating and awkward your challenges are your first year of service, the more intense and joyful your experiences will be your second year.

Weellll . . . That sounds about right.

I’m not yet done with my second year, but I can say this: I shed a lot of tears my first several months in country. There were lots of good moments, but what was more pronounced, especially at the time, was the sense of constant highs and lows, with a lot of the lows being very low. (Again, I was happy a lot, and I’m not licking some wound here. I know that life was not that rough at all, but I’ll admit that all the standard aggravations and disappointments broke me down sometimes. Too many times.) Following the one-year mark, however, things started to feel less weighty, and I started to appreciate the small victories, the standard happenings, the nuanced beauty of just being here. Now, I kinda feel like I’m in a love affair with my village. I’m not saying I’ve started moving mountains or that I’ve turned lives around. I’ve just turned my own corner of sorts. For all those tears I shed, I’m being rewarded with real, robust laughter and a strange fullness in my chest as I enjoy the company of my people as much as I can. Ups and downs, what-have-yous, those are still there. But the lows aren’t so low and the highs are really high and the sun rises and sets and the moon moves tides and nothing is that important, so let’s all just laugh at ourselves and appreciate where we are.

I think that’s enough of a spiel, seeing as it was quickly spiraling down a rogue and non-sensical path.

In November, I was graced once again by a brave visitor from America. Kayla was here for over two weeks, and we had such a good time. We started out in Dakar, spent a night on Ngor Island off the coast of Dakar, and then enjoyed two gorgeous, carefree days at Lampoule Village, a little place in the desert dunes modeled after Mauritanian tent camps. We had Thanksgiving in Linguere with the (incredible and ever-generous) missionary family and about ten other Linguere PCVs.

Kayla then came home with me to Ngaraff and we spent about five truly magical days there. Kayla’s ability to integrate and build bonds with people totally blew me away – it was as if no language or culture barrier existed. Having acquired a Senegalese moniker - Binta Sarr - from some friends we made on Ngor Island, she was ready to go! She taught the kids songs and they adored her. “Benin woy! Benin woy!”- “Another song! Another song!” - they screamed as they clamored to get close to her on the outside bed. (They still come up to me and belt their severely distorted versions of “Itsy-Bitsy Spider” and “Squirrelly, Squirrelly, Squirrelly.”) She got dance lessons from some of my rambunctious young female friends (and her natural rhythm means she’s a natural, and already a way better dancer than I am!). She wowed them with her Wolof from Day 1, and my counterpart said to me, all giddy, “She’s got a good brain, like you – you can tell because you both learned Wolof so fast!” She rocked Senegalese clothing at two special occasions, and looked beautiful. Binta Sarr was a hit, and I wish she was my village sidekick impermanently!

Kayla, enjoying the dunes at sunset

Camel rides at Lampoule

Market shopping for Thanksgiving. This is my favorite

market lady ever - I call her my mama and she calls me

her child. I love how small I look next to her in this picture.

With my counterpart Marieme and her granddaughter Kinay

Dressed up for the women's group meeting.

Outplanting trees at the school.

Kayla gets a dance lesson - she's got it!

Dressed up again, and so are the babies!

Kayla snapped this shot of the some of the

crazy little boys at the entrace to my village. Classic!After Ngaraff, we headed to the coast. We stayed at this magical little hobbit village, Toubab Dialaw, a beach community about 50 kilometers south of Dakar. (hmmm, have I really said “magical" twice in describing this trip? I’m not taking it back, it's all true.) We did all sorts of fun things there – lazed in hammocks, petted the cats, drank coffee, created papaya/banana/lime salads, splashed around, bantered with questionable Rasta-men, ate chocolate crepes, and immensely enjoyed each other’s company and conversation. When I put Kayla on a plane at the end of her trip, I felt blissful for the time I’d spent with a truly good friend, impressed and humbled by the goodness, honesty, and wisdom she, as always, had exhibited, and remiss at having to say goodbye. In an uncertain world, I feel truly lucky to have a friend like Kayla.

View from our favorite terasse,

where we drank coffee in the morning and beer in the afternoon.

Lounging with our kitties.

Dancing with our new favorite dancing mama.

The magical hobbit land.

Dancing with the kids on the Toubab Dialaw beach.

Playing on the beautiful sandstone with our new friend, Cheekay,

who's traveling through West Africa for 6 months with his girlfriend.

After Kayla left, I had to rush back to Linguere to dive into work (yes, we do work here, sometimes.) The region-wide HIV/AIDS education project that Kim, Ann Marie, and I have been working got its official kick off with a four-day training of the educators that had been chosen, two from each of the 12 participating villages. Putting the training together was a huge amount of work and stress, but it went well! The villages vary greatly from each other, in size and other indicators, and the 24 educators represented very disparate levels of knowledge about HIV/AIDS and a broad spectrum of experience in teaching and speaking in front of people. Several of them were quite shy and inexperienced, so much of the training was devoted to teaching how to teach and to loosening up the educators by forcing them to practice leading discussions and presenting on the topic of HIV/AIDS.

It was actually a lot of fun, and at the end of the fourth day, I felt a real current of motivation amongst these people. They seemed pumped up to go into their communities and share what they had learned. The project is now in that phase – the educators have started holding the discussions in their villages. It’s rolling along (with the usual hiccups) and is scheduled to finish up around the middle of March.

Condom demonstrations

Making people come out of their shells.

Condom practice.

Of course, a dance off with one my the trainees.

Trainees from my zone.All that aside, tomorrow will bring the real piece de résistance of my entire Peace Corps Service: the Naftalin-Levitt clan will invade Senegal. The only thing more remarkable than the thought that I will be able to hug my mother, father, stepmom, and big brother tomorrow is the fact that I haven’t been able to do so for over 21 months. Bring it on! Ten days in paradise with my people. (unfortunately, that probably means I’m speaking to an empty room, here, since the people visiting me in Senegal represent my best blog readers J )P.S. Is there a disease for someone who can't stop taking of pictures of babies? I think I have it, because, seriously, it's uncontrollable. And I love it!!A random smathering of photos -- mostly of babies, duh:

My counterparts gorgeous grandkids

(whom I might have to bring home to the U.S. with me...

we'll see how mom and dad feel about that...)

Ibra Sisee has a good protective grip on his little brother, also named Ibra.

Kinay and Fatou.

Kinay! I love this kid! Seriously, can I keep her?

Team Linguere storms the PC Halloween gathering as N'Ice Cream Girls!!

Getting my hair braided for Tabaski.

Typical lunch: Red Chebujenn (rice + fish) with veggie.

Gather 'round, let's eat!

These sheep gave their lives on Tabaski...

Little sisters in their Tabski outfits.

I'm so in! I got invited to wear the Tabaski hostess outfit with

my dad's four wives and two sisters. Can you even

find me in this picture?? I know, I blend in, don't I?

Awa Thiam and the twins on Tabaski.

 The whole Lingeure crew, recently updated. There are 14 of us now!!

 While taking care of my baby sister Ndeye Fatou,

I plopped her on my bed for a bit, and this is what she did!

I'm so proud.

In a world of ugly, broken down, decrepit public

transportation, this car that Abby and I rode in

on the way back from Dakar takes the cake.

I have to admit: I was starting to feel sheepish about having divulged my med school ambitions to too many people; I started wanting to back out as I came to terms with the mountain of prerequisites that I would have to face after leaving Peace Corps this spring. Then… something happened – I got a call asking me to translate for American doctors coming to Senegal to repair cleft lips and pallets. I was feeling pushed and pulled in all different directions, wanting to be in my village for a stretch, knowing my friend Kayla would soon be coming to visit from America… but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity. And for Pete’s sake, I can’t believe I almost said no. It was entirely life-changing.

We’ve all see those commercials about the “Smile Trains” – the Western doctors that come into developing countries to operate on hair-lipped kids. Being a part of it, however, really drove home the importance and wonder of what occurs.

From start to finish, I was blown away by what was transpiring before my eyes and by what I got to be a part of. The team from the Global Smile Foundation worked with a group of local doctors at a hospital in Thies, operating on 30 people from the ages of 5 months to 25 years, all with unilateral or bilateral cleft lips or pallets. The job of the PCVs in attendance – myself and four others—was to do English/Wolof/French translation and whatever other odd jobs the American doctors were in need of. Right after I arrived the first morning, my first task was to help one of the head surgeons talk to a seven-year-old patient, Awa, and her TWIN SISTER, Ada. Dr. Farid said, “Tell her that after the operation, she’s going to look just like her sister.” What a beautiful , thrilling, once-in-a-lifetime experience that was, to be able to tell a little girl that these doctors would change her and make her look like her twin. They both smiled, shyly.

Things only got more incredible from there. They let me into the Operating Room almost immediately. The American doctors were all really good people, each one kinder, more patient, and more eager to teach than last. The first operation I watched was on that 7-year-old girl with a complete cleft lip. Once the anesthesiologists had put her under, Dr. Kyle and Dr. Ousama made markings on the girl’s upper lip and discussed where to cut before they injected anesthetic “pain blocks” into her face, which caused her lip to swell dramatically. (Babies and children were all put to sleep, but anyone 12-years-old and up was counted as an “adult” and therefore put under local instead of general anesthesia.)

Fifteen minutes later, once the pain block injections had fully kicked in, they went to work. Incisions were made, skin was snipped, and they moved along deftly and expertly. And then, not too long after that, the first stitch was made, pulling the two parts of the upper lip together. All of a sudden, this startling, miraculous thing occurred: the girl’s face was whole, and it was changed. The doctors were done before I knew it, and that was that: one hour had passed since they had injected her anesthesia, and now she was waking up, looking around the room, sitting up on the OR table, and getting ready to move to the recovery room. And, essentially, she had a new face. I was speechless. Literally! I NEVER hurt for words. But I was bereft of words that could come close to articulating the awe that was swirling through my mind.

The work that occurred in those 60 minutes, throughout the day, and for the duration of the four days of the surgical mission continued to blow the mind. I got to talk to adult patients, comfort them during surgery, hold babies, assuage the fears of parents, hear stories about why they thought their children had been born with this deformity, clean surgical implements, assist surgeons in all sorts of ways, and generally observe and participate in some seriously fascinating and touching operations. The lives of some of these people, who had come from village and towns all around Senegal to have the operation, composed sad vignettes, and talking to them was eye-opening. There was one young women who said that she had had to pay someone to marry her; another girl simply said that she would never have been able to get married if the was not to have the surgery. I got to spend a lot of time with a little 10-year-old boy named Abdou, whose entire persona screamed of his intelligence, kindness, pure integrity, and fervor for life. Unfortunately, he also had a severe cleft lip, and while he had tried to go to school twice when he was younger, he was kicked out by his teacher both times because he was not able to speak clearly. (Cleft lip surgery addresses issues that are far beyond aesthetic – most kids that don’t have the issue fixed as an infant develop major speech defects.) Over and over again, myself and the other volunteers found ourselves incredulous at both the stories that these peole were telling us and the candor with which they told them.

If I was looking for affirmation for my post-Peace Corps goals, I certainly found it, in spades.

Dr. Sarah Jane doing last minute checks on a patient.

Little baby on the OR table!

Bringing in the next patient.

Justin and I in the OR.

A Haitian patient pre-surgery.

Abby with a patient and her family - mother, big sister, baby sister, and grandma - after surgery.

Reason #1: Habitat for Humanity, Big Brothers & Sisters Program, Audobon Society... what do all these things have in common?

I feel like in the states we are instilled with a drive for volunteerism, a compulsion to contribute to our communities, or, if nothing else, a latent guilt that fabricates these emotions in us. Here in Senegal, that all seems to be essentially absent. As Kim, Ann Marie and I have been getting our region-wide HIV/AIDS Awareness project off the ground, I've learned a ton about how to work with Senegalese people. On one of the first days of outreach we had planned to visit four of our focus villages and explain our project to them, with the help of a member of our project "team" (Which consists of a Linguere hospital administrator, a worker for the Senegal-based American NGO EmbraceAIDS, and various other experts) and a rented vehicle to take us in the bush.

From start to finish, it was a struggle. Our Senegalese work partner, Jerry, gave me the cold shoulder when I asked him to motorcycle himself to Linguere to meet the others and showed coy stubbornness in actually carrying out the discourses we had planned for him. All this was because, as we found out later, he felt offended that we hadn't advanced him a per diem and transportation reimbursement. Our chauffeur stonewalled us on the price of the car rental for the day and made a pretty penny off our desperation for a car to get us into the bush. In neither case - and this turns out to be the rule, not the exception - did these men feel swayed by a desire to contribute to our noble project and cut us a break. The frustrating thing is that the project is meant only to benefit their community, of course. Ann Marie and Kim and I talk about how we'll be out of here within the next several months . . . so why are we the ones pouring ourselves into this education, stressing about details, begging people to contribute their time, and donating our money from our own meager stipends, while they turn up their noses until they're paid, and paid well?

I mean, the answer to this is a "duh" -- we've signed on as Peace Corps VOLUNTEERS for the very reason that we get a kick out of pouring ourselves gallantly into communal ventures. Still, it's frustrating to face the reality that, across our undertakings, we can't necessarily count on our Senegalese brethren to join us in our altruistic frame of mind and give their time to our projects without expecting very specific forms of compensation. So be it.

I should also probably qualify my initial statement about people being unwilling to contribute to their communities, because, at the village level, it's a different story. While you can't get masonry, woodwork, etc. carried out for free, the people of the village can come together at the drop of a hat to put together a party, cook a meal for hundreds of people, plant a garden, etc. Further, the whole "it takes a village..." concept is definitely apt, for every child in the village (and me, as well :-) is the responsibility of any and every older individual. You can eat a meal anywhere you find yourself, at any moment. People care about each other and take care of each other, and it's beautiful.

Reason #2: No Fly Zone

Am I wrong, or have flies basically been eradicated from America? I remember having to hide from them on certain Boundary Waters canoe trips, but I feel like aside from a few wilderness areas, flies aren't a huge issue in the states. Nor are mosquitoes, save a few bad minutes right at dusk in the midwest.

Not so here in Senegal. The flies are bad. Wanna take a nap in the middle of the day without feeling the perpetual tickle of itsy-bbitsy legs landing on you? Good luck. I dream of the day I can take a daytime nap again.

How did we do that? How did we get rid of the bugs? Is it just that we don't have trash and manure and dead animals and gross standing water near residential areas? Whatever it is, cheers America! I appreciate you.

Reason #3: Salad Bars

So, I just celebrated my second Tabaski here. It's a fun holiday, but it celebrates Ibrahim's (Abraham's) sacrifice of a sheep, so people here slaughter numerous sheep in observance. I was prepared this time around for the onslaught of meat; My gastrointestinal health has been shaky of late in general, so I didn't want to overdo it. I took it slowly and was even pleasantly surprised by how relatively delicious it tasted throughout the festivities.

The other shoe dropped two days after Tabaski. My dad's first wife, Penda, gave me breakfast -- I don't usually get breakfast from my family, even though they normally eat benign things like bread or couscous. They must have thought this particular offering was a really super special treat, because Penda tried not once but twice to force it on me. I took it the second time despite the putrid catfood-like smell coming from the bowl. As I carried it into my room, I looked down and was dismayed by the sight before me: an assortment of questionable hunks of meat and a couple potatoes floating in some manner of oil gravy substance.

I tried to capture the creation, but the pictures just don't really do it justice. Anyway, can't include a picture here because my computer's broken and I have no way of loading the photo onto this one, so you’ll just have to take my word for all this and depend on my description.

So. My mother may disown me and I may turn off all males from the possibility of any future romantic contact with me, but I have to confess: I ate some of it. I ate the two potatoes and tried to find some viable morsels of meat. And in case you're wondering, no. It did not sit well with the GI tract.

So there ya go. On top of that, as the meat assault continued throughout the week, I found myself eating all sorts of weird animal parts. As I dug meat out of the eye socket of the sheep skull plopped in the middle of the rice bowl, I once again thought longingly about my days of vegetarianism. Upon my return to the states, I plan to patronize salad bars, not sheep skulls. Until then... when in Rome...

Reason #4: Your pizza in 30 minutes, or it's freeeeee!

So remember that old Pizza Hut (Domino’s?) decree, “Your pizza in half an hour, or it’s free?” It’s something us time-crunched, hot-pizza lovin’ Americans have come to take for granted.

Think again!

In Senegal, people are generally a bit less pressed for time. I’ve pretty much accepted and adopted that rhythm, as well, but . . . when it comes to pizza . . . it’s harder to be at peace with that lackadaisical, “god-willing” business.

My buddies and I recently returned from a vacation down to the South of the country. On the trip back up to Dakar, we piled into a car at 5 A.M. and did the trip straight, landing us in the urban jungle around 3 pm. And what was the very first thing on our collective minds?

We're hungry and it's Tuesday in Dakar, which means only one thing: Pizza Inn Two-for-Tuesdays! Obviously.

We made legs straight for Pizza Inn; tragedy struck. The power was out! Apparently you can't bake pizza with no electricity. Fine, we thought. We’ll wait. We sat right in front the registers, determined to be the first in line for copious amounts of delicious buy one, get one free pizzas. And we sat. And sat. We were four gung-ho, determined Americans increasingly becoming the butt of entertainment for the Senegalese crowd populating the pizza parlor/gas station/snack shop.

Finally, around 6 pm, we let go of our dreams of the twofer pizza deal, picked up our bags (still our big vacation sacks, having come directly from the taxi station), and limped out of Pizza Inn toward the Peace Corps building.

Two hours later, we were still hungry and still meal-less. We mourned the loss of the pizza dream. Alas, we decided to revive it!

We called Pizza Inn with two questions:

1. Had electricity returned ? (Peace Corps has a generator, so we were living in a power outage-free universe)

2. Could they deliver to the PC building in NGor?

On both accounts, Fatou, the sweet young woman on the other end of line, gave me a resounding “Oui!”

Our numbers, by then, had increased, so for the nine PC Vols, we ordered eight large pizzas, duh! For the price of four! Then I did my best do give Fatou good directions to our place and got off the phone. We were back in the game, baby!

And we waited, patiently. Like I said, we were familiar with Senegal’s lack of urgency, poor customer service, and general dyscfunctionality, so we didn’t worry as an hour ticked by, and then another. (As I waited, I took advantage of the PC office phone to call home to America; my mother, when I told her the circumstances, was far more concerned that any of us were.)

Around the 2.5 hour mark, hungry and tired, we started to feel some unease. I called Fatou back and made sure the directions were clear. She assured us our pizzas were on the way, via delivery man and his scooter.

Next time we called, however, we were appraised of the fact that a SNAFU had taken hold. Delivery man’s scooter had broken down and he was awaiting back-ups, i.e. a second delivery man with HIS scooter. We agreed to keep waiting, but I did make a brief fuss about the possibility of cold pizzas before hanging up the phone.

In the next half-hour, myself and various other Wolof-speaking PCVs were on and off the phone with Fatou and each of her delivery mignons, trying to explain and re-explain directions to the PC house under increasingly disgruntled attitudes from all parties. Finally, the doorbell rang and Justin and I went outside; we were super hungry, at this point, and not optimistic about the state the we would find our pizzas to be in.

Sure enough, as back-up delivery boy tried to hand us the boxes, we felt the heart-breaking sensation of luke-warm / room temperature cardboard. Fail.

So we did what any ravenous, self-respecting, Wolof-speaking PCV would do: we refused to pay and tried to make off with the sub-satisfactory pizzas. That’s when it hit the fan, so to speak. Delivery boy was angry. He growled. Justin and I growled back. The guard in front of the PC building got involved. Justin rushed inside for reinforcements among our starving peers, shouting over his shoulder that “the guard would protect me” – we were both afraid of the pizza battle coming to blows.

Justin & Co. returned, and we stood our ground; we wouldn’t pay full price for cold pizza that had arrived 3+ hours late. But like I said, this wasn’t America. Eventually, Delivery Boy zipped all eight pizzas back into the case on the back of his scooter and made off. But not before I – yes, I, Emily, the peace-loving, use-your-words girl of yore – had a chance to give him a light slug on his shoulder. I couldn’t help it! It wasn’t even the pizza that got to me in the end. It was his surly hostility, his snarky smugness.

We went back inside, pizza-less and jejected. The vols who had missed the confrontation stared at us in shock – “You sent our pizza back?” “On principle!” roared Ann Marie. But in the end, we caved. We were hungry, and we'd had our minds set on pizza for awhile – for some of us, we’d first had the mouth-watering hankering over eight hours ago.

So I called Fatou back. I said, “Send him back. We’ll pay the money." Delivery boy returned, still snarky, still surly. We paid. He handed us our pizzas, now colder than ever, snatched is 17,000 CFA from my hand, and zoomed away. We ate the pizza. It was delicious.

. . . . . .

Ohhhh-Kay. Enough bad energy. To be honest, I love Senegal. It’s started to occur to me that I’m actually leaving this place at some point, and that that point isn’t too far in the future! Mostly, I kid about the aforementioned downsides of this country, especially in comparing it to my motherland. OF COURSE America has better food, cleaner streets, air-conditioning, more attention to customer service, a higher tendency toward community service. There are cultural differences, wealth discrepancies, varying standards, etc. etc. etc. But that’s not why we go places or why we do things. No one joins that Peace Corps to live like they did in America. The hilarious, idiosyncratic things that happen to me on a daily basis – the cows I accidentally heard on my morning run, the toddler that tumbles face first into the sand as she’s making a frantic attempt to escape my white face, and on and on – are worth their weight in gold. I’ve said before and I’ll say it again: I just must remember to laugh . . . I must ALWAYS remember to LAUGH!!

Furthermore, the foundation of one’s quality of life rises from the goodness of the people in our most immediate surroundings. I truly love the people of my village, as well as many of my fellow volunteers. The harassment that springs at me on the streets of most big cities, as well as the laziness and the lack of volunteer mentality (See above) that seems to emanate from much of the Senegalese population . . . all that nearly entirely dissipates within the confines of my lovely, perfect little village. In truth, my primary problem is only: How will I ever say goodbye?

I have no good excuse for my long blog-a-battical. I feel like I’ve been running around for months now and never have enough time in internet-able locales to justify prioritizing a blog post over emails and grant proposals. Why do I feel so busy? I pose that question only semi-rhetorically Am I really busy, or do I just make myself feel that way because I’m an American raised with the American values of go-go-go(!) and pushing yourself into time crunches whenever possible? Hmmmm.

Either way, I’m here and everything is fine. Life in West Africa continues to chugitty-chug along. Rainy season came dangerously late and has been fairly disappointing in its sparseness and sporadicness. I’m disappointed less for my sake than for that of the farmers in my community. The first big and consistent rains came a full two months later than they did last year, and as we waited and waited for them to come so we could start planting in the fields, I really started to get a sense of that pressure and fear that comes with truly relying on seasons and Mother Nature for one’s livelihood.

July, after the bike trip and Kedougou extravaganza, was the time for buttoning up the school year. I had one last delightful girls group meeting, and then attended the end-of-the-year fete on a sweltering hot day. It was a fun event nonetheless, complete with dance routines and “theatre” skits by the teenagers and, of course, the awarding of prizes to the top of the class students.

Last girls group gathering -- we did gender roles skits and talked about premature marriage.

(Even though the oldest of them are only 14, a few of them might be facing

marriage proposals during the next school year. No joke.)

Rapping dancers at the school's Fete Finale

My little bro Omar Jeng, age 8, receives his honors prize.

All dressed up and serious for the school party.

Another gender development activity -- here the teenage girls

are crowded around my tiny computer screen to watch

HIV/AIDS-related short programs in Wolof.

My newest little sister: Dad's first wife gave birth to

Nday Fatou in June. She's a cryer but pretty darn cute,

and it's so fun to have a baby in the household!

August? Ramadan. Thirst proved to be just as debilitating as it was last year, but this time around I went a little easier on myself. I still fasted – no food, no drink – while in village, but I took a few breaks. I took a St. Louis vacay, spending some good time with a friend (another PCV who is lucky enough to call that posh city his site!) and enjoying the cooler coastal temps, good food (during daylight hours, at that!), and even a dip in a hotel pool. Deeelux!

Also during this time, the Linguere region vols banged out a helluva malaria-awareness project. We spent a week going around to each of our 13 villages, doing theatrical presentations and programs in which we explained all thing malaria-related – mostly how it’s transmitted and how it’s NOT transmitted, i.e. myth-busting notions such as this: malaria is NOT caused by under-ripe mangos, mystical spirits, or exposure to the sun. It was a ton of fun to have the whole gang of us storm into villages, round up our people , and educate/perform in a way that made both volunteers and villagers smile.

Day 1 of our Malaria Tour. One of my jobs was to dance in one of the skits.

Noooo problemo. :-)

The PC/Linguere gang teaches how to make natural (and effective!) mosquito

repellent from local ingredients.

Fabulous Team Linguere.

The first big rains of the season! In Linguere, we knew the only way to celebrate

was with a slip 'n' slide contest. (which I dominated, of course.)

The other big news? I had another visitor, another real live American who braved the wilds of Senegal. Ben Lee made it to this side of the planet for a 12-day-long whirlwind tour. He’s a warrior, as they love to say here in Senegal, and after a brief couple of days in Dakar, he spent a full FIVE DAYS in my village. At the end of it, he could do nothing but express how he could have spent longer there. Despite his total lack of Wolof, the people of Ngaraff really loved him, especially the adolescent and teenage boys like my host brothers. It made me realize how much more naturally they relate to people of their own sex, despite national, cultural, or linguistic affiliations. Now they can’t stop telling me how much they hope that the next Ngaraff volunteer is a man!

Ben and I also traveled to The Gambia, my first time in that mystical country. I say mystical because it seemed to be such a strange place, so akin to Senegal but simultaneously so different! Nicer roads, less impoverished people, but still seemingly less developed. And I had never realized before this experience how many French words have been incorporated into the Wolof language. In The Gambia, Wolof is the primary native language as it is here, but as a former British colony, it’s population speaks far more English than French, so I had to learn to toss English into the Wolof where I would normally toss in French.

Giant caged-in trampolines in Dakar!

Ben's shot of some kids in a nearby town.Lunch for two in my room.

Ben happened to be in town for a baptism party and got to witness the

huge-scale cooking that the women are able to undertake at a moment's notice.

Ben was also in town for soccer season! Here I am at a match with

my very favorite baby. Kinay. She's too wonderful!

Spirited Ngaraff fans at a soccer match.At the peanut fields with my brothers.

Ben ran an impromptu bike clinic when we got flats in FOUR OUT OF FOUR of our tires.

Ben's parting gift for my family: a sizable chicken.

Slaughterhouse Three.

Okay. Get this: Ben brought real, true IPA beer all the way

from America. I cried tears of happiness and then

we drank them on the roof of the Linguere regional house.

Boat trip on the Gambia River.

The Gambia River. All those little dangling things are small spherical birds nests!

In addition to all the birds, we had some baboon sitings and ran into a couple of hippos.

After sending Ben off at the end of September, it was back to work, pronto! I headed directly from the airport to the bus stop, where I caught a hot and sticky sept-place car back to the Djolof. I had to get back for a two-day Girls' Camp that the Linguere-region volunteers had put together for the participants of a scholarship program for middle school girls. It was loads and loads of fun! We played games, talked about HIV/AIDS, and engaged in real and open discussions about the obstacles faced by young women in this country. We were able to score one of the most magnificent Peace Corps workers for the project -- Awa Traore is a strong and confident woman with an uncanny ability not only to address any type of difficult/touchy subjects with any body of people, but to do so in a captivating and convincing manner. After the camp, she agreed to make her way around the region and visit our sites. She did an absolutely studendous discussion in my village – we gathered both adult women and many of their husbands, and we had a candid and trenchant discussion about wives as equal partners, relative influences in household finances, supporting children in their education, family planning, and a host of other subjects that are generally considered hush-hush with the people of my village and that I generally have a very difficult time discussing effectively and meaningfully.

The girls are ready to be heard!

Awa's getting the discussion going...

At Awa's seminar in my village, the attendance of the men

made all the difference fore the effectiveness of the discussion.

Goodbye to one more Linguere vol!

Two years well-spent, Mary Allin (she's in the

center).

And as we say goodbye to Mary... we welcome

the newest member of our Linguere family!

Teeeeeeny and unnamed. Any suggestions?

(also check out my sweet pants in this photo :-)

more photos on the right-hand side. -->

It’s a wild scene here at the PC-Senegal Linguere regional headquarters! We’re nutty with excitement over a new project we have in the works.

First, a brief history: not long before I arrived in country, the previous generation of Linguere volunteers worked with local counterparts to develop a basketball program at the high school here in town. They raised funds to build a regulation-sized court on the campus and put together a monthly training camp that coached students in basketball skills and trained local educators to run the program autonomously. It was a hit, to say the least. I was lucky enough to install in my village just in time to participate in the culminating tournament, which showcased the phenomenal skill progression of students and trainers alike. It was a beautiful event, pitting 42 confident and happy high schoolers - 21 girls and 21 boys - against one another in a tournament that exemplified everything from focused athletic ability to a genuine fervor for organized sport.

Inspired by the synergy we witnessed that day – and knowing that it provided only minimal insight into the world of possibilities for harnessing the athletic abilities and enthusiasm of these kids – my peers and I have put together a plan for building on this work. Our project – the Linguere Youth Basketball Initiative – aims to build basketball courts in three Linguere satellite villages: Ngaraff (home to yours truly and all the smiling faces that have colored the photos on this blog), Barkedji (home to Ann Marie Albright) and Diaglie (home to Kim Hall). The courts will be a foundation for a larger mission in the region – one of building leadership and teamwork skills in confident, driven youth across the region. We plan to do this through a careful progression of skill acquisition at a young age and gradual, well-directed fostering of these skills as the students grow and progress through grade-levels.

The potential for this work truly makes my little heart go all a-flutter. I can only imagine the manic joy, the eagerness, the zeal that will spill from the kids of Ngaraff when they have an actual athletic facility on which to unleash their yearning for anything that involves running around, playing, and challenging their peers. (And I have no doubt that this will be duplicated in Barkedji and Diaglie). While the looks on their faces would be enough, the possibilities extend so far beyond this. We’ll hold trainings in the individual villages and coordinate camps and tournaments across the region. And not just in basketball, but in volleyball, handball, and other fitness-related activities. In addition, the paved terrain will provide a meeting space for the villages, and add aesthetic appeal and morale in places that are in need of such a boost – an outcome not to be understated.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, these courts will open up opportunities for a whole range of gender development activities - an undertaking that is near and dear to my sensibilities.

You’ve probably guessed by now that the reason I’m previewing this project here – instead of giving details on completed activities – is that we’re currently engaged in a full-gale fundraising effort that involves YOU! We have established a secured a Peace Corps Partnership “grant” (the same as the one that I launched in association with my health clinic project), so it calls on our friends and family in the states to find the funding.

Any amount that you could contribute would be appreciated beyond what I’m able to express here. To make a donation or learn more about the project, please check out the PCPP site here:

https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=685-182

Everything is illuminated. At least, much of Senegal has been illuminated. With "Bike or Die" as our motto, myself and three friends embarked on an epic journey through this country's innards. Destination? Kedougou. Distance? 600 kilometers. Path? Through the bush. Guidance? Pulaar nomads.

6 A.M. Day One. Setting out from BarkedjiLast Sunday, bikes in tow, Justin, Ann Marie, Mary and I set out from Ann Marie's village, 35 km outside of Linguere. It took us six days to bike down to Kedougou. Most nights, we slept in the bush, more exposed than I've ever felt. When I camp in the States, I generally bring a tent along; we had only a tarp, and one incomplete mosquito net for the four us. The situation was somewhat perilous -- the first morning, for example, as Ann Marie sat up and stretched, I looked at the tarp where she had just been lying and spotted a large, live scorpion. How she had avoided getting stung is a total mystery. The next night, we saw aggressive lightning rolling in from a distance, so we clamored around trying to make our important possessions water proof and then huddled together, the four us, sandwiched together between two layers of tarp. We cooked makeshift meals of pasta and other bizarre ingredients we found in tiny bush villages. We navigated by looking at the sun -- we tried to make our way in a generally Southerly direction, following donkey cart paths through the country and stopping at tiny Pulaar encampments to ask directions to the next known destination.

The best part was traveling through all of Senegal's micro-climates. Every kilometer we seemed to watch the terrain change before our eyes, become greener and more densely packed with trees. We started out in the desert, the very day a sand storm rolled through and covered us in unforgiving, corrosive dust clouds. By the second day, we were already dodging sludgy puddles. Day three, I no longer had to dodge low-hanging branches because the vegetation switched f rom unforgiving thorny trees to pliant bushes with soft leaves! Day four, we found a verdant paradise. Day five, we were in Senegal's Niokolo-Koba National Park, playing with baboons and listening to warthog calls. From there on out, our scenery could only be described as jungle. Glorious jungle. A welcome sight to flora-deprived eyes.

On the road--

We went from this . . .

. . . to this . . .

. . . to this . . .

. . . to this . . .

. . . and finally, straight into Kedougou.

Some fun things along the way:

A confused baby in the bush.

Maybe we're the first white people he's ever seen?

Nomadic Pulaar community on the go.

Truly transient people still baffle and amaze me.

Rad reverse mohawk on a kiddie in the bush.

This well is sooooooo deeeeepp. I think they said 80 meters?

The donkey that hauled up the buckets had to walk out ridiculously far from the well.

The scorpion that was lodged under Ann Marie's body

when she woke up on the first morning.

Huge hollow baobab filled with bats!

Newborn baby donkey!

Koumpentoum = Out of the bush!

And about halfway to Kedougou.

Headed out of Tambacounda: 228 km to Kedougou

Park Ranger's adorable baby wearing daddy's hat

at the entrance to the Niokolo-Koba park.

That's nothin'.

We woke up to a pack of monkey's hangin' out over our

mosquito net in the Park on the last morning.

Warthogs at our campsite in the park.

The jerks stole our oatmeal!

It's all over now, Baby Blue.We made it to Kedougou in time to celebrate with about 90 of our fellow volunteers at the annual 4th of July celebration. We also floated along the rivers down there and hiked out to picturesque waterfalls. Today? Back in the desert. And happy to be here!

My year in country mark was back in March, but I felt like the more significant milestone was the anniversary of my installation in Ngaraff, which came and went on May 18th, while I was, ironically, out of village, traveling from Dakar to Linguere after returning from Morocco. It has triggered a fair amount of reflection on what I’ve done and am doing; what living my life here, rather than elsewhere, actually means, and all those other inevitable deliberations that accompany little landmarks that we cling to in the generally chaotic and illogical elasticity of time’s passage. Needless to say, I reached no grand conclusions I do, however, have some sporadic reflections.

My counterpart and her family, including one-week-old Kine.

These are definitely my closest friends in the village.I’ve been looking around at the babies of Ngaraff: There are the ones walking around who were merely blob-like when I arrived. There are the ones who for a long while were in the odd stage (reached around the first birthday) where they were scared of me, and now scream my name and reach for my hand and let me port them all over the village without protest. There are the ones who had no problem with me in their infancy and now are entering that very phase. And then, of course, there are the babies who – most narcissistically, I realize – I like to say are part of “Club Bigue.” -- That is, the ones who were born during my time in Ngaraff. I love counting them, loudly and proudly, with all the moms, showing off how I can recount not only the order of their births, but their respective dates. My life here allows me to follow along with growing kids in a way I was never able to in my previous life and, as you can see, I love it. The cycle of birth (and death as well, for that matter) is simply so much more present here.

Another thing: as I’ve watched the seasons come and go here, watched it go from hot to rainy to hot to cool and, yup, back to hot, I’ve become exceptionally appreciative of the work that goes into food, of the incessant battle to feed every mouth in this village. I think about one of my favorite meals, for example: millet couscous with a sauce of peanut paste, dried fish, tomatoes, beans. (I realize…. Not that exciting. But reasonably nutritious and… seriously, try to the millet couscous before you knock it! Although, if I lost you at “dried fish,” you’re actually right about that -- it’s a ubiquitous offense in Senegalese cooking). For this meal to hit the enormous communal metal dinner bowl and get hastily fisted into my gullet, so many labor-intensive processes have to occur that it really boggles my mind. The millet alone has to be planted, weeded, maintained; harvested; extracted from its stalk; bagged; transported from field to home; pounded, sifted, pounded, sifted, steamed, sifted, reconstituted into couscous. Having been a part of each of these steps – all done by human-power, alone, without the help of machines – I can attest to the time and effort it all requires. Then there’s the sauce: the farming of the peanuts, and the many steps to turning it into paste; the cultivation and collection of the beans, the importation of the fragile little tomatoes; the (unfortunate) importation of the dried fish; you get the picture, and I’m rambling. I’m just perpetually astounded by the burden faced daily by the women of my village and every other village in Senegal and most of Africa: that of preparing three meals a day for a horde of hungry bellies – not just the cooking (over an open fire, might I add), but the perennial struggle of ensuring the presense of adequate supplies and maintaining them in a usable form. I certainly have no intention of inciting some sort of guilt complex in you, but I can’t help but say this: next time you order a pizza, or put a Lean Cuisine in the microwave, or grab a ready-made rotisserie chicken from Safeway, I ask you to take a moment and smile at your good fortune: one more meal attended to, and easily, at that. I’m living amongst people who will never once find such a trouble-free, effortless solution to the nightly question, “What’s for dinner?”

Wow. That was a bit of a lengthy piece, I’m sorry! I’m gonna try to be less verbose from now on…

My year mark also got me thinking of all the things I’ve done and seen in the last year that I’d never done or seen before, so I jotted down this incomplete list:

Dismembered and disemboweled a variety of dead animals in preparation for eating, including chickens and goatsPlucked a thorn the size of my pinkie out of my foot and the foot of othersSent kids on absolutely any errand I can dream upRidden on a car with goats beneath my feet and chickens tied by my headEaten around a giant bowl with upwards of 18 other people sticking their hands in.Been openly gawked and laughed at on the street.And so much more...Health Hut Grand Opening!

So, perhaps you’re tired of hearing about Ngaraff’s Health Hut, but this is big news: I helped my community put on a huge Grand Re-Opening of the clinic. I wrote a VAST (Volunteer Activities Support and Training) grant and everything, so that we could go crazy-all-out! I also insisted that it double as an HIV/AIDS educational extravaganza, complete with HIV testers from the Linguere hospital, AIDS-related theatrical sketches, and several health talks from local experts.

Preparation, needless was to say, was a bit hectic – a torrent of visits to officials, conversations with community members, phone calls, and double/triple checks on little details, like ice and coolers and transportation for extra chairs. The villagers rallied behind me and pitched in – the women showed up the day before to sweep and sift the sand in the lovely new health compound and clean out of the buildings, then stayed up late preparing beignet dough, only to rise early and drop ‘em in the hot oil by the barrel-full. The men raised the tent with little prodding from me, and sent their precious horse carts to retrieve extra seating from the nearby town. Despite the stressful and somewhat chaotic preparations, the event itself transpired almost flawlessly. It was a total success, as far as the goals of the day were concerned: people had fun, ate their fill in beignets, got real, hard-hitting education on HIV/AIDS, and got pumped up about the future of Ngaraff’s health system. On my end, I had to put up with some obnoxious behind-the-scenes BS, such as people seeing my white skin and trying to suck every dime out of our budget (what else is new?) and having to offer apology after apology as I failed to follow the correct protocol of calling the village chief and then the Imam to the microphone before handing it over the first speaker (granted, something I know and should have adhered to, but my mind was a million places that day.)

So be it, though-- I can swallow the personal frustrations in the wake of a really successful, entertaining, educational celebration. Still today, five days later, my people were telling me what a good time they had, how nice the party was, how “everyone was happy,” “everyone ate lots of beignets,”etc. If they’re happy, I’m happy. Truly.

And the best part? 54 people got tested. That might not sound like much, but considering that the last time a testing team came through, we had to pull teeth to get six people to show up, this was a huge victory. I had begged and pleaded, dragged women out of their seats, cajoled them and had others do the same, and despite their fear, my lovely ladies of Ngaraff (and a few men) stepped up to the plate and entered the testing room. My heart still fills to think about it and share this with you.

This is still just the beginning – or maybe we could see it as another halfway mark? – to a functional health system in the village. But that’s something, right?

Cleaning the health hut in preparation for the big event!

This is what sifting sand looks like -

and the compounds look beautiful when we're done!

Late-night beignet dough prep.

Kicking off the Grand Opening!!

The New Health Hut at it's finest! HIV testing - lots of it!

Alhumdahlilaay!

Dance troup from the nearby town - the crowd loved it!

AIDS-education skits. And really well done!

Senegal Vacay 2011

My other big accomplishment for this first year of service? Luring my dear friends Andrew and Erin out of the comfy Seattle lifestyle and into the grips of a full-fledged Senegalese adventure! They get the prize for being the first (And maybe the only?) “home” friends to visit me here. We had such a good time! I don’t think I can adequately express how amazingly flexible, forgiving, resilient, and easy-going they were, and it was thanks to this that we had such a stupendous, unforgettable trip. We kicked it on the coast for a few days, kayaking in the mangroves and taking pirogue trips out to bird-covered islands to camp. Fellow PCV hosted us at his SITE, Palmarin, which - yes - is located on a salt intrusion filled with mangroves forests. (Not that I'm jealous...) Erin and Andrew then bravely endured a typically horrendous day of travel to make it out to Ngaraff, where they happened to catch one of the biggest parties the village has ever seen – the baptism of my counterpart’s daughter-in-law’s baby. We brought the house down when the three of us hit the dance floor together, along with my PCV Linguere buddy Mack.

After a gastro-intestinitis-induced layover at the Linguere regional house, we cruised to St. Louis to experience the big International Jazz Festival, held annually. We finished up the trip at my friend’s Chris’ house, taking advantage of his highly-operative kitchen to let Andrew and Erin work their magic and create the World’s Best Veggie Lasagna. As a side dish? BROCCOLI. I speak the truth. I hadn’t seen it in 15 months, and I shed tears. Thank you, dear friends.

I heart baobabs.

 Andrew helps some kids across the salt flats to get to the beach.

Erin, makin' castles in the sand...

With our Palmarin host, Chris, on the pirogue out to "Bird Island" for a night of camping.

E & A kayaking through the mangroves.

Beautiful beautiful baobabs.

With my counterpart Marieme at her daughter-in-law's HUGE baptism party.

Andrew mugs with a local tot.

Awa Cham and my favorite twins, Awa and Ada.

The World's Worst Sept-Place ride: this position is no joke!

We had to bend over like this to fit in the car.

St. Louis. More pictures to the right. ==>

Long story short: My pal Chris' friend back in Florida has a clothing company that's trying a promotional campaign that involves people putting on t-shirts with the company logo on it and taping themselves doing "Conscious Acts of Kindness." Chris decided that he wanted to find poor kids and pay for them to jump in them moonbounce at Dakar's (one and only) park -- He brought me along because he knew I would love the kids and because he doesn't speak Wolof (he speaks Serere.) Anyway, we did it and it was really successful, of course - how could you go wrong with a moonbounce?!? We took a ton of footage and Chris put together this video:

Okay, here's my confession: I've been out of Senegal for the past three weeks or so, prancing about in Morocco, mostly, with a brief sojourn in Barcelona as well. What can one say? It was all so delightful. Morocco is truly the land that dreams are made of, a perfect intermingling between the wild sensory phenomena of Africa and the functionality and ease of Europe and the "West." It certainly didn't feel like Africa, to say the least. I hardly know where to start.

Traveling in Morocco with April, who's COS-ing (Completion Of Service, used as a verb, noun, and adjective inPeace Corps worldwide), Kim, and Amanda was a treat from start to finish. We hit several of the bigger cities: Casablanca, Fes, and Chefchaouen, before flying out of Tangier to reach Barcelona. After five days in Spain, the ladies continued on to France and elsewhere in Europe, while I returned to Morocco to meet up with other friends.

Leaving Senegal was a trip in itself! Our minds were boggled by the variety, the cleanliness, the giganticness of the First World. Take this huge lollipop I came across during our layover in the Lisbon airport, for example:

Then, as we stumbled jet-laggedly through the market of Casablanca, we were floored, over and over again by the abundance of fresh things, like delicious oysters-on-the-halfshell that Amanda couldn't help but take immediate advantage of:

Really, it was all too much-- we'd made it about four feet into the market before our wrists were laden down with way more fresh fruit and vegetables than we could possibly eat. And olives, cured lemons, spices, hot sauce.... oh my!

Casablanca is home to the world's second largest mosque, a 689-ft.-tall monster that can accomodate 105,000 worshippers and could easily fit Rome's St. Peter's Basilica inside it, complete with a glass floor set right over the ocean.

A fish seller in the Casablanca marketMosques aside, what was the best part of Casa? Hearty fresh orange juice, squeezed right before you eyes, everywhere you turned. Better yet, it turns out that this is the case everywhere in Morocco, and we certainly indulged.

After a few days of eating our way through Casablanca, we hopped a train for Fes, a large city known for its enormous walled-in Old Medina, now a winding maze of homes and shops selling everything from Argan Oil to Fes-made leather purses to nine different varieties of dates. We spent a good deal of time wandering around that Medina, buying things, gaping at the medieval architecture, and benefiting from the total sensory overload that characterized the entire huge old city. It's hard to describe the degree to which this "sensory overload" part is true. Everything - the shoe displays, the nut displays, the archways and doorways and walkways - was not only gorgeous, but an aesthetically-intriguing site. vision. Aromas, most of them good, seemed literally to enshroud you at every turn. And I wanted to eat everything in site - spicy olives, fluffy Berber crepe, veggie-pita sandwiches, marinated chicken shiskkebabs, and of course lots of fresh juice.

Beautiful displays at the Fes' Old Medina

My favorite olive man

Me, Kim, Amanda, and April, posing in the median of a beautiful, wide, tree-lined street in Fes (we don't have these things in Senegal):

Fes street food - yummy snails in coriander broth! Oh! The other really fun thing we did in Fes was go to a traditional bathhouse ("Hammam"). I don't even know where to start with describing this experience. We bought our tickets from a sketchy man at a sketchy ticket window in a sketchy alley, and he gave us soap, a scrubby mitt, and a weird brown blob of something wrapped in newsprint. Then we filed into the locker room area, where we were instructed by a large gruff Moroccan women (using hand signals) to undress.... which we did, to our great amusement. Then, wearing just panties and our towels, we walked around the corner into the bathing room. We had absolutely no idea what to do. The room was filled with beefy Moroccan women grooming each other; when we finally decided to drop our towels, we didn't know what to do with ourselves, so, for some reason, the four of us stood in a row, facing the wall -- Utter hilarity. Finally some women who, bless their hearts, spoke moderate French, came over and told us to sit on our mats and wash our hair until our "women" showed up. We did this, and after not too long the real fun started: our scrubbers (we'd paid extra for the full scrub down instead of just the do-it-yourself hot bath) came along and took control. One-by-one, we were rubbed and scrubbed and man-handled by, again, huge beefy Moroccan ladies who, due to their total lack of English/french skills and our total lack of Arabic, could only access every inch of our bodies by tugging and pushing us around to get the right angle. Perhaps too funny to be adequately described?

Jamal, our saint of a Couchsurfer host in Fes.Next: On to Chefchaouen, which turned out to be this beautiful mountain hamlet, a cascade of stone buildings laid into the slope-side. Interestingly, at some point in the past, the people of Chefchaouen decided to paint their walls blue – the reasons for this is are still under debate among town tour guides, but the fact of the matter is that it makes for one of the prettiest sites one has ever seen, whether seen from within a baby blue alleyway or viewed from above, as a mosaic of different shades of blue covering the mountainside.

Spices! Gorgeous in their essence.

Chefchaouen is situated in the Rif mountain range, so we did a day of hiking that was a bit of a fantastic fiasco. It started raining midway through the hike, though we were already soaked - at least from the knees down - because we had to cross the river upwards of 30 times and got tired of taking off our socks and shoes and rolling up our pants. After hitting the waterfall and starting our way back, we were wet and freezing, but also hungry, so we stopped in the rain to have the picnic lunch we'd planned - delicious veggie pitas with goat cheese. Unfortunately, we hadn't planned well on the equipment side of things, and had just one pocket knife and no other utensils... so while I cut onions, tomatoes, and carrots, Kim ripped bell peppers with her hands and Amanda and April used their fists to shove goat cheese, avocado, and cilantro into the pita pockets. Still tasted good, though I'm not sure I tasted much as I chowed down in the downpour.

One of many river crossings.

Pita pocket picnic in the rain

We left Morocco via the northern city of Tangier on a cold, rainy day, and arrived in Barcelona that night. Hitting Europe was even more of a shock to the senses than Morocco was after Senegal. Everything was BIG and clean and easily accessible. Also, expensive. But my first delicious draft beer – real, hoppy, true beer, from a TAP – was worth every cent.

It’s no Morocco, but Barcelona was a beautiful city with all the things I love about Europe – gorgeous old buildings, facades with intricate iron lattice work, trees, statues – plus a stunning waterfront covered in sailboats, making me itch to hop aboard one and cruise out of town. Highlights from our time in Barcelona include:Walking around alone, exploring the streets and the HUGE market that offered up an abundance of everything and anything, to a point of overwhelmed dizziness for a girl coming out of AfricaTapasRenting a bike and scoping out a good swath of the cityThe brilliant and beautiful Sagrada Familia, a church designed by Gaudi according to the Golden Ratio and nature’s inspiration, which has been under construction for over 100 years and still is not completeGaudi’s Park Guell, an improbable, whimsical, Dr. Suess-like collection of stone and marble formations holding exotic gardensThe view of Barcelona from the top of Park GuellNestling into an Italian bar to watch an FC Barcelona – Real Madrid soccer matchStaring at all the sailboats and dreaming of sailing days of the past and futureAn all-you-can-eat salad+ buffet, ala SouplantationAnd so much more. Fish market in Barcelona

Yo-ho, yo-ho, a sailor's life for me...

My lovely travel companions.

Inside the Sagrada Familia

The Sagrada Familia. (Read about it! A fascinating tale to which I just can't do justice here.)

Park Guell

At the top of Barcelona.

Gaudi had quite the imagination!It was a trip to be in Europe, even for a few days. Maybe this is what people call “culture shock,” though I didn’t really find it to be alarming or debilitating in any way. I just found myself carrying a constant awareness of all the little and big differences between Spain and Senegal, or even between Morocco and Senegal.

Great as Barcelona was, I have to admit that I missed Morocco, a place that is replete with ease and functionality but is still pleasantly rough around the edges. I was excited to go back there. I parted ways with April, Amanda, Kim, and Camille at two in the morning after a night of tapas and wine; they were headed North to France and I was headed back to Morocco the following day to meet up with Mary, Brian, and Kourtney for a trek in the moutntains and various other diversions.

Biding my time at a sweet little terraced acafe in Tangier, I met a fellow Los Angelino - a phD student and photographer who snapped this pic and gave me some pointers on my camera.

Men doing their sunset prayer in unison by a mosque in Marrakech.Morocco round II, with a different crowd and different activities, was distinct from my first visit but equally intriguing. The High Atlas mountains are a remarkable land form. We hiked around for several days;on the last day, we climbed up Mt. Toubkal, 4,126 meters high. Our guide Abdou was fantastic, and we brought along mules to carry our stuff, plus a mule guide who doubled as a cook and made incredible Moroccan feast three times a day. Some of the more wonderful six days of my life.

Thanks for carrying my stuff up the mountain, Mules!

An old man cruising through the mountains.

Brian's going home to America! I'll miss him.

A Berber village in the mountainside.

Team Linguere does Mt. Toubkal.

Heading for the mountain.

Hanging out at the top of Mt. Toubkal, North Africa's big peak.

Kourtney, Mary, myself, and Brian, with a couple other hikers we picked up along the way.

After our trek, Kourtney, Mary and I headed for the coast, to a popular tourist town called Essaouira. We spent just a couple days there, sunbathing and soaking up the last drops of Moroccan goodness.

The best part about Morocco: the lovely doors. (Pictures here with lovely Kourtney :)

Chwarma in the sand - what more could you want? I'm clearly pleased.

One last sunset in Morocco.

Returning to Senegal was a wild experience in itself, but one that may have to be saved for a future blog post or, better yet, a one-on-one conversation.

To ease the transition, Kourtney, my stalwart travel partner, and I took advantage of our nine-hour layover in Lisbon to cruise around the city, and take in many of its many of its alimentary delights:

A wine stop at the top of Lisbon's Sheraton hotel, with some of the best views of the city, which is stunning - set along the river and dappled with those endlessly gorgeous historical buildings.

You know that feeling you have when trying to recount something very meaningful to you, and despite all your most earnest, pain-staking, and lengthy efforts at honest description, you just don't really feel like you've done the whole thing justice? Well, that's where I'm at now, but so be it. I have to get back to the village and you have to move on with your life, too!

Ergo, I shall leave it at that. :)

For some reason, starting projects here seems like even more of a daunting task than I remember it being back home. Especially with a heavy duty ambition like a multi-facted wall/latrine/water tap construction process, it seems hard to believe that all the right steps will actually occur, in the right order and under the right circumstances and with the right people, such that the desired outcome will actually be achieved. The village is a slow place, and inertia often prevails . . . not to mention the fact that my own inexperience with all different aspects of building stuff in a small village in Africa seemed liable to lead to certain SNAFUs along the way. (Of course, all this is NOT to say that I or we were in any way unprepared or lacking in energy when I wrote the funding request -- I was truthful in all that I said about the driving forces behind this project and I by no means wish to introduce any sort of skepticism regarding either the willingness of my community toward the implementation of the project nor the care with which I approached every single step of the process.) I'm just a naturally timorous and under-confident person-- suffice it to say that the project, when it began, seemed a bit intimidating.

Then, things started happening. And now, only three and a half months after I came out asking for money, the wall is all but completed and we're honing in on the home stretch! Following another village meeting in which we announced the arrival of funding and reminded the villagers of the monetary and in-kind contribution that they had pledged to contribute, we got things started. We hired a nearby expert to install the water tap -- the first step since water would be critical during the construction phase -- and it was done in a morning! (It still just amazes me when things happen quickly here . . . because they so rarely do.) I traveled to Dahra, the local big town, with the health committee treasurer and the head mason, to purchase the supplies for the wall: 110 sacks of cement, three different kinds of rebar, two tailor-made doors, and loads of nails, planks, and other essential knick-knacks. The next day, I walked up to the Health Hut and found a team of masons knee-deep in cement and sand, forming bricks one-by-one in an impressively fast molding system. For several days straight, they cranked out bricks like nobody's business, and meanwhile other masons started shaping the rebar and laying the foundation for the actual build-up process.

Then, I left town for one week - I went to Thies to help train the new group of Health/EE volunteers who just got to country, then to Dakar to celebrate April's birthday. After this extended absence, I rolled up to Ngaraff on a hot and dusty Sunday afternoon and there it was, just like that. A fully constructed wall, shimmering in the blazing hot sun. By George, they'd done it!

We're waiting for a few finishing touches, and we still have to dig and build the latrine, but the progress is plain. As I've made clear in previous post, this is when the real work starts. Accustoming the villagers to using the health clinic regularly and appropriately after so many years of inactivity has already proven to be a difficult task. Ndanka, ndanka rekk - slowly, slowly - this is a goal we can now work toward in earnest with the hope of seeing real progress. I hope. :)

The Health Hut, before. . .

Installing the water pipe extension.

Ladies and gentlemen, running water!

Molding bricks.

Completed bricks.

Workin' the rebar.

And more and more and more bricks!

And more and more and more rebar!

What else is going on?

The women's community garden is up and running!

Eggplant and tomatoes.

Little Fatou helps harvest lettuce.

Usually, the women get the millet off its stalks by hand - a slow process of pounding and sifting. This year a millet machine, transported and powered by a tractor, came to town. It cruised through the fields from one mound of millet stalks to another, and it felt like - all of sudden, in a cloud of millet chaff and tractor fumes - little Ngaraff was swept into the Age of the Industrial Revolution.

Loading millet stalks into the grinder.

A small team comes annually from the Linguere hospital to offer HIV/AIDS testing for a day. As it turns out, the people of my village are quite scared of getting tested -- a combination of the stigmatism surrounding a potentially positive result and a fear of needles. Despite my repeated tours of the village, exhorting/begging people to participate, only 10 people showed up -- and that includes myself and two of the health workers.

I look way more excited about the needle going into my arm than I actually was.

The big boss man, Senegal Country Director Chris Hedrick, came toNgaraff!

Luckily, construction on the Health Hut had started just in time.

We got an Environmental Education club started at the school , with about 20 of the mid-aged kids. They're super fun!

For some reason, clubs here love to elect officers, even if they have no real role. Here, the kids are voting.

Painting a mural with 20 kids was kinda a nightmare . . . but also a lot of fun!

To celebrate April's birthday, we had a beautiful day in Dakar . . .

A terrific picnic at the park . . .

Drinks at sunset at a hotel on the water . . .

And - duh! - ice cream cake. A very successful day.

More babies . . .

For some reason, I get such a hoot out of these baby potties.

Another new baby girl in the village!

And just last night, we celebrated Ann Marie's birthday here in Linguere.

Justin and Kim hired a camel and had it brought straight to

Ann Marie was beside herself with excited over her "Birthday Camel."

Part I: Profligacy

For those of you that come to this blog looking for shrewd cultural anecdotes and authentic insight regarding immersion in an African village, this post might not be for you. (not the first section, at least.) For Senegalese PCVs, President's Day weekend meant a three-day marathon of running around, partying, and painting Dakar red under the title of the West African Invitational Softball Tournament, AKA W.A.I.S.T.

Not much else to say - the weekend spun by me in a chaotic haze, so I'll just let some pictures tell the story...

Night 1: 8 P.M.

We were set up with cushy ex-pat homestays in Dakar.

Kourtney and Justin made fine roommates.

Night 1: 11 P.M.

Let the 72-hour dance off begin. Here, at The Viking in Dakar.

Day 2: 10 A.M.

I'll be honest, this is just about how we started every day.

As I said, Kourtney and Justin made fine roommates.

Day 2: 11 A.M.

As part of ballerina-themed Team Kaolack, Kourtney

dons her tutu and gets ready to head to the field.

Day 2: Noon.

Space travelers of Team Kolda gets ready to face off against formidable

Team Linguere, previously part of the Dakar region

team, in its first year as an autonomous team.

Day 2: 1 P.M.

Cows and Cowboys of Team Linguere cheer on their

teammates in a match against the Kolda SpaceCorps (see above.)

Day 2: 3 P.M.

Cows & Cowboys-themed Team Linguere/Louga poses

for a post-match team photo. Were we victorious? Not sure...

Day 2: 3 P.M.

The cowgirls of Team Linguere.

Day 2: 5 P.M.

Brian, Team Linguere's perfect Pulaar, takes a restful squat -

he's in adherence of the theme, of course,

as Pulaars are Senegal's cowboys...

Day 3: 11 A.M.

Cowgirls back for more.

Day 3: Noon.

Rematch with Kolda. SpaceCorps vs. Cows & Cowboys.

An epic fight to the finish.

"Palling around with terrorists..."

Day 3: 1 P.M.

This is when we thought we'd won and took to celebratory

dancing. Our victory chant? "WE ARE A REGION. WE ARE A REGION."

Then we were told we had to play more innings. Oh Team Linguere.

Day 3: 1:30 P.M.

Team Kolda, post-game.

Day 3: 2 P.M.

Emilie McClintic's cow udder is filled with delicious wine.

Day 3:

Eric of Team Kedougou/Tamba (Cops and Robbers)

and Jessica of Team Kaolack (Ballerinas).

Day 4: Happy Hour.

Kourtney and I, recovering from the weekend with

some delicious mojitos. (Give me a break! You only

live once, and they don't have these in Linguere.)And there you have it. Whew! I was not all that sad to wrap that weekend up.

Part II: Progeny

Now some photos from village, as proof that it's not all hedonism and debauchery around here. To compliment the incriminating story told by the first half of this blog post, I present you with another installment of - your favorite and mine - THE BABY PARADE!

While I was away at WAIST, my buddy Awa Thiam gave birth

to beautiful twin baby girls! When I heard the news, I went running

to her hut. They were born Wednesday; photo taken Friday - two-day-old

buckets of preciousness. I was like, "Awa, you've got two

babies - can't you give me ONE?" She readily agreed.

Birane gave birth, too, to a boy! This one's old - five days old.

Jara at the garden. She used to run away from me but

now she runs TO me, sticks out her little hand, and even

makes a valiant attempt at screaming my name,

which generally comes out "DEE-day!"

None of Ngaraff's infants are thanking me for instituting

monthly baby weighings. Clearly, Soxna's not happy.

Neither is Nayfatu.

Birane's baby boy, not quite a week old,

gets weighed for the first time. 3.5 kilos.

Waiting their turn while we talk to their Mamas

about various baby-health-related issues.

Twin Baby Girl #1, not yet baptized and therefore

not yet named, gets weighed for the first time.

Twin Baby Girl #2 goes in the gurney.

Tots 'n' a Tree Nursery.

The twin that Awa agreed to ceed to me. Dad named

her Ada, but mom and others still insist on calling her Bigue. :)

Ada-Bigue, in my arms where she belongs.

Big Bigue and little Ada-Bigue, at the twins' babtism.

Mama Awa with Ada's twin sister... named Awa.

They really like to keep new names to a minimum around here.

I don't seem to know where to start. Blog posts usually come to me pretty easily, but this one has left me feeling unsure of what to say and how to say it.

Thanks in large part to many of you reading this, the PC Partnership grant to fund the wall around our Health Hut was fully funded within two week of going up on the website. I don't yet have any information on specific donors (that will come soon, along with the money itself!), but it's clear that many of my friends and family have opened their wallets and forked over precious cash.

I'm so appreciative, so humbled, so touched. I realize that this act shows a palpable trust in me, which makes my stomach do somersaults of affection and gratitude. By no means, however, am I blinded by such narcissism, for I also realize that it says a heck of a lot more about all of you. For one, it's a poignant indicator of your generosity -- even in tough times, even when you had holiday shopping to do -- you forked over what you could for people you will probably never meet. Moreover, what's clear is the ubiquitous compassion that exists out there -- and it is this that catches in my throat and that I find so immensely touching and humbling.

It took little convincing to get you on the same page as myself as far as the notion that humans should have access to a certain standard of health care. (Here, I don't mean the loaded term currently tearing America apart from the Senate on down, but rather the more basic concept of access to medical attention and education). I hesitate to employ the heavy and overused term "right" - though it be an institution of our American parlance and world view both - but the notion that human lives are entitled to a minimum amount of help and support seems to be one human right that is difficult to contend with.

As for me, I'm a disciple of Paul Farmer, who believes that "the idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that's wrong with the world" and quotes heavily from Rudolf Virchow, the populist German physician of early 20th century ("Physicians are the natural attorneys of the poor, and the social problems should largely be solved by them"), so I'm hardpressed to see a more fundamentally important battle that we may undetake on behalf of whatever population we find ourselves living amongst.

All this convoluted babble is merely to say: yay! I'm so appreciative that my friends and family have supported this project in which I really deeply believe. Now, in addition to activating the actual building process for the wall, latrine, and water tap, the arrival of funding allows me to attack Health Hut Rehabilitation Project, Phases II and III, with additional gusto.

Phase II, already underway, is to work with the community health agent and the midwife in the village - those two fantastic women - to get in the regular practice of stocking medical supplies, holding health committee meetings, weighing babies monthly, conducting educational talks, and otherwise doing what they can to start and maintain a functioning health structure. On a side note, baby weighings - we've now held one in December and one in January - are my favorite activity. Have you ever seen a baby scale? It kinda resembles a canvas diaper strung from above, like a grocery store produce scale, so you stick the chubby little legs through the holes and let the munchkin dangle there while you read the scale. I just don't get tired of the way those precious little ones look dangling there like a sack o' taters! They invariable cry, but all I can do is laugh and make faces at them until this brief traumatic experience has passed. :-)

Phase III, also already in progress, involves asking other related parties in the region to help us in any way they can, mostly through providing necessary supplies that we don't have the ability or means to seek out ourselves. Did I say "asking?" It usually looks more like groveling, but I ain't ashamed. I put on my nicest Senegalese outfits and go talk to anyone who will listen, including the doctors and other important parties at the Linguere Hospital, the government-issued nurse at the nearby community health post, officials at the district community council, reps for a health-related NGO that works in the region, and a smattering of other Senegalesians that may or may not be able to help our village health system in any way. In my most obsequious, self-effacing, strategic manner, I explain the work, effort, money, etc. that Peace Corps, the people of of Ngaraff, and my friends and family back in America have put forward for the wellbeing of the village's Health Hut; I also enumerate the reasons that I believe the rehabilitation of the Ngaraff's health system is of such vital importance not just to the village but to the region (as if my audience shouldn't already be hip to this reality . . . but many benefit from the convincing.) Though my Wolof still struggles with the details, I think that what comes through is my real dedication - perhaps even angst - related to this project.

And I think it's starting to work! The other day Ngaraff got a visit from the Linguere district top doctor - the chef medecin - who came bearing various supplies meant to build a safe, sterile medical facility. (And he proved himself to be about 20 years younger and twice as handsome as the Dr. Thiam I had been planning to visit/grovel to before too long, but that's neither here nor there.) The best part? He spoke of the arrival of our piece de resistance, the bit of equipment around which all the groveling is centered: a birthing table. With that, our midwife can help women deliver their babies in a clean, comfortable environment, instead of on the mud/sand/cement floors of their huts. Can you imagine?!?!

And there ya go. Visions of a birthing table dance in our heads as we go to bed every night, and meanwhile we work toward a functional Health Hut in all ways we can. Once more, thank you for your support, monetary or otherwise.

In other news?

I just took a mini-vacay in Kedougou, a region bordering Mali and Guinea in the Southeast of Senegal, AKA the Land of Dreams, if you remember from my 4th of July posts/photos. I spent a couple of days in a friend's village, which was an interesting and instructive experience for many reasons, not the least of which was that - for the first time in awhile - I was totally out of my element language-wise. This part of the country is dominated by Malinke-speakers, of which I knew not one word upon my arrival! It was wild to revert back to the feeling of being a butt-headed foreigner who couldn't even greet my friend's host family. Aside from that, it was a joy to be in a new place, especially one covered trees and vegetation. Though Kedougou, like the rest of Senegal, is heavily feeling the effects of the dry season, this terrain nonetheless provided the lushest, most forest-like environment I've seen in . . . way too long.

After the village visit we took a hike out to one of Kedougou's gorgeous waterfalls, tucked away in a verdant creek gorge, and camped near the water. I was nearly shedding tears of joy, just for the relief I felt in seeing water and greenery.

Photo by Mika :)The original purpose behind my trek to the Southern reaches of the country was to help out at an eye clinic being hosted by the NGO Right to Sight in the region of Tambacounda, just North of Kedougou. Unfortunately, they let me know only after my 15-hour-long travel day to Kedougou that I wouldn't be needed for the clinic after all. Despite this, I decided to pass through Tamba on my way back up North and at least visit the clinic -- and I'm SO glad I did. What they're doing is cataract surgery on over 200 blind or nearly blind Senegalese people from all over the region. I got to watch the surgeries up close for a short while, and I was totally blown away by what I was witnessing: they actually go in a slice these people's eyes open, pull out the clouded cataract, and replace it with a new one, as patients lie patiently, having received only local anesthesia. And all this in Senegal. I'm still reeling; I can't quite describe how beautiful and inspiring I found this whole process, and even if Paul Farmer and this whole Health Hut project hadn't already been coaxing me down the path of a career in medicine, this experience would certainly have resonated with me in a meaningful way. I was only there for an hour, but my friend and fellow UPS Logger, Mikael, volunteered at the clinic for a whole week - you can read his blog for more info and photos.

Before leaving Tambacounda, I spent a night in Mikael's Pulaar village, which, like the Malinke-zone farther South, provided a pretty interesting and enlightening experience as far as intra-country cultural differences.

Mika and some little sisters, with his self-painted hut in the background.

I was pretty stirred by Mika's relationship with his family.

Mika and I - we're both gamers of yore - played Magic in his hut! We're brushing up on our skills so we can take on Marty D, PC Senegal's resident master of Magic: The Gathering

Now I'm back in Linguere, trying to love the desert despite having seen the "other side." As much as I appreciate in my home, it's hard sometimes to realize where I could be living, had I received a different site placement. But really, there's beauty and intrigue around us all the time, wherever we are, and I'm not just saying that.

I took the above pics with Mikael's camera; my camera died a few weeks back, hence the recent lack of photos. Don't fret - my lovely mother is sending me hers (thank you, Mama!), so don't fret -- the crisis will soon be over.

Finally, to wrap up this already too long blog post, I'll ask you to allow me one final indulgence. I haven't been able to get this poem, "Mending Wall" by the great Robert Frost, out of my head since I started this whole wall project. I want to share it with you - even though it has nothing to do with Africa or health clinics and (haha) actually discourages the building of walls. Really, it has nothing to do with anything. It's just so lovely, that's all.

Mending Wall

by Robert Frost

Something there is that doesn't love a wall.

That sends the frozen ground swell under it,

And spills the upper boulders in the sun;

And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

The work of hunters is another thing:

I have come after them and made repair

Where they have left not one stone on a stone,

But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,

To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,

No one has seen them made or heard them made,

But at spring mending-time we find them there.

I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;

And on a day we meet to walk the line

And set the wall between us once again

We keep the wall between us as we go.

To each the boulders that have fallen to each

And some are loaves and some so nearly balls

We have to use a spell to make them balance:

"Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"

We wear our fingers rough with handling them.

Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,

One on a side. It comes to little more.

There where it is we do not need the wall:

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.

My apple trees will never get across

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

He only says, "Good fences make good neighbors."

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder

If I could put a notion in his head:

"Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it

Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know

What i was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offence.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him,

But it's not elves, and I'd rather

He said it for himself. I see him there

Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top

In each hand, like an old stone savage armed.

He moves in darkness as it seems to me,

Not of woods only and the shade of trees.

He will not go behind his father's saying,

And he likes having thought of it so well

He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

Back in my pre-Peace Corps life, I was pretty much a youth worker by trade. While I've held a lot of jobs, i think I can say that where I've felt most competent, comfortable, and effective is in my time working with kids. So it seemed natural and obvious that I would try to work with kids during my service here in Senegal. After installing myself in Ngaraff, I started to feel the distinct drive to focus my attention on the female adolescent population.

Last week, I convened my girls' group for the first time -- I decided to have two clubs, one for each of the two oldest classes at the primary school in Ngaraff. That means six girls in each group and - for the most part - girls between the ages of 11 and 14 because kids tend to start school late in the village.

This first meeting presented me with a lot of surprising truths about women and youth in Senegal, and it also turned on end a lot of my assumption about working with kids. We started out the first meeting with some traditional ice breakers from days at Camp Warren and suggestions I had gathered from a PC-issued "Life Skills Manual." First "Roses and Thorns" (which I gave a Wolof-translated title): a simple exercise where, one-by-one, each person in the group says their favorite thing (rose) and their least favorite thing (thorn) that they've recently experienced. I explained and re-explained the activity, and then the girls that thought they got it tried to explain it to their peers, but to no avail; these smart, capable teens and pre-teens just couldn't really wrap their minds around what they were supposed to do. I don't think the problem lay with my Wolof. Rather, I think it had to do with the girls in this country not being remotely familiar with the idea of sharing details of their lives, at least not in a semi-formal setting structured around creative, independent thinking. Once I extracted some sort of a response from one brave girl, the best I could get from the rest of them was, essentially, a regurgitation of what the first one had come up with, both for their rose and for their thorn. (on a side note, the thorn they all repeated was having been physically disciplined by their teacher that morning - yikes!)

The pattern continued with the other ice breakers; simple little activities that I do with eight-year-olds at summer camp were entirely foreign and confusing to these Senegalese adolescents. While i could positively pinpoint why, a hunch told me that it had to do with the lack of opportunity for original or imaginative thinking in their lives up to this point. The school curriculum here is strictly demarcated by a centralized federal agency and most learning happens by rote memorization.

After ice breakers, we did a basic collage project -- I had gathered a bunch of magazines, ranging from Time to Oprah to US Weekly to National Geographic -- and I instructed them to make a "C'est Moi" collage. First, it once again required several rounds of explanation before they timidly started thumbing through the magazine. Then, I was shocked: they didn't know how to use the scissors and glue to create a collage! Once I showed them, they continued to be hesitant to cut into the magazines, saying they didn't want to "ruin" them. In the end, however, they loved it, and returned to their compounds at the end of the meeting proudly toting their new homemade collages.

Because I want one focus of the club to be HIV/AIDS education for the girls, our final activity of the meeting was to watch a few brief films from the AIDS-related series "Scenarios from Africa" (which have versions translated into Wolof, thank goodness!). First, though, I asked the girls what they already knew about AIDS (SIDA, in French and Wolof). "SIDA, C'est une tres grave maladie," was the piece of the knowledge they were able to offer me in robot-like voices, along with a few other bits of into on how it is transmitted. Then we watched the films, which provided basic awareness on the disease's transmission and thoughts on sensitivity to those living with it.

As the girls went home, happy and full on popcorn and candy, I felt pleased and proud and humbled by their appreciativeness. At the same time, however, I felt a pang of something that made me recoil at my own hypocrisy: I felt just a teeny bit nervous and apologetic about having monopolized their time for an entire afternoon, thinking that their mothers would be peeved at me for keeping them away from their usual chores of making dinner and pounding millet. Coming back to my senses, I was struck by my personal realization of how pervasive gender roles and limitations are in rural Senegalese society, and how impactful they are for adolescent girls -- If I'm worrying about letting these girls have too much fun for too long . . . you can imagine what kinds of obstacles they face as they try to have normal social lives and to continue their education past primary school . . . essentially, in their attempts to lead lives as as typical teenage girl should.

All that I witnessed in the girls at the first meeting - specifically, their stunted ability to engage in activities such as arts & crafts and free thinking exercises - coupled with my aforementioned thoughts on the importance of challenging gender roles for Senegal's girls has only fueled my fire to devote myself to this club.

They were so sweet and excited! Here they are:

My room, ready for the first club meeting

Group #1 shows off their collages

Group #2

Pleased with their collage work!

I am coming to you for help with a project that is deeply important to me and the people of Ngaraff: we are working to rehabilitate the non-functional health structure in the village. As I describe in the last post, many of the my early conversations with the members of my community made apparent the need for such a project. Currently, the village has two small buildings that function as a Health Hut - the smallest unit in the top-down Senegalese health structure - but they are rendered largely ineffective due to the lack of a viable compound-type area that is safe, inviting, and conducive to larger gatherings and other health-related purposes. The people of Ngaraff face a persistent set of health challenges, including malaria, respiratory distress, child malnutrition, and complicated pregnancies. Under current circumstances, villagers have to travel over six kilometers, by foot or horse-drawn cart, to reach the health post in the next town over. Often, however, they just don't make the trip, leaving illnesses untreated, preventative reproductive health measures untaken, and malnourished babies without recourse.

Obviously, there are a number of steps that have to be taken for the health system in the village to function well. Some of these are already in place - For one, Ngaraff has two highly competent, energetic, trained health workers. Their opportunities to conduct effective health care, however, are just about entirely stymied by the fact there is no viable setting in which they may do their work.

My conversations with these health workers, as well as with the village health committee and other community members, has made it clear to me that, in order for the Health Hut to function in a robust and worthwhile manner, it needs to become a secure, inviting compound-type health facility, contained and protected from the road and the elements. Thus, my plea for money.

Through the Peace Corps Partnership Program (PCPP), I have put together a grant to build a wall around the village Health Hut. Through a separate funding source (see http://www.appropriateprojects.com/ if interested), we will also build a water tap and latrine within the Health Hut Compound.

Together, these improvements will serve to create a safe, sanitary, and pleasant compound-type area that will service the community across the spectrum of health-related needs. Additionally, a walled-in location will make possible a garden and tree nursery on the Health Hut grounds, both of which will reinforce the importance of healthy practices with the community.

I'm fully aware that, despite what I've described here, a wall might seem like an insignificant or symbolic improvement to any locale -- this would have been my reaction as well. Living here, however, I fully grasp the necessity of such a project. Given the sandy terrain of the village, coupled with the extreme heat and prevalence of strong winds in the region, the small health hut buildings, by themselves, are nearly unusable - what is necessary is a protected, shaded outdoor area that lends itself to being a gathering space and a setting in which a health worker can function in peace.

Of course, a functional health structure consists of more than a functional location. That is why, both before and after the completion of the health hut wall, I will work with the village health workers, as well as the district doctor, local nurse, and other third party individuals, to plan and implement a variety of health-related activities. These will include: monthly baby weighing in conjunction with baby/child nutrition demonstrations; other types of nutrition education; regular HIV testings in conjunction with education on HIV/AIDS sensitivity, prevention, and general awareness; family planning discussions; seminars on the importance of pre- and post-natal visits; and other activities.

Over time, the health hut compound will enable the community to address a number of principal and entrenched community needs, including expanded youth education and reproductive and family health discussions. I truly believe that this project has the potential to heighten gender parity in the village and generally boost the morale of community members as medical care becomes effective and reliable.

PCPP is an international Peace Corps initiative that allows volunteers to fund projects by collecting money from friends and family back home through secure, easy online means. If this project is something you would like to support, you can do so by going here: https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=685-162.

I've described some of the build-up to this project below in the first part of that last post. For those of you that want more information, I would LOVE to share my entire grant proposal with you (makes for fascinating bedtime reading!) or to answer any questions or concerns you have. Just contact me here on the blog or at emily.naftalin@gmail.com.

Thank you, sincerely.

I know. It's been long enough that you're probably all a bit timorous of the lengthy post that I am likely to impose on you after such an absence. To make it less daunting, I've broken it into chapters . . . like an equally scintillating American history text book, or something.

Chapter 1: Here's to Your Health

My big project at the moment is an initiative to rehabilitate the health structure in my village. The build-up to this has essentially been going on since I installed. I heard the adamant and resounding cries of my villagers early on as I went from compound to compound asking what their desires were for change in the community -- almost everyone voiced a wish to see a functioning health hut. A "Health Hut" is the most basic level of the Senegalese top-down health structure; it's a simple facility meant to address fundamental needs, dispense a minimum of drugs, and help people make healthy decisions. Our "Health Hut," which consists of two pathetic-looking buildings on the edge of the village has, for a variety of reasons, been essentially non-functional for almost a decade. Following PC modus operandi, I've been careful to look for a way to effectuate Health Hut rehabilitation by empowering my villagers, without taking an overly-dominant role in the process.

As the project took shape, I convened the latent village health committee and we talked business: how can we make this work? We agreed that the vital first step was to create a safe, pleasant health setting, which would be accomplished by constructing a wall around the current Health Hut -- creating a nice health compound that can be used for everything from weighing babies to testing for STDs to simply ensuring an inviting space for someone that wants to consult the health worker. And maybe someday, we'll have a birthing table and women will give birth in a safe, sterile setting instead of on the floors of their huts.

Eventually, the planning process for the project intensified a bit, and I dove into the grant-writing portion. I made sure that the people of my community understood what was coming and what their role would be. I engaged in a serious heart-to-heard with the health committee, the two village health workers, and my two village counterparts, and - using my very best Wolof - I explained the parameters of the grant, stressing that while I would be the one seeking funding, it would be the members of the community, led by the health committee, who would plan and execute the ultimate building of the wall. Additionally, I made sure that we agreed that the wall's construction was only the first step; that once this had been accomplished - rather, even before it is completed - we would do what we could to make care and preventative health discussions a priority in the village. Thus, accord was reached. I suggested that we convene the rest of the village to explain the details of the project - especially important considering that we decided that the community members would be responsible for a contribution of rocks and sand for the wall and a certain percentage of the monetary funding - and the committee insisted that the meeting take place the following night, after dinner time. Though a nighttime meeting seemed bizarre to me, I went with their counsel . . . and sure enough, post-dinner-hour the following evening, under a star-speckled sky in the light-free village square, all my neighbors came streaming in, women with sleeping babies strapped to their backs, men carrying plastic chairs, and we convened. The village chief held forth; the members of the health committee held forth; I held forth; other vocal villagers had their say; and following only a modicum of dramatic yelling and banter, we agreed the a plan to build a wall around the Health Hut was indeed the crucial and much-sought-after project we had thought it to be. Everyone assured me that I had the full support of the entire village, and we all went to bed.

P.S. How am I funding this project? Through a Peace Corps grant process that asks for contributions from the volunteer's friends and family back home . . . So stayed tuned for my shameless plea for money.:-)

Chapter 2: Here's Lookin' at You, Kid

During this intense time, when I was meeting with the health committee and convening my villagers for after-hours assemblies, I was lucky enough not to be all alone. For a week, I got to host a CIEE study abroad student who was on a brief exploratory hiatus from his Dakar schoolwork. Eli was such an absolute joy - all that one could want in a person and a guest, and I couldn't help but wish that I could have been that insightful, level-headed, and downright cool when I was 21. Despite only being in the country for a couple of months, he was interested in everything, eagerly tried to keep up with the Wolof, engaged with my community, remained energetic, and never seemed intimidated. AND: he ate everything, from fermented Pulaar yogurt to dried hibiscus flowers to second lunches, which, even if nothing else had, guarenteed the undying respect of this girl.

Modu and I free the peanuts from their stalks

Eli and I chipping in.

With Ousman and Eli.

Eli and ModuChapter 3: Nice to Meat You

Senegal recently celebrated one of its most important holidays, Tabaski, which commemorates Ibrahim's sacrificing of a lamb to Allah. So, naturally, we all must sacrifice our own shared of sheep on this day . . . and my family took that concept and ran with it. Dad killed four sheep, and all of a sudden the meat feeding frenzy had commenced. Enormous bowls of (mostly) severed animal parts were carted over from the slaughter station (my nomenclature, not theirs). Adults, adolescents, children who have even nominal motor skills -- everyone was grabbing at the troughs of raw animal protein. Cooking fires sprang up seemingly from nowhere, and we roasted meat on wooden sticks scavenged off the ground -- the scene resembled some sort of perverse marshmallow roast from my favorite summer campfire. Again, this former vegetarian had all of her preconcieved notions regarding meat consumption - the parts we could eat, how we would eat them, and how they shall be cooked - turned on end.

As it turned out, this sprint turned into a meat marathon. Following the 11 AM "cocktail hour" consisting of the sheep scrap roast-off, we had a brunch of meat and potatoes, followed by a lunch of meat, potatoes, and bread. After an afternoon of parading around in our fancy tailored Tabaski outfits, we had - what else - a hearty meaty dinner. That was Day 1.

Fast-forward five days. Still eating Tabaski sheep meat, three meals a day. And yes, dear discerning reader, there's no electricity (= no refridgeration) in Ngaraf. Mmmmmm . . .

On a side note, some of my female family members took a brief break from the meat mania to braid my hair into teeny braids! My scalp ached for a few days, but it's all in the name of integration, right?

My host moms work on getting some meat off a leg.

One of many roasting stations.

Meat feeding frenzy begins.

My mom is hanging sheep intestines out to dry. She asked me to hold her chair for her, which put me straight into the spray zone for meat juices as she whipped the strands over the branches. Oh well.

Gettin' my herrr did.

My dad's four wives and his sister, looking splendid in their "hostess" outfits.

Little girlies in their best outfits.

Aunt Oulymata is decked out. There's so much fabric -- can you even see that baby she's holding?

Gussied up.

Winding down on Tabaski.

(Braid aftermath, one week later.)

Chapter 4: Gone with the Wind

Harvest time has been in full swing for a few months now. We brought in our beans and gathered our millet, and we are now, at long last, in the final stages of the peanut harvest. Eli and I helped with the "man" job -- physically detaching the peanuts from the stalks by repeatedly swinging rakes into the large mounded piles of pulled peanut stalks. More recently I've been taking part in the female half of the job, called bessing -- separating the peanuts from the sticks and stalks and what nots that are mixed into the huge mound (a task that my Djolof compatriots very distinctly relegate to the women). The precess here is absolutely elegant in its simplicity: the women hold the mixed buckets of peanuts and chaff above their heads, and then they wait for the wind. And (sing it!) when the wind blows, the buckets will dump, and when the buckets dump, the peanuts will fall, and the chaff will be blown away, once and for all. Cool, huh? Using nothing but the power of the wind and the relative density properties of peanuts and their dry chaff material, my people have devised a relatively efficient method for separating huge messy jumbles into tidy piles of peanuts rekk.

And for what it's worth, these women are total warriors -- for a couple weeks now, they've been going into the fields everyday, morning 'til night, skipping lunch and taking advantage of every gust of wind until the sun goes down. I've gone with them whenever I can, and goodness, I get hungry, no matter how many peanuts I munch.

(I couldn't help but note that a good day for bessing is a like a good day for sailing: warm, but not hot, with a steady strong breeze. Made me smile.)

Gewal and Nancy dump their peanuts as the wind blows.

The women after a long day of bessing.

Heading home after a day in the f ields.

The product of a well-sorted mound of peanuts. Beautiful!

Chapter 5: Riding the Gravy Train to Peace and Carrots

As we saw for the 4th of July and Halloween, PCVs love to travel for good ole American celebrations, and Thanksgiving was no exception. The kids in the far North - the region surround St. Louis / Ndioum, generally referred to as the Futa - hosted this party. Ann Marie, Justin, Rachael, Steve, Mary and I headed out of Linguere last Tuesday night having no idea what we were getting ourselves into, and it ended up being some of the more harrowing, gut-wrenching travel that I've experienced. We got packed in, we got piled high, we got kids on our laps and knees up to our chins . . . and I'll let some pictures tell the rest of the story.

It was rough, but the adventures proved worthwhile. It's always fun to see a new area of the country, and Ndioum offers a great river for swimming. On Thanksgiving day, after a morning of killing and plucking chickens and turkeys, we feasted and danced in classic PC Senegal style. Whew.

We stopped mid-night to rest for a few hours in a some random Pulaar village in the middle of the desert. Here's Steve and I up early to search for a car for the next leg of our journey.

Justin and Steve take measures to keep the massive amounts of dust out of their eye, throats, lungs on one leg of the trip.

Some of our truck-mates.

Too much dust to see the car that's not far behind us . . .

Arrived safely; ready to go for a swim with our Northern compatriots.

Doing our share of the plucking . . .

Dancing? And waiting to catch the football, I think . . .

The men of the North - Jonno, Evan, and Paul - show off some Senegalese haute couture.

And now for the return trip . . . packed in on Leg 1.

Return trip, Car #3: Do you see how far below us those people on the ground are? That's how much baggage was piled on top of this pick-up, and we sat on top of that for many hours.

A beautiful sunset as we enter the final hours of the World's Longest and Most Painful Day of Travel.

What else?

The kids and I transplanted our first set of trees at the school, and I'm hoping with all my heart that at least some of them are alive when I return to the village in a week.

Now, after a quick few days in the village and a restful watermelon-eating day in Linguere, we're about to be on the road again, this time for our West Africa All-Volunteer conference in Thies. After that, I'm hoping to have some good couple weeks of respite and work in Ngaraf before the New Years celebrations, etc. tug at my heart strings.

Goodness. Long enough for you? Thanks for reading, team. (or skimming. Or just being here. I get it, really :-)

Happy Hannukah!

Sala puts a flamboyant seedling in the ground.

With Brian, savoring the last moments of watermelon season by eating excessive amounts of it.

I recently finished reading "When a Crocodile Eats the Sun," a memoir about Mugabe's decimation of Zimbabwe and the impact it has had on one native white family. In it, the narrator, Peter Godwin, makes this poignant avowal:

"I feel like weeping. Weeping at the way Africa does this to you. Just as you're about to dismiss it and walk away, it delivers something so tender. One minute you're scared shitless, the next you're choked with affection."

For some reason, I was immediately struck by this quotation, by its striking honesty and by my visceral awareness of its truth in my own life.

Unlike Godwin, I'm not living in a veritable warzone, forced to watch the country of my birth and rearing go from being "Africa's breadbasket" to "Africa's dustbowl." Senegal is a world away from Zimbabwe, and in most cases I'm eager to avoid generalization about a continent made up of 54 distinct countries and countless tribes, ethnicities, cultures, and languages.

But something about what Godwin had to say help specific resonance with my experience here, as far as the way that this place - Africa - can shuffle you between polar opposite emotional extremes from one moment to the next. I know that I frequently have to take pause -- literally, to stop what I am doing -- when I find myself experiencing that sudden shift from utter, abysmal frustration/fear/loneliness/anger to utter appreciation/love/wonder/affection for the moment and the place.

As I write this, by candlelight in my hut, exhausted from a frustrating day, some young men are clustered outside my room in the nearby village common area. They came together for an impromptu session of harmonious singing, accompanied by the rhythmic beating of plastic jerry cans (Which double as chairs and water containers during the day). The anxiety and aggravations of the long, hot day are melting away in the beauty of this juxtaposed tranquility.

As a simple matter of fact, the harshness of life here is constantly making its presence known, especially to a tender, under-prepared white girl from the first world, such as myself. I go days on end without ceasing to sweat. My skin - thankfully not quite as pale as that of some of my colleagues - still responds unfavorably to the relentless West African sun. I spend my days walking through sand mottled with various types of manure, and no less than one in five steps does the poor sole of my foot come crunching down on a thorn stuck in my flip-flop.

And then there are all the inveterate health problems. Few and far between are the days when we don't suffer from some sort of gastrointestinal issue, mysterious rash, or both. As my PC Volunteer Leader April put it, "Sometimes you just don't know what's going on with your body in this country."

And then -- well, and then there are the people. Specifically, there's the high-incidence of meddlesomeness, the unabashed and unending demands and constant needs, and the perpetual scrutiny that is directed at me, the toubab. Please understand that I mean it in the least ego-meniacal and self-interested way when I say that I have come to sympathize fiercely with celebrities. Everyone wants a piece of you, wants something from you -- your attention, your salutation, your money, an English lesson, a ticket to America, a US. visa, your bike, etc. Sometimes, I close my eyes and try to pretend I'm anonymous again, like if I can't see anyone, they can't see me -- like a baby playing peek-a-boo who thinks he becomes invisible when you cover his eyes.

Believe it or not, however, all this is not meant to be a senseless barrage of complaints. What I'm presenting above is a sampling of things that can get me thinking that I'm not cut out for a life in Africa, that make me wonder what the heck I'm doing here, that break down my resistances, sometimes to point of tears or tantrums or feelings of total despondency.

But alas, this is the crazy miracle of Africa: it is these same forces that bring me back to life. The same kids that make me want to run screaming can make me fall in love with their sincerity, their desire to talk and learn and help. An old man will infuriate me when he reprimands me for not greeting him, but then we get to talking and I realize what a spectacular thing it is to befriend this man, and that maybe I should have been more careful with my greeting after all. In the midst of a sweaty afternoon, a poor migrant laborer gives me a watermelon and refuses to let me pay him for it. The women have impromptu dance sessions at the women's group meeting. The kids are always dancing, too, for no ostensible reason. Some of them bang on metal bowls while the rest of them dance, and in this simple, creative fashion, they pass the time. Teenage boys chant late into the night. Women come together to cook for the whole village, on command. My four-year-old brother insists on giving me a full half of his handful of peanuts. Villager after villager forgives all my language blunders, excuses all my communication errors, likes me and respects me and takes care of me despite my general confusion and occasionally cranky disposition. I sleep under the beaming moon, pee under the stars, shower in the rain. Goats and sheep offer me consolation in bad moments; a cow's soft eyes lift my spirits on a morning run. And the terrain, generally dry and brown as could be, for three months out of the year pulls out all of the stops and blankets itself in a lively expanse of green. In unexpected and vivacious ways, Africa makes you smile out of nowhere.

It's soccer season!

The first game we hosted drew every single resident of Ngaraff to the dusty field across the road from the village. They banged on metal bowls, danced, stormed the field when our boys scored a goal, and showed off an impressive collection of aggressive/melodic French/Wolof cheers.

It was an altogether stirring performance by both the players and fans. Midway through the game, however, the afternoon heat suddenly started to turn on us, and before we knew it there was a dark thundercloud looming on the horizon . . . followed not far behind by an enormous cloud of dust. But in Ngaraff, apparently, the show must go on! The men of Ngaraff and their opponents played on as a sandstorm in the distance got closer and then covered us all in dust as it moved through . . .

. . . And the sky got increasingly dark and grimacing . . .

. . . And most of the fans picked up their plastic chairs and headed home . . .

. . . But the diehards stayed on . . .

Including my sister and my little buddy Pop Ibra . . .

And my BFF Joxal (look how cute she is!):

A few days later, most of the men and many of the young, unmarried women climbed aboard a caravan of horse-drawn charettes and shipped off for a neighboring village to watch our team compete. The rickety wooden charette, combined with fierce speeds and bad roads, made for a harrowing ride -- my 11-year-old Koumba and I clung to each other and the splintered wooden planks, especially when the charette drivers (teenage boys from the village) decided to race with one another.

The caravan:

Everyone was happy and excited, though, and the game was worth it.

The team (I painted numbers on the backs of all their jerseys!):

Victorious smiles, and happy to be home alive:

In other sporting news, Ngaraff hosted a wrestling competition with big, beefy participants from all over the bush. They wrestled in traditional Senegalese style, which is nothing like you've ever seen: an odd spectacle of two men circling each other in the ring, staring each other down, swinging their arms like feral felines while bent over at the waist, until at some point they go in for the tackle and then -- it's over! Quickly and anticlimactically, they're done, and the ref gravely raises the hands of one of the wrestlers. Also, they wear the most uncomfortable-looking, non-stretchy, tightly-tied diaper-like things as their only uniform. The whole thing is quite a display, and these people LOVE it.

Now, you probably think its been all fun and games around these parts, but we have found time to fit in some serious work. April, our PC Volunteer Leader in Linguere, organized a girls' leadership seminar as a culmination to an annual scholarship competition for middle school girls in the region. We involved the girls in activities and lessons regarding both AIDS education and "stay in school" messages. Awa, one of the most dynamic women in Senegal -- and, bless her heart -- a Peace Corps administrator, came to help us lead it. Awa has a remarkable and unique ability to address important issues that we would be hard-pressed to tackle on our own, including incest, early marriage, and condom use.

A typical "choose one side of the room based on whether or not you agree with my statements" game:

Women's empowerment, one teenager at a time:

Amazing Awa, doing her thing:

The following day, I hosted a smaller-scale event in Ngaraff with a small collection of preteen/ teen girls and their parents that I gathered in my village. Awa talked about the hazards that can prevent girls from continuing their education through to university -- everything from parents that demanding constant help pounding millet to early, unwanted pregnancy.

My young ladies:

Also: the urban agriculture volunteer in Linguere hosted a perma-garden training with her PC boss that turned out to be a smashing success:

Gardeners and farmers came from far and wide to learn about effective, efficient gardening techniques, including four women from my village:

And back in the village, the women have been working on weeding and cleaning various communal areas, such as the school and - at my suggestion - the area around the health hut! Look at them go!

Plus, intensive harvesting of the field crops has begun. I've helped pick beans 'til my fingers were raw, and I accompanied my buddy Usman on a millet stalk harvesting expedition the other day:

Harvesting millet means that the long cycle of processing it will begin -- Millet needs to be pounded several times to prepare it to be eaten in the way we eat it. This is my mom and, um, other mom working on the first pound:

The kids like to roast millet stalks and then scrape off the seeds and eat 'em hot. I think it's delicious!

I'm also still working on my little garden plot, though it's mostly dead. I've harvested loads of beans and I'm working on a compost pile in preparation for "cold season" planting. I'm basically going to start over, this time with a somewhat more premeditated approach -- I'll try to include some sort of perma-culture techniques and integrate pest management, but optimism at this stage would be premature; I'm still gardening in sand. Weeds grow great, though! Here's the somewhat photogenic cow that came by while I was weeding the other day; in a seredipitously symbiotic affair, she seemed to find my most annoying and invasive weed to be the most delicious! :-)

That's a sampling of what's going on in these parts. I'm continuing to plug away at my big health structure re-structuring -- I've started with convening the village health committee that has been defunct for years; Now I'm helping the committee put together a budget for their dream health hut compound and focusing on small-scale preventative health education.

I've spent the last week or so making my way around the country a little bit: to the beach, to a volunteer summit, to Dakar to get some work done. I'm ready to go home to my village . . but not before answering to one more very important call-of-duty: Food. Justin and Kourtney, fellow Korean food addicts, joined me in stuffing my face on my last night in Dakr:

If I look devilishly happy, I am -- Kimchee noodle tofu soup has that effect on me.

Now, with my belly full and happy, it's time for me to get back to my babies:

See why?

See you soon!

For most of the past month, the answer has been "yes" . . . though unfortunately we're not talking about a beerrun. During the month of Ramadan, Senegalese people inquire whether or you are participating in the fast by asking if you are "in Ramadan," which is often shortened simply to "Are you in?" When I say that I am indeed "in," the favorite follow-up comment is to tell me that Ramadan has made me smaller and that I've lost my "jay fonday"(large round butt), to which I respond by standing up and sticking out my bum to show that it's still there. They disagree, but say: "Don't worry, after Ramadan, we'll eat lots of of fresh yogurt and drink lots of fresh milk, and your jay fonday will come right back." Honestly, this exact exchange has taken place more that a few times.

Then one night, it happened: one man peered over the compound wall to the West, and cried out to the rest of us. A crowd gathered to peer at the sky, and rejoiced as they saw the tiny sliver of a new moon rising on the dusky horizon. And just like that, Ramadan was over, just as it had begun, with a new moon and a call to prayer.

Needless to say, I'm relieved to have Ramadan done with. Fasting everyday started to wear on my mind and body; thirst is especially debilitating, and I realized that I've never really voluntarily resisted drinking water before. Everyone was feeling the effects of it, which was made abundantly clear in the general malaise and crankiness that settled over the village. And yes, I was cranky, too.

Now that things are back to normal, it's a lot easier to talk to about projects and engage my neighbors in getting things started. What kinds of things am I looking ahead to? I want to work on helping my village rehabilitate its non-functional health hut -- a long process that will start with reviving and convening the health committee in the village, figuring out how we'll motivate (i.e., pay) our two village health workers, and then looking for ways to get a hold of a nice health hut compound and a sustainable supply of materials and medicines. (If you're furrowing your brow and feeling worried about the nature of this project... trust me, no one is more aware of the extensive and involved process that is to ensue than yours truly.) I'm also talking to my village about building latrines in compounds that don't have crappy (he he) ones, but that, too, will start with assembling the appropriate individuals to form a hygiene committee and making sure they can provide the right backing and follow-through for the project.

Answering to a sort of residual Ramadan-induced hunger - and because there's no ice cream in Linguere - I made the 7 hour trip to Dakar for a 48-hour feeding frenzy . . . and I did get some office work done while there, too. I put up a mini photo album of the trip with the other slide shows to the right.

And alas, some pictures from last few weeks:

I hope my family appreciates what I go through to bring them good gifts from town. Those bags, the cooler you can't see, are filled with mangoes, yogurt, ICE, dates, and other surprises. Yes, I did make it safely back to my village.

I even managed to take some pictures from the road!

Top view.

The funniest part about this pictures is that the kids were MOST excited about getting the cheb (rice!) in the picture. The hollered with laughter over "photo cheb photo!!"

This is Fallou, the first baby born after I installed in my village. Look what a little chub-ster he is now! To his mom, I refer to him as "the owner of the butt that is wide." She loves it!

A huge building fell down in my compound.

Check this chick out! These ladies can balance things on their in a way that seems to defy gravity.

Who would have thought that I would have come to Senegal and become a mural maniac?? This represents a pretty wide diversity of color, if I do say so myself, especially considering that I was only working with 4 pots of paint.

Ramadan's over! My dad's third and fourth wives rolled in from town and helped cook up loads of the traditional meal: meat, onions, and potatoes, eaten with bread.

The end of Ramadan is celebrated with the holiday Korite. Like most other Senegalese holidays, it's fairly anticlimatic: we sit around all day, cook, and then at some point everyone showers and puts on fancy clothes and the village gathers to admire each other's outfit. They say to each other and to me, "Lala naa la," which means "You look lovely," but literally translated to "I make the bed for you." Odd.

I broke out the old swear-in outfit and got loads of "Lala naa la"s.

Korite. My little brothers and sisters decided to dance for the photo.

My brother Cherno really wanted a solo shot. For some reason, his solemnity is so precious and endearing, and it also cracks me up.

Women of my family at a village funeral.

Senegalese women continually blow me away with their ability to cook MASSIVE amounts of food. Over wood fires, at that! Here they are cleaning rice to cook for about 500 people at the funeral, just like that. They're amazing.

Gewal and her daughter. Isn't this sweet?

The trick to entertaining yourself at any anti-climactic Senegalese party (which is all of them): Find an infant and don't let it go.

Magatte Kan, village health worker.

With my mother. I gave her the fabric for the outfit she's wearing!

Little sibs.

My dad's first wife with her oldest and her youngest. (and there are many in between)

So long for now!

Dakar weekend slideshow to the right ==>

So, here we are, Day 17 of Ramadan. Ramadan, it turns out, is a pretty amazing endeavor on the part of the world's Islamic community. All around the world, for one whole month out of every 12, a billion and half Muslim people deprive themselves of food and water for the 16 sunlit hours of the day. That's a lot of people spending a lot of time fasting. To me, it's an amazing statistic, and one that I appreciate infinitely more having spent the last couple of weeks entrenched in this experience.

In solidarity with my community (to make a long story short), I've been joining them for the daytime fast. My host mother comes a-knockin' at my door around 4:45 am; sometimes I consent and stumble groggily to the communal bowl of lukewarm left-over dinner rice, but more often, I nibble on a Cliff bar or eat nothing at all and go on sleeping. And that's that, until 7:30 pm on the dot, at which point the village mosque - which has somehow acquired a car battery for its purposes - blares the evening Call to Prayer, AKA our signal to stuff our faces. In my family, we break our fasts with bread, homemade mayonnaise, dates, spiced coffee, and water ... lots and lots of water. It's really quite lovely, actually, and makes the whole Ramadan endeavor entirely worthwhile -- to sit with my family in that moment of dusk, bathed in that delightful orange glow that occurs only at that time of day, and together nourish our bodies after having collectively gone without.

Since it's the "rainy season" (the rain in these parts has been bit sparse), it's prime time for farming. Most of the men and many of the women in Ngaraff spend their mornings in the fields, and I've enjoyed accompanying my brothers or various neighbors out into the green pastures to plant or pull weeds or do whatever needs being done. When they're done with the morning tending of the fields, the people here tend to collapse under a tree until it's time to start roasting the coffee and thinking about breaking the fast. I can't quite bring myself to be totally out of commission for so many hours, so I've been busying myself with little tasks here and there -- composting, painting murals, experimenting with natural pesticides, as well as helping my mothers with all sorts of household tasks and doing research and preparation for projects that are in the works.

In other news, one of the women in the village, Ada Mbay, gave birth a couple of weeks ago. It's not the first baby born since my installation in Ngaraff, but I've been out of town for all the other baptisms. This time around, I made sure to be there for the baptism, and went a little crazy taking pictures not only of Ada's newborn baby girl but of all my other favorite little tykes in the village. So yes, the pictures are a bit of baby mania . . . are you surprised? These babies make me so gosh-darn happy.

My mom, breaking bread as she waits for the call to prayer.

Dieng ladies of all ages pitching in on laundry day.

Men returning from the fields as a big storm rolls in.

Mbase, Sidi, Ndene

This little guy decided to build his cocoon in my shirt overnight.

The thorn I extracted from DEEP within my little brother's toe.

Few PCVs are as proud of their murals as I am, but you all KNOW how desperately artistically challenged I am. Look at the detail! I painted this!

With my bros, heading back from a morning of working in the fields.

Brand new baby before her baptism. Her name is Sohla, named after the daughter of the other Bigue in the village!

With baby Sohla and her mama, Ada.

Pop Ibra.

Nayfatu is the most beautiful baby in Ngaraff, but also cries more than ANY of her peers. I call her "Joykat" -- joy, in Wolof, means to cry, and kat is the suffix they put on words to indicate profession. (a jangalekat, for example, is a teacher - jangale means "to teach.")

Nayfatu, in a rare happy moment.

Daba Ndieye is camera-shy.

Pop Diaw thinks mommy's funny.

How great is this picture??

Pop Ibra and big sister Aissatou.

Itty bitty baby girl! Ooooof, too adorable.

Saye also doesn't like the camera.

Does this make you laugh? It makes me laugh.

This is my life.

Aida Gaye and Pop Ibra are my two favorite babies.

It's been over five months since I first stepped foot onto Senegalese soil. In someways, that seems like a deceptively short span of time when I consider the twists and turns that my life and my psyche have taken since I got here. In other ways, however, I'm a little ashamed at the time gauge it provides. Five months, and what do I have to show for it?

IST (In-Service Training) gave us an overview of some of the many projects we can undertake while here in Senegal, including permaculture gardening, improved stoves, chicken raising, bee keeping, latrine building, and youth clubs, among other things. The majority of my time, I feel, was spent looking at, identifying, and handling trees at various stages of maturity, and not one moment of that time was lost on me. Sadly, I can't claim to be a natural green thumb, but I'm determined to plant some trees in this god-forsaken desert, if it take me the rest of ma vie, sobe allah.

Now that training is really over, my cohorts and I have once again been unleashed on this country in a second American diaspora, and this time around we're supposed to show Senegal what we're made of. While I feel a certain amount of concern about my general lack of progress on, well, anything . . . I'm trying not to dwell on my progress or the degree to which it justifies my presence here. Rather, I'll say only that that that persistent wisdom, "Poop or get off the pot" has been ringing loudly in my ear. This ultimatum comes down on me not from any external source so much as from my own conscience, as you can imagine. It's time to do some work.

After IST, I spent a weekend decompressing on the beach with a few friends. After that I took a few days in the town of Linguere, helping out with work at a local farm that is part of the Master Farmer Program linked to Senegal's extensive and quite bad-ass Food Security Initative (check it out! http://www.pcsenegal.org/food_security/index.html). At long last, I've now been back in my village for only about a week, trying to figure out exactly what form my work will take.

Somedays, this feels like such an intimidating prospect that I start to crumble under its weight. One day, I stood in my half-dead, half-diseased garden, and cried, loudly. All I wanted to do was curl up in the fetal position, preferably on the next flight to LAX or SeaTac. Instead, I went on a hunt for the freshest, greenest manure I could find to add to my nascent compost pile. And that's kinda been my strategy -- call it life avoidance, but I've simply been trying to keep busy with whatever sweaty, toilsome task I can find. It's prime farming season, and I've been tagging along with people heading to their fields, spending my days helping in whatever way I can. It's hard work, but it makes me feel more a part of this community than most things, and it gives me time to think about my "real work." (Plus, who doesn't love that satisfying feeling of pulling up a deeply-rooted weed?) I don't want to jinx any potential projects yet by bellowing about them on this blog, but you can be certain that they'll have to do with gardening, trees, preventative health and access to basic health care, latrines, keeping girls in school, and dealing with trash.

I'll make this post even longer with a few anecdotes from the long-running comedy of errors that I like to call "Being Bigue:"

1. I fell in a sewer . . . again. Due to my unabashed vociferousness on the subject, most of you know about my unfortunate run-in with a poop pit in Madagascar a few years back. Thanks to that experience, my more recent ordeal seemed like little more than a dip in a kiddie pool. It happened after an especially strong rainstorm in Thies, on the last day of IST, when all the streets were flooded and the power was out; I was traipsing through the streets after a couple of beers and all of a sudden found myself waist deep in a watery pit at the gas station. As the gas station attendants, only slightly worried, helped me climb out of the hole, I tried to explain, in Wolof, how I had no idea that stupid hole was there, while Kourtney sternly reprimanded them for not having a better lit service station . . . forgetting, of course, that the power was out.

2. Mistaking them for weeds, I nearly pulled out a whole swath of healthy, important millet plants in my host mother's field in my effort to be an "extra helpful" helper. She stopped me just in the nick of time.

3. That same day in the fields, I noticed some commotion among my brothers in the neighboring field. I went over to check it out, and found that they were taking turns slamming large sticks into the ground, hooting and hollering all the time. The victim of their blows was an enormous mbet, a bizarre lizard creature, three-feet in length. (In English, a monitor lizard -- have you seen these things? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monitor_lizard). The boys then informed me, most excitedly, that they planned to eat the wretched creature, and proceeded to slash into its tough, scaly neck with a dull sickle.

4. My little brother asked me to put a band aid on his butt . . . pretty much right in the crack. He was so cute, and so unashamed himself, that I didn't even protest. But maybe I should have?

5. All that, and chickens keep getting stuck in my room -- they somehow slip in stealthily when my screen door is open, and then, upon being discovered by me, they squawk and flap their wings and try frantically to exit whence they came, bumping their beaks against the screen door that has now been closed, but which they somehow fail to notice. Isn't my life a hoot?

To anyone out there still reading, HAPPY AUGUST! To those of you rambling in the Cascades or the Rockies this season, please let the mountains know that they are at the top of my mind, and that I will return with sufficient sacrifices to Mother Gaia in two years time. For those of you preparing to attack the Minnesota State Fair, do enjoy a deep-fried Twinkie on my behalf. To those of you in Panama or Haiti, thank you for the inspiration that has seen me through to this juncture. To those of you battling the behemoth metropolis of Los Angeles, well . . . just join with me in reveling over how extremely and comically that past life of mine contrasts with the one that I currently inhabit.

I'll leave you with that, and, as always, far too many photos with obnoxiously loquacious captions.

Before IST, Team Linguere gathered to do some minor home improvements, including building this garden bed outside our house.

Have you ever seen a cashew tree sprouting out of a cashew?? I thought it was pretty neat!

Our PC Environment Education Director showing proper mango tree transplanting technique.

Stoked on our mango transplant.

Bee houses.

Tree nurseries are my life. (No, I did not plant this one . . . If I ever create anything remotely this beautiful, I'll literally jump for joy.)

How we ended up befriending and then engaging with these beefy Senegalese wrestlers at the beach is still somewhat unclear to me . . .

Dead puffer fish - it's huge!

Andrew and I actually found the opportunity to hike, of all things - imagine that! - and I was absolutely thrilled, this being the most elevation that I've gained, on foot or otherwise, since my United Airlines flight started its descent into the Dakar airport five months ago.

Ann Marie and the rest of Team Linguere, planting 200+ Procipis trees at the pilot farm.

Procipis seedlings in their new home.

With the farm owner and workers after transplanting, right before a huge storm hit.

Farmland around Ngaraff.

My brothers, weeding their peanut field.

Is this a good look for me?

It's a better look for my sister Joyja.

My siblings, helping me transplant a mango seedling. If I do say so myself, this transplanting was a perfect example of the knowledge exchange that I was so hyped about when applying to the Peace Corps: I brought the mango tree and some overly academic skills regarding outplanting fruit trees; they brought endearing enthusiasm and crucial practical knowledge on how to construct a defensive shelter that would protect our little tree from the hungry goats.

Farming, farming, farming . . . this is the tool that everyone uses to weed -- it's kind of a trowel on the end of a long pole, and they push it through the soil to cut the roots of the weeds. It's fairly efficient, and I'm getting pretty good at it, too!

Ngui, and several of her friends, saw me picking Neem seeds, and when I told them, upon their inquiry, that I would use them to make a medicine for my sick eggplant, they were practically tripping over each other as they scrambled to help me gather the seeds. It warmed my heart from the inside out and back again, and the best part is, it's not so atypical. These are really good kids.

A Garden State moment with my buddy Magatte.

My sister Penda, driving us out to the forest to get cooking wood. It was an epically fun trip with she and two other sisters.

Have you ever chopped something with an ax or hatchet? It's absurdly fun. For all my tree- hugger tendencies, I couldn't get enough of it. Am I going crazy? (I still plan to bring more efficient stoves to the village . . . don't worry.)

My sister Bitti, with our wood and our means of transport.

P.S. I've updated the "Being Bigue" album to the right.

This post is a bit of a confessional. The last couple of weeks have been spent in the company of fellow volunteers -- the 42 PCVs that I originally trained with -- and thus have been an unabashed binge of all things American. We have been indulging in gluttony and excess. We've been swimming and sunbathing. We've been passing our flashdrives between our netbooks and macbooks, sharing films and TV shows and then curling up, together or alone, for marathon viewing session of Top Chef, True Blood, and Glee. We've baked cakes (excessive amounts, of course). We've been drinking beer; we've been eating cereal, spaghetti, ethnic food, and fresh vegetables.

Also a part of this all-American bender: We've been fighting for our rights and expressing our entitlement. We've been complaining. We've been gossiping. We've shared our fears, frustrations, and existential crises (which this blogger, for one, has been relieved to learn are not limited to her). We've also shared our triumphs and exchanged ideas, been applauded and awed by and each other.

Being in such a large group of toubabs (white people) for the first time in a couple of months has been both exhilarating and exhausting, difficult and delightful. The purpose of our reunion is our In-Service Training (IST). Since PST here in PC Senegal is so heavily focused on language training, they bring us all back together after our first two months at site to receive training in more technical subjects and logistical skills. The trainings, for the most part, have been worthwhile, but as I said . . . my American cohorts have not hesitated to compain when they feel that their time is being being wasted by a particular session. And the most vocal outcry came in response to the staff's decision to lodge us with our original PST homestay families, in nearby villages, instead of at the training center. A band of renegades raised a ruckus, sending a petition through the ladder of PC beauracracy until we earned permission to stay in the rooms at the training center instead. If ever one needed a reminder of the American tendency to exchange blows over that to which we feel entitled, these recent couple of weeks have provided it.

Before comign to Thies for IST, I spent a few days in Dakar, which turns out to be an exceptionally cool city, with a beautiful coastline and food that can bring your taste buds back from a regrettably latent state.

And now, a few pictures that capture some of the moments of American excess that I've had the joy of experiencing since I left site a few weeks ago. Many of them involve food. Please don't judge . . . in this country, you kinda gotta get while the gettin's good, you know. Soon enough, it will be back to millet couscous, and plus Ramadan's coming! What's a girl to do but overindulge when she has the chance?

Dakar, looking fine.

The view of the Presidential Palace (and beyond) from my friend Joey's apartment, who just completed her service and, ever so sadly, returned home to America.

A touching moment with Kourtney.

Sarah and Kourtney, two of my best friends here in Senegal. Truth be told, we spent more than one full day at the American Club in Dakar, swimming, tanning, drinking good coffee and eating french fries.

Italian deliciousness.

French cultural center. Trying to live up to sophistication that our wine bottle suggests, and clearly failing.

French deliciousness.

Steve and Kim, excited about Jello at the Dakar region meeting.

Dakar region volunteers, "meeting."

Dinner at a Chinese restaurant, where they only spoke Mandarin (good thing we had Justin, a native speaker, with us!), was also delicious. But get this: we were seated on the 2nd floor, and the food was delivered to us on this shelf, lowered on a rope from the 3rd-floor kitchen. Sometimes, the world is . . . simply amazing.

The view from the car one of the days that we had to commute to our old home stay villages.

Jenae, Jillian, and Maddie, cake decorating machines!

So proud of our three cakes: Super Stage Shout Out - Nature Scene - Map/Flag of Senegal

Celebrating all IST birthdays, and those that fell during our first months at site.

Jillian, making a hasty escape after lighting the firecrackers!

You are here.

Often times, while lying on my cot or hunching over my garden plot or peddling my bicycle down the rickety road, I'm tickled to visualize my location on a map. In my mind's eye, I like to picture a camera zooming out in concentric circles in the style of a Ken Burns documentary. On a daily basis, the sphere of my life is fairly limited, the concentric circles starting in my little room, expanding out to the family courtyard, and then gradually rippling out to the Ngaraff village limits. Essentially, I'm confined to, let's say, a half-mile square piece of terrain, and, were in not for my morning runs (which take me either down the paved road or deep into the bush), I would tread the same 400 yards of sandy path over and over again for many days on end.

I'm hardly dismayed by the state of affairs -- quite the opposite! Ngaraff is a place filled with wonderful people and a many delightful moments everyday.

See? These are my siblings in my room:

These are the lovely ladies that helped me put together my tree nursery:

And this is one my favorite kids - we crack each other up! (For example, he dared me that I couldn't take a picture of myself, and then when I took this one, he collapsed in a fit of laughter. So great.)

And these are my adorable twin brothers:

And we do lots of fun things in Ngaraff, like give kids baths...

(I don't know why these guys aren't having a good time... I think getting sponge bathed in a bucket in the middle of the hot afternoon looks like a ball!)

... And do hair...

And do laundry...

When all my little siblings wanted to "help" me do laundry, even the boys, I was eager to capture the moment as proof of the Gender and Development (GAD) work that we're supposed to do. :-)

The reality of my limited geographic sphere, however, does result in certain eventualities:

1- I can't stop reading anything and everything that I can get my hands on -- I think books are filling the void created by the intellectual under-stimulation I find myself experiencing.

2- I talk to myself. And, in exasperating moments, I allow little outbursts of English to my non-English speaking neighbors -- It's enormously liberating, and, mentioning this to my Peace Corps compatriots, I've learned that I'm not the only one in the habit of doing this.

3- I am compelled to travel, to explore, to roam, to make my way around my region and this country to the greatest extent that I am able.

Recently, I got the opportunity to explore the area immediately surrounding Ngaraff - the next greatest of the concentric circles - when I was recruited to help with a round of polio vaccinations being administered by the health post in a nearby town.

The first day of vaccinations, I assisted the village midwife and the village health agent (both exceedingly kind and lively women) in treating all of Ngaraff's children under the age of five, visiting every compound and squeezing two drops of the vaccine into each little expectant mouth.

The second day, we moved out into the countryside to vaccinate the children of the

Pulaar villages within walking distance. When I say "villages," however, I should clarify that in most cases, this consisted of a small cluster of huts set among the sandy, desolate terrain, separated from other such outcroppings by miles of barely distinguishable donkey cart tracks.

A typical Pulaar encampment:

In this fashion, we roamed through the desert, trying our best to reach all the compounds we could. Often, what we came across was not even a clump of huts, but a few tarps strung between thorny trees, or a mattress laid out under a donkey cart -- such a settlement, more often than not, being home to several children under the age of five, all of which were being attended to by an older sibling who usually wasn't older than eleven or twelve.

An example of a makeshift encampment:

Sometimes, we just found some kids sitting under a tree and, not sure which random bundle of huts they belonged to, we squirted the inoculating drops into their little mouths right then and there.

As a side note, Pulaars tend to have much groovier hair styles and a lot more flair on their clothing. Take this kid, for example:

The third day of polio vaccinations required the use of the health post's four-wheel drive truck to take us even deeper into the Pulaar forest. The truck brought us to what seemed like endless clumps of huts similar to the ones we'd visited on foot the day before -- except these were even farther apart and farther from the main road and from water sources; the people in them also seemed far more taken aback by the presence of a white person. More than once, some brazen grandmother snatched the lightest skinned baby from the arms of its mother and tried to offer it to me as a gift to bring back to America, and I'm fairly certain that in one little village, they showed me a newborn -- less than a week old, for sure, so not yet baptized and thus not yet named -- and informed me that her name would be Bigue, after yours truly. True story.

The Pulaars, like the Wolofs, are an ethnic group with a very strong presence in Senegal. Needless to say, my foray into their dispersed and remote communities gave me a new perspective on the circumstances, the opportunities, and the worldview of the people of my village. My glimpse of rims of the circles that stretch far into the desert made it feel like we here in Ngaraff are well-supplied with amenities and within easy access of anything we could need or want. As always, it's all relative, and it's all about perspective.

As one continues to zoom out from the village of Ngaraff, you have the region of Linguere and its adjacent region Dahra (separate according to the Senegalese government's delineation, but acting as one under PC Senegal... and not even an officially recognized Peace Corps region -- we're technically, and absurdly, a member of the Dakar region, but I digress.) Over the (nonexistant) river and through the (sparse) trees, across the plains of Pulaar nomads, we come to the village of Yang Yang, where my friend Justin lives. To get there, I bike 20 km on pavement, then make a right turn at Dahra... onto an abominable excuse for a road, a gravelly dirt trail that years of truck use have left rutted and bumpy, making for a painful bike trip.

This is me and my companions, April and Joey, on the paved portion:

40 km down the rutted dirt road, after passing nothing but small Pulaar huts and lots of packs of sheep and cattle, we finally made it to Yang Yang, sweaty and tired but pleased with our accomplishment:

Yang Yang, it turned out, is a bizarre oasis in the desert. Its bizarreness stems from the wealth that is apparent throughout the village, being located in the middle of nowhere, a seeming village in the sky. It has electricity, satellite TV and a refrigerator at every house, a hospital, a police station, a water tower, a massive community garden, streetlights, a museum . . . and only 200 residents, by Justin's estimate. Truly bizarre. One reason for its puzzling pre-eminence is that Yang Yang was the home Djoloff (Wolof) kings, and thus remains the figurative seat of the Djoloff empire -- it's actually a fascinating history, hence the museum. On the museum's second floor, we came across a statue, just realistic enough to be creepy, of the last Djoloff king . . . which of course begged that we do silly things with it and take pictures:

Yang Yang also has extra beautiful baobabs and baobab-lined sandy paths. . .

. . . And a baker of village bread who let us watch as he rolled out his loaves and baked them in his wood-fire clay oven. (Note: Senegal has two kinds of bread -- delicious village bread, which is soft and luscious, and machine bread, which is gross, airy, perpetually stale, and only kind of bread I can find in Ngaraff.)

So that's Yang Yang.

I also had the chance to do some distance traveling this past month, to the Kedougou region, in the Southeast of the country. The 15-hour car ride down there was first made better . . . and then made much, much more uncomfortable due to the fact that I got to sit next to the world's cutest baby in the uncomfortable far back of the car for a good portion of it:

Kedougou host PC Senegal's annual 4th of July celebration, and what a party it was! In case anyone was worried about ex-patriot loyalty, I can assure you that 100+ Americans an ocean away from their motherland are able to celebrate her freedom in top style.

I mean, just look at all this joy:

As always, Mikael and I representing for the Loggers:

Kourtney, my partner in crime and beer pong:

Perhaps more exciting than the party was the glory of Kedougou itself. It's a place where goats look well-fed and women ride bicycles along tree-lined street that have been cleaned of their trash. Oranges and avocados and bananas are found at on every corner. Best of all, however, was the green . . . the green, everywhere you looked, in every direction, up to your knees, poring itself mercilessly into the fresh air.

The Gambia River flows right through town, allowing for hours of floating and splashing fun:

And, in the nearby national park, there are warthogs! (which the restaurant at our hotel made into very popular sandwiches).

Now, if you'll allow me a semi-sequitar Tom Robbins-esque rant, I would like to take this opportunity to say this: it has officially been confirmed that Linguere is - by far - the most hardcore region in all of PC Senegal. Nowhere else are volunteers gardening in sand only. Nowhere else does the "rainy season" mean 2 - 3 big rains. No one else is so far from any large body of water. On the 12-hour drive back from Kedougou, the landscape got progressively drier, browner, and less populated with trees, and the seven Linguere volunteers in the car could only exchange glances of solidarity, knowing that desert is hardening us and that that's for the best (Right?).

Now, I've probably gone and scared off any potential visitor I might have in to this country. How about I make you this promise, however: If you come to Senegal, I will take you to Kedougou, and we can play in their waterfalls and tall grass together. :-D

Okay. I'm done denouncing my region. To be fair, the area surrounding Ngaraff has gotten much more beautiful of late, due to the onset of the "rainy season." With astounding rapidity, the dead brown ground has come alive in a kind of reverse spring: instead of melting snow and ice giving way to budding life, it's the slight cooling of temperatures and the saturation of the dusty landscape with long-needed rain that is allowing green grass to grow and leave to fill the trees. It's beautiful.

See?

The rains also drove the villagers out in hordes to plant their seeds in the fields that sprawl out from Ngaraff. I accompanied my mother and brothers to their field the other day and had a grand time seeding cowpeas and bissap seeds into the rolling, (semi) green pastures.

Are you all wondering when I'm going to do real work? I will, I promise. I'm in Dakar at the moment, exploring the city, attending some meetings, seeing off an America-bound friend, and eating delicious food. Next week I return to Thies for a two-week In-Service Training at the Peace Corps center. When I return to the the village after that, I hope to have skills and motivation to hit the ground running. Inchallah.

This entry is way too long for it's own good, due to the fact that I wrote most of it on lonely nights in my hut. Thanks for sticking with me.

It was 6:30 pm - daytime - according to the indiglo time on my watch. But the sky was pitch black -- a kind of black where every bit of light is obscured from the sky and you can't see your hand in front of your face.

Not ten minutes before, casually strolling home under bright blue skies after watering my garden (and you'll see the irony in this in a minute), I met my teenage friend Ablaye on the path, who, as usual, wanted to show off an English phrase he knew. On this admittedly hot afternoon, he said, "Today is very hot, because I think that the rain, it comes." I turned to the East and saw what he was talk about: low dark clouds that seemed to be heading our way. Still feeling no sense of urgency, I slowly made my way home and helped my sister check on the fish that we had been drying in the sun.

Before I knew what was happening, though, there was electricity in the air, the wind kicked into gear, people were running and screaming, and I myself felt a certain panic surge within my body. I dashed into my room just in time to grab my solar charger from my open-air douche and slam the doors and window. Then, I huddled on the porch with my family as everything went black, right before my eyes... and stayed that way for a good few minutes. These were the sandstorms of which I had heard tell, but no description or story could have prepared me for this. When the sand had blown through, the sky lightened - slightly - and then the rains came, rains like nothing I have EVER seen. This was so much more than rain "coming down in sheets" -- it was more like a hundred powerful fire hoses had been turned on and pointed at the village at a 45 degree angle. It didn't stop, or even lighten, for at least an hour. Never before have I witnessed such a spectacular testament to the fury that Mother Nature can exact. It was the kind of thing that made me feel entirely powerless, and that made me glad that I didn't have to worry about protecting small children or animals.

Also, it must be noted, my fellow villagers seemed basically un-phased by the weather phenomenon. Not 30 minutes after the worst of the storm had passed, my sister alerted that dinner was ready! The next morning, my neighbors were cheerfully rebuilding their stick fences. The first verbal acknowledgment of abnormal events that I was able to extract from my neighbors came later in the morning, when I went to help the women prepare a bulk of beignets for the school party. They nonchalantly changed their daily "How is the morning?" diatribe to include "How was the wind?" instead of "How is the heat?" Other than that, business as usual!

Below are some pictures that really don't do justice to the storm I experienced, but that's because I was running by the time it got really dark.

The approaching storm.

Notice the kid running for his compound - that's when I knew!

Early on in this whole shebang, I told myself that when the day arrived in which I could easily tell the difference between the sound of a human child crying and a baby goat bahhing, I would feel successfully integrated into Senegalese society. That day has yet to arrive. I'm getting better at this, but when I hear a high-pitched wail outside my window, my guess as to the species of the cryer is often wrong. So, happily, I have some work to do! Always good to make progress but feel you can still improve.

I would say that that is about where I am with most of my other goals related to adapting, integrating, conversing, etc. -- I'm progressing but by no means fully accomplished. A favorite Wolof proverb says: "Ndanka, ndanka, mooy jappo golo ci nay" -- "Slowly, that is how you catch a monkey in the forest." Patience . . . thus is the lesson of the past month of my life. (In the best way possible.)

My recent phone conversations with friends and family back home have reminded me that certain aspects of my life, while quotidian and unglorious to me, may still be somewhat mysterious and - bless your souls - interesting to you. Below is a cadre of somewhat mundane vignettes. For those of you not interested, just skip to the pictures, specifically the last one, which exposes the truth about the insanity of myself and the rest of the Linguere PC family.

Food -- The situation is not dire, but it's not great. For lunch, we crouch around a large metal bowl, generally filled with greasy rice. My family is posh enough to have vegetables in the bowl, but, out of necessity, all the veggies have been boiled to the point of being able to be squished between a thumb and a forefinger. My host mom does that part for me and then tosses the chunks into my corner of the bowl, her assumption being that can't get my own greasy mushy morsels with my spoon. Dinner is millet couscous or more greasy rice, and the dinner bowl can be a dangerous rodeo -- it's dark out, and sometimes when I blindly jam my spoon into the bowl, it comes back out and enters my mouth with something questionable on it, such as a chunk of rubbery/gelatinous meat of unknown variety.

My favorite activity these days is to help cook, both with my family and at other compounds around the village. It gives me the pretense of purpose (which, sometimes, feels in short supply as I wonder my village), and the women love to teach me! Everyone gets a hoot out of having Bigue in the kitchen, and they all want to hear every specific task in which I took part. The woman of the kitchen will announce, proudly: "She put the fish in the pan! She chopped onions! She took the fish out of the pan! She pounded tamarind!" It is in moments like these that the people of my village make me so, so happy.

To me, unexciting, or even yucky, food is not really a significant source of strife -- by no means is it the most difficult or problematic element of my service. That said, a girl can dream. And I have a lot of food fantasies. I dream of ginger-garlic snow pea stir fries and clam chowder and enormous troughs filled with baby greens, arugula, cherry tomatoes, avocados, and other raw salad delights. Mmmmm.

Sometimes, though, even reality serves up the things dreams are made of. So, picture this: several PCVs (Ann Marie, Kim, Justin, and myself, as well as the veteran Linguere-region volunteers), all seated around a large table, hunched over plates heaped with spaghetti and salad, our elbows dug into the table top and our forks clutched in our fists as we shamelessly shovel noodles into our mouths, pausing only to tear into unreasonably large chunks of garlic bread. This was the scene last night when we were invited to our missionary friends' house for dinner. Apparently, three weeks straight in our respective villages left us not only with a mad hunger for marinara sauce and lettuce, but also with a noticeable deficiency in table manners. (potentially due to the lack of tables in this country?) Luckily, Dirk and Sarah are used to hosting PCVs, and they accepted us for the overexcited, under-mannered eaters we've become.

Transportation -- This weekend, to get to the closest bank and withdraw cash, Ann Marie, Justin, and I (my nearest neighbors from my training group) traveled to Louga, a larger city about 120 km from Linguere . . . a three hour trip on, perhaps, the worst road in Senegal. The trip there, we traveled in a sept-place, which turned into a harrowing adventure in which the driver swerved from one shoulder (i.e., dirt trail along the side of the road) to the other, often narrowly missing concrete markers. On the return trip the following day (after an afternoon and night of exploring Louga and hanging out with PCVs there), we traveled in a larger type of van/bus that volunteers call an Alhum. This time, we went much slower but ended up having a much more pleasant ride - the reduced speed made it less terrifying.

Why is an Alhum called an Alhum? Because they all have the word Alhumdahlilaay written across the front. This means "Allah is good" or "Thank God;" in other words, the buses are thankful for the constant miracle of them reaching their destination. Hmmmm. This tells us something, I think.

Within town, my preferred mode of transportation is the horse-drawn cart, or charette. Open-air and lots of fun!

Sleep - Since I installed at the peak of Senegal's hot season, it's been way too hot to sleep inside. Instead, I usually set up my little canvas camping cot in the courtyard with the family. There's an obvious lack of privacy, as I generally have mats of kids to either side of me and sheep nuzzling me as I sleep, but I can see the stars! Recently, the winds have been picking up at night and kicking sand into my face, so, believe it or not, I've taken to sleeping in my douche and found it to be an absolutely lovely option -- cooler than my room, but protected from the wind, totally private, and still offering a view of the stars! Soon, the rains will come and drive us all inside, which, for me, will afford a welcome opportunity to close my door for the first time ever and enjoy and some legitimate privacy.

Health - Mine has been great! No travelers' diarrhea for this girl, alhumdahlilaay. (Though, as I write this, I'm experience some serious stomach pains. Let's hope hubris hasn't gotten the best of me.)

Mental Health - Also intact. During my first conversation with my (real) mother after I installed, she confessed that she had been genuinely worried that I had had some kind of nervous breakdown. Thankfully (and remarkably), I have not.

Negatively impacting my mental health, while simultaneously fortifying it and chipping away at my ego, however, is the amount that I am forced to hear about the former volunteer, whom I replaced. Dana's village name, Awa, continues to fill the conversations of my neighbors, and the details that I know about her service are immense -- facts such as what she ate, what she carried on her head, what she farmed (and how expertly she did it), what sorts of ailments she had, etc. In truth, their obsession makes perfect sense, and the fact that Dana had such a positive and meaningful relationship with the people of Ngaraff is only a good and beautiful thing, as well as entirely justified. She did great work, and I have done nothing so far to earn this kind of respect, so I am happy just knowing that the potential for such a relationship exists. They are already embracing me in so many ways, and I them.

Also, they did tell me that I am learning Wolof faster than Awa and that I have prettier hair. Hey, I'll take what I can get.

Babies-- What can I say? They're the best part of this whole thing. The other day, I had one strapped to my pack and another I was cradling in my arms, and I was happy as a clam.

Etc. -- I'm out of the village now for about a week, taking care of various logistical things (the Louga bank adventure being one), and helping out with some regional projects, like a basketball tournament for middle schoolers that was organized by the older volunteers. Tomorrow I travel to Ann Marie's village for a 3-day intensive Wolof seminar, and I return to my village on Friday. The next couple of weeks in the village will be quite busy. I have plans to bike to Justin's village (60 km in the dirt!), paint a mural, assist with some vaccination days being conducted by the local health post, help out with a mosquito net distribution a PCV is doing in a neighboring village, keep truckin' on my garden, and finish up surveying my community, all before I travel for 4th of July festivities.

Well, you've reached the end of another long blog entry. Have I told you lately that I love you? I really do appreciate the support that I get from everyone reading this. All my best to you, and thank you!

A little brother and his friend - they come into my room and pretend to help sweep, but what they really want is for me to take a picture of them, or just to hang out and see what kinds of funny things the white girl is doing.

A favorite baby, Aida, getting bath. (There are few things cuter than a bathing baby.)

Aida with her mother, also named Aida, who is the village's midwife.

A morning running route.

Just some kids, doing what they do -- being cute.

Look at the face!!

How I rolled into Linguere last week.

Justin in the sept-place on the way to Louga. That thing dangling outside the window? That's the poor live chicken that was strapped to the roof (and we thought we had it bad inside the car).

Reliable transportation in Louga.

Me and Justin with Emilie, our PCV hostess with the mostess in Louga. Me and Emilie make up 28.5% of the volunteer population in this country that is named Emily. Can you guess how many Senegal PCV Emily's there are?

Ann Marie "helping" the students warm up before the basketball tournament.

Linguere-region volunteers, before the day got crazy (see below).

Students getting into their basketball teams -- they were amazingly well-behaved!

Okay. This is Joey. She's a third year volunteer who did her original service in the Linguere region but has been working in Dakar for the last year and is getting ready to leave the country. Her idea - seeing as there is not one body of water anywhere near Linguere - was to fill up multiple beignoirs (large plastic buckets) with water and ice, and have each of us sit in them, reserving a few beignoirs to be centrally placed and hold beer and ice. Brilliant, no? We thought so.

Here's Team Linguere, sitting in our beignoirs. Do you think they sent us all here together because we're crazy, or do you think we all got crazy after living here in the desert? There's no way to tell for sure . . .

I'm back from my first stint in my site, and I'm alive! I biked into Linguere this morning to see if the local Eaux et Forets project could hook me up with some seeds for my tree pepiniere, and now I'm sitting at our missionary friends house, reeping the benefits of internet, cold water, fresh food, and English conversation.

What do I say? I kinda want to ask if you want the good news or the bad news first, but that would be a joke, because I don't feel like anything going on in my life or my head can be classified in those terms. I won't pretend like the last two and a half weeks haven't been a series of emotional ups and downs - joy at small victories, mixed with loneliness and frustration beyond what I ever could have imagined - but nothing, simply nothing, is wrong.

One day this week, I sent a text message to some fellow volunteers along the lines of: "my mom is an evil alien from a planet of cold and malicious beings." This was dramatic. Earlier that day I'd had a run-in with my host mother -- or, what I've come to realize, was less of a run-in and more of a cultural misunderstanding. The details of the run-in/misunderstanding aren't really worth relating, but my discomfort with my host mother has been a point of stress with me from Day 1. My father, the chief of the village (who spends most of his time in other parts of the country and is rarely home) kind of shook things up when he "gave" me to his second wife, who seems to have a tense relationship with his first wife, who was the previous volunteer's mother... and they both seem to be somewhat jealous of the third and fourth wives who live in a nice house down the road in the town of Dahra.

I say all this not to complain, but rather to share my small but widening lens on Senegalese emotions and motivations -- the set of cultural behaviors that stretches beyond what you can learn from a book or a movie or a brief visit, and the stuff that brought me to the Peace Corps. My family here is my best "tool" in this regard, and the fact that I was having difficulty getting along with them has been an upsetting distraction, to say the least. Slowly, however, what had appeared to be a sticky misfortune is - maybe, just maybe - revealing itself to be the most valuable teaching tool. Realizing that my "run-in" with my mother was really no such thing, understanding that her hurt face indicates not disdain but concern over her own performance as my caretaker, coming to terms with this and many similar disconnects, in my family and my village -- all has contributed to instructive growing pains that revealed themselves not in one epiphanic moment but in a shadowy edification that has yet to fully develop. My ego is still bruised, and I know that much of my loneliness continues to stem from my shaky cultural footing, especially as it pertains to my family. But I'm getting there, and I'm learning, and that's the best I can do.

If all that I'm saying sounds convoluted, confused, or contradictory, you're right... on this constant journey of self-discovery (alas, this has certainly turned out to be one), I am still sailing turbulent emotional and mental seas. (Forgive me,O grammer gods, aka my loving parents, if that was a mixing of metaphors). As a girl who always did wear her heart of her sleeve, however, I can't seem to stop myself from bringing my mixed-up babble right here to blogspot. So welcome aboard! I hope you don't get sea sick.

But, enough with the flowery pontifications, right? You're probably wondering how the work is coming along. Right now, my work consists mostly of getting to know the people around me, planting a garden and tree nursery, conducting an extensive Peace Corps-mandated baseline survey of my village, and, uh, figuring out what the heck is going on around me -- actually a taller order than one might expect, especially when my Wolof, while getting better everyday, is still frustratingly underdeveloped. Anyway, on a given day, I take a run in the morning, then try to get some gardening work done before the sun starts frying eggs right before your eyes. Then I walk around. I chat. I walk into random compounds and plop myself down, go through the greeting parade (it's long), ask questions, usually get teased, and generally get asked if I have a husband and if I can cook, even though most of my neighbors already know the answers by now. I go home for lunch and a mid-day rest period (though it's been too hot to sleep) and wait until the afternoon cools off enough to start walking and talking again, or to do some dirty digging.

Oh! And I apologize for the schizophrenia, but I have another new name. Upon installation in Ngaraff, I was re-baptized Bigue Dieng (pronounced BEE-gay Jang). I had a little trouble warming up to it at first, but now, as I walk through the village, I hear it squeaked by every tot that can talk, and it's hard not feel endeared to a name so sweetly shouted. "Beeeegay!" If I don't respond: "BEEEEEGAAAAY!!!!"

Early in the day, people here traditionally greet each other by asking how the morning is. Most times, the reply is: "Suba sang nii, rekk" -- "The morning is like this, only," sometimes with a comment about the heat or (if it's under 90 degrees F out at 8 am) the cold tacked on. I usually find that this quip calms and brightens my mood a bit. It's so simple, and so pleasant. Just like my presence here, the morning is what it is. This is the life that I dreamed of and worked toward - for better or for worse - for years before I made it to Africa. To be amongst these people, feeling their pains, laughing their laughs, learning their habits, holding their babies, LIVING THIS LIFE - this is what I wanted. Now I'm here, and it's not easy, but I'm in the thick of it, and all I can do is my best. And sometimes my best is just to be here. So be it. The morning is like this.

This is the dust pile that I sweep up about 3 -4 times a day when the sand storms roll in. In this, the hottest months of the year, right before the rainy season, the heat's been getting up around 120 degrees and the winds, occasionally fierce, have sent the dry sand swirling.

Returning from the garden. The school director took this, saying that I needed to have it "for my father back in America."

My counterpart, Marieme, with her bucket of dried cow manure to match the one I had on my head. She's ready to help me pound and sift this sh*t, literally. Marieme is amazing, and never makes me feel stupid, even when I ask silly questions, like: "Are we going to get in trouble with the owner of this manure?"

The first stages of my pathetic little garden. If it looks like we're gardening in sand, you'd be right. Hence the ever-tenacious manure-hunt -- it takes lots of it to create viable soil.

My little brother and my fabulous, hard-working sister. This is the kitchen.

My firecracker of a mother, manning the "market" that she sets up every morning outside our courtyard for villagers to get their vegetables and fish.

The endless hunt for dried cow pies, and how completely desensitized all the kids are to them, never fails to amuse me.

Shower power hour at my house. 6-year-old Say Sisee is being soaped up by Bitti; 5-year-old twins Hussein and Assan are waiting their turn.

By request: my douche (bathroom/shower)

. . . Look out your window, and I'll be gone. So says the immortal Bob Dylan.

Hurray, Hurray, we're on our way, we're off to great places, today is the day! So says the immortal Dr. Suess, and today, 40 new volunteers joining the ranks of Peace Corps Senegal are OFF to great villages around Senegal.

Kim, Ann Marie, Justin, and I have spent the last couple of days in our regional capital, Linguere, buying everything we need to install - buckets, mats, machetes - amidst a veritable Sahara sandstorm. Now, the hot, hot breezes will blow us out of town and into our respective sites. Wish us luck!

Love,

Emily

Looking off into the desert from the roof our regional apartment/office building in Linguere (which we are actually moving out of -- happily, we're transitioning to a larger house down the street!). This photo does justice to neither the amount of sand in the air nor the barrenness of the desert.

P.S. I have a new address! Look over there ==>> :)

P.P.S. I've also added a couple of new photo albums (some of the photos have been in the blog body before, but lots are new) and some fun links to other PC Senegal blogs. Enjoy!

And we're off!

It was been an eventful couple of days here in Peace Corps Senegalandia. Thursday we had a big fete for our host families from our training villages -- we bused in our moms and random other family members and showed them a grand ole time: music, dancing, a delicious chicken lunch feast, speeches, beignets, boissons, and more dancing.

Friday was Swear-In Day, which is a big deal in the Peace Corps miniworld. We left early from the training center, and entered Dakar a couple of hours later under police escort, which - in all honesty - was one of the more fun experiences of my entire life: A moto-cop leading our Peace Corps parade, flashing his lights and directing people to pull off both sides of the road as we drove by.

The ceremony was held at the American Embassy, with a speech by the American ambassador, the PC country director, and a few other big shots, as well as newly sworn-in volunteers from each language group. Yours truly made the Wolof speech! Afterward we gorged ourselves on minipizzas, tartes, and various other hors d'oeuvres. Below are several pictures from the party, party, partying that we've been doing. :-)

Now that we are officially PEACE CORPS VOLUNTEERS, have raised our right hands and sworn to serve and protect the US constitution, so help us god, we have to leave the comfort and security of the training center and our training villages and go out into the world to fight the good fight. For most of us, this happens early tomorrow (Sunday) morning, when, laden down with everything we own, we will board "sept-places" (rickety station wagons; the preferred form of public transportation in this country) and head out of town for our regional houses. And you know what happens Tuesday? I get dropped off in my village, never to be heard from again. Just kidding.

Team Mandinka, cute and killin' it as always.

LOGGER LOGGER LOGGER LOGGER LOGGER

Jessica, me, Rachel, Maddie. My family made me this outfit.

Tying my "mussor"

Musicians for the Fete de Familles

They used this huge gourd for all sorts of different purposes - to stand on, to do flips off of, to bang on... turned upside down it was an impressive balancing contraption.

Last moments with my host mother.

Rocking out on the way to Swear-In

DJ Kimmie Kim Hall spun the tunes all the way to Dakar.

Jessica and Steve, Team Ker Sadaro... OH, how I will miss my village mates when we separate this week.

A Rainbow made of Boubous

Beautiful baby blue boys: Dave, Jono, Jamie, Justin, David

Hilariously cute, Kourtney.

Engagement photos with Steve

Mike, Evan, and Charles -- Not sure why they decided to hold pinkies... but it's pretty darn cute.

Dave, Jono, Paul, and Evan, bro-in' out by the banner.

All us trainees, moments before we became real live volunteers.

Watch out for the ever-scandalous knee exposure!!!

Sarah, I'll miss yooouuuuuu....

Wolof speakers FO LIFE.

Amanda takes the embroidery prize. (also, what inspired this pose?)

Linguere region warriors!

Eric, Mikael, and I, at the "American Club" in Dakar after Swear-In.

The title of this post was inspired by my good friend and nearest neighbor, Justin Tien (adventuresofjt.blogspot.com), after I started a story to him and some of our other buddies by casually saying, "So, remember when we used to be vegetarians?" The story I was telling was one of integration -- something that we all strive for and struggle with everyday, which is a familiar story to anyone that has lived in another country.

In the name of true candidness, today has been a tough one in terms of feeling comfortably integrated. After a night of bad sleep and a frustrating language test, the Senegalese habit of insisting on immediate and extensive greetings got to me. In a moment of weakness, I was driven to tears when our tech trainer ordered me to greet him and then harassed me about a cut on my foot. They've warned us about blogging on bad days, but I'm doing so anyway, so stick with me.

Training has continued along fairly uneventfully, or maybe life here is just feeling more routine. Our counterpart workshop was an exhausting two-day event, but having the time to discuss my life and work in Ngaraf with two well-informed and committed village residents made me feel far less anxious about my actual installation. Plus, we rewarded ourselves with a two-day beach vacation, packing all 40+ of us into an airy beach villa for the weekend following the workshop. After that, it was off to our home stay villages for one final week with our families. Now, we've said those goodbyes and are preparing for the next stage in this journey: Swear-In, Installation, and, at long last, the start of two years of service.

In my reckless pursuit of integration, I've gotten myself into a few pickles of late. Last week at the beach, I got bruises and cuts all over my body - mostly on my feet - when waves tossed me into large rocks concealed beneath the surface. Yesterday, just as those sores were healing, I got severe blisters on the balls of both my feet when I played volleyball in hot, hot sand the day after over-enthusiastically pumice-stoning the skin on them. Also, in the last days with my home stay family, I experienced my first bout of real sickness, complete with diarrhea and fever . . . thus successfully reigning in my hubris over "never getting sick." And I broke my phone when I made the rookie mistake of tucking it under my chin in order to pee during a power outage (key detail: the phone has a flashlight on it). Yes, I dropped it in the toilet, or, rather, the hole that serves as a toilet; I retrieved it and cleaned it, but it was broken. (It's fixed now!)

I hate to leave on a note of complaint, but since my inspiration is expiring, I will let these pictures (and their captions) tell the rest of the story. In true storybook fashion, I've even divided the images into four chapters:

CHAPTER 1: THE VILLAGE ROUTINE

Senegalese women have an amazing ability to prepare enormous amounts of food. What you see here is one of several huge pots of beef stew that the women of my compound cooked as a gift to the school.

You can't have a meal without rice! The beef stew was poured over these 40 or so pans of rice. Look at all that food, cooked up like it was nothing!

Giving a presentation on how to make a Nimes Lotion, a mosquito repellent made from Nimes leaves, soap, and oil.

With Steve and Jessica at our super-successful Nimes Lotion demonstration.

(Question: does anyone know if Nimes trees exist in the U.S.?)

This is what I got when I asked the boys to come pose for a picture.

Jessica's siblings, after she painted their finger nails.

CHAPTER 2: LIFE AT THE TRAINING CENTER

Ann Marie shows us how to fry moringa leaf beignets

Evan and Jono show off their "chayas"

Cuddle Fest at the center!

With my two counterparts after the workshop: Monsieur Ba, my school counterpart, and Marieme, my community counterpart

CHAPTER 3: BEACH VACATION!

Bus to the Beach!

Dave and Kourtney on a beach stroll

Paul and Maddie, the model married couple

Kourtney and I

(It was about this time that we started planning our around-the world sailing trip for the months after we complete our services)

The coastline

Group Shot

CHAPTER 4: GOOD-BYE KER SADARO :(

Jessica and Steve walking home after watering the garden.

The Road to Ker Sadaro

(sadly, the road to my Ngaraf has far less trees ... maybe I'll plant thousands!)

NICE OUTFIT

I'm sorry if you're over the pictures of massive cooking projects, but I just can't get over it! Here, the women are preparing gallons and gallons of soured milk (essentially yoghurt) to pour over steamed millet to make the traditional baptism delicacy called Lach.

15-day-old Fama getting her head shaved on the day of her baptism

My little buddy, Kine, who likes to sit on my lap and protect my purse from the prying hands of other little tikes.

Steve and his sisters

Crazy, crazy dancing at the baptism - they are SO good at this dance, which involves jumping high off the group and flinging your limbs around wildly

I don't know if it's genetic or what, but even the littlest kids can look good doing this dance.

Steve and I get in on the action.

We don't look quite as good...

More intense dancing at the baptism

Some favorite kids

With my mom (in green) and my Aunt Hady (in blue) -- they gave me this and other beautiful outfit the night before I left!

The picture that sparked the name of the post!

This is the sheep they killed in my honor... so this is me, the former vegetarian, trying to integrate!

Oh! I really will miss my little brothers and sisters in Ker Sadaro.

P.S. You probably all know this, but just in case: you can make any picture bigger by clicking on it, FYI.

Just for fun, a couple of videos:

Sometimes, you gotta dance! These boys are gettin' down at Dana's going away party in Ngaraf:

The trainees from each region had to make a presentation on the ecology of their region. The four of us from Louga/Linguere had the best one, and I thought I'd share it. (Take it with a grain of salt... though we are maintaining that we live in the most hard-core region, the true "wild wild West" of Senegal.)

I'll start with this: 30 years ago, before the filling of the Maka-Diama Dam on the Senegal-Mauritania border, a tributary of the Senegal river greened the area surrounding Linguere. In the years since, the area has undergone a serious desertification process, but the population that settled there in the days of vegetation and flowing water has stayed put as the land dried up and the trees diminished. They farm and garden and go about their lives, but are forced to devote much of their day to seeking and transporting water for themselves and their crops. And now: I will live amongst them.

Personally, my water situation in my future home, Ngaraf, is nothing to complain about. One of the communal village "robinets" - faucets - is located right outside my family's compound. In my work as an environmental education volunteer, however, I foresee much of my time revolving around the perpetual struggle to keep this life-force close at hand, for my neighbors and my plants and who knows what else.

I returned last week from a 5-day visit to Ngaraf, my real, permanent village -- though we won't permanently install ourselves until the middle of May, the Demystification Week gave all of us trainees the opportunity to see the places where we will live. I spent the week with Dana, the volunteer I will be replacing and an intimidatingly-wise and competent young women. Absurdly, my very first nights in the village were Dana's last, and during my stay, we shared - both literally and figuratively - the space that she has occupied for the last two years and I will occupy for the next two. It was a truly intense time for both of us, sitting at opposite ends of the Peace Corps Circle of Life.

As the reality of my foreseeable future set in (and I mean that far less omoinously than it sounds), I picked Dana's brain about the details of her work and life in the village. She's done a great deal to help create and oversee a community garden operated by the women, and this is a project that I'm both thrilled and terrified to take on. (On that note, by the way, if anyone knows of any awesome gardening resources - especially those that pertain to warm weather - please alert me to their existence and/or send them my way!) I guess if I can make trees and vegetables grow successfully in that climate, I will feel like I can do anything! Until that happens, though, I must admit that I'm quite nervous about my prospects.

So, some of the exciting things about my site:

Camels: Driving in, we saw a few of these beasts speckling the horizon. During my stay, I came across a few others on my morning runs, and on the way out, our SUV was halted in the road by whole pack of 'em -- domesticated ones! (domesticated, as in they belong to a group of nomadic Pulaar people).The people of Ngaraf: During my stay, it seemed that all 300 people of the village felt genuine grief about Dana's departure. Even so, I felt them welcoming me in all different ways -- trying to get to know me, laughing with me, teaching me, putting up with my bad Wolof. They are truly good people, and I can't believe my luck at getting to live with them for the next two years. Also, I must say that, while it may have been difficult to witness their distress at the loss of my predecessor, the affection and connection they felt with her is a testament to their kindness and ability to welcome an outsider. Such a beautiful thing!

My counterpart: every PC volunteer is hooked up with at least one village counterpart -- a competent and well-connected village resident to help you integrate, learn your way around, implement projects, etc. One of mine, Marem, is exceptional -- one of those people that I could immediately recognize as being intuitive, wise, caring, and strong.My douche (my bathroom!): It's mine and only mine, and it's attached to my room, so I can walk there in my underpants when it's a bazillion degrees out! And it's open air, allowing bad odors to escape and letting the stars shine in on my evening buckets baths. The best cement pit latrine in Senegal, hands down.

The Missionaries: Linguere region volunteers reap extensive benefits from an ever-friendly and generous Lutheran missionary family living in Linguere proper (2o km from my village). When they got wind that all the region's new PCVs would be in the area for demystification, they invited us over and treated us to wonders untold: microwave popcorn, chips and homemade salsa (I KID YOU NOT), delicious gin and tonics in frosted classes (again, I kid you not). We hear tell of homemade ice cream (a BIG DEAL when there is no other ice cream within at least 100 km of Linguere), feasts on major holidays, cold drinks in the hot season, hot showers in the cold season, and all other varieties of semi-debaucherous delights.

It's been a week since I left Ngaraf, during which I returned to my training village to, well, train. I swear in as a Volunteer on May 14th, and shortly after that I will be installed in Ngaraf for good.

All the pictures below are from Ngaraf and the Linguere region (my permanent site). Coming soon: some more recent pictures from this last week of training.

The women made hordes of delicious deep-fried beignets for Dana's going away party, which doubled as my "baptism."

In love with babies wherever I go.

Children of Ngaraf.

Dressed up for the going away party/baptism.

Many packs of Nomadic Pulaars, all cattle-herders, populate the area around Ngaraf.

Nomadic Pulaars come into Ngaraf every day to fill giant truck tires inner tubes with water from the Robinet.

I can bare the desert as long as there are baobabs. And there are, alhumdalilaay!

Me with the amazing Linguere missionary family: Sarah, Eva, Ellen, and Dirk.

(Camp Warren folks: Sarah's from Eveleth!!)

Camels. 'Nuff said.

Attempt at a picture of me and the camels through the picture of the Peace Corps car.

With Kourtney and Eric, reunited after Demystification.

The "Drive-thru Wal-Mart" -- These guys huddle around the Peace Corps bus all along the (slow-moving) highway on our way to and from Dakar (approximately 2 hours from the PC training center in Thies -- we went there to take care of some administrative business and eat at delicious restaurants.)

Scared, excited, and blindfolded, we were taken by the hand and led to our futures... on a giant painted map of Senegal.

(Photos by Kolda volunteer Amanda Wybolt.)

Andrew, Mikael, and Eric win the blind fold contest.

It's a funny thing to smile at a camera with a blindfold on...

Mamadou, head of PC Senegal's EE and Health programs, taking me on my way.

My feet, before my eyes and mind knew what was happening.

My personal photographer, Amanda. (thanks!!)

Some Kolda region volunteers, patiently (?) waiting...

"Who are you? Who am I touching? "

Fanning myself with my site envelope, I believe.

The moment of truth. Justin is my closest neighbor, and he's looking slightly displeased... I'm hoping it's not related to me.

Me, Justin, Ann Marie, Kim: The Linguere Crew (In this case, "L" is not for loser. I hope.)

Podor zone volunteers: Jonno, Evan, Maddie, and Paul - my neighbors to the North!

Steve and Sarah are excited to be placed on the coast! (Little to they know how frequently I will be visiting them...)

Me and Mikael B. (UPS '08)

LOGGER LOGGER LOGGER LOGGER LOGGER!

With Country Director Chris Hedrick

Tomorrow, we're all heading out to visit a volunteer in or near our site! Since I'm replacing another volunteer, I will be visiting my actual site - yes!! PC Senegal's official nomenclature for this process is "demyst-ing" - or "demystifying" - which is tells you something about the purport of what we are doing tomorrow.

The reality has slowly set in that I will truly be moving to the desert for the next two years. I believe that there's a lot to love about the desert: dunes and camels and baobabs, all totally beautiful in their own way. Other elements of my future home are harder to love, like the rumor of 130 degree heat in the hot season and the news that I have to dress even more conservatively than I had anticipated. Maybe I'll come to love those parts, too, though. Either way, I'm not getting my panties (or my ankle-length skirts, for that matter) in a bunch until after I "de-myst." What an exciting time!

I found out yesterday that, for the next two years, I will be living in the village of Ngaraf, in the region of Louga, in North-Central Senegal. On this map, you'll see the two cities of Dara and Linguere in the periwinkle-shaded region called Louga. Ngaraf is located right on the main road between these two, 20 km from each of them. (If you're feeling tech-savvy, you can check it out on google maps - Ngaraf itself is actually labeled and you can see all the little compounds.)

I still don't know a ton about my site. The village has about 300 residents, mostly Wolof-speaking, and all Muslim. I'll be replacing an environmental education volunteer who has been working on a number of gardening projects and, like me, likes to run and bike. My house is rumored to be fairly posh by rural standards -- a cement structure, not a hut, which makes me feel like the third little piggy who builds a brick house and makes fun of the first and second little piggies because they built their houses out of straw and sticks, respectively.

There are three other kids from my training group also being placed in the area surrounding Linguere. Ann Marie, Justin, and Kim are all great -- they have positive energy, good senses of humor, and thick skin, alhumdahlilaay!!

A cute little story: There's a big map of Senegal painted on a cement area here at the training center. The Peace Corps folks unveiled our site placements to the trainees by blindfolding all of us and then leading us to our spots on the map. We stood there, calling out names and grasping blindly to figure out who our nearest neighbors were until they told us to remove our blindfolds and indulge in the "moment of truth." It was very fun, though nerve-wracking and quite intense! One of the spectators took some great photos of this process, which I'll post when I get a chance.

Next week, we travel to our install sites for a five-day visit. We'll stay with the volunteer we'll be replacing (if there is one), meet our new home stay families, and basically see where and how we'll be living for the next two years! The shroud of uncertainty under which I've existed for the last three years is finally being fully removed. I'm extraordinarily excited to see my home and meet my neighbors, and I'm doing my best to reserve judgment and expectations until then.

All the best to you!

--Emily

When I returned to my village home stay family last week after several days at the Thies training center, my host mother greeted me with "Nammoon nala" -- i.e., "I missed you." Better yet, I knew to respond with "Malaa Raw" -- meaning, "I missed you more." This delightful little exchange is fairly common, and it's a nice indication of a certain tenderness that is present in the culture and language that I am becoming immersed in.

Another encouraging auspice is the frequency with which the word for peace, "jamm," appears in Wolof phrases:

* Goodnight. Sleep in peace!

* How is your family? In Peace only.

*The morning is peaceful.

*Etc.

And if that isn't good enough for you, how about these little gems from the Wolof language: the word for yes is "Waaw," pronounced like the English exclamation, "Wow!" -- Meaning that every time I answer a question in the affirmative, I get to sound like I'm giving a really enthusiastic endorsement. It's great. Oh! And their version of "Thank Goodness" is ALHUMDILILAAY (All-HOOM-dah-lee-laay). People here seem to say it every other sentence, and I've picked up the habit. Try it some time, with gusto; it's really fun! Finally, my favorite idiomatic phrase, uttered in response to a variety of questions, is "Mungiy Doh" -- "It walks." Wolof is great.

And I'm sure you're wondering . . . How IS the Wolof coming along, anyway, Numbe? Well, it's coming. It walks. :-)

The language learning curve has been steep due to the confluence of several fortuitous factors, including my stellar language trainer, my personal desperation to understand what the heck people are saying, and - most of all - my immersion in a Wolof-speaking environment. With each and every exhausting day in the village, I come leaps and bounds in my ability to speak and understand the language. I also feel that I'm making progress in other, less-tangible areas, like a higher tolerance for being the constant focus of attention and a broader understanding of the emotional patterns of my host family.

As practice for the kinds of things that we will do after we install, the Peace Corps trainers have been giving us a lot of technical work to complete. During our last village stay, we planted our garden and our tree nursery, and now have a whole adorable patch of black-eyed pea plants sprouting up; we built two mud stoves; we created a map of the village; we sat in on a primary school class; and we traveled to a local health post to observe a morning of infant vaccinations. The vaccination day was a bit intense -- in the midday heat, hundreds of women were lined up with their babies, with at least half of them nursing at any given moment. Upon reaching the front of the line, they would hold their squirmy little ones as a bleary-eyed nurse jams a large needle into each plump, smooth little thigh. Maybe it has something to do with the administering of shots - I'm really not sure - but many of these women seemed weary, or even sullen.

On another note: I've been struck of late by the true, honest affection that I've come to feel for my host family in the village. It's an intriguing and beautiful testament to our ability, as sentient beings, to love and understand across cultural rifts. This was one of my primary motivations for seeking Peace Corps service in West Africa, so I'm overjoyed at how much I've come to like this family. I love my mother, Manay Njay, who calls me her "Diskette" and proudly, with a beaming smile, hands me a frozen bissap juice treat after lunch every day; I love the young kids, like Binta and Manay Thiaw, who are interested in everything I do and offer me shy smiles when I come home from school; I love my preteen sister, Nday Njay, wise and strong beyond her years, who helps me do EVERYTHING and doesn't even laugh at me; I love my teenage sister, Nogay, who sits with me at dinner and never fails to remind me that I must strive for my "Jay Fonday" butt; I love my "Tante" Hady Keri (actually the second wife of my father's brother), who seems to have a sixth sense about when I need help with something and will send one of her beautiful children running across the courtyard when she sees that I'm in need; I even love my brother, Mamour, who is my age and likes to ask me to marry him. Oh! And the babies... I love the babies. The best part is that none of the mommies have any problems ceding their darling baby to my care for however long I want! :D

I think these people really are good people, and sometimes they make me so happy. Yet this is just my family for the duration of training. Imagine how attached I will get after I am installed in my final village and live with the same family for two years!

For all my gushing, I still find myself feeling a significant amount of frustration on a regular basis. The nature of my life produces weak spots in my optimism, and every now and then it becomes just a bit too much. In bad moments, I scowl at an agressive kid, or stomp past a group of old women without greeting them, or retreat to my room until I feel I can once again face the heat and the swarms of people. Suffice it to say that I am constantly working on making these moments fewer and farther between.

The hardest part, for me, might be the cession of all control over the food that I eat. It is certainly a bizarre thing, at the age of 25, to all of sudden find yourself void of agency over what you will eat next -- not only not to have a choice, but not to know when your next meal will come, or what it will be. I'm getting better about it every day, and slowly coming to a place where I can relinquish control without forfeiting my sanity.

That all said, it's nice to be back at the center for a few days -- choosing my food, catching up with friends, taking alone time, and checking in with all of you folks!

The big buzz around the center these days revolves around our Site Placements, which we will know on Wednesday! The rumor mill is churning with talk of the relative merits of various potential sites, such as a Pulaar-language village where you get to swim with manatees, or the Serere-speaking site that sits among abundant mangroves, or the Fulakunda village populated by dwarfs! For my part, I'm confidant that wherever I end up, I will make the best of it and come to love it as one loves the place they call home.

Congratulations on reaching the end of this ramble-fest of a blog post. I've added several pictures below, but for those of you feeling exceptionally photo-gluttonous, you can click on the Picasa photo album to the right, where I've posted many, many more.

With my host mother and another family member; the posed me with the enormous metal bowls and the over-sized serving spoon, which got cut out of the photo.

A typical lunch spread

In the background, the older men's lunch bowl; In the foreground, the young men's lunch bowl

The other Numbe Thiaw - Called "Little Numbe" by our family so we know who's being addressed. (Yes, that makes me "Big Numbe.")

This is Fatima, one of my favorite babies --

she lives in my compound so we get to hang out a bunch.

"Tante" Hady Keri, with three from her beautiful brood.

Pounding goat food -- notice that they gave me the small stick and my seven-year-old sister the big stick, which is just about an accurate representation of our relative abilities.

Little kids in the wheelbarrow -- always a hit.

Pounding and sifting clay for our mud stoves. I love these kids -- they're all so happy here, even though they are in the midst of getting covered in sand and clay because they are so diligently helping us.

These kids followed us around as we gathered clay and manure for our mud stoves. They insisted on carrying all our stuff, like Jessica's big black bag, which is hanging from the shoulder of the little one on the left.

The Ker Sadaro crew with our mud stove. That's our language trainer, Ayssatou, on the left.

One very exciting day, another group of Wolof speakers visited us in Ker Sadaro.

Kids eager to answer a question in the 5th grade class we visited.

Lunch time!

Chebujenn - fish and rice - which we eat for lunch about 4 out of every 5 days.

Muraling

Jessica, me, Steve - the Ker Sadaro Crew - finished with our mural!

The Thiaw Clan Cows.

(to get the most out of this phrase, you must know that "Thiaw" is pronouced "Chow;" Thiaw is the French spelling.)

Steve and Jessica with their respective favorite kids.

Binta, another favorite baby.

This one lives at our language trainer's house, where we have class.

Some of my siblings: Manay, Nday Njay, Binta, Little Numbe, and Pap

Binta and Mohammed

My brother Mamour, on the right, with another family member whose name I can never remember.

I was excited that they finally let me help cook!

Some of my teenage siblings, studying in the courtyard.

My host mother!

Mothers and infants waiting for vaccinations.

This baby is only ONE DAY OLD! They let me hold him; it was beautiful.

Ker Sadaro boys, dressed in their best for Friday prayer (the most important prayer of the week), in line for candy.

Another favorite baby.

Our black-eyed pea patch!

On the way back to the training center after 12 days in our villages.

Sarah, Andrew, Albert, and Kourtney cooking dinner at the training center.

Jay Fonday contest.

The Environmental Education trainees after building a killer Moringa Leaf bed

Laundry day at the Training Center

My village home stay family looking at my pictures from home

This sweet little thing is one of the many other Ndumbe Caws in the village

Yes, sifting manure with my bare hands

At our teacher's homestay house for our eight tea session of the day

Baby goat!

Me, Steve and Jessica - Team Ker Sadaro -

Super excited about our freshly dug garden beds

Ker Sadaro

Ker Sadaro

Women leaving the peanut grinding factory in Ker Sadaro

With Sarah, Steve, Jessica, Jamie, Mikael

after our first week in the villages

Also, notice that there are more pictures posted in the Picasa web album. Click on the slideshow to the right. -->>

. . . Ndumbe Caw!

I've returned from my first week with my village homestay with my own personal Wolof name and lots of new skills to help me survive in rural Senegal. Last week, I gathered with my 40 fellow PC trainees for the exciting moment of our language assignments - we will all be learning one of the six native languages, and the assignments are exciting because they tell us a certain amount about where in the country we will eventually be placed after training. I was pleased to find out that I would be learning Wolof, which is one of the most widely spoken languages in the country. My training home stay family lives in the small village of Ker Sadaro, and the two other trainees living in the same village, Steve and Jessica, are both fantastic -- they, and our lovely language and culture teacher, Ayssatou, make this whole experience possible. Steve is also my village running buddy, and they're both my confidants.

My home stay family, not surprisingly, is delightful as well - hospitable and generous and patient beyond belief. And there are lots and lots of them, a couple of heads of households, each with at least two wives, and each wife has innumerable children, ages 2 months to infinity (that littlest one, a teeny baby girl, might provide me more happiness than anything else in my life; as I cradle her in my arms every day after lunch, I feel myself lifted out of even the worst of bad moods). I still don't know who everyone is or how they're related or even whether or not they're part of the extensive Caw clan, but I'm hoping that my next stint in the village will take care of this problem. The Caw family gave me my name - Ndumbe Caw (pronounced NOOM-bay Chow) within a minute of meeting me, naming me after my four-year-old sister and several other village residents.

Village life is all sorts of wild. It starts early, with me wishing my host of host mothers "Asalama Malekoum" on my way to the latrine. I have several hours of class in the morning with my PC Ker Sadaro mates, and then I return home for lunch, which is usually the national dish, Chebujenn - rice with fish, veggies (eggplant, bitter tomato, manioc, cabbage, carrot), and lots of oil. I eat around an enormous metal bowl in the sandy courtyard with about 8-10 other family members, and I've been trying to eat with my hand like a real Senegalese, taking little balls of food in my right fist and squishing it repeatedly before eating the now-firm patty off the tip of my fingers. (I still prefer eating with a spoon, and I'm bring one with me when I return). Dinner is eaten in my room with my host sister Nogay, age 19, who fills the silent space above our shared bowl by repeating to me, over and over, "Rere, rere!!" ("Eat, eat!"). She is adamant that only through abundant consumption will I achieve the "Jay Fonday," or the large round butt that contributes to your dancing abilities and aesthetics, so named for the mushy, delicious, calorie-filled breakfast food, Fonday.

In addition to language and culture training, we've been working on our village vegetable plots and tree nursery, which involves sifting and mixing sand and manure, digging digging digging, and learning lots of technical project-related Wolof terms.

At the end of every day, I fall to sleep exhausted in my mosquito-netted cocoon, -- physically exhausted from the heat and the digging, mentally exhausted from the constant effort of trying to learn and speak a language that still sounds like jibberish a lot of the time, and, most of all, emotionally exhausted from the frustration of being unable to adequately express my appreciation for all that I am receiving from the community around me. The highs are high and the lows are lows -- I feel very discouraged when I get harassed by a gaggle of snarky boys looking for money, or when I contemplate the weeks and months that stretch before me in a place that does not yet feel like home. But: when I actually carry out a fluid conversation with my host mom and receive a big grin of approval from her, that ... well, that's like winning the lottery.

Also, the simple fact of my presence is entertaining to the people of my village; it's somewhat fulfilling to bring that much mirth just for being a Toubab (white person) that speaks bumbly Wolof.

I'll return to the village today (Wednesday) for a two-week stay, so you won't find me hanging around blogspot. I do, however, have a cell phone and can be reached on it in my village (via text or call): 221 (country code) 77 118 0534. If you're calling from a cell phone, press the star button twice before dialing the number.

Thank you all so much for reading. In an egomaniacal way, when I'm sitting quietly with my homestay family, it makes me feel comforted and connected to think of all your curious and empathetic eyes sharing my experience with me.

Training is going remarkably well! We're still in the early stages and basically locked in our compound, but we're learning all sorts of important things. In addition to the unbelievable number of Peace Corps acronyms, we learned about all the yummy Senegalese foods, several important unfamiliar objects, some basics on planting a garden, how to fetch water, how to pee in a small hole, how to eat rice with our hands, and the proper behavior when in the presence of someone doing their daily prayers. This morning, we even had our first "survival Wolof" lesson, and we've all been like broken records repeating the greeting over and over ever since. (Since there are several local languages in Senegal, many of us won't be using Wolof in the villages we eventually will be placed in; we will start training in our "permanent" languages tomorrow, but for now we need some Wolof - the most common language - to get around the city.) We have our lunches in the tradition style: we sit on mats in groups of 4 or 5 and eat out of a big metal bowl in the center of our circle -- it's quite fun, and phenomenally tasty as well! I'm relishing all the over-stimulation and onslaught of new ideas.

My fellow trainees are all truly good and interesting people, with unique and important qualities to bring to the group. I feel SO very lucky to be amongst them. As a group, they are also exceptionally hilarious, and I find myself laughing about 80% of the day. We've been playing volleyball and doing yoga and sharing card games and having sing- and dance-alongs... and also, of course, working hard and having lots of discussions about out futures hear in the country.

Here are some photos, which fall into mini-album called "First and Lasts." (heh heh, my creativity is waning, I'm sorry.)

Last stateside meal: Sushi and Saketinis

Last piano bar dance and limbo fest in the U.S.

Last view of American soil

First moments in Senegal

First Senegalese dance party

First time carrying water --

I'll try to master the no-hands technique in the next couple of years -- I'll think I'll have plenty of practice

Of the 791 (or so) days that I will spend in Senegal, I've done one. This seems like a small feat, until I zoom out and pan over the bigger picture of my Peace Corps process, which started about two and half years ago with an application. Getting myself safely onto Senegalese soil required a lot more than I anticipated when I started the paperwork back in the summer of 2007; it meant lots of perplexing decisions, self-reflection, and -- as is the nature of any meaningful decision -- the forfeit of much that is dear to me. The last month has been particularly enlightening in this regard, as I've said one bittersweet goodbye after another to family and friends. Finally, I made it to staging in DC, where I met and befriended my fellow volunteers. And then - at long last - came the final airplane flight (direct from DC to Dakar) and the rigors and immigration and customs. Two hours after our 6 AM landing in Senegal, we reached the town and Thies and the Peace Corps training center, where we promptly collapsed for long naps that carried us straight into the middle of our first hot West African day. After French language interviews and medical reviews, we had a long, long drum circle/dance fest with local musicians, romping and stomping until we had sand up to our kneecaps and had gotten a chance to witness all of the trademark Senegalese moves the locals could come up with.

So as I sit here on this first evening, I realize that the bridges I've crossed thus far deserve their own reflection and self-satisfied nod, for being here really is a big part of the battle. Of course, there is so much to come, and thank goodness for that. The bridges and battles that await me will, needless to say, take on a character that is different from those in the past, but they will no doubt build on each other and contribute to who I am -- which is the exciting part. We can travel all over the world, up and down and back and forth a million time, and we still maintain our personal constitution; in fact, we realize and develop who we are with each tough decision, difficult goodbye, or weak moment. For this reason and so many more, I am thrilled to be here and excited for the days, weeks, and months to ahead.

We'll be here at the training center for another four days before moving in with nearby home-stay families. I hope to check in again soon! To all of you, THANK YOU for listening.

Some of the girls that taught us our dance moves today.

... The Walrus Said, To speak of many things - Of shoes and ships and sealing wax, of Senegal and one girl's feelings.

Thanks, Mr. Lewis Carroll.

The time has come for me to start my tenure with the Peace Corps. On March 7th, I'll depart for Senegal, where I'll stay for the next two years, working in and enjoying a rural community yet to be determined. As a Preventative Health/Environmental Education volunteer, the projects, training, and education that I carry out will address both of these subjects, as well as the nexus between the two.

Or so I think. As I sit here in Los Angeles, I can't truly know what my life will be like once I move into my community in rural Senegal. What I do know is that I am ready to experience a truly new way of life, to get to know a diverse set of people, to share ideas on a range of matters, to play with some kids, and to broaden my perspective on the challenges, opportunities, and capabilities of all the people with whom we share our little planet.